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I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr.'s talk show from Dallas last night.  It's here.

JULY 25,  2011

NOTHING SAID, NOTHING ACCOMPLISHED – AT 10:14 P.M. ET:  Both President Obama and Speaker of the House Boehner spoke to the nation on television tonight, discussing the debt crisis.  Neither man said anything, but both wore well-pressed suits.  Nice suits, I thought.  I can't imagine that the TV ratings went through the roof.  From CNN:

Washington (CNN) -- Congress is at a stalemate over raising the federal debt ceiling, and Americans need to pressure their elected representatives to work out a compromise that will avoid a potentially devastating default, President Barack Obama told the nation Monday night.

For about the 44th time.

The president singled out House Republicans for intransigence and said the political showdown is "no way to run the greatest country on Earth."

That should increase the spirit of good will and compromise.

In response, House Speaker John Boehner argued the opposite, saying in televised remarks that excessive government spending caused the problems the nation faces and cutting that spending is the only way to solve the problem.

"The sad truth is that the president wanted a blank check six months ago, and he wants a blank check today," Boehner said. "That is just not going to happen."

COMMENT:  These chaps don't have a high regard for each other, and it showed.  The speeches were a waste of their time, and the nation's.  I have the sense that we're heading for some short-term, stop-gap measure to allow us to muddle through until some true negotiations occur.  Some pundits are saying that the stop-gap solution may have to take us through the 2012 election, after which the great statesmen of our time will get serious, and start coming to negotiating sessions in long pants.

July 25, 2011       Permalink

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 8:45 P.M. ET;

OBAMA ON THE TUBE AGAIN – Mr. Obama will once again address the nation tonight.   He's been on so much recently that he could become a summer replacement for Jay Leno.  The president will talk about the debt negotiations, again.  Given the economic state the country is in, we're calling this his First Fire Sale Chat.

POLLS ARE UNFRIENDLY – Gallup reports that Obama's approval rating has dipped to 43% again. Dems assure us that other presidents have had low approval ratings and have come back to win reelection.  But Clinton's approval rating in 1995, a year before the presidential election, was above 50%. 

A LARGE ARRIVAL – New Jersey's "stout" Republican governor, Chris Christie, arrives in Iowa today for a speech.  Donors and Republican groupies will be looking for any sign that he's reconsidering his declaration that he isn't running for president.  Christie is considered by some to be the ideal Republican candidate because of the dramatic steps he's taken to put New Jersey's house in order.  I have to disagree.  He's done a great job as governor, but he has two substantial deficits:  First, he has an abrasive manner that may work in a room filled with ultra-partisans, but will wear thin in a national race, where being "presidential" is critical; and, second, he has zero foreign policy experience, and has no known views on that and other national issues.  He's a governor, and, for now, that's his proper role.

July 25, 2011       Permalink

SICKENING – AT 4:25 P.M. ET:  As if more proof were needed that the left, especially the European left, intends to use the victims of last week's horror in Norway for its own purposes, we have the example of the little prime minister of Spain, who now lectures us.  From CBS News:

The prime minister of Spain reportedly said Monday that last week's killing spree in Norway requires "a European response" in which Europeans should be called on "to rise up and fight radicalism, to respond against xenophobia."

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero made the comments during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron at his No. 10 Downing Street office in London, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported in its liveblog about the Norway attacks.

Zapatero spoke before a Norwegian judge briefed reporters on a court hearing for Anders Behring Breivik, the man who confessed to killing an overall total of at least 76 people in a shooting at an island youth retreat and a bombing at Oslo's government headquarters Friday. Breivik wrote in his manifesto that his plan was to save Europe from Muslims.

"This isn't just another event," Zapatero told reporters. "This is something extremely serious that requires a response, a European response, a shared response to defend freedom, to defend democracy, calling on people to rise up and fight radicalism, to respond against xenophobia."

