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APRIL 19,  2012

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:22 P.M. ET: 

NOT THIS FORD IN MY FUTURE – Ford's CEO tells us that the cost of a battery pack for a an electric Ford Focus is $12,000 to $15,000 dollars.  By contrast, a complete, comparable gasoline-powered car costs about $22,000.  Do you get the feeling that some of this technology isn't quite ready for prime time?  I have the sense that the automotive battery business is still the equivalent of 8-track tapes.

CALLING AL GORE – There is a great deal of rough weather in Britain.  After a bitter winter, the exact opposite of what we had here, some forecasters are saying that part of Britain is in store for the coldest or near coldest May in 100 years.   Of course, this is all due to global warming, as was our unnaturally warm winter.  And if icebergs form off the coast of Florida, that's global warming, too.  Igloos in France?   Global warming.  The moral of the story is that, each day, more and more questions arise about the "science" of climate change.  We need a Challenger-like commission to look into all the contradictory claims.

YES, CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA –  We noted this morning that President Obama refuses to side with our closest ally, Great Britain, in its dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.  Obama's appeasement of the Argentinians has, as appeasement usually does, produced no useful benefit for the U.S.  This week the militantly left-wing government in Buenos Aires nationalized its biggest oil firm, Hugo Chavez style.  This resulted in major international condemnation.  But, apparently believing there was no downside, the government has now nationalized a major gas company and declared it a public utility.  Argentina is drifting further and further toward the Cuba/Venezuela model.

YOUTH FOR ROMNEY? – Obama owned the youth vote in 2008, getting 68% of the 18-24-year-olds, to John McCain's 30%.  But a new poll shows a very different picture for this year, with Obama up only 7% over a "generic" Republican candidate.  It also shows that 45% of these young voters are independents, 13% greater than the general population.  Obama cannot afford to do poorly among the young, but if the numbers in this poll hold up, he will face a major political meltdown.

April 19, 2012        Permalink

VEEPSTAKES – AT 9:58 A.M. ET:  A new poll gives an entertaining, if only that, view of who Republicans favor for the vice presidential slot on their fall ticket.  From The Politico:

Republicans are increasingly falling in behind Mitt Romney’s White House run, but they haven’t got a clue who he should add to the ticket, a CNN/ORC International survey says.

Condoleezza Rice tops the vice presidential wish list among Republicans and right-leaning independents, according to the poll Wednesday. Twenty-six percent of those polled backed the former national security adviser and secretary of state under George W. Bush as Romney’s No. 2. (Rice has repeatedly said she’s not interested in the job.)

Romney’s former nomination rival, Rick Santorum, garnered 21 percent for the VP spot, while Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tied for third with 14 percent.

Sen. Rob Portman, whose name has been topping the VP list among some political insiders, registered less than one-half of 1 percent in the poll – mainly because he’s a mystery.

Sixty-seven percent — the highest in the poll — had simply “never heard of” Portman, an Ohio Republican.

And...

Tea party supporters found Rubio, at 22 percent, their favorite as Romney’s running mate, while Christie, at 18 percent, came in second. Rice tied with Santorum for third.

Among Republicans who say they aren’t avid tea party backers, however, 36 percent picked Rice as their top choice. Rubio trailed in the single digits in part because 55 percent of those outside of tea party circles said they’d never heard of him.

COMMENT:  As I said, it's an entertaining view, but meaningless.  In most primary campaigns most voters have never heard of a number of potential vice-presidential candidates.  That changes, of course, as soon as one of them is named by the presidential choice.  The buildup begins.

So these early polls often test fame rather than quality.  People want who they know.  The choice of Rice is a good demonstration of that.  Putting her on the ticket would link Romney to Bush 43, and that is something he doesn't want.  And it probably wouldn't do a thing to increase Romney's meager support among African Americans.  They will go for Obama.

I have a hunch it will be Portman, a very solid guy who may help with Ohio, but it's only a hunch. 

April 19, 2012       Permalink

HYPOCRISY IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  As readers know, we love to roast the mainstream media here, and there's plenty of raw meat for a delicious roast.

The leftward march of the media during the past four or five decades has been obvious, except to the media, which always denies what others plainly see.  The media was instrumental in electing Barack Obama in 2008, partly by refusing to examine his background or hold him to the same standard required of other candidates.

The latest offender is the Los Angeles Times, which has made some effort to improve in recent years, but still is nostalgic for the old-time left-wing religion.  It was the Times that published, a few days back, those pictures of American soldiers with dead Afghans.  Even the White House was disturbed, in part because the photos were two years old and not exactly news.  Michael Rubin, in Contentions, looks at the paper's hypocritical explanation for the inflammatory publication:

In explaining their decision to publish photos of American troops posing with the bodies of alleged Taliban terrorists, despite the fact that the photos are two years old and guaranteed to inflame violence, the editors of the Los Angeles Times explained, “At the end of the day, our job is to publish information that our readers need to make informed decisions.”

