Please note that you can leave a comment on any of our posts at our Facebook page.  Subscribers can also comment at length at our Angel's Corner Forum.

Founding reader John McDaniel – who designed Urgent Agenda's logo – has a new and intriguing blog called ClearRight. He's currently featuring my recent essay, written for our Angel's Corner, entitled "A New Era."  For those interested, it can be found right at the top of John's site. 

AUGUST 10,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:52 P.M. ET:

ACTION, CAMERA, VOTE – There is much buzz in Washington over the extraordinary access apparently being given to SONY Pictures and Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow ("The Hurt Locker"), who will be doing a movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden.  The causes of the buzz:  1) Both SONY and Bigelow were big backers of Obama in 2008; 2) the film is scheduled to be released in October of next year, less than a month before the presidential election.  Republican Congressman Peter King of New York is asking for an investigation into the arrangements between Hollywood and the White House.  He is correct.  There is something not right here.  I've seen plenty of great war films, and not one glorified a president or was timed for release right before an election.  It was the troops who got the attention.  You'd think there'd be some common decency.

SARAH'S TRAVELS – Well, what do you know?  Guess where Sarah Palin is taking her national bus tour this week.  Would you believe...Iowa?  Correct.  Although she's not participating in tomorrow night's big GOP debate in Iowa, or in the Iowa straw poll on Saturday, she will be visiting the state, as will Governor Rick Perry of Texas.  It is theorized that Perry is visiting to steal the thunder of whoever wins the straw poll.  Question:  Will Sarah in turn steal Perry's thunder?  Don't underestimate her.  She still hasn't announced her presidential plans, but I doubt if she's visiting Iowa in a sweltering summer just to watch corn grow.

OH, THE SENSE OF REVENGE – Arthur Laffer, one of the architects of supply-side economics, and one of the economists behind the Reagan economic program, reveals that he was contacted by the White House in the spring and was asked to have a conversation with Obama adviser Austen Goolsbee.  Gee, you don't think the White House is having doubts about the Obama economic plan, do you?  Oh, wait.  What Obama economic plan?  I'll try to Google it.  Clearly, this president is in serious trouble, and asking the advice of the Reagan group is one of the smarter things we've seen recently.  I doubt if the advice will be taken, though.

A FINE ROMANCE – When Rick Perry announces his candidacy this Saturday, one interested party will be former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York.  It turns out, as reported in a superbly done piece on NRO, that Perry and Giuliani – an odd couple – have a mutual admiration society that goes way back, and have helped each other politically.  Although Perry is a strict conservative, and Rudy a moderate "New York conservative," the two get along famously.  I'd guess that if Perry gets in, Rudy will stay out.  I can't see a Perry/Rudy ticket because Perry's needs lie elsewhere, but I can see Rudy as head of the FBI, or even attorney general.

August 10, 2011       Permalink

BULLETIN – WALL STREET PRODUCING EGGS AGAIN – AT 4:18 P.M. ET:   The headline in Variety, the bible of show business, right after the 1929 stock market crash was "Wall Street Lays an Egg." 

Apparently, the street is in the egg-producing business again.  The Dow closed down about 520 points today, wiping out yesterday's gains and adding to a string of losses.  What we're seeing, according to most analysts we've consulted in the last hour, is fear, especially fear of a financial collapse in Europe.

We actually see the phenomenon of European politicians cutting short their traditional August vacations to get back to work.  At the same time, President Obama has apparently scheduled another vacation for himself. 

The trend is down.  The only way out of this is economic growth, and no one in power in Washington seems to know how to go about that.

August 10, 2011       Permalink

BULLETIN – STOCKS SLIDE DRAMATICALLY – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  Yesterday's rally, which was probably just some bargain hunting, is history.  Things are not good on Wall Street this morning.  From Bloomberg:

U.S. stocks tumbled, erasing more than half of yesterday’s rally, while European shares slid and Treasuries rose for a third day amid concern the economic recovery is faltering and the debt crisis is spreading to France. The euro weakened against 11 of 16 major peers, dropping 1.1 percent to $1.4220.

At this hour the Dow is down 324 points.

Some economists are warning that the debt crisis in Europe, which has spread to Italy and Spain, and now threatens France, is far more important than the downgrading of American credit by one ratings agency.  Europe has thus far not solved its debt crisis, in part because the European public continues to demand high social spending.

If Europe fails, it could make this last week look like prosperity.