COMMENT:  Zapatero, who took advantage of the terror attacks in Madrid in 2004 to win his office, is one of the great clowns of Europe.  An old America hater – he famously refused to stand for the American flag when it passed in a parade saying, "It's not my flag" – he also presides over one of the most pro-Arab and anti-Irael governments in the West.  At one time he liked to suit up in Arab scarves to show his solidarity, apparently with a gang of Mideast dictators.

His country is an economic mess, and may have to be bailed out.  But Zapatero now lectures us to fight radicalism, although he's supported radicalism of the left most of his life.  As usual, he didn't express the slightest sympathy for the victims of last week's murders.  It's all political.

Fortunately, throughout the internet, conservatives are fighting back against attempts to link them to the Norway incident, and I believe we'll easily win the fight for public opinion. 

July 25, 2011       Permalink 

I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, AT THIS LACK OF FAITH – AT 12:06 P.M. ET:  Can you imagine that some Americans don't trust the media?  Have you ever heard of anything so silly?  But a poll for The Hill shows that those ungrateful citizens don't realize what a package of truth and purity they're getting from today's press and TV: 

Likely voters hold a dismal view of the news media, generally regarding reporters as biased, unethical and too close to the politicians they purport to cover, according to a new poll for The Hill.

A full 68 percent of voters consider the news media biased, the poll found. Most, 46 percent, believe the media generally favor Democrats, while 22 percent said they believe Republicans are favored, with 28 percent saying the media is reasonably balanced.

That 28 percent can be found in Chicago cemeteries, though they're let out to vote on election day.

The share of voters who believe the media are too friendly with politicians is almost twice as large as those who find their coverage of politicians appropriate. Forty-four percent of voters assert the former; only 24 percent believe the latter.

The picture is not much brighter on the general question of ethics. Fifty-seven percent of voters think of the news media as either somewhat or very unethical, while only 39 percent see them as somewhat or very ethical.

COMMENT:  This lack of respect for Keith Olbermann has got to stop.  What do these people want?  Facts?  With all the hard work the media did in 2008 to elect Barack Obama, you'd think there'd be a little respect.  We're spoiled, so spoiled.

July 25, 2011     Permalink

GRIM JOB PICTURE CONTINUES – AT 9:48 A.M. ET:  If we cannot solve our unemployment problem, this economy will go nowhere.  Consider this chilling report:

Putting pressure on an already lousy job market, the mass layoff is making a comeback. In the past week, Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Borders announced a combined 23,000 in job cuts.

Those announcements follow 41,432 in planned cuts in June, up 11.6% from May and 5.3% vs. a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Meanwhile, state and local governments have cut 142,000 jobs this year, The WSJ reports, and Wall Street is braced for another round of cutbacks. This week, Goldman Sachs announced plans to let go 1000 fixed-income traders.

If these trends continue, we may soon be talking about losses in the monthly employment data -- not just disappointing growth, says Howard Davidowitz, CEO of Davidowitz & Associates.

"Everything in business is confidence," Davidowitz says. "You lose confidence and businesses can't deal with that [and] who could have confidence with what's going on in Washington?"

Davidowitz is bipartisan in his criticism, calling the U.S. political system "dysfunctional and deranged."

COMMENT:  One of the things not emphasized enough in reporting the budget and debt talks in Washington is that our economic problems will be much reduced if our economy started to roar again.  It is not roaring, however.  It is whining, at best.  A strong, growing economy is the best antidote to the current mess, that and sizable cuts in bloating government spending.

And yet, some economists say that our unemployment crisis may become a permanent fixture.  In that case, America will become like too much of Europe.  The sad fact is, though, that there are some in the "intellectual" world who think that would be just fine.

I've lost all confidence in this president's ability to create jobs, because all he creates is apprehension and uncertainty.  We need to change the captain so the liner can avoid the iceberg.

