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I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr.'s talk show from Dallas this week.  It's here:

MAY 20,  2011

SCHOOL DAZE – AT 11:29 P.M. ET:  It's commencement time at America's colleges and universities.  For graduates, it's the end of the quest for a degree.  For parents, it may or may not be the end of payments.

When I was a student at the University of Chicago, tuition, room and board for four years came to about $8,000.  Today, the same package at an Ivy League or equivalent school could easily run more than $200,000.  True, there's been inflation in the 145 years since I graduated, but at nowhere near the level that would justify the massive increases in student costs.

Rich Lowry paints a devasting picture of the empires we call colleges, and their exorbitant practices.  Maybe we should rethink the whole idea of the "college education" and its mystique:

Amid all the uplifting clichés at their commencement ceremonies, graduating college students won't hear a line applicable to some of them - you got ripped off.

Student debt just surpassed the country's credit-card debt for the first time. It is projected to top $1 trillion this year, according to the New York Times, when it was less than $200 billion in 2000. For the class of 2011, the mean student-debt burden is nearly $23,000, up 8 percent from a year ago.

What are students going into hock for? In their book Academically Adrift, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa sift through data that only Bluto could relish.

They cite the work of labor economists Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks showing that in the early 1960s, college students spent 40 hours per week on academic work; now they spend only 27 hours per week. In 1961, 67 percent of students said they studied more than 20 hours per week; now only one in five study that much.

Considering what's being taught by some historians, anthropologists and ethnic-group advocates, that may be a good thing.

Full-time instructional faculty dropped from 78 percent in 1970 to 52 percent in 2005. "On average," Arum and Roksa write, "faculty spend approximately 11 hours per week on advisement and instructional preparation and delivery." The rest is devoted to research and sundry other professional and administrative tasks.

The hiring binge on campus has been devoted to what sociologist Gary Rhoades calls "managerial professionals" specializing in sundry student services. What kind of learning environment is it, after all, without a director of sustainability initiatives?

And...

Reformers are brimming with ideas to renovate an expensive and inefficient system. Economist Richard Vedder suggests dismantling the current architecture of financial aid - which helps drive up costs in a never-ending cycle - and giving help only to truly needy students who are performing well academically. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) asks why we can't move toward three- rather than four-year degrees. Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute wants other ways to credential young people besides a BA. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is embarking on a controversial push to get the state's universities to devote themselves more to teaching than to obscure research.

Finally...

In their book, Richard Arum and Josipa Roska make the elementary suggestion that colleges foster "a culture of learning." That would seem to go without saying, except in the groves of academe.

COMMENT:  A distinguished academic who is also an Urgent Agenda reader wrote to us suggesting that the fastest way to improve American colleges would be to abolish all departments with the word "studies" at the end.  Another nationally respected educator, with whom I had a recent discussion, complainted bitterly about the cost of education today compared with the time he was a graduate student.  He also noted that a member of his family, a college student, seems to be home more than she is at school.  I noticed the same attendance issue when my kids were in school.  A vacation every minute.

The college education has been oversold.  There is very little real journalistic reporting on the quality of education that students receive in return for exorbitant fees.  Changes introduced since the 1960s often mean that students are often indoctrinated rather than educated.

If truth be told, many American colleges are glorified high schools.  And many are burdened by a strain that has always been present in universities – a perverse anti-intellectualism.  We like to think that colleges are heady places, and, indeed, some are...and there are some wonderful professors out there.  But political correctness, trendiness, the edifice complex, and the fact that education is, indeed, a business, all work against the search for truth that must be the foundation of any college worthy of its name.

May 20, 2011      Permalink

THE WANTING OF CHRIS – AT 10:17 A.M. ET:  Frustrated Republicans, who see the GOP presidential field as having the excitement of a rest home, are trying to nudge others into the race.  There is now a wanting of Mitch Daniels, the very capable but somewhat dull governor of Indiana.  But the real want is Chris Christie, the bombastic, large, loud, and blunt governor of New Jersey, who has made great strides in turning around a state that was almost as dead as the bodies regularly dumped by local fraternal organizations into New Jersey's marshlands.  But will Christie do it?  John Phillips, writing at the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket blog, has some stimulating thoughts:

Of all of the potential GOP candidates, the serious Republican money men and women want the girl playing hardest to get: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The Garden State Guv says no dice, telling reporters, “Short of suicide, I don't really know what I'd have to do to convince you people that I'm not running. I'm not running.”

