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JUNE 30,  2011

THIS IS JUST INCREDIBLE – AT 11:17 P.M. ET:  The headlines screamed at us.  It was the classic case of a major figure, the head of the International Monetary Fund, brought down by the accusations of one of the "little people."  The media loved it.  The audience loved it.  And now we find it may not be true.  From The New York Times:

The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials.

Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.

Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.

Senior prosecutors met with lawyers for Mr. Strauss-Kahn on Thursday and provided details about their findings, and the parties are discussing whether to dismiss the felony charges. Among the discoveries, one of the officials said, are issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.

And...

According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.

In addition, one of the officials said, she told investigators that her application for asylum included mention of a previous rape, but there was no such account in the application. She also told them that she had been subjected to genital mutilation, but her account to the investigators differed from what was contained in the asylum application.

COMMENT:  Mr. Strauss-Kahn, meet Duke University.  There is a chilling resemblance between this case and the Duke case, in which false allegations of rape were hurled at three lacrosse players, who were immediately declared guilty by politically correct Duke, and thrown out of school.  They were later completely exonerated, and the politically ambitious district attorney who'd intended to prosecute them was disbarred.

We should hasten to point out that the great majority of sexual assault charges presented by women turn out to be true, and there are more and more quality prosecutions of those charges.  But there have also been disturbing false cases, resulting in the destruction of the lives of innocent men.  Strauss-Kahn has already lost his job as head of the IMF because of the charges, and his political career in France, where he had been considered the leading contender to become the country's next president, is essentially over.

If Strauss-Kahn is cleared of wrongdoing, there should be an immediate, massive investigation of the district attorney's office's initial work, although that office eventually, and commendably, discovered the discrpancies in the case.  And news organizations should have the common decency – highly unlikely – to finance an outside investigation of their own behavior. 

The image of American justice is not very good here.  There is work to do.

June 30, 2011     Permalink 

THIS WEEK'S JOBLESS REPORT – NO GOOD – AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  The jobless picture in America is just not improving.  While we have almost a year and a half before the election, Obama had better get this economy restarted, or he'll be calling the moving boys from Mayflower.   From Bloomberg: 

More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, indicating little progress in the labor market.

Jobless claims fell by 1,000 to 428,000 in the week ended June 25, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg News survey called for a drop to 420,000. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls and those getting extended payments declined.

Weaker demand in recent months has prompted some companies to trim their workforces, adding to concern a cooling labor market will further restrain consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. Federal Reserve officials last week retained record monetary stimulus to help the economy withstand a “temporary” slowdown in growth.

“The labor market is not making any material improvement,” said John Herrmann, senior fixed-income strategist at State Street Global Markets LLC in Boston, who projected 429,000 claims in the latest week. “Consumer spending will be more constrained.”

COMMENT:  There are also surveys showing that an increasing number of Americans believe that this will be a permanent condition.  Psychology is basic to the direction of any economy, and the American psyche is going in the wrong direction.

June 30, 2011       Permalink

PRAISE THE POST – AT 9:20 A.M. ET:  Yes, yes, the Washington Post is a liberal paper,  but it's done some very good things recently, like running a responsible and thoughtful editorial page.  And now the Post is doing what The New York Times does only to conservatives.  It is holding President Obama to a high standard of accuracy.  We give credit where it's due at Urgent Agenda, and the Post deserves credit for this examination of Obama's press conference yesterday:

In a bit of class jujutsu, the president six times mentioned eliminating a tax loophole for corporate jets, frequently pitting it against student loans or food safety. It’s a potent image, but in the context of a $4-trillion goal, it is essentially meaningless. The item is so small the White House could not even provide an estimate of the revenue that would be raised, but other estimates suggest it would amount to $3 billion over 10 years.

Meanwhile, student financial assistance, just for 2011, is about $42 billion. So the corporate jet loophole — which involves the fact that such assets can be depreciated over five years, rather than the seven for commercial jets — just is not going to raise a lot of money. It certainly wouldn’t save many student loans.

Going after hedge fund managers might raise about $15 billion over 10 years, but in a different life The Fact Checker covered Wall Street and is pretty certain those financial wizards would figure out a way to avoid this tax shift. John Carney of CNBC actually outlined how that would work.

