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FEBRUARY 18,  2011

A STRANGE PLACE – AT 8:30 P.M. ET:  The UN, that is.  While the Mideast is burning, with government after government firing on its own people, the UN Security Council met in somber session today to take up the issue of...Israeli settlements.

We all know that Israelis who want to live in places their people have lived in for 6,000 years are at the root of every problem in the world.  We do know that, don't we?

So the Security Council met to consider a resolution introduced by Lebanon, whose government has been taken over by the terror group, Hezollah, condemning Israeli settlements.  The U.S. had offered, meekly, to support a "statement" criticizing the settlements, but the Palestinian "leadership" turned that down, insisting on a full-fledged resolution, which the U.S. promptly vetoed, properly asserting that it disrupts the peace process and contributes nothing.  All other Council members voted for the measure, a safe vote.

What is pathetic here is that the episode shows how useless the UN is.  It also shows the weakness of the Obama administration.  Any other recent administration would have been able to persuade the Palestinian nutjobs to accept a mild statement, considering the fact that these UN actions don't mean much anyway. 

One of the tragedies of the Palestinian Arabs is that they have been ruled by incompetent, corrupt and dishonest leaders who've been far more interested in useless gestures than in real progress.  They have a friend in the White House in Barack Hussein Obama Jr., but they certainly don't act as if they do.

At the same time, the UN today failed to show the slightest interest in the fires burning throughout the Mideast.  There's probably a good cocktail party scheduled for tonight.  Mustn't let history interfere.

February 18, 2011      Permalink

WISCONSIN BOILING – AT 8:16 P.M. ET:  Things are hopping in Wisconsin.  The public employee unions are revolting, in many ways, and Dem legislators have fled across state lines to avoid having to vote on critical issues involving the state's collapsing finances.  From Fox:

The fate of a contentious anti-union bill in Wisconsin was hanging in the balance Friday as Senate Republicans called in the state police to capture fugitive Democratic lawmakers who fled the state in protest, and who appear in no hurry to return.

Democratic state Sen. Jon Erpenbach who is staying at a Chicago hotel, said that he and his 13 fellow Democrats could stay out of Wisconsin for days or even weeks. They have been missing from the Capitol for a day and a half.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker dispatched two state troopers to Democratic leader Mark Miller's home in Montana at the request of Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald.

Senate Sergeant-At-Arms Ted Blazel said troopers knocked on Miller's door and rang his doorbell, but no one answered.

The Wisconsin Constitution prohibits police from arresting state lawmakers while the Legislature is in session, except in cases of felonies, breaches of the peace or treason. Fitzgerald said he's not looking to have Miller arrested, but he wants to send a signal about the circumstances at the Capitol.

Jesse Jackson has rushed to Wisconsin to add his two cents.  Well, his half a cent.  There are rumors that Lenin will be arriving in Madison in a sealed train later tonight.  The University of Wisconsin faculty can't wait to greet him.

Thousands of teachers are calling in sick, closing schools in Milwaukee. 

Republicans charge that the Democratic National Committee is involved in organizing the public-employee-union protests.  President Obama has made clear his sympathies lie with the unions, prompting a sharp response from Governor Walker, who politely suggested that the president might mind his own business.

Walker, if he prevails, might come out of this a major national figure. 

Nancy Pelosi has declared herself on the side of the Wisconsin unions, although there's no evidence she's ever been there. 

We are watching developments carefully.  If the unions can succeed in shutting down Wisconsin, they might try it in other states.  This confrontation reminds some commentators of President Reagan firing the air traffic controllers when they went on strike soon after he took office.

February 18, 2011     Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 10:26 A.M. ET:  From Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, quoting others on what it takes to win in politics:

The late Rep. Henry Hyde, he of the Hyde amendment, once said to me, "Politics is a game of addition." You start with your followers and bring in new ones, constantly broadening the circle to include people who started out elsewhere. You know the phrase Reagan Democrats? It exists because Reagan reached out to Democrats! He put out his hand to them and said, literally, "Come walk with me." He lauded Truman, JFK and Scoop Jackson. He argued in his first great political speech, in 1964, that the choice wasn't right or left, it was up or down.