Perhaps the editors would then like to explain why they continue to sit on a videotape of Barack Obama reportedly toasting former PLO Beirut spokesman and University of Chicago buddy Rashid Khalidi? Isn’t that necessary for readers to make informed decisions? I’m not sure whether the editors could provide a more glaring example of their own hypocrisy.

COMMENT:  That's a bulls-eye.  There have been many requests for the L.A. Times to release the tape, but the paper continues to refuse.  The media is very big on "the people's right to know," except when the people knowing something would hurt the "correct" political stance on some issue.

Thus, even Tom Brokaw, at the time of the 2008 election, lamented that Americans were electing a president about whom they knew so little.  We don't know much more these four years later.  We still have no satisfactory explanation of the president's background; his association with radicals; the fact that no one at Columbia University, his undergraduate school, seems to remember him; the financing of his education, which one respected black leader said was provided by a Saudi prince; the fact that his two published books have different writing styles; possible travel to Pakistan in the 1980s; some strangeness about his Social Security numbers; and the fact that he, a man who had never written an article on Constitutional law, or argued a Con law case, was given a job as a Constitutional law teacher at the University of Chicago Law School. 

And we're not going to know much about these elements because the press, once again, isn't asking too many questions. 

But publish something that may inflame a foreign population and place Americans at risk?  Hey, no problem.

April 19, 2012       Permalink

UNDER THE BUS – AT 9:03 A.M. ET:  Barack Obama's willingness to throw old friends, allies, and even family members under the bus, especially during election campaigns, is well known.  Indeed, it's been reported that a bigger bus, with room for more casualties toward the rear axle, has been ordered.

But the tendency is serious, and often the throwees have been America's best foreign friends, like Britain, Canada and Israel.  Nile Gardiner, in London's Telegraph, reflects on the latest episode, this one involving the Brits:

As I noted in a piece earlier this week, Barack Obama has no interest in standing with Britain over the Falklands, declaring in a press conference in Colombia at the Summit of the Americas:

And in terms of the Maldives [sic] or the Falklands, whatever your preferred term, our position on this is that we are going to remain neutral. We have good relations with both Argentina and Great Britain, and we are looking forward to them being able to continue to dialogue on this issue. But this is not something that we typically intervene in.

Please note that Obama even gets the name of the islands wrong.  The Spanish name is Malvinas. 

The Obama presidency has made it clear that it views Britain and Argentina as equal allies. This, despite the fact that Great Britain is a world power that has fought alongside the Americans in almost every major US-involved war over the past 70 years (with the notable exception of Vietnam). In contrast, Argentina is an insignificant international actor, currently led by a kleptocrat anti-Western government, which has barely lifted a finger to help the Americans in the past.

Barack Obama's latest knife in the back for Britain – and there have been many - should be a wake-up call for David Cameron, whose recent trip to Washington was an undignified exercise in hero-worship toward a Left-wing president who doesn't even like the British. The prime minister should understand that Barack Obama is no friend of Britain and never will be. And nor is his Secretary of State, who has actively backed Argentina's calls for UN-brokered negotiations between London and Buenos Aires over the sovereignty of the islands.

COMMENT:  We get the sense that this is a growing feeling internationally – that Obama has no loyalty to America's closest friends, is ignorant of history, and contemptuous of the alliances that have aided our foreign policy.   Not a way to make and keep friends.

Obama snubbed Canada in rejecting the Keystone Pipeline, essentially sending pro-American Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper off to China to find another market for Canadian oil.

One can only think of what's in store for Israel, and even for America's Arab allies, like Jordan, in a second Obama administration.  The Arabs look at what Obama did to ally Hosni Mubarak of Egypt...who not only was shoved under the bus, but under the wheels of the bus.  Compare please to Obama's indifference to pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran in 2009, and his curious lack of passion about the horror in Syria, which has claimed more than 9,000 lives so far.

Add to this the weakness that Obama radiates as president and you have what we plainly see, a foreign policy in disarray. 

Can we afford a second term?

April 19, 2012        Permalink

BULLETIN – WORRYING NEW JOBLESS FIGURES – AT 8:38 A.M. ET:  Each Thursday morning the Labor Department releases figures on the number of new claims for unemployment benefits for the week before.  These are the most frequently released economic numbers we have.

Figures released just minutes ago tell a story of a stalling recovery.  From Bloomberg:

More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, a sign the improvement in labor-market conditions may be stalling.