Until he rolls a seven, I'm not buying it.

CNN recently reported that Christie met with a group of influential Iowa Republican donors who tried to talk him into running.

Bruce Rastetter, an energy company executive told the Cable News Network, “We want to encourage him from an Iowa perspective and a national perspective. We need a candidate like him in the race...I think the other people are good people, good candidates. Chris Christie is someone who is...unique...and direct.”

If Christie truly has no interest in running, why is he meeting with activists from Iowa instead of watching all of the 'Barefoot Contessa' episodes stored on his TiVO?

It's because Christie wants to be courted.

Think about it, if you want to convince someone to do something they claim they don't want to do, having a never-ending parade of very smart, very wealthy people sweet-talk them into 'saving the country' will do the trick every time. It's the most persuasive route you can take, outside of a rag soaked in chloroform.

If big money donors can eliminate the torturous task of spending 10 hours a day raising money, Christie can spend all of his time on the fun part of campaigning: going on TV, pressing the flesh and eating deep-fat-fried meat products on sticks. As a sweetener, did I mention that he can eat deep-fat-fried meat products on sticks?

COMMENT:  I think Christie is great as governor of New Jersey.  Would he play nationally as a presidential candidate?  Hard to say.  Just as Mitch Daniels may be too quiet, Christie may be too loud.  And did I mention that he tips the scales at "get off before you break the springs"?  If he flies on Air Force One they'd have to add an engine. 

Christie has been losing popularity in his state, the effect of being effective.  If he can be persuaded to jump into the presidential race, he would provide instant theater.  Right now, that can't hurt.

May 20, 2011       Permalink

COMING TO A CLINIC NEAR YOU – AT 9:29 A.M. ET:  For anyone who, in a moment of delirium, thinks socialized medicine is the answer to all our problems, think again.  From Britain's Guardian:

Doctors are blaming financial pressures on the NHS for an increase in the number of patients who are not being treated within the 18 weeks that the government recommends.

Eighteen weeks?  That's the recommended time?  How'd you like that for an American standard?

New NHS performance data reveal that the number of people in England who are being forced to wait more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in the last year, while the number who had to wait longer than six months has shot up by 43%.

In March this year, 34,639 people, or 11% of the total, waited more than that time to receive inpatient treatment, compared with 27,534, or 8.3%, in March 2010 – an increase of 26% – Department of Health statistics show.

Similarly, in March this year some 11,243 patients who underwent treatment had waited for more than six months, compared with 7,841 in the same month in 2010 – a 43% rise.

Despite rising demand for healthcare caused by the increasingly elderly population and growing numbers of people with long-term conditions, the NHS treated 16,201 fewer people as inpatients in March 2011 compared to March 2010, the latest Referral To Treatment data disclose.

COMMENT:  And there are plenty of people around Obama – you know, the kind who spent their junior year abroad – who think the British system is just lovely.  So civilized.  So centralized.  How egalitarian.  The equality of mediocrity.

I'm afraid we'll be the next victims of this mentality unless Obamacare is repealed or substantially changed.

May 20, 2011     Permalink 

THE VISIT – AT 8:43 A.M. ET:   As noted below, the Israeli prime minister visits the White House today, a day after Mr. Obama delivered his speech on the Middle East.  Already there are problems.

The two men don't much like each other.  In a remarkable slap, someone leaked to The New York Times a personal insult delivered by the president about the prime minister:

By all accounts, they do not trust each other. President Obama has told aides and allies that he does not believe that Mr. Netanyahu will ever be willing to make the kind of big concessions that will lead to a peace deal.

The assumption here is that the Israelis must make the concessions while dealing with a Palestinian movement that would like to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. 

Wait, there's more:

For his part, Mr. Netanyahu has complained that Mr. Obama has pushed Israel too far — a point driven home during a furious phone call with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday morning, just hours before Mr. Obama’s speech, during which the prime minister reacted angrily to the president’s plan to endorse Israel’s pre-1967 borders for a future Palestinian state.

That is news.  We didn't know about the Clinton call, which apparently was also leaked to The Times.   This isn't shaping up to be a cordial visit.  Mr. Obama sometimes feels more comfortable with enemies of the United States than with allies.

There is a history here, and not a good one:

From one of their first meetings, at the King David Hotel on July 23, 2008, when Mr. Obama, then the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, visited Israel, the two men have struck, at most, an intellectual bond. Mr. Netanyahu, as the leader of Israel’s conservative Likud Party, was far more comfortable with the Republican Party in the United States than with Mr. Obama, the son of a Muslim man from Kenya whose introduction to the Arab-Israeli conflict was initially framed by discussions with pro-Palestinian academics.