And this from the president:

“Moammar Gaddafi, who prior to Osama bin Laden was responsible for more American deaths than just about anybody on the planet, was threatening to massacre his people. . . . As a consequence, a guy who was a state sponsor of terrorist operations against the United States of America is pinned down, and the noose is tightening around him.”

Yes, Gaddafi is a bad guy, but Obama conveniently ignores the fact that until the uprising, the administration was rushing to do business with him. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with one of Gadhafi’s sons, Mutassim Gadhafi, in 2009, declaring, “I’m very much looking forward to building on this relationship.”

We need more of this.  Had a Republican president engaged in the artistry that Obama engaged in yesterday, New York Times Washington writers would have gone into cardiac arrest simply rushing to their computers to give us the news of the deceptions.

Read the whole piece.  Fascinating stuff.

June 30, 2011       Permalink

DISTURBING NEWS FOR SARAH – AT 8:52 A.M. ET: Sarah Palin may be testing the waters in Iowa this week, but the political news from home is bound to create a major embarrassment for her, and raise doubts about her political viability. From the Anchorage Daily News:

A new Hays Research poll shows Barack Obama would beat Sarah Palin among Alaskans if the presidential election was today.

The poll found 42 percent of Alaskan voters would pick or are learning toward Obama in a head to head race against Palin for the presidency, while 36 percent of the voters would choose or are leaning toward Palin over him.

Conservative Anchorage radio host Mike Porcaro paid for Hays Research to ask the question.

“Sarah Palin showcases her Alaska roots at every opportunity, but the surprising reality is she has become highly unpopular in her home state,” Porcaro said in an emailed statement.

“Whether it is the fact she left office after serving barely two years or that some Alaskans believe her tax policies have punished our vital oil and gas industry or the ‘rock star’ nature of her media coverage, these results show Sarah Palin would lose to Obama in Alaska, where voters overwhelmingly support conservative candidates,” Porcaro said.

As the article points out, Alaska hasn't voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. 

COMMENT:  Sarah Palin, whom I admire in many ways, is paying the price for some unwise decisions, especially her decision to resign as governor to become a highly paid media celebrity.  She may well have a future in politics, but I hope she sits out the 2012 election, regroups, and gets a better sense of direction. 

June 30, 2011       Permalink

ANOTHER BLUNDER – AT 8:31 A.M. ET: Once again the Obama administration has made an international concession without demanding a thing in return.   Anything to be the nice fella on the block, especially when the block is populated by Islamists.   From Reuters:

WASHINGTON - The United States has decided to resume formal contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a senior US official said on Wednesday, in a step that reflects the Islamist group's growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its US backers.

It may also upset a number of true democracy fighters in Egypt, who have been trying to limit the Brotherhood's influence.  Once again, we've undercut the very people sticking their necks out for freedom.  Obama must get a great kick out of this.

"The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing," said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency."

The official sought to portray the shift as a subtle evolution rather than a dramatic change in Washington's stance toward the Brotherhood, a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.

I love the polite description.  The Brotherhood has a profoundly fascist history, was an ally of Adolf Hitler, and today, despite a public smile, is considered by most observers to be an extremist Muslim organization.  To recognize this group without getting public commitments in advance is appeasement in the extreme.  We must be uneasy about Obama's constant groveling in the Muslim world.

Under the previous policy, US diplomats were allowed to deal with Brotherhood members of parliament who had won seats as independents -- a diplomatic fiction that allowed them to keep lines of communication open.

Where US diplomats previously dealt only with group members in their role as parliamentarians, a policy the official said had been in place since 2006, they will now deal directly with low-level Brotherhood party officials.

There is no US legal prohibition against dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood itself, which long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt and which is not regarded by Washington as a foreign terrorist organization.

But other sympathetic groups, such as Hamas, which identifies the Brotherhood as its spiritual guide, have not disavowed violence against the state of Israel.