That's what Mr. Daniels was saying. "We can search for villains on ideological grounds," but it's a waste of time. Compromise and flexibility are necessary, "purity in martyrdom is for suicide bombers." We must work together. You've got to convince the other guy.

COMMENT:  That is so right.  Those who look for ideological purity are headed for defeat, especially in a presidential election.  Reagan was far from pure.  He reached out and appealed to Democrats.  Obama won by presenting himself as a centrist, although in his case he deceived us and should be defeated in 2012 on that basis alone.

But smart candidates understand they can't win with their base alone.  No one ever has.

America is an idealistic country, not an ideological one. 

Elections are about winning.  I am not interested in losing next year.  I don't want us to produce someone like Adlai Stevenson, who lost two presidential elections and basked in the applause of those who thought him right, but knew he had not one iota of power.

February 18, 2011       Permalink

ON WISCONSIN – AT 9:10 A.M. ET:  The People's Republic of Wisconsin is becoming a big story.  The Republican governor's austere budget plan, which will require public employees to give up collective bargaining rights, has brought on a firestorm of indignation, centered in the state capital of Madison.

Madison, of course, is Berkeley, without the good weather.  Teachers called in sick to protest the new budget plan.  State workers gathered at the capitol building, and there were the expected signs comparing the governor, Scott Walker, to Hitler.  Walker is not impressed.  From The Hill:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) says his party has been emboldened by massive protests against his controversial budget plan.

Walker said demonstrators who filled the state Capitol building in Madison and the boycott by state Senate Democrats — some of whom fled the state in protest — have steeled the resolve of members of his party.

"If anything, I think it's made the Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate stronger," he told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren in an interview Thursday night. "They're not going to be bullied. They're not going to be intimidated."

The unrest in Wisconsin has attracted attention from national lawmakers and political figures, who have incorporated the state's tussle over Walker's budget proposal into the debate over the federal government's fiscal woes.

Public-sector workers are upset with the plan, which calls on them to pay to receive pension and health benefits and removes collective bargaining rights for some.

President Obama has weighed in on the side of the public-service unions, which have been among his most loyal electoral supporters.

Walker is doing what Chris Christie is doing in New Jersey, and what other governors must do to save their states from fiscal insolvency.  In Illinois, of course, the fiscal problem has been addressed by a huge increase in taxes.  Why, look at all those businesses now rushing to Illinois. 

Governors are taking action.  At the same time, we point out that they must be careful.  Good budget cutting is done with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.  And it is simply wrong to demonize all public-service workers.  I've met very fine public employees, and some who weren't so fine.  We've all had wonderful public-school teachers, and some who shouldn't have been teaching at all. 

I have serious doubts about removing collective bargaining rights from public-empoloyee unions.  We, as a nation, are careful about withdrawing rights already won.  Both political parties have historically embraced collective bargaining.  The idea is to get concessions from public unions through tough negotiations, and the threat of layoffs if budgets aren't brought into line.

The request of Governor Walker that public employees pay a part of their pension and medical plans makes sense to me.  The payments would still be far below that paid by employees in private industry.

We must remember that public cheers today can easily turn to boos if services the public expects are suddenly cut off.  The truly obnoxious and gluttonous behavior of some public unions does not justify reckless or poorly thought out actions by budget-cutting elected officials.  A careful pattern of cuts, layoffs through retirement and reasonable givebacks by public employees will win out over chest thumping, which, I guarantee you, will wear thin.

As an example of good governance, look no further than Republican Mitch Daniels in Indiana, who has run his state superbly with quiet competence and a lowered voice.  He might be president, and probably deserves to be.

