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APRIL 21,  2011

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS – AT 11:05 P.M. ET:  We alluded to this in the post below.  Our president was serenaded in San Francisco by a very fine musical group today.  It is our pleasure to bring you a report of this culturally uplifting moment:

A crowd of half a dozen protesters concerned with the Wikileaks story disrupted the Obama event at the St. Regis Hotel, with Oakland activist Naomi Pitcairn organizing the event for the group which calls itself freshjuiceparty.com; she personally paid $76,000 total for tickets for the group to gain entry to the high priced fundraiser, she told us.

The progressive group protested what they called the inhumane treatment of Pvt. Bradley Manning in the Wikileaks case. Their protest song — which included lyrics: “We paid our dues..where’s our change?” — was sung in its entirety for Obama, who thanked them at the end of the a capella performance.

Outside, the group said that they were progressives who had worked for Obama and voted for him in 2008, but who were disappointed not only with Manning's treatment, but with Obama's policies on war as well.

The protest began when Pitcairn stood up about 5 minutes into the president’s speech and said, “We wrote a song for you, Mr. President.” When he tried to suggest she wait, the group launched into the ditty, and kept singing for several minutes.

COMMENT:  Readers can e-mail various record companies and radio stations, and demand that the song be recorded and played.  We should also insist that the lyrics be printed in a variety of languages, of course including those of African, Pacific Islander, and rain forest peoples. 

However, and we don't wish to be rude, but we wonder whether there was a better use for that $76,000.  You think?

April 21, 2011       Permalink

THE LESS THAN CHARMING PRESIDENT – AT 6:25 P.M. ET:  Many votes in presidential elections are cast, not from the head, but from the gut.  It's how we feel about a candidate.  Do we like him, or her.  Is there trust in a crisis?

Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal, argues something we've believed here for a long time – that President Obama, once the nice-guy-with-a-brain candidate, isn't coming off as particularly likable any longer.  And it can cost him:

If it is true, as Michelle Obama said in February, that her husband isn't smoking anymore, maybe he'd better start mellowing out with the cigs again before it costs him the presidency.

The Barack Obama we've been seeing lately is a different personality than the one that made a miracle run to the White House in 2008.

Obama.2008 was engaging, patient, open, optimistic and a self-identified conciliator.

Obama.2011 has been something else—testy, petulant, impatient, arrogant and increasingly a divider.

Never forget: That historic 2008 victory came with 52.9% of the total vote and 52% of independent voters. David Axelrod recently noted "how small the margin for error is."

Presidential personality is well inside the margin of error for 2012, but the one on display recently has not been attractive. And it's happening a lot.

This Monday, after wrapping up a White House interview with a Dallas TV reporter, the station reported that Mr. Obama said: "Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview, alright?"

And...

The Obama migration from the high road to the low road is evident even in nonpolitical settings. Here he is last weekend talking about the White House phone system: "You know the Oval Office always thought I was going to have like real cool phones and stuff. I'm like 'come on guys, I'm the president of the United States.' Where's the fancy buttons and stuff, and the big screen comes up? It doesn't happen."

I'm like? Real cool phones and stuff? Would Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy ever have affected whatever their generational equivalent was of "Where's the fancy buttons and stuff?"

And...

The latest Obama, which seems genuine, routinely ridicules and mocks his opposition. He mocks pretty much anyone who disagrees with him about anything.

Finally...

What voters like is the memory of the historic Obama they voted into the office of the presidency. The person they voted for in 2008 is different than the person who kicked off his presidential campaign last week by personally stomping his opposition.

Somehow voters are apparently expected to "like" whichever version Mr. Obama chooses to give them. It is asking a lot. By definition, this is a gap, and it's looking like it could be a dangerous one for the incumbent.

COMMENT:  Agreed, although the media will soften the blows on the president, even the self-inflicted ones.  But the Obama of 2011 is not the Obama of 2008.  Today he is an experienced president who's seen what the job really is, and he's seen that his little coffee-house (caffeine-free) theories don't necessarily work in the real McDonald's world. 