And the Brotherhood has never distanced itself from that violent policy.  They're shrewd operators, and we should have nothing to do with them until they make very definite commitments, and do so before TV cameras.  The Israelis, in particular, will take this as a sign from Obama that they're very much alone.  True seekers of democracy in the Arab world will take it as a sign that it's business as usual for Washington's "realistic" diplomats.  Yuch.

June 30, 2011     Permalink 

JUNE 29,  2011

SNIPPET – AT 10:23 P.M. ET: 

From the Toronto Sun:  John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death - according to the tragic Beatles star's last personal assistant.  Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon's death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.  In new documentary Beatles Stories, Seaman tells filmmaker Seth Swirsky Lennon wasn't the peace-loving militant fans thought he was while he was his assistant.  He says, "John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.

The sound you hear is a lot of sixties-generation journalists jumping off bridges. 

BE PREPARED TO BE SICK – AT 10:12 P.M. ET:  Is there any action too disgraceful for the United Nations?  From the Daily Caller:

In the latest ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ news from the United Nations, North Korea assumed the presidency of the Conference on Disarmament Tuesday.

“Bare months after the U.N. finally suspended Libya’s Col. Muammar Qaddafi from its Human Rights Council, North Korea wins the propaganda coup of heading the world’s disarmament agency,” the executive director of UN Watch Hillel Neuer said in a statement protesting the move. “It’s asking the fox to guard the chickens, and damages the U.N.’s credibility.”

Damages the U.N.'s credibility?  What credibility is that?  It's like damaging Paris Hilton's virginity.

According to the U.N. summary of the meeting, North Korea’s So Se Pyong addressed the 65-member arms control forum, saying that “he was very much committed to the Conference and during his presidency he welcomed any sort of constructive proposals that strengthened the work and credibility of the body.”

Neuer said that though North Korea’s new role as head of the conference, which reports to the U.N. General Assembly, would likely be justified by the U.N. by saying it was the result of a an “automatic rotation,” such an excuse was not sufficient.

“While the U.N. will likely defend North Korea’s appointment as simply an automatic rotation,” he said, “no system should tolerate such a fundamental conflict of interests. It’s common sense that a disarmament body should not be headed by the world’s arch-villain on illegal weapons and nuclear proliferation, notorious for exporting missiles and nuclear know-how to fellow rogue regimes around the globe.”

COMMENT:  Sorry, Mr. Neuer, but the ordinary rules of civilized behavior don't apply to the North Koreans.  And please notice the silence of the "third world" and of "human rights" groups. 

Also, please notice the lack of reaction by the White House.  You know, we're "committed" to the U.N.  Those who are committed, in my view, should be committed.

June 29, 2011      Permalink

NEW HAMPSHIRE POLL GOES TO ROMNEY, BUT BACHMANN GAINS – AT 10:36 A.M. ET:  The New Hampshire primary will be, as usual, highly publicized.  It's one of those political staples in any election year.

As expected, Mitt Romney is well ahead in New Hampshire polls at the moment.  He's a local boy, having been governor of neighboring Massachusetts.  Boston TV stations beam into New Hampshire.  But Romney's lead still places him well under 50%, something that could begin to worry his handlers as the campaign progresses.  And Michele Bachmann is rising faster than any other candidate, even in New Hampshire.  From The Politico:

Mitt Romney is holding steady in the state of New Hampshire, but Michele Bachmann is on the rise.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, is drawing 36 percent of the vote in the Granite State, according to a poll released tonight by Suffolk University and WHDH-TV. That's one percentage point more than Romney pulled in Suffolk's last poll, some two months ago.

The biggest mover in Suffolk's polling, however, is Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann ,who has jumped from 3 percent of the vote in May to 11 percent now. With voters who said they watched the June 13 presidential debate in Manchester, Bachmann and Romney split the win: 33 percent of respondents chose Romney as the winner, while 31 percent chose Bachmann.

The other, lower-level movers in the poll: Jon Huntsman, who debuted at 4 percent, and Tim Pawlenty, who lost three points and fell to 2 percent. Also in the low single digits were Sarah Palin (4 percent), Newt Gingrich (2 percent) and Rick Santorum (1 percent).