February 18, 2011       Permalink 

GOVERNMENT WINNING IN IRAN – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  While we can cheer democracy demonstrators (if that's what they are) throughout the Mideast, the most important challenge to government authority comes in Iran, a nation that's a clear threat to the peace of the region.

Sadly, the government of Iran seems to have the upper hand.  It is brutal, willing to kill its own people, and can count on a core support of fanatics:

(CNN) -- Thousands of people who attended a pro-government rally in Tehran on Friday condemned opposition leaders and called for their execution, a witness said.

The protesters in Revolution Square chanted "Death to Karrubi" and "Death to Moussavi" -- references to prominent opposition leaders Mehdi Karrubi and Mir Hossein Moussavi.

State television also showed crowds chanting "Death to America."

Hey, why not throw in the Great Satan?  The posters are already printed.  And note the vigorous reaction from the White House.  Zzzz.

It also showed some demonstrators holding up the picture of 26-year-old Sana Jaleh, who was shot and killed during protests in Iran on Monday.

Iranian authorities say he was a regime loyalist and member of the pro-government militia group -- the Basij -- who was shot by protesters. The opposition movement refutes the government's claims and says Jaleh was a pro-democracy activist. They say the government is attempting to hijack his death for propaganda.

Thousands of government opponents marched in Tehran on Monday. Government opponents and supporters also turned out Wednesday for Jaleh's funeral.

COMMENT:  The regime in Iran appears secure, at least for now.  There are certainly democracy heroes in Iran, but the willingness of the regime to murder its citizens keeps those heroes to a minimum.  Also, there is a certain lack of enthusiasm for Iranian democracy in Europe, which has many business deals with the mullahs.  And we know what talks, and what walks.

February 18, 2011       Permalink

MIDEAST SIZZLES – AT 8:24 A.M. ET:  Violence appears to be increasing in Mideast nations, as democracy demonstrators are set upon by government forces.  From The New York Times:

The severity of a Libyan crackdown on a so-called “Day of Rage” began to emerge Friday when a human rights advocacy group said 24 people had been killed by gunfire and news reports said further clashes with security were feared at the funerals for the dead.

Both Britain and America have tried to whitewash the Libyan regime in recent years.  After all, there are oil deals to be made. 

And, please note if you will the silence of the left on what is happening in these Mideast dictatorships.  Not much interest.  The left has been brainwashed for years that the only important issue in the Mideast is the "national rights of the Palestinian people."  They can't see anything else because they can't see beyond a party line.

That apprehension also seized Bahrain where five people died in a brutal assault on a democracy camp in the capital, Manama on Thursday. The violence has pitted a Sunni minority government against a Shiite majority in the strategic island state that is home to the American Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

Thousands of Shiites gathered at a mosque in the windswept village of Sitra, south of Manama, on Friday for the funerals of two of the dead, chanting “The people want the fall of the government” before noon prayers.

In Yemen, for an eighth straight day, demonstrators for and against President Ali Abullah Saleh skirmished on the streets of the capital, Sana, until the president’s supporters routed their foes.

In Libya, defying threats of reprisals in several cities, thousands of protesters mounted one of the sharpest challenges to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s 40-year rule in a “Day of Rage” on Thursday modeled on the uprisings coursing through the region that have had toppled the authoritarian regimes of Tunisia and Egypt.

COMMENT:  There will also be a mass meeting of demonstrators in Egypt today, and they will be addressed by a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.  We'll follow that closely.

The United States appears to have absolutely no influence in anything happening in the Mideast right now.  That is, at least in part, the pathetic legacy of Barack Obama, whose greatest dream seems to be to limit American power.  He has succeeded in that.  At least he's succeeded in something.

February 18, 2011     Permalink

FEBRUARY 17,  2011

AND SO IT BEGINS – AT 9:07 P.M. ET:  Weren't we just told that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was going to lie low for a time?  Apparently, one of its chief spiritual leaders didn't get the message.  This guy is a fundamentalist, but has the ability to sound moderate when the need arises.   He is dangerous, and he's baaack!