Some of his rabid base hasn't seen the real world, and that is causing the president no end of trouble.  He is being heckled at one rally after another.  Today the followers of Bradley Manning, the imprisoned soldier who is charged with passing a vast amount of classified data to WikiLeaks, interrupted an Obama appearance with their shouted demands that their hero be better loved. 

The president has his troubles.  We tend to forget what Henninger reports – that Mr. Obama only got 52.9 percent of the vote in 2008.  The way the media reported it, you'd think he was elected almost unanimously. 

At the same time, the president has the power of incumbency.  The Republicans have the weakness of being in the media crosshairs.  Still a hard fight.

April 21, 2011      Permalink

NEW WESTERN EFFORTS IN LIBYA – AT 11:06 A.M. ET:  A stalemate is developing in Libya, but some Western allies are taking action, absent the leadership of the United States.  From WaPo:

The United States and its allies have entered a new stage of involvement in Libya, sending assistance and advisers directly to opposition military forces, which have been unable to break Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s stranglehold over much of the country despite help from NATO airstrikes.

France and Italy said Wednesday that they would join Britain in dispatching military advisers to assist the inexperienced and disorganized rebel army, primarily in tactics and logistics. President Obama authorized sending $25 million worth of nonlethal equipment, including body armor, tents, uniforms and vehicles.

And...

A senior European official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the Americans, said that Obama’s eagerness to turn over command of the Libyan air operation to NATO late last month, and the withdrawal of U.S. fighter planes from ground-strike missions, had undermined the strength of their united front against Gaddafi.

Yeah, we noticed.  Remember how the Europeans greeted Obama's election?  A new god had become president.  You don't hear much of that any longer.  In fact most reports say that the Europeans are appalled by Obama's conduct of foreign policy.   And he was conspicuously absent from the invitation list for next week's Royal wedding in London.  Now, maybe they just weren't inviting American presidents, but maybe a hint was being sent. 

If Obama is reelected, he could argue that he now had the experience to be president.  I'm not sure.

April 21, 2011       Permalink

WHERE OBAMA STANDS – AT 9:52 A.M. ET:  Well, it's good for our morale.  The Hill presents a pretty devastating picture of where Obama stands politically right now, and analyzes the reasons.  They're all valid, but none of them negate the need for the GOP to have a candidate who can take Obama on: 

President Obama’s approval ratings are plummeting, and the timing is terrible for the White House.

Even as Obama skewered Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the House GOP budget plan, his approval rating dipped in a Gallup poll to 41 percent, the lowest number yet of his presidency.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday shows Obama at 47 percent, down seven points since January.

Worse yet for the White House, Gallup shows the president in a nosedive with independents, who are coveted by the Obama-Biden 2012 campaign.

From April 12-14, independents’ approval of Obama fell to 35 percent, 9 percentage points off his average for the year, according to Gallup.

Rising gas prices are no doubt a problem for the White House, and may be a main factor in the plummeting poll numbers. The higher gas prices generally rise, the lower a president’s approval ratings tend to be.

Still, it is disconcerting for the White House and Obama’s new campaign operation in Chicago to see falling poll numbers just after the president launched his reelection campaign with a strategy of focusing on the economy and the contrasting economic visions of the president and the GOP.

COMMENT:  It is still very early in the game.  We are probably a year away from knowing who the Republican nominee is.  And I'd love to know what gas prices will be in April of 2012. 

As the story goes on to say, Mr. Obama is whipping up his crazy base now, with the hope of getting it re-involved, and hoping to come back to the independents later.  That may be a bridge too far.  We hope it is, but we will have only one hand clapping until we know who the GOP picks.