August 10, 2011       Permalink

MOST DEMS OPPOSE PRIMARY CHALLENGE TO THE ONE – AT 9:36 A.M. ET:  There does not appear to be a major revolution brewing in the Democratic Party, despite the apparent nostalgia for the days of George McGovern.  From The Hill:

Most Democrats don't wish to see President Obama face a primary challenge in 2012, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

Despite frustration among liberals that the president has ceded too much ground to congressional Republicans on the debt ceiling and other major issues, just 32 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents wish to see a primary challenge to the president.

Fifty-nine percent of Democrats said they would not wish to see a challenge to Obama, according to a Pew Research Center/Washington Post poll conducted after the recent debt-ceiling deal. The president agreed to a compromise debt bill that included only spending cuts and none of the revenue increases on which he had insisted.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a liberal stalwart, suggested at the height of the battle in Congress over that deal that a primary to Obama would be a "good thing." Consumer activist Ralph Nader has said he's recruiting candidates to run against Obama in different key primary states.

But even self-described liberals aren't much different in thinking Obama deserves a primary challenge. Thirty-three percent of liberals support a primary challenge to the president, while 62 percent oppose such a maneuver.

COMMENT:  Now, of course those aren't spectacular numbers for the president.  When only 59% of your party opposes a primary challenge, you aren't feeling much love. 

But the fact is that most Dems, while wrong, aren't nuts, and don't want Obama destroyed by some fringe candidate like former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska, who says he'll run against Obama if he could raise a million dollars.  Oh, Gravel also said that he thought former hard-left Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, an anti-American hatemonger, would make a fine candidate as well. 

Some politicians should be required to present a psychiatrist's certificate of good health before being allowed to open their mouths.

August 10, 2011       Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:37 A.M. ET:   From Bret Stephens, writing in The Wall Street Journal:

Much of the media has spent the past decade obsessing about the malapropisms of George W. Bush, the ignorance of Sarah Palin, and perhaps soon the stupidity of Rick Perry. Nothing is so typical of middling minds than to harp on the intellectual deficiencies of the slightly less smart and considerably more successful.

But it takes actual smarts to understand that glibness and self-belief are not sufficient proof of genuine intelligence. Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.

COMMENT:  Agreed.  We have a tendency to confuse academic intelligence with wisdom.  The two are not the same.  I have great respect for true scholarship and great teaching.  But the president does things.  He doesn't simply contemplate things.  And this president's ability to do things is, to put it mildly, under question. 

He comes from a world where people dream of putting their College Board scores on their gravestones.

He seems to have little understanding of how the real world operates, having rarely lived in that world.  He believes that by speaking well he can do well and move mountains.  He cannot.  He seems to have contempt for the very acts of politics, compromise and vote counting that allow great things to be accomplished.  He does not understand what a leader does, having never been one before.

Maybe the next time we choose a president we should bar one question from being asked of candidates:  Where did you go to school?

August 10, 2011       Permalink

TOUGH TALK IN LONDON – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  British Prime Minister David Cameron recently said that multiculturalism had failed, a remark that shocked the prissies in Europe and in British universities, but of course he was right. 

Now Cameron is talking tough again, and properly so, saying things that have needed to be said in a nation that is really two nations – the Britain of Churchill and the Britain of the chic left.  Britain has been stunned by three nights of rioting that began in London and spread to other cities.  From The Telegraph:

David Cameron has given the green light for water cannon to be used on the British mainland for the first time and condemned pockets of society as “sick.”

The Prime Minister said water cannon – until now only ever seen in the UK in Ulster - will be available at 24 hours notice to deal with the “despicable violence” being carried out in cities across the country.

And in a sign that other more draconian crowd control measures will now be at the disposal of the police he said: “We will do whatever is necessary. Nothing is off the table.”

In his strongest comments yet on the perpetrators of the violence, Mr Cameron said: “There are pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick...It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society, people allowed to feel that the world owes them something.”

Water cannon have been used this summer by police in Ulster and have been a regular sight at disturbances in the province. But despite calls for it to be used on the mainland – including after last year’s student riots in London – ministers have always ruled it out.

COMMENT:  Cameron still has a tough job ahead in countering the cultural forces on the left.  The BBC reverted to leftist form during the riots by referring to people who were beating other people as "protesters."  Some British fringe leftists have openly praised the rioting.  We have a similar political element here, of course. 

We hope these horrible riots, during which whole sections have been set on fire, will jolt the British people into a realistic view of what is happening in their society, despite the efforts of the BBC and other outlets to present their own "narrative." 