For the first time since he was banned from leading weekly friday prayers in Egypt 30 years ago, prominent Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi will lead thousands in the weekly prayers from Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday.

Sources told Al Arabiya that a military force will accompany the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars from his home to Tahrir Square, provide security for the prayers and accompany him back to his residence.

Al-Qaradawi last delivered a Friday prayer sermon in Egypt in 1981 after the assassination of former President Anwar el-Sadat.

COMMENT:  I think we deceive ourselves if we believe the Islamists won't move to control Egypt.  If they ever reach that point, the Mideast could go up in flames. 

February 17, 2011       Permalink

DID SOMEONE SAY 2012? – AT 8:08 P.M. ET:  I'm sure you're familiar with the prediction that the world will end in 2012.  There are various foreign cultures who've hyped that line for years, or centuries.  Whether it will come true or not, none of us can know.  Maybe Obama's reelection will do the trick.

But there is something happening in space, and it may really have implications for 2012.  Consider this:

A POWERFUL solar eruption that has already disturbed radio communications in China could disrupt electrical power grids and satellites used on Earth in the next days, NASA said.

The massive sunspot, which astronomers say is the size of Jupiter, is the strongest solar flare in four years, NASA said yesterday.

The Class X flash - the largest such category - erupted on Tuesday, according to the US space agency.

"X-class flares are the most powerful of all solar events that can trigger radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms," disturbing telecommunications and electric grids, NASA said.

And get this:

Astronomers have been predicting that a solar cycle known as Solar maximum, predicted to hit with full force in 2012, could be one of the most damaging on record.

Similar storms back in 1859 and 1921 caused worldwide chaos, wiping out telegraph wires on a massive scale, but the potential for damage in the digital era could be much greater.

A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause “$1 to 2 trillion in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to 10 years for complete recovery."

COMMENT:  Of course, our intelligence community will probably issue a report saying, "We don't see the Sun as a serious ideological threat.  We believe it has given up violence and become moderate."

We await 2012.  The presidential election may not be the big event of the year.

February 17, 2011       Permalink

SOME IN THE ACADEMIC WORLD GET IT – AT 9:35 A.M. ET:  What?  Did I read this correctly?  A college is actually lowering tuition?  Leave us we should read on. 

And it's a well-known college at that – Sewanee, alma mater to several of our great and active Urgent Agenda readers.  From The New York Times:

For those who wonder how college tuition costs manage to keep rising year after year, apparently defying laws of economic gravity, Sewanee, a liberal arts college in Tennessee, has an answer: they can’t.

On Wednesday, Sewanee announced that it will cut its $46,000 annual bill for students by 10 percent in the fall.

The college, formally Sewanee: The University of the South, is betting that the drop in tuition — which at this point it can afford — will help it compete on two fronts: with the public universities that are siphoning off a growing share of the students it accepts, and with other private colleges where tuition is likely to increase by 4 to 5 percent this year, as it has for the last two years.

“The university has made a bold and perhaps risky move,” said John M. McCardell Jr., who became vice chancellor of Sewanee a year ago. “But given the realities of higher education in the current economy, we believe that some college or university needed to step up and say, ‘Enough.’ ”

Four cheers for Sewanee.  Too many colleges have become huge rackets, charging absurd prices that seem unrelated to the quality of the education they provide.  Incoming students watch as their revered institutions build all kinds of edifices and establish all manner of departments to suit this group or the other. 

(One prominent Urgent Agenda reader, himself an academic, said that if you want to really improve higher education, eliminate all departments whose names end with "studies.")

At the same time, colleges and universities apply for and receive heavy amounts of federal aid, without too many questions asked. 

If Americans generally have to cut back, then colleges have to cut back.  We hope Sewanee's step leads the way.

