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SEPTEMBER 4,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:05 P.M. ET:

THE NEWEST MONEY THREAT – The US Postal Service says it may have to shut down completely during the winter unless Congress takes emergency action.  One reason for the crisis:  Labor represents 80% of the USPS's expenses, as compared with 53% at United Parcel Service and 32% at FedEx.  Decades of labor contracts are coming home to roost.  I suspect we'll see drastically reduced service in the future, a probable end to Saturday deliveries, and possibly three-day-a-week deliveries in some areas.  Make sure your e-mail works.

LIBYA – The same old Mideast story.  What is it about these Arabs?  Can't they get anything right?   Superb national-defense reporter Bill Gertz, of the Washington Times, reports that jihadists in Libya have revealed plans to subvert a post-Gaddafi government and set up an Islamist state, according to US intelligence sources.  There are also reports that Libyan rebels are arresting blacks in the capital city of Tripoli and accusing them, many migrant workers, of siding with the Gaddafi regime.  Welcome to the new world of freedom.  It seems that Libya is in danger of slipping into a future even more frightening than the time of Gaddafi.

ANTICIPATION – Political junkies are anticipating this Wednesday's Republican debate at the Reagan Library.  The main event:  the confrontation between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.  Romney is already giving hints of his approach, a contrast between his business experience and the fact that Perry has spent a good chunk of his adult life in political office.  It is absolutely imperative for Romney, if he hopes to challenge Perry's lead, to go after the Texas governor on Wednesday.  For Romney, Perry must be pictured as an unelectable, extreme-oriented career politician.  For Perry, the reverse is true.  He's got to create his own image, as Ronald Reagan did, reassuring the audience that he's a mature, reasoned governor, not some fringe guy.  As  performer, Perry outdistances Romney.  But we'll withhold judgment until after Wednesday night's rumble.

September 4, 2011       Permalink

THE REALLY BIG NEWS – AT 9:53 A.M. ET:  Is it war?  No.  Is it the economy?  No.  Is it the GOP race for president?  Of course not.

The big news is that US News and World Report is about to come out with its annual rankings of colleges.  The trauma.  The agony.  The magazine sales figures.

It is, of course, a silly exercise, in part because the truly important questions are never asked.  What is being taught?  What kind of citizens are these colleges producing?  Whatever happened to the traditional academic role as pursuer of truth?  Has propaganda replaced education?  Are young minds being properly prepared for the future?

WaPo has a good report on how the US News rankings are made.  All it tells me is that higher education is big business more than big education, and people are starting to wonder about much of its value:

Bob Morse is a wonk, a number-cruncher who works in a messy office at a struggling publishing company in Georgetown.

He’s also one of the most powerful wonks in the country, wielding the kind of power that elicits enmity and causes angst.

Morse runs U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Colleges guide, the oldest and best-known publication to rank America’s premier colleges.

The annual release of the rankings, set for Sept. 13 this year, is a marquee event in higher education. Some call it the academic equivalent of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Colleges broadcast U.S. News rankings on Web sites and in news releases, tout them in recruiting pamphlets, alumni magazines and “Dear Colleague” letters, and emblazon them on T-shirts and billboards. Institutions build strategic plans around the rankings and reward presidents when a school ascends.

“U.S. News doesn’t advertise the rankings,” Morse said in a recent interview at the publication’s headquarters. “The schools advertise for us.”

Morse, 63, has endured for two decades as chief arbiter of higher education’s elite.

No one can stake a credible claim to academic aristocracy without a berth on the first page of a U.S. News list. He is to colleges what Robert Parker is to wine.

COMMENT:  The usual suspects will wind up near or at the top.  Very worthy schools will be far below, and will struggle to make ends meet and provide some scholarship aid.  That's the sad part. 

September 4, 2011       Permalink 

THE THREAT FROM WITHIN – AT 9:41 A.M. ET:  Americans have been taught to recoil against any talk of a security threat from within, unless that threat comes from the right.  After all, we don't want to go back to McCarthyism, do we?  (How many times have you heard that?)

But this week we'll be marking the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, and new evidence is surfacing that the attackers of that day had a domestic network behind them that is still probably in place.  From Fox:

Declassified documents, exclusive interviews and phone and banking records present an overwhelming case that the 9/11 hijackers relied heavily on a domestic support network to facilitate the plot.

Former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who led the first congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks in 2002, was asked by the Fox News Specials Unit if he believes the hijackers' support network remains in place today because it was never fully identified or disrupted after the attacks.

"I have no reason to believe it's not," Graham told Fox News.

The findings of an 18-month investigation by Fox's Specials Unit, called the "Secrets of 9/11," to be broadcast Saturday at 10 p.m. ET, shows that some members of the suspected Al Qaeda support network entered the U.S. nearly a decade before the attacks and that others are still living here in plain sight.