July 25, 2011       Permalink

AFTERMATH II – AT 9:20 A.M. ET:  There is a concept in law known as "compounding the libel."  I learned it at Columbia's journalism school, and met it again when I was assistant to Herman Kahn, the nuclear-war theorist.  He was thinking of suing a writer who'd compared him to Dr. Strangelove.

Compounding the libel simply means that, if you sue someone for libel, the nature of that libel can legitimately be reported by the news media.  It can be repeated over and over again as the story of the case develops.  That's why some people are advised not to sue if they're libeled because the libelous statement will be repeated over and over by the press, potentially doing more harm than the original libel.  That is the reason Herman Kahn never sued.

I thought of the concept while reading all the giddy leftists denouncing reporters whose first instinct after the Norway attacks was to wonder if they were carried out by Al Qaeda.  As noted in the post below, the reporters are now having fingers shaken at them by the multiculturalist crowd.  The catch is, every time a member of that clique denounces a journalist for bringing up Al Qaeda, the name "Al Qaeda" is used.  Over and over again.  And it will remind people of  why that name is used, the constant barrage of jihadist attacks, all over the world.

So maybe our side, in a very cynical way, will actually benefit from the finger pointing.  Mention Al Qaeda, and what do people think?

As one conservative said, Al Qaeda may not have been responsible for the Norway attacks, but it is no less a threat today than it was a week ago.

July 25, 2011       Permalink

AFTERMATH I – AT 8:13 A.M. ET:  It was not difficult to predict, after we learned that the Norway killer was a "right winger," that the international left would go nuts.  We didn't have to wait long.

The deranged criminal who committed the atrocity left writings, many of which are remarkably mainstream.  He quotes writers, on the right, who are quoted routinely around the world.  These writers are now being smeared all over the internet for having provided the "inspiration" for the actions of this one man.  That, of course, is obscene.  It is common for even the most corrupt of political actors to quote perfectly respectable sources.  Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the vicious North Vietnamese dictatorship, quoted Thomas Jefferson.  That didn't make Ho a Jeffersonian democrat and it didn't make Jefferson a Commie lover. 

Those self-righteous clowns who are today lecturing those on the right who have warned of multiculturalism and have taken on the jihadists and their teachers might ask themselves a simple question:  If these writers, like Robert Spencer and Melanie Phillips, "inspired" the mad Norway killer, why weren't any of their other readers inspired to do the same thing?  A truly inspirational writer inspires the masses, not one man with a mental defect.

And the left is also becoming unhinged because a number of commentators, in the hours after the atrocity, theorized that Al Qaeda might have been involved.  Yes, I would have preferred that judgment be withheld, but the speculation in this case was informed speculation, not wild guesses.  The fact is that a number of incidents involving Norway in the weeks leading up to the attacks involved threats against that country from radical Islamic sources.  The fact is also that the overwhelming majority of large terror attacks committed each year are committed by jihadists.  Speculatively mentioning that is not irresponsible.

In this case the speculation turned out to be wrong, and that requires cautious apology, but only cautious apology.  You may be sure that much of the left, which had no problem blaming Sarah Palin for "inspiring" the Tucson shootings, wants to now try to sell us the line that the Islamic threat has been exaggerated, and that talk of the failure of multiculturalism is "racist" and "hate speech," and that we must ban it.  You can almost hear the smacking of lips on trendy college campuses, where dissent from the party line is indeed often called "hate speech." 

Fortunately, thoughtful conservatives are immediately fighting back against the outrageous attempts to link this Norwegian lunatic with conservatism, Christianity, or concern over multicultural excess.  Ross Douthat, the somewhat conservative columnist for The New York Times, points out that America's Unabomber wrote things about environmentalism that could have been written by Al Gore.   And he notes that Angela Merkel of Germany has denounced the failures of multiculturalism.  He adds:

...this doesn’t mean that conservatives need to surrender their convictions. The horror in Norway no more discredits Merkel’s views on Muslim assimilation than Ted Kaczynski’s bombs discredited Al Gore’s views on the dark side of industrialization. On the big picture, Europe’s cultural conservatives are right: Mass immigration really has left the Continent more divided than enriched, Islam and liberal democracy have not yet proven natural bedfellows and the dream of a postnational, postpatriotic European Union governed by a benevolent ruling elite looks more like a folly every day.