February 17, 2011      Permalink

OBAMA STUMBLES IN POLL – AT 9:02 A.M. ET:  Now, at least this week, "anybody" at least ties the president.  From Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket blog:

President Obama's done a lot of talking recently about Winning the Future. Trouble is, he's not. Politically.

At this moment -- 57% of the way through a first term with only 628 days left until the 2012 presidential election -- the Democrat can only tie any conceivable Republican candidate.

The GOP doesn't even need a frontrunner to catch the incumbent of the most powerful political office in the world. No wonder Obama's bringing fresh blood into the White House and shipping out aides to kick-start the billion-dollar campaign back in Chicago.

A new Gallup Poll finds Obama a little worse off in that generic presidential ballot category this year than he was last year at this time.

And -- this'll get the ex-state senator chewing the nicotine gum faster -- the new Gallup numbers show Obama significantly behind the same standing of his Republican predecessor, that Texas guy who still refuses to reciprocate Obama's criticism of his two terms.

Last February Obama led a generic Republican 44-42. This February, after the invisible "Recovery Summer" and Democrats' historic midterm election shellacking, any Republican ties Obama at 45-45.

And...

Gallup's numbers show Obama maintaining his voter strength among blacks. Women still prefer him more than men do.

But the youth vote, so crucial to the Democratic ticket last time, is evaporating. Going into the 2008 election Obama had 63% of the registered voters aged 18 to 34. Today, he's got only 51%. Likewise, Obama's support among 35-to-54-year-olds has crumbled from 53% in 2008 to 43% today.

COMMENT:  While this gives us cause for optimism, please always remember how hard the Republicans work to lose elections.  You must admire their zeal.  So let's not take anything for granted.

The Republicans need a dynamic candidate to wrap things up.  Or an unusual candidate who captures the public imagination.  I don't see that person yet, but I'm looking.

February 17, 2011       Permalink 

A NETWORK COVER-UP? – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  The despicable sexual assault on CBS correspondent Lara Logan by an Egyptian mob last week was bad enough.  But there are charges that CBS is compounding the outrage by withholding facts that don't conform to the accepted "narrative" that the crowds in Egypt were just enlightened, modern, peace-loving protesters.  From the Boston Herald:

“[60 Minutes] correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, ‘Jew! Jew!’ as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo’s main square Friday.”

Powerful reporting on an important story. Two problems: It didn’t run until yesterday, and CBS didn’t run it. The quote is from the New York Post. And it was The Wall Street Journal that reported “the separation and assault lasted roughly 20 to 30 minutes.”

CBS did not report the story of Logan's assault for five days.  I personally sympathize with CBS's initial decision to stay silent because of the sexual nature of the attack.  But, once the facts started coming out, CBS had a journalistic obligation to report the whole truth, which it clearly has not done:

Some women journalists, like WGBH’s Callie Crossley, complain that CBS should never have reported the story, that Logan should be treated like a rape victim in the United States. But I’m with liberal columnist Richard Cohen of The Washington Post:

“The sexual assault of a woman in the middle of a public square is a story  . . .  particularly because the crowd in Tahrir Square was almost invariably characterized as friendly and out for nothing but democracy,” Cohen wrote.

Watching the same complicit media we all saw, Cohen notes most journalists covered the mobs “as if they were reporting from Times Square on New Year’s Eve, stopping only at putting on a party hat.”

Even CBS’s own statement said Logan was “covering the jubilation” and was attacked “amidst the celebration.”

These are good points.  We still don't actually know what many of the protesters actually want.  The press was burned in Cuba in 1959, when Fidel Castro was reported as a good-hearted revolutionary, aided by his revolutionary Tonto, Che Guevera.  And it was burned again in Iran in 1979. 

And we saw what happened when Gaza was permitted a free election.  The people went to the polls and elected Hamas, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Iranian mullahs.