April 21, 2011      Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 9:11 A.M. ET:

From the Columbus Dispatch:  The anger that most people feel when they discover a scratch on their vehicles often turns to rage when they see the body-shop repair bills.  Those hard feelings might be avoidable someday, thanks to a team of researchers who say they've created a type of paint that can heal itself when exposed to ultraviolet light.  The idea improves on other experimental coatings that repaired themselves when exposed to heat, said Stuart Rowan, a polymer chemist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

I don't know about you, but I think that's a great idea.  Yankee ingenuity.  We now await a government agency coming in and demanding a ten-year-study to see if the new material will destroy the world.

April 21, 2011       Permalink

NOTHING LIKE A LITTLE SLANTED JOURNALISM – AT 8:51 A.M. ET:  We rail about press bias here, and today we see a stark example from The Politico.  These "journalists" seem to go about their work completely unembarrassed:

For all the rhetoric about cutting government spending, NASA’s space mission remains sacred in Congress.

A handful of powerful lawmakers are so eager to see an American on the moon — or even Mars — that they effectively mandated NASA to spend “not less than” $3 billion for a new rocket project and space capsule in the 2011 budget bill signed by the president last week.

NASA has repeatedly raised concerns about the timeframe for building a smaller rocket — but the new law expresses Congress’s will for the space agency to make a massive “heavy-lift” rocket that can haul 130 metric tons, like the ones from the days of the Apollo.

Congressional approval of the plan — all while $38 billion is being cut elsewhere in the federal government — reflects not only the power of key lawmakers from NASA-friendly states, but the enduring influence of major contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing in those states.

For instance, a series of stop-gap spending laws had kept money flowing to the man-to-moon Constellation program because Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) initially tucked a provision into a 2010 budget bill — even though President Barack Obama and Congress agreed last fall to end that Bush-era initiative. An internal NASA audit pegged the cost of that move at $215 million over five months.

It's Bush (!!), don't you see?  It's always Bush!

While some praise Congress for pushing the United States to remain a world leader in space science, critics say the national space program is effectively run by lawmakers protecting jobs in their home states.

COMMENT:  I have no doubt, no doubt whatever, that lawmakers are trying to protect jobs in their home states.  Shock.  I also have no doubt that companies do heavy lobbying.  And I also have no doubt that sometimes foolish decisions are made, based on political calculations.

But the space program has been one of the most exciting, productive, and uplifting programs in America's history, and the technology from it has improved virtually every area of American life.  It symbolizes American supremacy.  And, to some of us, American supremacy is pretty important.

Obama has de-emphasized the space program, and it isn't only members of Congress who are complaining.  Former astronauts, scientists and editorialists have argued against Obama's shrunken NASA.  Neil Armstrong made an impassioned plea to keep a program that Obama cut.  And Obama's choice to head NASA actually said that his mandate was to improve relations with the Muslim world.  As Johnny Carson used to say, "I did not know that."

But the way the Politico piece was written, you'd think that those who want to forge ahead in space are the real villains, as opposed to the cool rational heads urging a second-rate NASA.  Not good, not good.  This is why people lose confidence in media.

April 21, 2011       Permalink

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE II – AT 8:15 A.M. ET:  In 1968 some pundits called Eugene McCarthy's campaign to unseat President Lyndon Johnson "the children's crusade" because there were so many young people involved. 

It was in some respects a children's crusade, with an intellectual and emotional maturity level to match.  It was noticed in a place named North Vietnam, whose armies we were fighting.  The North Vietnamese realized they could use this political movement to their advantage, and they did. 

We seem to have a new children's crusade, surrounding the presidency of Barack Obama.  Obama addressed some of the young 'uns yesterday, with an intellectual level worthy of the 1960s.  From Fox:

SAN FRANCISCO -- Easing into his 2012 campaign, President Obama is telling his supporters he understands their frustration over the compromises he's made with Republicans, while preparing them for more to come.

It's a timely warning given the upcoming vote on raising the debt ceiling and the ongoing debate over long-term deficit reduction, both issues Obama says can only be solved if Republicans and Democrats work together. But further compromises could prove a tough pill to swallow for many of Obama's liberal backers, who have grown tired of watching the president cede ground to the GOP on spending cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy.