A suggestion floating around is for Bill Bratton, who revolutionized policing in New York under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to to become the next head of Scotland Yard.  It's a great idea that could modernize policing in Britain, but apparently it won't happen.  Too much political opposition.

After all, why get the best when another bureaucrat can be brought in?

August 10, 2011        Permalink

ON WISCONSIN – AT 8:04 A.M. ET:  After an effort that dwarfed the Normandy invasion, the Democrats failed to win control of the Wisconsin legislature in yesterday's recall election.  There is pain, there is agony, on the left, but Obamacare health providers and spiritual advisers stand ready.  From the Wisconsin State Journal:

After tens of millions of dollars spent by outside interest groups, dozens of attack ads and exhaustive get-out-the-vote efforts, Democrats on Tuesday fell short of their goal of taking control of the state Senate and stopping the agenda of Gov. Scott Walker.

Republicans won four of six recall races, meaning the party still holds a narrow 17-16 majority in the Senate — at least until next week, when Sens. Robert Wirch, D-Pleasant Prairie, and Jim Holperin, D-Conover face their own recall elections. A third Democrat, Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, easily survived a recall attempt last month.

Sens. Robert Cowles, R-Green Bay, Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, and Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, successfully defended their seats Tuesday.

Challengers state Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, and Jessica King unseated incumbent state Sens. Dan Kapanke, R-La Crosse, and Randy Hopper, R-Fond du Lac.

Going into Tuesday, Republicans controlled the body 19-14, so Democrats needed to win at least three seats and hold onto two more next week to take over.

"The revolution has not occurred," said UW-Milwaukee political science professor Mordecai Lee, a former Democratic lawmaker. "The proletariat did not take over the streets."

Huh?  You mean people still talk that way?  The proletariat?  Have they sighted Lenin coming in on a train? 

This is good news because of the enormous effort, backed, as the story points out, by well-financed outside groups, to reverse control of the Wisconsin Senate. 

Maybe, just maybe, with the right presidential candidate Wisconsin can be flipped into our column next year. 

August 10, 2011     Permalink

AUGUST 9,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:57 P.M. ET:

WISCONSIN – At this hour we cannot say with certainty whether Democrats will succeed in recalling enough Republican state senators in today's election to take control of the Wisconsin senate.   Six seats are up for recall.  Dems must take three to have a chance at Senate control.  So far, three seats have gone Republican, one has gone Democratic, for a total of four seats settled.  Of the remainder, the Dem candidate is leading in one, and the last one is neck-and-neck.  It looks like this will go down to the wire, decided by one seat.

RICK –  Governor Rick Perry of Texas, having already announced speeches in South Carolina and New Hampshire on Saturday, has now announced that he will visit Iowa on Sunday, a day after the Ames (Iowa) straw poll.  Clearly, Perry, who will announce his presidential intentions Saturday, is trying to steal the thunder from whomever wins the straw poll, in which he is not running.  It's a great, if antagonistic, political strategy.  By this time next week the focus will be on Perry, as we see whether he can gain traction outside Texas, or if he's just a local guy with ambitions.

SKILLS – Wall Street recovered somewhat today, after yesterday's debacle, but in between President Obama went to another fundraiser and announced, “This is not rocket science in terms of how we can create more jobs in this country."  Well, given what Obama has done to NASA, he's not very good at rocket science either.  Cutbacks in NASA will make us dependent on Russian rockets for a long time, and have cost thousands of the most highly skilled jobs in the country, many of them in Rick Perry's Texas.

FINALLY – In what must be seen as another funeral oration for Barack Obama's foreign policy, the United States is now calling for President Assad of Syria to step down.  The demand, similar to the demand made of Gadaffi of Libya, will be accompanied by sanctions, but not by force.  That, of course, is the problem.  Assad watches as Gadaffi survives and remains, and he watches the United States weakening.  Does he have a great incentive to step down?  That may depend on the Arab countries and their attitude toward him.  It may also depend on European countries, some of whom have energy deals with Syria.  Let's see if, after two and a half years of Obama, we have any clout left.

August 9, 2011       Permalink 

VOTING IN WISCONSIN – BRACE YOURSELF - AT 7:51 P.M. ET:  Unknownst to the outside world,  Wisconsin votes today in special recall elections directed against Republicans in the state legislature who voted in favor of Governor Scott Walker's legislation to restrict collective bargaining.

It could be a bad night for Republicans because the recall forces are so energized, and recall elections usually bring out only the true believers.  From the Washington Examiner:

...Wisconsin voters can go to the polls in six state senate districts where the incumbent Republican is up for recall, targeted by public employee unions after supporting Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining legislation.