All told, the poll shows Romney in a commanding position in the early primary state where he's placed his strongest emphasis, so far, with Bachmann sucking up much of the remaining oxygen. Bolstering Romney's position is the fact that nearly half of Republican primary voters — 46 percent — said that jobs and the economy were the top issues in the campaign.

COMMENT:  If Bachmann can cut into Romney's lead in New Hampshire, well outside her home base in the Midwest, that would be news.  It also might seriously hobble Romney's quest for the nomination.  We do not hear any great yearning for Mitt.

But Bachmann is now under a relentless assault by the media crowd.  In part it's because of their pathological obsession with demonizing conservative women.  "Palinizing" will be a word that will enter the political vocabulary.  But, in part, it's because of her own constant gaffes and her evasiveness in answering legitimate questions.  Bachmann must finally realize that complaining about press bias and insults is not enough.  That's the field we're on.  Republicans will be judged by a higher standard, and must meet that standard, fair or not.  Bachmann did well in the New Hampshire debate.  Since then she has been only so-so in press interviews.  We'll follow her closely.  Like her or not, she's a fascinating political story.

June 29, 2011       Permalink 

PRAISE FOR TIM – AT 9:29 A.M. ET:   Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, is becoming the forgotten man in this campaign, which is sad, for he has just given the most thougtful speech of the campaign thus far, and a gutsy one at that.  At a time – see story just below – when many Republicans are making foreign policy by battery-powered calculator, Pawlenty spoke forcefully for traditional Republican views, views that formed the foundation of the modern Republican Party.  From the Washington Times:

A growing schism within Republican ranks over U.S. intervention abroad spilled over into the 2012 presidential campaign Tuesday, with former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty urging elected leaders to resist what he called “isolationist sentiments.”

The comments were aimed at a slice of the GOP presidential field that has called for a reassessment of President Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan and a re-examination of the overall U.S. military posture around the globe.

“America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment and withdrawal,” Mr. Pawlenty said in staking out the hawkish position in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday. “It does not need a second one.”

While the GOP in recent years has been seen as the party more in favor of a robust military presence throughout the world, that calculation has been changed under Mr. Obama, who expanded the war in Afghanistan and this year committed U.S. forces to lead and then aid NATO in maintaining a no-fly zone over Libya.

Meanwhile, tight budgets at home have some Republicans worried that the country cannot afford those ongoing engagements on top of the existing costs of U.S. troops stationed throughout the world.

Pawlenty showed himself to be the statesman of the race, far more so than the jelly-spined Jon Huntsman, who's become the favorite of the chattering classes. 

“It is a fight for the soul of the Republican Party,” said Max Boot, a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow who suggested that part of what is going on is political jockeying as the candidates try to stake out positions that distinguish them from one another. “There’s always a danger that a Republican president might succumb to the siren song of isolationism and that’s why I think it is good Pawlenty is making a clear argument against it.”

And...

In his foreign policy speech, Mr. Pawlenty warned that some Republicans are trying to “outbid the Democrats in appealing to isolationist sentiments” and that history has shown how over the long run that “weakness in foreign policy costs us and our children much more than we’ll save in a budget line item.”

“Our enemies in the war on terror, just like our opponents in the Cold War, respect and respond to strength. Sometimes strength means military intervention. Sometimes it means diplomatic pressure. It always means moral clarity in word and deed,” he said. “That is the legacy of Republican foreign policy at its best and the banner our next Republican president must carry around the world.”

COMMENT:  Cheers for Tim.  I don't think he has much chance for the Republican nomination as he lacks a certain fire, and an appeal to the GOP primary base, which is sad.  His speech, though, was the speech of a president, not a groveling candidate, and he is to be commended. 

It's pathetic, though, that a Republican candidate had to give a speech to remind his party of what it stands for.  Next time one of the "we can't afford it" crowd invokes the name of Ronald Reagan, let's all laugh together, very loudly.

June 29, 2011       Permalink

UK CONFIRMS IRAN MISSILE TESTS – AT 8:56 A.M. ET:  While our own government debates the pace of withdrawal from the region, Britain confirms Iranian tests of missiles capable of reaching American bases, southern Europe, and Israel.  From WaPo:

LONDON — Britain’s foreign secretary says Iran has conducted covert tests of ballistic missiles alongside a 10-day program of public military maneuvers.