The House Homeland Security Committee shares these suspicions. A letter, first obtained by Fox News, states that the committee, chaired by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has launched a congressional investigation into the New Mexico-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his likely role as a 9/11 facilitator.

COMMENT:  But beware.  The investigators will undoubtedly be subjected to the charge of "Islamophobia," which is the new, replacement word for McCarthyism.  The left adjusts its vocabulary, but peddles the same old stuff:  Anyone asking questions must be a bigot. 

We still don't know the full story of 9/11.  And we still don't know the extent of the threat from within.  We do know that, every time there's a major investigation, powerful forces come forward to try to stop it. 

Islamophobia, you know.

September 4, 2011       Permalink

OBAMA'S WEAKNESS – AT 9:30 A.M. ET:  This is one of the slowest news days of the year, so, unless the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor again to get it right this time, don't expect dramatic developments.  On the other hand, if a politician has to concede publicly that he's a secret predator, this would be the day to annouce it.  Who's listening?

But Michael Barone does have a fascinating retrospective on this last week's dust-up between Obama and Congress on the issue of when the president would deliver his jobs speech.  You'll recall that Obama simply announced a date and time, which, strangely, happened to coincide exactly with a major televised Republican debate.  Not good.  Barone comments:

I think it illustrates several of the weaknesses of this presidency.

One is a lack of regard for the Constitution. Congress is a separate branch of government, set up by Article I of the Constitution, which is not about the Executive Branch as Joe Biden said in the 2008 vice presidential debate. (Media outfits that dispatched dozens of investigative reporters to Alaska were apparently incapable of discovering this obvious error.)

Before last week, presidents and congressional leaders always agreed privately on scheduling presidential addresses to joint sessions before any public announcement was made. But it appears that no such agreement was made here, just a brusque announcement that had to be retracted.

Another weakness on display was contempt for public opinion. White House press secretary Jay Carney said it was just "coincidental" that the president wanted to speak at the same time as the Reagan Library debate. It was just "one debate that's one of many on one channel."

But those with memories that go back beyond last week may recall that in May 2009 Obama scrambled to find a venue for a speech at exactly the same time as former Vice President Cheney was scheduled to speak at the American Enterprise Institute on detainee questioning issues. Cheney coolly watched Obama on television and then delivered his own speech.

Hamhandedly trying to bigfoot the opposition is a habit with this president, not a coincidence.

A third Obama weakness is his propensity to charge his political opponents with playing politics when he is doing exactly that himself. In previewing this latest jobs-and-the-economy speech, Carney said that Obama will make the case "that politics is broken, and that politics is getting in the way of the very necessary things we need to do."

This from the president who has brushed aside one bipartisan initiative after another, from the health care initiative of Sens. Ron Wyden and Bob Bennett to the recommendations of his own fiscal commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson.

COMMENT:  Well said and exactly right.  The president is basically a small-time Chicago politician with a golden voice.  He needed ten more years of seasoning before he should have even considered running for president.  What we have in the White House is a perpetual candidate with no particular policies.  Those policies that have succeeded were largely inherited from the Bush-Cheney administration.

But he's a superb campaigner, which is one reason I worry about the election that gets closer and closer.

September 4, 2011       Permalink

SEPTEMBER 3,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:31 P.M. ET:

A NEW SARAH?  – Sarah Palin sounded a new theme in Iowa today.  Well, actually, it was the old Sarah, the Sarah who was so successful as governor of Alaska.  She took on both parties in her speech today, but seemed to train her heaviest guns on "crony capitalism," the rackets that occur in big business.  She basically called for an end to corporate welfare, bailouts, and the corporate income tax.  In effect, she was telling corporations that the government would get off their back...but they had to make it on their own.  It was Palin's independence that established her star in the first place.  Sadly, though, it's largely been thrown away in the quest for celebrity.  I'm not sure she can get the polish back.

NEW TERROR WARNING – The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have issued a new warning about Al Qaeda's interest in using small planes loaded with explosives to carry out attacks in the United States.  While there is apparently no detailed, credible threat at the moment, the new alert follows on other, similar alerts over the years.  Just after 9/11 the federal government grounded crop-dusting planes, believing Al Qaeda was interested in using them for an attack.  A small plane loaded with explosives could, of course, do devastating damage, especially if it were crashed into a loaded airliner on a runway, a train, a bus, or a school.  Some snicker at such concerns...until there's an attack.

OBAMA'S STRATEGY – According to The New York Times and other sources, the president's new economic strategy, just evolving, consists of showing contempt for Congress and enacting as many things on his own as the law allows.  In effect, he'll be running against the "do-nothing Congress," the phrase Harry Truman used in his 1948 election campaign.  Of course, one problem is that Obama isn't Truman, and the Senate is still controlled by Democrats.  Another problem is that Obama hasn't really proposed anything yet that could actually work.  A third problem is that Americans, according to polls, don't believe he's really capable of salvaging the economy.  Other than those problems, he's got it made. 