Republicans currently hold a 19-14 majority in the Wisconsin Senate, so Democrats only need to win three of the six races to take a majority. Democrats appear particularly competitive in at least four races.

And...

As one Republican strategist summarized, “The trends are all going our way, but the energy is all on their side.” If Republicans can keep the majority, they'll have to call it good day.

COMMENT:  If the Dems can flip the Senate, the national party will claim a great national victory, on a par with V-J Day in 1945.  Actually, it will mean nothing.  Wisconsin is a special case, a state with both a strong conservative and strong "progressive" tradition living side by side.  The "progressives" are the angry ones right now, and they're dragging their allies to the polls. 

I'd hate to see Scott Walker's program frustrated by losing the state senate, but it may happen.

August 9, 2011        Permalink

WE'RE SHOCKED, SHOCKED, AT SUCH ROUGHHOUSE POLITICS – AT 10:17 A.M. ET:   Apparently the president who called for a more civil atmosphere in Washington believes this applies to everyone but himself.  Of course, when you're a demigod, you make the rules.

The Politico reports that the Obama people plan an extremely rough campaign:

Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s re-election campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee.

The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for re-election in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.

That "hope" stuff, it's so yesterday.  Now fear, on the other hand...that's cool.

In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obama’s high command has even studied President Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John F. Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger.

“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.

COMMENT:  Real nice, huh?  Read the whole article for an indication of what they plan to do to Romney if he is the nominee.  The question is whether Romney has the guts to fight back.  John McCain, whom I admire, was the gentleman of the 2008 campaign, and it certainly did him a great deal of good. 

The Obamans are rough Chicago politicians.  They like to portray themselves as elegant, educated idealists, but underneath they're gut fighters who will do anything to win.  They also know what many Republicans can't seem to fathom, that the GOP isn't particularly popular, and can't expect to ride back into the White House on dissatisfaction with Obama. 

Republicans must give as good as they get if they are to survive next year's onslaught,

August 9, 2011       Permalink

BULLETIN:  STOCKS OPEN HIGHER – AT 9:54 A.M. ET:  From Fox:

Wall Street staged a comeback on Tuesday morning following deep losses in the prior session as traders capitalized on beaten down stock prices and awaited the Federal Reserve's monetary policy statement slated for release later in the day.

As of 9:32 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 113 points, or 1%, to 10,922, the S&P 500 climbed 12.1 points, or 1.1%, to 1,132 and the Nasdaq Composite jumped 33.4 points, or 1.4%, points to 2,392.

COMMENT:  We caution that those are opening numbers.  It will be a long day.

August 9, 2011       Permalink

NOVEMBER, 2010, ALL OVER? – AT 9:21 A.M. ET:   Superlative political analyst Michael Barone is looking at the polling data coming in, and finds today's political map remarkably similar to the one that was drawn just before last year's elections.  From the Washington Examiner:

My Examiner colleague Conn Carroll notes that Gallup’s polling over the last six months shows Barack Obama with an approval rating over 50% in only 11 states, with 169 electoral votes (Conn has 173, but I think he’s including Maine where Obama’s job approval is right at but not above 50%). They include just three of the ten largest states, California, New York and Illinois. I find these results highly congruent with the popular vote for the House in November 2010, the subject of my July 21 article in american.com. The popular vote for the House, I argued, has become a good proxy for party and presidential standing since the mid-1990s.

What’s interesting here is that the list of states where Democrats carried the popular vote for the House in 2010 looks very much like the list of states where Obama’s Gallup job approval has been over 50% this year.

The Gallup 50%+ list includes only one state where Republicans carried the 2010 House popular vote, New Jersey, and the vote was very close there. It doesn’t include the four states where Democrats carried the popular vote but Obama’s approval stands at 50% or below: Maine, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington. But,...Obama’s Gallup approval tends to be very close to the Democratic percentage of the House popular vote last November.

Tentative conclusion: the balance of opinion remains very close to where it was in November 2010.

COMMENT:  Obviously, this can change.  But Barone's report underlines the opportunity the Republican Party has going forward to the 2012 election...if the party can pull itself together, nominate an attractive presidential candidate, and come up with a rational program that isn't self-destructive.  Those are big challenges for a party that works hard to lose elections.

The danger:  The Republican Party is becoming as ideological as the Democratic Party, and rigid ideology has never been attractive to the American voter.  We are an idealistic nation, not an ideological nation.  Reagan understood that, which is why he could pursue a conservative agenda while never appearing to be an ideological parrot or an uncompromising martinet. 