Jobless claims fell by 2,000 to 386,000 in the week ended April 14 from a revised 388,000 the prior period that was higher than initially estimated, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 47 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a drop to 370,000. Revisions to previous data have been larger than normal and the government is trying to determine the cause, a Labor Department spokesman said as the figures were released to the press.

COMMENT:  That's a lot of lingo to say that the jobs market did not perform up to expectations last week, nor did it the week before, or the week before that.  After a period of progress, the progress suddenly stopped several weeks ago.

The magic number for unemployment claims is 400,000.  If the figure is over 400,000, the economy is in trouble.  It was over that number for many months, then slipped back, and some observers thought the jobs picture was improving.  Now, clearly, over the most recent weeks, the number has been creeping back toward 400,000.  If it reaches that number again, a psychological watershed will have been crossed.

Nor is job creation going well.  We need to create 150,000 new jobs every month just to keep pace with population growth.  Last month's figure was below even that. 

Obama doesn't want to take these trends into November.  But he apparently will have no choice.

April 19,  2012     Permalink

APRIL 18,  2012

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:03 P.M. ET:

NEW PIPELINE PLAN – Fox News is reporting that the Canadians presented today a new plan for the Keystone Pipeline, putting pressure on President Obama to approve the pipeline before the election.  The pipeline is very popular with most Americans, but Obama has bowed to environmental militants in stalling approval.  Republicans see the stall as a significant campaign issue.

DICK CLARK – Dick Clark, who did more to introduce rock 'n roll to America in the 1950s than any other broadcaster, has died at 82.  One can debate the merits of the music, but Clark's clean-cut image and personal decency were reassuring to American parents.  As one newspaper put it, he came across as a well-scrubbed graduate student, not a carnival barker.

HUH? – The Obama campaign, embarrassed by a recent photo showing an almost all-white group of campaign workers in Chicago, is moving to diversify.  It is trying to hire more African-Americans, and is very public about the effort.  There has been considerable criticism from within the black community to the effect that Obama ignores "his own."  (No surprise there.)  Cynics say the new hiring binge is designed to stimulate black turnout in November.

THE TRAYVON MARTIN CASE – Florida Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler, who was supposed to preside over the case, has withdrawn, citing a conflict of interest.  She was pressured to withdraw by shooter George Zimmerman's well-regarded new lawyer, Mark O'Mara.  The judge's husband works with a lawyer who has been hired by CNN to comment on the case.  Everything O'Mara has done signals that he is going to put up a vigorous defense.

April 18,  2012     Permalink

THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT – AT 9:23 A.M. ET:   It is with regret that I report that we have been engulfed by darkness.  From the Washington Post:

The barbarians have done it, finally infiltrated a remaining bastion of order in a linguistic wasteland. They had already taken the Oxford English Dictionary; they had stormed the gates of Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition. They had pummeled American Heritage into submission, though she fought valiantly — she continues to fight! — by including a cautionary italics phrase, “usage problem,” next to the heretical definition.

Then, on Tuesday morning, the venerated AP Stylebook publicly affirmed (via tweet, no less) what it had already told the American Copy Editors Society: It, too, had succumbed. “We now support the modern usage of hopefully,” the tweet said. “It is hoped, we hope.”

COMMENT:  That's it.  It's all over.  The AP, whose stylebook we use here, has drifted to the left in recent years, and it's clear that has been accompanied, as it always is, by lower standards.  Look what's happened to our universities.

The acceptance of "hopefully" symbolizes the dry rot of our civilization.  It is the linguistic equivalent of hip-hop, a one-word nod to the supremacy of the sixties generation.

What comes next, an acceptance of "Hey, man," as a proper form of address?  Or, "it's like, y'see," as elegant rhetoric.

I can't go on.  I must take my pills.  I do remember when a "concert" meant the New York Philharmonic, not a gang of dropouts with amplified instruments. 

Like, it's awful, but hopefully things will change.

April 18, 2012        Permalink

LATIN AMERICAN FLOP – AT 8:57 A.M. ET:  In the post below we report Obama's latest blunder, refusing to side with Britain in its dispute with Argentina over the Falklands.  The refusal has not gotten Obama anything from the leftist Argentinian government.

But there's more from Latin America.  Last week's Americas summit, which Obama attended, was catastrophic for the United States, in part because no one fears the American president any longer.  The conference literally broke up over the demands by the leftist governments of the region to invite Cuba to the next summit.  Obama, in an election year, had to oppose that, but did not get his way.  No decision was made.  In the past, the U.S. had but to wink, and the Castros would have gone unmentioned.