September 3, 2011       Permalink

THE SEPTEMBER GOP RUSH – AT 11:29 A.M. ET:  We are about to have an ultra-active political month, with the focus on the GOP race.  What happens in debates this month may well produce dramatic results, positive or negative, for several of the candidates:

WASHINGTON — The Republican race for the White House is about to accelerate dramatically, with a series of debates and events testing whether Rick Perry has staying power and Mitt Romney can keep focusing on the president instead of his GOP rivals.

September also may settle the field for good, with Sarah Palin perhaps deciding at last whether to run.

Perry, the Texas governor, jolted the party last month by leaping to the top of several national polls within days of joining the race. Now, three scheduled debates in 16 days, the first on Wednesday in California, will show how well he can stand alongside his competitors and field a range of questions.

That opening debate "will be most critical" for Perry because "it will be his first time out," said Terry Nelson, a campaign strategist who had worked for former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, now out of the 2012 race.

Perry’s entrance has riveted political insiders and led to talk of how Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, should respond. It also siphoned off some of the buzz surrounding Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, a tea party favorite previously considered by many observers to be Romney’s chief rival.

But GOP strategists warn that it’s very early, and polls at this stage are often poor predictors of what’s to come in next year’s voting to pick a nominee.

"There’s movement all over the place," said Kevin Madden, an unpaid adviser to Romney and a veteran of several campaigns.

COMMENT:  Good summary.  There may well be more political attention directed toward the Wednesday debate than toward the president's speech on jobs before a joint session of Congress.  That may tell you somethijng about who's important right now. 

Obviously, we'll be watching intently on Wednesday.  The debate will be held at the Reagan Library in California, a reminder of the Republican Party's legacy. 

September 3, 2011        Permalink

THIS WON'T GO AWAY – AT 10:46 A.M. ET:  It isn't very fashionable these days to talk about foreign policy and foreign threats.  We are developing a 1930s mentality, when domestic problems were so great that we just ignored the growing monsters in Europe and Asia.  That was someone else's problem.

For several generations after World War II we seemed to understand the mistakes we and other nations had made.  Now, the passage of time and the distorted teachings in the press and our universities are taking us once more into a period where ignoring foreign threats is becoming too much of a norm.  But these threats don't go away simply because we will it.  We are going to wake up very surprised one morning:

VIENNA: A possible military dimension to Iran's nuclear activities is worrying the United Nations nuclear watchdog, according to a confidential report.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is ''increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organisations'', the report said.
These included ''activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile'', according to the report, which is due to be discussed by the agency's board of governors at a five-day meeting starting on September 12.

The UN Security Council has issued four rounds of sanctions on Iran to force it to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for use in a reactor or a nuclear warhead.

The Islamic republic began its 20 per cent enrichment in February last year, theoretically bringing it closer to the 90 per cent level required to make an atomic bomb.

Tehran insists that its activities are aimed exclusively at developing nuclear power. A diplomat admitted on condition of anonymity that Iran was also making ''lots of efforts'' to get its Fordo enrichment plant, deep inside a mountain near the Shiite shrine city of Qom, operational as soon as possible.

COMMENT:  It's nice to see that the UN has noticed.  There are multiple sanctions in place against Iran, and they haven't done a bit of good.  Yet, our president seems little interested.   He was far more interested in pushing our main Arab ally, Hosni Mubarak, out of office.

Iran's growing nuclear program is having the expected side effects, even before a bomb is tested:  Other nations are cozying up to Iran, and that includes our so-called "ally," Iraq.  We grow weaker, the Iranians grow stronger, and they are fanatics who may just use a nuclear bomb if they get it.

September 3, 2011       Permalink

WHERE OBAMA STANDS – AT 10:14 A.M. ET:  In three days the political season will officially begin.  This is an off-year, but we start our political campaigns early in America.

Already there are signs that the upcoming fight will be brutal.  It is expected by many, as Howard Fineman reports, that the Dems, in particular, will wage a vicious, negative campaign that might make Joe McCarthy look like the king of ethics.  They have very little record to run on – Obama's greatest accomplishment is the number of vacations he's managed to take – and so they must divert the eyes of the public and direct attention to the opposition. 

As we enter this Labor Day weekend, where does the president stand?  Scott Rasmussen reports:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 19% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21.

And overall:

Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's performance. Fifty-four percent (54%) at least somewhat disapprove.

COMMENT:  We should note that Gallup has had the president's approval as low as 38% this past month.  The president's numbers are weak, but far from impossible.  In fact, in the Rasmussen survey he normally defeats Republican competitors.  Rick Perry now beats Mr. Obama by a few points, but the lead is well within the margin of error.  The race must still be called fluid, with Mr. Obama having the advantage of incumbency and a still swooning press.

September 3, 2011     Permalink