That's a key point.  You can be sure the Israeli Mossad has given Mr. Netanyahu a detailed picture of Mr. Obama, and the picture painted cannot be one an Israeli leader would like:  Mr. Obama spent an inordinate amount of time hanging around with leftist "intellectuals," including the militantly anti-American and anti-Israel Bill Ayers. 

Welcome to Washington, Mr. Netanyahu.  If you feel awkward, remember that the British prime minister got an even worse reception.

May 20, 2011       Permalink

THE SPEECH – AT 8:01 A.M. ET:  President Obama delivered what was dubbed a "major" speech on the Middle East yesterday.  Notice the difference?

The most worrisome thing about the speech is that it is being praised in Europe. 

The speech was based on a false premise, that President Obama has always stood for democracy in the region.  I mean, who could doubt that The One was always for "the people"?  But as former Republican official Elliott Abrams points out, the president didn't exactly get his own history right:

The first thing he did was take credit for the Arab Spring, saying he had supported it all along. This is simply not true. The by-word early in his administration was “engagement,” with a caustic rejection of the Bush “Freedom Agenda.” Bush’s tougher policies toward Iran and Syria were to be replaced by outreach, discussion, diplomacy — far more civilized. And that engagement was with the rulers, not the ruled; Obama’s was a world of states, and you engaged with the people ruling them.

And...

It is traditional now for Obama to insult the Bush administration, and this time he referred at the start to how he had had to “shift our foreign policy” after a decade of war. In fact, the shift he had to perform today was from indifference to democracy in the Arab world to the Bush policy of supporting it.

That is correct, but the Obamans never concede that Bush got anything right.  To do so would be to violate the holy beliefs of the political left. 

It was just a speech, long on nice talk about democracy, but short on policy – kind of like having the preamble to the Constitution, without the Constitution. 

Most of the attention has not been given to Obama's bromides about democracy.  They are meaningless and are just words.  The president had little to say about Iran's suppression of democracy, nothing to say about Saudi Arabia, one of the most regimented societies on Earth, and he actually suggested that Assad of Syria, currently head of a government that has murdered more than 1,000 of its own citizens recently, can still play a useful role in his country.  We fail to see a coherent, practical policy in this.  And Gadaffi of Libya remains in power, despite Obama's demand, now forgotten, that he leave.  Obama doesn't do democracy very well.

In fact, far more press attention has been given to Obama's demand that peace between Israel and a proposed Palestinian state be based on the "1967 borders," borders that existed before the Six-Day War of 1967.  This has infuriated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who arrives today for a visit with the president.  Obama's proposal, now applauded by the European appeasers, codifies for the Palestinian side that it will get a state within the borders it wishes without negotiating a single point. 

True, the president did blast the recent, sordid "unity" deal between the Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, and the terror group Hamas, which runs Gaza, asking how Israel can be expected to make peace with a Palestinian government that includes a terror organization that denies Israel's right to exist.  That is a good question.  But it's a question, not a policy.  The policy was in the proposal that peace be based on 1967 borders that Israel considers indefensible.  The fact that this policy was insultingly spelled out on the eve of the visit of the Israeli prime minister shows, once again, Obama's contempt for an American ally, a contempt he has shown before toward Britain, France, and Canada. 

We can't read this speech and feel any confidence about the future of American foreign policy.  I wish we had one.

May 20, 2011     Permalink 

MAY 19,  2011

HISTORY IS MADE – AT 10:38 P.M. ET:  Arnold Schwarznegger has put his return to Hollywood on hold, following his admission that he'd fathered a love child.  This may well be the first time in Hollywood history that any film star has put anything on hold because of sexual infidelity.  Mark the date.  You'll want to tell your children someday.  From the New York Post:

LOS ANGELES -- Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is delaying his return to Hollywood after admitting he fathered a love child with a former employee, The Sacramento Bee reported Thursday.

"At the request of Arnold Schwarzenegger we asked Creative Artists Agency to inform all his motion picture projects currently underway or being negotiated to stop planning until further notice," a rep for Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

The agents at Creative Artists probably stood around the cash register and wept openly. 

"Governor Schwarzenegger is focusing on personal matters and is not willing to commit to any production schedules or timelines. This includes 'Cry Macho,' 'The Terminator' franchise and other projects under consideration. We will resume discussions when Governor Schwarzenegger decides," the statement added.