And then we had Obama, in high groveling mode, welcoming Brazil's new president, Dilma Rousseff, a former Communist guerrilla, to the White House.  Brazil now has the world's sixth largest economy, although that economy has started to falter under Rousseff's heavy socialist hand.  More worrisome, Rousseff is a professional anti-American.  From the Washington Times:

Ms. Rousseff is an exemplar of the anti-American hard left that is uniting in the developing world to check U.S. power. One of the main goals of her mission to Washington is to get Mr. Obama’s seal of approval for Brasilia’s ambition to acquire a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. U.S. support for this scheme would be self-destructive as Brazil would provide a reliable vote against American interests in the world body. Ms. Rousseff, a former communist guerrilla herself, is a strong supporter of anti-U.S. dictatorships such as the Castros in Cuba and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. She has backed the Iranian mullahs’ efforts to acquire nuclear capability while leading a club of nations pressing for U.S. nuclear disarmament. If the planet is divvied up between those who are for us and those who are against us, Ms. Rousseff is on the wrong side.

And...

This tale matters because Brazil is now the world’s sixth-largest economy and a leader of the coalition of second-tier states looking to extract revenge for years of perceived Western “first world” imperialism. The narrative mirrors Mr. Obama’s kneejerk “Blame America First” worldview. Brasilia also shows how left-wing bureaucracies mobilize to stifle dissent through censorship and confiscation of property when faced with public opposition. This week’s confab between Mr. Obama and Ms. Rousseff was more than a photo-op for two leftists whispering about what the world could be if they had more power. It’s about what the world is already becoming.

COMMENT:  Which is why we desperately need a change in Washington.  We already know that Obama has, not realizing a microphone was on, pledged to be more "flexible" with Russia once the election is over.  We have no way of knowing what he pledged to Rousseff, but he did a lot of smiling.

April 18, 2012        Permalink

AND THERE HE GOES AGAIN – AT 8:34 A.M. ET:  The foreign-policy pundits are buzzing about Barack Obama's latest gaffe, where our closest ally, Great Britain, was again the fall guy.  Our old friend Andrew Malcolm, at IBD, sets the stage:

OK, picture this: President George W. Bush, he of the cast-iron Texas tongue, at a news conference concluding an international summit.

He's asked about a dispute involving Argentina and Great Britain, our closest overseas ally, the one that's lost 408 soldiers by our side in Afghanistan, where we've fought a decade together to prevent a second 9/11.

In his answer, Bush refers to the disputed territory by the wrong name, misplacing the islands by some 8,000 miles. Worse than his geographic ignorance, instead of backing Britain, whose prime minister he just buddy-buddied at an NCAA game and White House state dinner, Bush says, well, that's not really something he thinks the United States would take sides on.

Britain?

Or Argentina?

Seriously?

Do you think there might be some prolonged outraged news coverage back home about the latest Bush blunder, this time a two-fer?

Well, Bush never did that. But Barack Obama did last weekend.

And...this is painful:

“We’re going to remain neutral,” Obama said at a news conference with President Juan Manuel Santos at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. “This is not something that we typically intervene in.”

Oh really? Except the United States did intervene in the very same dispute back in 1982, when Obama was almost 21, long after his Indonesian childhood. Back then, Argentina invaded the British overseas territory of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.

COMMENT:  We aided Britain back then, as well we should have.  Britain is always there for us, the Argentinians are not, and had no problem harboring ex-Nazis after World War II. 

The current Argentine government, not warm toward America, has reignited the Falklands dispute, and the American president refuses to take the side of Britain.  The Brits will remember the next time Obama needs a favor.  I dread the possibility of this man getting a second term...with a new secretary of state.

April 18, 2012        Permalink

THERE SHE GOES AGAIN – AT 8:18 A.M. ET:  The first lady of the United States is between vacations, and talking again.  The White House might regret it.  Let us remember that Michelle Obama famously said during the 2008 campaign that her husband's run for the presidency made her feel pride in the United States for the first time, a remark that should have disqualified her instantly from any visible position.

She has done some good work for veterans' families and on behalf of children.  But she's talkin' politics again, and talkin' nonsense:

Michelle Obama made a remarkable claim when talking up her husband, President Barack Obama, at a campaign event earlier today in Nashville, Tennessee.

"I am so in," Michelle Obama said toward the end of her remarks. "I am going to be working so hard. We have an amazing story to tell. This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light."

The crowd of nearly 450 folks applauded as the first lady likened her husband to a Jesus-like figure.

COMMENT:  Yikes.  Are they really going back to that?  We had our fill of the "gift from Heaven" line in 2008.  We heard Barack himself say that, starting with his election, the oceans would begin to recede.  I have, since then, met many people who've vacationed at the beach, and they have not reported any significant change in the way the waves roll in.  Maybe Barack didn't get to their beach yet.

I find it both hilarious and depressing that the first lady makes religious references on behalf of an administration that has often trampled religious sensibilities, as in requiring religious institutions to insure medical procedures that offend the religious conscience.

Pure hypocrisy.

April 18,  2012     Permalink