During a raucous fundraiser focused on young people in San Francisco Wednesday night, Obama said his supporters are not alone in their frustration.

"There are times when I've felt the same way you do. It's a big, complicated, messy democracy," he said. "We knew this wouldn't be easy."

Obama's three-day West Coast swing -- his most extensive travel since announcing his re-election bid -- offered a glimpse of how Obama will seek to reenergize the independents and first-time voters who carried him to victory in 2008. Obama's rallying cry is that more work needs to be done in order to make the vision of America he promised a reality, and he is the only one who can see those hopes through.

COMMENT:  Isn't democracy hard?  Oh dear, oh dear, all that dealing with...Republicans.  Can't we just pretend the 2010 elections didn't happen, just like we erase a video recording? 

It's becoming clear that Obama intends to use juvenile arguments in 2012, just as he did in 2008, and they may work.  When you try to "youthify" politics, you get a very immature political scene.  We had it in the late sixties, we may be getting it again.  Slogans and emotions rather than policies.  Who needs to work the details?  Let's go have pizza.

Republicans aren't ready to counter this.  They don't know how, just as they haven't yet mastered the art of talking above the media directly to the American people.

Don't underestimate Obama.  There are enough children of all ages out there to send him back to the White House.

April 21,  2011     Permalink 

APRIL 20,  2011

GLOBAL WARMING ALERT – AT 11:05 P.M. ET:  Darlings, you just know that global warming is involved here, even though we can't get these conservative no-nothings to understand what we understand.  What are we going to do with them?  I weep:

CHICAGO (CBS) – Not only has Chicago dealt with chilly rain, hail and even snow this week, but temperatures Tuesday were at their lowest for this late spring date since the 1940s.

You see, the fools don't understand that this is global warming.  And if it's hot, it's also global warming.  And if nothing unusual occurs, that too is global warming. 

CBS 2 Meteorologist Megan Glaros says the high Wednesday is expected only to reach 46 degrees with a peek or two of sunshine, but the chilly conditions will make it feel like winter never ended. As of 6:45 a.m., the temperature in Chicago was just 34 degrees. 

And...

In the early evening hours, just walking a few blocks along the streets of Chicago felt like going out to sea in an open boat during a rainstorm in northern Canada. Anyone walking against the wind was blasted continuously in the face with cold droplets of rain, and given the strength of the winds, an umbrella was as good as useless.

You look at those capitalist smokestacks belching smoke into the atmosphere, and sending it to our Third World brothers and sisters.  They're the cause of this.

Is Barack the only one who knows?

April 20, 2011       Permalink

JUSTICE FOR COLE VICTIMS? – AT 4:41 P.M. ET:  The attack on the USS Cole in a harbor in Yemen occurred more than 10 years ago.  Some 17 American sailors were killed, and 40 wounded.  Now there may be justice for the families of the victims: 

The Defense Department announced Wednesday that it is seeking the death penalty against a Guantanamo Bay detainee in connection with the USS Cole bombing in Yemen more than a decade ago.

Military prosecutors have re-filed terrorism and murder charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, of Saudi Arabia, the first case to move forward since President Obama ordered military trials to resume at Guantanamo Bay. The charges allege that Al-Nashiri led the planning and preparation for the USS Cole attack that blew a hole in the ship, killing 17 sailors and wounding another 40.

Al-Nashiri was first charged in 2008, but those charges were later withdrawn after President Obama took office, as his administration undertook a sweeping review of the Guantanamo Bay detention program. Al-Nashiri had been waterboarded during the Bush administration.

The Defense Department said Wednesday that the suspect will now be charged with a number of severe counts, including murder in violation of the law of war, terrorism and attempted murder.
The charges are referred to the Convening Authority for Military Commissions, which presides over the war crimes tribunals at the U.S. base in Cuba.