Given the nature of those movies, maybe it's best that Arnold stay away.  Ronald Reagan was also governor of California.  He stayed in politics.

When these "personal matters" came up during the golden age of Hollywood, a compliant press, and powerful Hollywood columnists, kept them secret.  Loretta Young was able to bear a child by Clark Gable without the public ever getting a hint of the reality.  She was just "taking time off.  Paulette Goddard could "live in sin" with Charlie Chaplin, and it never made print. 

We wanted stars to be role models.  Some of them weren't, but we never knew.

May 19, 2011       Permalink

WHAT WAS LEFT OUT – AT 10:26 P.M. ET:  President Obama delivered his much-anticipated and overhyped speech on the Middle East today.  We will examine some of the contents tomorrow, but Investors Business Daily got it right when it noted what the president left out.

The president's policy speech lauded changes in the Mideast during the so-called Arab Spring. Curiously missing was anything about ominous nuclear developments in the Muslim world.

We're happy to see President Obama embrace President Bush's idea that the Mideast status quo is not satisfactory. Changes are due.

But during his lengthy address, billed as a comprehensive new policy toward the Muslim world, Obama barely mentioned the biggest threat of all: the growing nuclear threat of Pakistan and Iran, which may soon metastasize to other countries in the region.

Even as Obama spoke, the nuclear genie was leaving the bottle. Iran's state radio on Wednesday announced that its Bushehr nuclear plant, built illicitly with Russian help, is now "operational." This is a first for Iran — and a watershed in its bid to gain nuclear weapons.

Though its oil reserves are the third largest on Earth, Iran insists it needs Bushehr to generate energy. Maybe so. But color us skeptical. It won't be long before Iran ascends the nuclear learning curve and builds a weapon.

Equally alarming, Pakistan has built a massive new weapons-grade nuclear reactor — its fourth — at Khushab. The British Daily Mail calls it "the fastest-growing nuclear program in the world."

COMMENT:  Political change in the Mideast will come and go, but nuclear weapons, once developed, are forever.  And the Mideast, tragically, is drifting further toward extremism, despite the hope of the "Arab spring."  This is not Europe.  There is no democratic tradition. 

Pakistan isn't in the Mideast, but it shares the brotherly characteristics of nuttiness and instability, and has a large nuclear weapons program.

As Americans, we must become more aware of the dangers the "Islamic bomb" poses to us, directly.  It doesn't take an intercontinental missile to deliver the bomb.  A nuclear weapon, stored in the hold of a rickety 60-year-old freighter, and sailed into an American harbor with a suicide crew on board, can take care of the ugly business.

And yet, the president said little about it.  Maybe he thought it would "offend" the sensitive Muslims, apparently one of the worst crimes in the world.

May 19, 2011       Permalink

NEWT CRASHES AND BURNS – AT 9:59 A.M. ET:  There's the old saying that there are no second acts in American life.  That's not true, of course.  Many who fail go on to succeed.   But in politics, with the great exception of Richard Nixon, successful second acts are very hard to come by.  And Nixon's second-act final curtain did not come down gracefully.

Now it seems to be Newt's turn.  The former speaker entered the presidential race just days ago, and has already crashed and burned.  Toby Harnden, the sharp-eyed observer of American politics for London's Telegraph, reports on the obituaries already being written:

Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign, barely a week old, is already in trouble after he was forced to apologise for launching an attack on a rising star from his own Republican party.

Mr Gingrich also suffered embarrassment when it was revealed that he had at one point owed up to $500,000 (£309,000) to the jewellery store Tiffany, apparently for items bought for his third wife Callista.

The former Speaker of the House of Representatives has flatly refused to talk about the credit card bill.

Both incidents appeared to confirm what even his supporters fear – that he is too undisciplined and has too much personal and political baggage to be a credible contender for the Republican nomination.

They also underline Republican concerns about the strength of its primary field a year ahead of the presidential election. No single candidate has broken out of the pack and several senior figures have opted not to run.

COMMENT:  All correct.  Newt's role is that of an idea man within the party, but, as I saw in a small meeting he addressed last year, he's all over the place, has little control of his message, and throws out proposals without thinking them through.  He is not going to be nominated, and I would doubt that he'll be in the race very long.

May 19, 2011       Permalink

BELLWETHER – AT 9:20 A.M. ET:  Ohio is one of the most critical states in a presidential election, and often an indicator of which way the country will go.  The president's standing in Ohio shows just how tough, and close, the 2012 presidential election is likely to be.  From The Hill:

Voters in Ohio are split on whether President Obama deserves a second term, according to a poll released Thursday.