For decades, Europe’s governing classes insisted that only racists worried about immigration, only bigots doubted the success of multiculturalism and only fascists cared about national identity. Now that a true far-right radical has perpetrated a terrible atrocity, it will be easy to return to those comforting illusions.

But extremists only grow stronger when a political system pretends that problems don’t exist. Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have an obligation to acknowledge that Anders Behring Breivik is a distinctively right-wing kind of monster. But they also have an obligation to the realities that this monster’s terrible atrocity threatens to obscure.

Well said.  But The Times will undoubtedly get letters denouncing Douhat as a "hate" writer. 

Oh, and it would be nice if some of the leftists would express some compassion for the victims of the attacks.  In their rush to politicize the horror, they have left out the young kids who will never see another day.  You know, sometimes people count, not just ideology.

July 25, 2011     Permalink

JULY 24,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE:

SHOCK AT NORWEGIAN POLICE RESPONSE – It is just sinking in to many in Norway that their police took more than an hour to reach the massacre of Norwegian children, children who had absolutely no defense and no security.  Norway is one of those leftist-run countries that endlessly "prides itself" on its self-declared high level of civility and humanity.  Great pride, great pride.  So their police didn't have any means to get to a massacre in less than an hour, allowing a single gunman – one man – to kill the equivalent of almost three infantry platoons.  It's always the same thing with these welfare states:  They have great pride in their own superiority, but a lot of people ultimately wind up dead.  We counted our own death toll from crime in the thousands each year in New York before Rudy Giuliani put an end to the liberal madness and fought back, saving the lives of many more thousands.  But the leftist element never "takes pride" in progress like that.

WHITE SHIFT? – A new Pew poll shows a dramatic shift in white voter support toward the Republican side.  No doubt some will attribute this to "racism," but it appears to be a reaction to economic stress and a giving up of hope.  Then why, one might ask, is there not the same slippage among minorities, who certainly are being hurt by the economy?  The reason, I think, is a kind of ethnic solidarity, an understandable desire to protect "the first."  But a racial divide, for whatever reason, can be a real danger to America as we enter an election year, and a source of fodder for the demagogues of any race.

July 24, 2011     Permalink

HESS TODAY, GONE TOMORROW – AT 8:38 A.M. ET:  The events in Norway have focused attention on right-wing extremist politics in Europe.  By that we emphatically do not mean conservative politics, although attempts are already underway by the usual suspects, led by The New York Times, to link the two, a particularly vulgar tactic.  And we sometimes forget that Europe has an ugly history on the fringe right.  We were reminded by a strange story out of Germany.  From the Weekly Standard:

Earlier this week, as reported first in Süddeutsche Zeitung, the remains of Rudolf Hess were disinterred from a Protestant cemetery in Wunsiedel, Bavaria. (Der Spiegel has also reported on this in English.) Ever since the suicide of Hitler's deputy in 1987 at age 93 (he was the sole inmate at Spandau), his gravesite had become a problem, attracting neo-Nazis who turned the quiet town into a pilgrimage site. But the town had finally had enough. In agreement with Hess's family, the headstone was removed and the body scheduled for cremation and burial at sea—a similar fate that Adolf Eichmann met after his execution in Israel in 1962.

COMMENT:  That's pretty much the bin Laden solution.  Get rid of the body and avoid a shrine.  The Israelis did the same when they executed Adolph Eichmann, the organizer of the Holocaust.  The Weekly Standard points out that those sentenced to death at Nuremberg were all cremated, and their ashes dumped in an undisclosed ditch.