The USS Cole case had already been designated for a military trial by Attorney General Eric Holder in November 2009. But because the process stalled for political reasons, it took more than 17 months for the case to move forward.

COMMENT:  It's about time.  After the Cole attack there was a spate of stories about how the American ambassador to Yemen was blocking a full probe in order to avoid hurting our relations with Yemen.  Now, maybe, there'll be some justice.

We're fortunate that this bird will be tried before a military tribunal, whose members will understand the brutality of the attack on the Cole, which almost sank the ship.

April 20, 2011      Permalink

QUAGMIRE IN LIBYA? – AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  John Bolton, whose mind is sharper on a bad day than Obama's is on his best day, warns about an American quagmire in Libya, with disastrous consequences.  Again, as in Vietnam, the issue is our national will, not our ability.  From the New York Post:

Opponents of the Vietnam War -- that seemingly endless, inconclusive, increasingly unpopular and ever-more-deadly and costly conflict -- called it a "quagmire." They said it was unwinnable and should never have been fought -- and that America must avoid similar future wars. Today, our real risk of "quagmire" is Libya.

Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has gotten things badly wrong. By demanding Moammar Khadafy's ouster while restricting US military force to the more limited objective of protecting innocent civilians, President Obama has set himself up for massive strategic failure.

And...

Of course, Vietnam became a "quagmire" because of US unwillingness to persevere to reach our legitimate objectives. Obama entirely ignored the critical point that Gen. Creighton Abrams' strategy had placed us on the path to victory in Vietnam, and that it was a failure of American will, not battlefield defeat, that humbled us there.

Bolton feels that two things are needed to prevent Libya from becoming Obama's Vietnam:

First, we must reverse course immediately and declare regime change to be our military objective, followed by substantial airstrikes against Khadafy's military forces, whether or not they are imminently threatening civilians...

...Second, because Libya's opposition leadership is still inchoate at best, we must identify anti-Khadafy figures who are pro-Western and find ways, overt or covert, to strengthen their hands. This will help both in opposing Khadafy today, and in any post-Khadafy government. Without confidence in the soundness of the opposition leaders, there is no justification for NATO supplying even light weapons, whose ultimate destination we can only guess. Failing to identify reliable leaders now will make any post-Khadafy regime, already problematic, potentially even more dangerous.

And...

Our president's most muscular recent action was to co-author an opinion article with Britain's David Cameron and France's Nicholas Sarkozy. This plainly reflects Obama's view that writings and speeches are all that a president is really required to do. Sadly, of course, articles and speeches are simply the articulation of policy, not policy in action. Nor do op-eds constitute leadership.

Finally, and most devastating:

Woodrow Wilson once wrote about himself: "I am a vague, conjectural personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles." Dreamer that he was, Wilson could have been describing his ideological descendant, Barack Obama. What we need right now is exactly the opposite of Wilson's presidential persona, or we shall surely see a true quagmire in Libya.

COMMENT:  Remember that last paragraph.  Obama is a mix of Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, a mix that's a recipe for one disaster after another.  Increasingly, Obama is not taken seriously in other countries.  At least Bush led, at least he was decisive. 

And yet Obama may well be reelected.  With no political constraints on him in a second term, you can only imagine what his foreign policy will be.

April 20, 2011       Permalink

THE DECIDING ISSUE? – AT 9:12 A.M. ET:  We've said here that gas prices at the pump could be the deciding issue in the 2012 campaign.  They severely hurt Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.  Now the president who is most like Carter is plagued with them.  How bad is it? 

UPI reports that, in Washington, D.C., where the president sometimes visits, gasoline prices charged by at least one station have hit the five-dollar mark.  There is no end in sight.  Planning in millions of families has been completely disrupted.  Consider what is happening in Western and rural areas, where people have to drive many miles a day just to get to work.  And consider the ultimate impact on food prices.  Those huge vans you see parked outside your local supermarket run, of course, on gasoline.