William Hague told the House of Commons on Wednesday that there had been secret experiments with missiles and rocket launchers.

Iran is conducting 10 days of war games in an apparent show of strength to the West and on Tuesday fired 14 missiles in public tests.

Britain believes Tehran has conducted at least three secret tests of medium-range ballistic missiles since October.

COMMENT:  What we are seeing is a replay of the late 1930s, when Germany was rapidly building its arsenal, and those who warned about it were called warmongers.  The free nations, especially the United States, fell well behind in war preparations.  (When World War II broke out, the United States Army ranked 15th in the world.)

It is hard to accept today, but Winston Churchill was kept off the BBC in the late thirties by a director who thought him an extremist for his warnings about Germany. 

There are those who argue that Iran is a diversion, that we should really be worrying about China, which is also rapidly building its arsenal.  We should be worrying about both, but we don't have the leadership in Washington to explain the importance of China and Iran to the American people.  We are now preoccupied with economic matters, as we were in the thirties.  A price was paid then, and a price will be paid by our children.  The price this time may be fatal, but say that and "sophisticates" laugh.

What is so sad is to watch the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan deteriorating into, once again, a party of eccentrics and green eyeshades, perfectly prepared to put national defense on the chopping block to maintain its precious position against any tax increases.  True, there is waste in the defense budget.  There always has been, and it must be rooted out.  Eisenhower wasn't entirely wrong about the industrial-military complex, although his famous warning was taken out of context.  But there are also many unmet needs – especially the need to replace aging ships and planes.  We are told that we can no longer "afford" a strong national defense.  That's like saying you can't "afford" a life-saving operation.  You find a way, and people do find it. 

Defense is today presented to the American people by too many "journalists" as a kind of choice thing.  You know, we all know we don't need it, but some people just want it.  Can't afford it any longer.  That is a crazy, wicked and historically corrupt argument. 

Our enemies watch.  We can hear the laughter.

June 29, 2011      Permalink

THERE'S DUMB AND THEN THERE'S "GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS" DUMB – AT 8:44 A.M. ET:  From The Politico:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich showed up in Syria this week and held a press conference in which he appeared to praise embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad - who is ruthlessly crushing opposition to his government - as “highly loved and appreciated by the Syrians.”

The Ohio Democrat released a statement on Tuesday saying that he had been misquoted by Syrian media.

Kucinich was originally spotted in Damascus by CNN correspondent Hala Gorani, who tweeted on Monday that she had bumped into the eight-term congressman. “Ran into Dennis Kucinich in another hotel,” she wrote, also noting that Kucinich had met with Assad for three hours.

State Department spokeswoman Megan Mattson said Kucinich visited Syria at the invitation of its government, and was not there as an an official U.S. government representative. Kucinich’s press spokesman did not respond to inquiries on what Kucinich discussed with Assad or who financed Kucinich’s visit.

Syrian state media quoted Kucinich as saying during the press conference, “President Bashar al-Assad cares so much about what is taking place in Syria, which is evident in his effort towards a new Syria and everybody who meets him can be certain of this.”

COMMENT:  Anyone naive enough to visit Damascus and take seriously a meeting with the butcher of Damascus deserves to be immediately retired from political life and sent to the nearest rest home, whether licensed or not. 

Kucinich is a fool and always has been, a leader of the leftist fringe of the Democratic Party.  In a way, he's a modern Henry Wallace, the vice president of the United States, under FDR, during most of World War II, and a man sympathetic to "progressive" (read that Marxist) causes. Wallace was replaced on the Democratic ticket in 1944 by Harry S. Truman, when it was thought by the wise Democratic leadership that President Roosevelt was dying, and that Wallace's leftist views made him unacceptable as president.  Wallace later ran against Truman in 1948 as the candidate of the Progressive Party, but had the decency to leave that party in 1950 after it refused to condemn the Communist invasion of South Korea.

Kucinich has none of Wallace's decency.  He blunders from one extremist position to another, never supporting his country in time of crisis.  I cannot understand how Ohio voters can continue to send him back to Congress. 

June 29, 2011     Permalink