And so Hess, once one of the most powerful figures of the Nazi regime, will finally disappear from this Earth.  And I'm willing to bet that his burial at sea will also be used by a blinded press to condemn "right-wing" politics and attempt to make fascism and "conservatism" appear the same.  Fight back.

July 24, 2011      Permalink

AND THEN THE RACE WILL CHANGE – AT 8:27 A.M. ET:  If there's an 800-pound gorilla in the room in GOP politics it's Governor Rick Perry of Texas.  The conventional wisdom, which I believe is correct, is that a Perry entrance into the presidential contest will shake things up considerably.   We won't have long to wait.  From The Hill:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has been flirting with a presidential run in 2012, said Friday that he'll make an announcement in three to four weeks.

He said during a forum with Republican governors in Aspen, Colo., that his decision-making has been a “thoughtful process” and that presidential aspirations had not been on his radar two months ago, according to the Aspen Daily News.

Perry, who has taken several high-profile meetings with potential supporters over the past month, said, "I'm basically asking people, 'Do you think there's room in this presidential election for a full-throated, unapologetic fiscal conservative? And if you do think there's room, are you going to help?'"

Those are the right questions.  As we noted here yesterday, Perry is very sharp, one of the sharpest politicians I've seen in recent years. 

Perry also picked up an unexpected statement of support following remarks he made about gay marriage.

The group GOProud reacted to Perry calling New York’s decision to legalize gay marriage “fine by me.”

Perry said gay marriage is an issue for the states to decide. “That is their call,” he said of New York. “If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business."

GOProud sent out an alert to supporters on Saturday calling Perry “absolutely right. Thank you for staying true to your conservative principles by supporting states’ rights,” it said.

When a Texas conservative can stay conservative, yet get the support of a GOP gay group, you've got to admire the guy's ability to maneuver.  Perry understands there's a route to the presidency and a candidate had better study that route carefully.  That route consists of an entire nation, not four or five comfortable states.  Getting hung up on side social issues that are being resolved state by state is not the way to go.

We await Perry's announcement.  If it's positive, we'll then see how he does as he comes to bat.

July 24, 2011       Permalink

NONE DARE CALL IT WEINERGATE – AT 8:17 A.M. ET:  Another congressional Democrat is in trouble, or should we say is again in trouble over sex charges.  Where have we see this movie before?  From the Politico:

Rep. David Wu spoke to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other top Democrats on Saturday about his political future in the wake of allegations of a sexual encounter with a teenager, but it is not clear whether the Oregon Democrat will step down from office.

Wu has been accused of having an “unwanted sexual encounter” with the teenage daughter of a longtime friendlast year over Thanksgiving weekend. The teenager, whose identity has not been disclosed, and her family have not filed any criminal complaint against the longtime lawmaker, but the incident, the second accusation of inappropriate sexual behavior against Wu, is “extremely troubling” to Pelosi and other Democrats, say Democratic insiders.

Yeah, they seem deeply troubled.  Get this:

Wu, who was born in Taiwan, has disappeared from public view in the past day. He is believed to be holed up in his congressional office or residence on Capitol Hill. Wu has not commented on the allegations other than to release a short statement calling the matter “very serious.”

And...

In 1976, Wu was accused of attempted rape by a former girlfriend. No charges were filed in that case, but Wu, who was then attending Stanford University, was required to see a counselor and was disciplined by the university.

Are we seeing a pattern here?

Shortly before the 2010 elections, Wu began behaving erratically, including sending a picture of himself in a tiger costume to his staffers. More than a half dozen aides and campaign consultants quit as Wu bombarded them with troubling phone calls and emails. Wu’s remaining staffers canceled all campaign events, relying on TV ads to win his race.

After news reports of his behavior appeared in February and March, Wu began treatment for an unspecified mental health condition.

What is remarkable is that this dude got elected, then reelected, in a "liberal" district in which women's rights would presumably be a sensitive issue.  The hypocrisy flows.

Resignation required.  Today.

July 24, 2011     Permalink