It's time to ask some tough questions.  As Americans, we favor democracy.  But we also favor freedom, civil liberties, and human decency.  All those terms are not interchangeable, no matter what the media party line.

February 17, 2011       Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:12 A.M. ET:  From former President Jimmah ("Ahm the best ex-president evah") Carter, breaking his silence on the Mideast protests and offering us his deep wisdom.

"I think the Muslim Brotherhood is not anything to be afraid of in the upcoming (Egyptian) political situation and the evolution I see as most likely," Carter said. "They will be subsumed in the overwhelming demonstration of desire for freedom and true democracy."

Boy, am I relieved.  Now that Jimmah has said it, it must be so.  And we know what Jimmah's track record is in identifying threats.  Remember how he just got everything soooo right on Iran.

And we're still paying for this deep thinker's "rightness" today.

February 17, 2011       Permalink

BAHRAIN TURNING VIOLENT – AT 7:57 A.M. ET:  Bahrain is headquarters to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.  It has been wracked with anti-government demonstrations in the last few days.  Now, a crackdown that appears to rival that in Iran.  From The New York Times:

MANAMA, Bahrain — Without warning, hundreds of heavily armed riot police officers rushed into Pearl Square here early Thursday, firing shotguns, tear gas and concussion grenades at the thousands of demonstrators who were sleeping there as part of a widening protest against the nation’s absolute monarchy.

At least five people died, some of them reportedly killed in their sleep with scores of shotgun pellets to the face and chest, according to a witness and three doctors who received the dead and at least 200 wounded at a hospital here. The witness and the physicians spoke in return for anonymity for fear of official reprisals.

The abrupt crackdown on what had been a carnival-like protest injected a new anger into demonstrations calling on King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa to enact reforms. “Death to Khalifa, death to Khalifa,” hundreds of protesters chanted on Thursday outside a hospital as women ran screaming through wards and corridors seeking lost children.

And in Yemen:

Sanaa, Yemen (CNN) -- At least 20 people were injured in clashes between stone-throwing pro- and anti-government demonstrators in Yemen's capital Sanaa on Thursday, an opposition lawmaker told CNN.
Ahmed Hashid, the lawmaker, said police at the scene did not try to intervene.

The clashes came after anti-government protesters tried to find a place to hold their demonstration, the government opponents told CNN.

They had planned to gather at Sanaa University but found government supporters there, who forced them to leave, they said.

Libya:

(CNN) -- Unprecedented demonstrations sweeping the Middle East and North Africa spread Wednesday to Libya, where police clashed with anti-government protesters in the coastal city of Benghazi, an independent source told CNN.

About 200 protesters came out to show support for human rights activist and lawyer Fathi Terbil, who had been detained earlier, the source said. Several people were arrested after police confronted the protesters, the source added.

But Libya -- ruled by Moammar Gadhafi since 1969 -- is not Egypt, said a highly placed Libyan source close to the government who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

"There is nothing serious here," he said. "These are just young people fighting each other."

Driven by discontent and fueled by social media, protests in the region spread this week not just to Libya but to Iran and Bahrain. Anti-government sentiment has also manifested itself on the streets of Algeria, Jordan, Syria and Yemen.

COMMENT:  The United States kissed and made up with Libya, and Britain arranged for the mastermind behind the terror downing of PanAm 103, imprisoned in a Scottish jail, to be released and returned to Libya on compassionate grounds.  He was presumably scheduled to die, but hasn't followed the schedule.

Unrest appears to be spreading in the Mideast, and big, bad Hosni Mubarak, who left power without ordering his soldiers to fire on citizens, doesn't look all that evil any longer.  In other countries, crackdowns are the order of the day. 

Note the deep concern of the political left in America.  A few prisoners were humiliated in an American-run jail in Iraq and the left went crazy.  With all this happening, yawn, little interest.  I guess it's a cultural thing.,

February 17, 2011     Permalink