Obama's job approval/disapproval rating saw a slight uptick to 49-45 percent in May from 47-48 percent in April, a Quinnipiac University poll shows. But when asked if Obama deserves to be reelected, registered voters split 47-47 percent.

The president also fares worse against a generic Republican: Forty-one percent say they would vote for Obama compared to 39 percent who would vote for a Republican, a statistical tie. In April, Obama led a generic GOP foe 41-34 percent, a seven-point margin. Fifty-five percent of voters also disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy.

And...

The poll indicates that, early in the campaign season, Ohio's electoral votes are up for grabs. The state typically serves as a key swing state during presidential elections and whoever wins it often wins the general election.

Quinnipiac's assistant polling director Peter A. Brown also noted that Obama did not receive the so-called "bin Laden bounce" — the approval rating surge he saw nationally after the killing of the al Qaeda leader — in Ohio.

COMMENT:  The GOP must take states like Ohio, and Virginia, if it is to recapture the presidency.  The polls are close in both those bellwether states.  This next year, on a presidential politics level, could be brutal.

May 19, 2011       Permalink

ALMOST MAKES US SYMPATHIZE WITH OBAMA – AT 8:48 A.M. ET:   Apparently the president of the United States isn't sufficiently left-wing to pass muster with the radical establishment.  Among its loudest members is African-American "intellectual" Cornel West, once of Harvard, now of Princeton, who feels slighted by the nation's first black president.  This is who's teaching your children.  From the fashionable Boston Globe:

Cornel West, a Princeton University professor and leading black intellectual, is harshly criticizing President Obama, a candidate he once supported but now calls “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”

We've noticed Obama's deep commitment to corporations.  Not.

West, a former Harvard University professor, said during an interview with the website Truthdig posted yesterday that the president has not been true to his race.

“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,” West said. “It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white…When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening.”

Can you imagine the reaction if a white "intellectual" said this?  West started his academic career with some apparently respectable papers, but has since deteriorated into a nutbag who left Harvard after then-President Larry Summers broadly hinted that he might do a bit more work.

The White House did not have an immediate comment. West did not respond to messages left at his office.
Republicans have questioned Obama’s origins — to the point where he felt compelled to release his long-form birth certificate to prove he was born in Hawaii — but West also uses Obama’s past to draw into question the president’s racial bearings.

“Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive,” West said. “He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.”

West is a professor at Princeton's Center for African American Studies and is the author of "Race Matters." He was a professor at Harvard, but left in 2002 amid quarrels with then-president Lawrence Summers.

West also recounts personal slights — that his phone calls didn’t get returned, and that he couldn’t get a ticket with his mother and brother to the inauguration.

Oh, so that's it.  It usually comes down to personal grudges.  If only mom and bro had gotten those tickets, why, old Cornel might be Obama's biggest fan.

West has become a silly fool, and early retirement might be the medically approved cure.

May 19, 2011       Permalink

STRAUSS-KAHN IS OUT – AT 8:36 A.M. ET:  From the Washington Post:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who is facing attempted rape charges in New York, announced his resignation late Wednesday night.

In a statement, Strauss-Kahn said he is resigning “with infinite sadness” in an effort “to protect this institution.”

The resignation, while providing clarity to an organization reeling from the accusations facing its managing director, immediately sets off a scramble about who will lead the powerful organization and what that will mean for the global economy.

Under Strauss-Kahn, the Washington-based IMF has taken a muscular approach toward fixing Europe’s financial woes, advocating financial bailouts for ailing nations such as Greece and Portugal. Without Strauss-Kahn at the helm, Europe is at risk of losing a key source of financial support in its efforts to contain the debt crisis buffeting the continent.

COMMENT:  The reason is that the "third world" is demanding that the new director come from one of its countries, meaning they want a bigger chunk of IMF cash.  Traditionally, the head of the IMF has been European, and that is being challenged.

The charge to have a third-worlder head the fund is being led by South Africa, which is ironic, considering the charges against Strauss-Kahn.  South Africa has one of the highest rape rates in the world, as well as one of the highest overall crime rates.  But what are little things like that when one is considered a great moral leader.

Obviously, if the IMF could not devote its current level of attention to Europe, and several European nations slip into bankruptcy, that could have an impact on the American economy as well.  So we've got a dog in this hunt.

May 19, 2011       Permalink