August 9, 2011       Permalink

LONDON IS BURNING – AT 8:32 A.M. ET:  One of the characteristics of an economic crisis, and we've remarked on it before, is that it diverts eyes from foreign news.

Something terrible has been happening in London, in response to a police shooting that remains something of a mystery.  There have been what must be called race riots, and they are spreading beyond London:

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron pledged on Tuesday to flood the streets of London with 10,000 extra police officers and said Parliament would be recalled in emergency session after rioting and looting spread across and beyond London for a third night in what the police called the worst unrest in memory.

Mr. Cameron spoke after cutting short a vacation in Tuscany to return home as violence convulsed at least eight new districts in the metropolitan area and broke out for the first time in Britain’s second-largest city, Birmingham, and elsewhere.

Coming after a cascade of crises, the measures announced by Mr. Cameron seemed to represent a bid to restore some appearance official authority after nights of chaos and near-anarchy with rioters taunting or outmaneuvering the police, raiding stores and torching buildings.

One commentator noted that the police in England have become so sensitive to issues of race – the result of left-wing "multicultural" propaganda, that they have been nearly paralyzed in response to the rioting.  That may change.  Public response appears to be ahead of the response of the police.

The violence has left many Londoners stunned at the spectacle of hooded and masked marauders rampaging with seeming impunity despite hundreds of arrests that have filled police cells to overflowing. In a cautious response on the streets, some citizens took to cleaning up the debris on Tuesday, cheering police patrol vehicles passing by.

Standing outside his office and residence at 10 Downing Street, Mr. Cameron said lawmakers would be called back from their summer recess for one day on Thursday to enable Parliament to assess the situation. All police leave had been canceled, he said, and the number of officers on the streets would be increased to 16,000 on Wednesday night from 6,000 on Tuesday.

That's nice.  It took three days to figure this out while vacation schedules were maintained.  If this were New York City, with its great police commissioner, Ray Kelly, the affected areas would be flooded with battle-trained cops within hours, even minutes. 

“Last night was the worst the Metropolitan Police Service has seen in current memory for unacceptable levels of widespread looting, fires and disorder,” Scotland Yard said in a statement tallying a further 200 arrests overnight, bringing the total from three nights of unrest to over 450.

The well-trained parrots in some parts of the British press, and the BBC, are already saying that the "root cause" of the trouble is budget cuts in "social programs."  The leftist line never changes.  It is part of a religion posing as a political philosophy. 

Do not be overly shocked if some of this violence comes here.  There are plenty of people out there who dream of a return to the 1960s, which they see as a time of revolutionary gain.

One thing about the Brits, though, and it goes for the French as well – they can be very tough when called upon.  Let's see what Cameron and Scotland Yard can do in the next few days.

August 9, 2011       Permalink

MARKETS UNSTABLE, CALMING PILLS REQUIRED – AT 8:24 A.M. ET:  From the Washington Post:

TOKYO — A frenzied sell-off caused Asian stocks to nosedive early Tuesday, and though most major indexes recovered slightly toward the close of trading, the latest day of losses extended fears of a global economic downturn.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell more than 4 percent within the opening hour and dropped 1.68 percent for the day, closing at 8,944.48 — its first finish below the 9,000 mark since mid-March. South Korea’s Kospi index sustained massive losses in the opening hours, at one point plunging more than 9 percent and bringing a brief halt to trading. But the index clawed back and finished with losses of 3.64 percent for the day.

European markets fluctuated in morning trading, falling sharply at first but then largely recovering. By midday, the major indexes were all within one or two percentage points of where they had opened Tuesday morning--with London’s FTSE and Germany’s DAX slightly in the red, but France’s CAC 40 and the Stoxx Europe 600 edging into positive territory.

U.S. stock futures were also volatile, but edged up significantly within two hours of the opening bell.

The latest Asian market chaos heightened the urgency facing the U.S., which on Tuesday will hold a Federal Reserve meeting to discuss possible new monetary easing measures. In the meantime, Asia is offering proof that no part of the world is cut off from the problems gripping the U.S. and Europe, particularly as foreign investors pull their money from Asia’s stocks and flee to safe havens, like Treasuries and gold.

COMMENT:  I wouldn't be shocked to see some gains in the U.S. stock market today, as bargain hunters move in, although panic and fear could move the market in the other direction.

But there is a worldwide economic problem, probably the greatest since the Great Depression, and President Hope 'n Change in the White House continues to give political speeches and go to fundraisers.

August 9, 2011      Permalink