The president is blaming speculators:

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday blamed speculators for driving gasoline prices higher and straining American consumers, saying there was enough oil in world markets to meet demand.

Speaking at a community college in suburban Virginia, Obama said increasing production of U.S. oil and creating a market for fuel-efficient cars would help meet the country's energy challenges.

Increasing production?  Did he say "increasing production"?  Where have you been, Mr. President?

"I know that if you've got a limited budget and you just watch that hard-earned money going away to oil companies that will once again probably make record profits this quarter, it's pretty frustrating," he said.

Rising fuel prices are a persistent concern for the White House, which is worried about their impact on the economy and on voters' wallets as Obama runs for re-election.

COMMENT:  Of course, the president has a point.  There is plenty of speculation going on, and it should be exposed by a vibrant press.  And yes, there may have to be regulations to rein it in.  Just as the Constitution isn't a suicide pact, neither is the free-enterprise system.  Something is wrong somewhere.

Indeed, Saudi Arabia is actually cutting production, claiming there is probably too much of a supply of petroleum right now.  Whether that's true or not is another story entirely.

What we do know is that we're dependent on foreign oil, and yet we have plenty of untapped petroleum in the United States.  Environmental ideologists have blocked attempts to get at it.  We are certainly in favor of the environment, but there have to be practical decisions made, that take into account the economic needs of the American people.

If gasoline goes to five dollars across the country, the disruptions will be enormous.  So will the political implications...unless the Republicans self-destruct, which is not out of the realm of possibility.

April 20, 2011      Permalink

ON THE USE OF A WORD – AT 8:52 A.M. ET:  There's an old saying that he who controls the vocabulary controls the country.  We've not done enough at Urgent Agenda to alert readers to what we see as the misuse of words to create an effect.  So let us begin today.

The first word on our list is "entitlement."  Notice how it's always used in relation to Social Security and Medicare, the better to make us think that this is something the government is doing for us, a favor, a gift to which we are entitled.

The problem is, neither Social Security nor Medicare are entitlement programs, and I wish conservatives would stop going along with the term.  They are insurance programs.  We pay into them.  We are required to.  Hey, guys, that's our money you're using.  Hasn't anyone in Washington noticed the fact that we pay a Social Security tax?  Hasn't anyone noticed that we pay Medicare premiums?

It's clear, of course, that the taxes and premiums are not covering the cost of the programs.  That has to be fixed, and a number of proposals are floating around.

But please, these are not entitlements.  No one is giving us any gifts.  We are policyholders, even though the insurance policies we hold are getting wobbly.

April 20, 2011       Permalink 

ROYAL WEDDING WORRIES – AT 8:38 A.M. ET:  And you thought we had security worries.  The royal wedding will be held in London next week, and Con Coughlin, resident terror expert at the Telegraph, is worried:

I hate to sound a sour note on what otherwise promises to be a truly joyful occasion, but for those responsible for ensuring the Royal Wedding goes off without incident the event is proving to be something of a security nightmare.

The Government’s decision to ban a protest planned by Muslims Against Crusades has highlighted the fact that not everyone in this fair isle wishes the happy couple well...

...I’m told that in Yemen the al-Qaeda cell run by Anwar al-Awlaki is working day and night to launch a terror attack against the UK (this is the group behind the ink cartridge bombs discovered at East Midlands Airport at the end of last year). So it is logical that the group would want to take advantage of the mass crowds gathering in London to launch an attack.

COMMENT:  The wedding is an obvious terror target, and remember to include the IRA as a group Coughlin is worried about.  Britain has become a center for Islamist extremism, and will be a target again as London hosts the 2012 summer Olympics. 

Not everyone wishes the royal couple well.  Security is very tight in London and growing tighter. 

...we should give our security forces all the help and support they need to make sure that is the case. That means we must all be vigilant, and report any suspicious activity immediately to the appropriate authorities.

Yes indeed.

April 20, 2011      Permalink