WEDNESDAY,  AUGUST 19,  2009

A MOMENT TO SAVOR - AT 5:56 P.M. ET:  When did you ever expect to read these words at Urgent Agenda - "The BBC has done some good work"?

Well, history is made.  The BBC has done some good work.  The usually, and usually hopeless left-wing news operation has ripped the mask off a leading "environmentalist," with some tough questioning:

The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization’s recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was “a mistake.” Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.

Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.

“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” he said.

And...

Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.

The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing “misleading information” and using “exaggeration and alarmism.”

Leipold’s admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.

COMMENT:  We wonder how many millions of dollars, or tens of millions, or billions, will be spent to combat "global warming," based on junk science like that.  And yet, the trendy left, including the president of the United States, takes this stuff as gospel.

Congratulations to Stephen Sackur and "Hardtalk."

August 19, 2009   Permalink

DEM NUMBERS SLIP, BUT DON'T CELEBRATE YET - AT 5:45 P.M. ET:  The latest Pew survey has bad news for the Democratic Party, but there's a big asterisk:

...the new poll finds favorable ratings of the Democratic Party have declined sharply since spring. Just 49% now say they have a favorable view of the Democratic Party. This compares with a 59% favorable rating for the party as recently as April and 62% shortly before Obama took office in January.

And the asterisk...

Opinion of the Republican Party, which stands at 40%, has not changed all year.

And that, not only the Dem decline, is the real story.  Democratic problems do not automatically translate into Republican gains.  The GOP has an opportunity, a golden one, but isn't taking much advantage of it.  As we've said here before, it has no real program, no exciting ideas, nothing affirmative to bring to the American people.  So far its stance can be summed up as "just say no."  It needs to do far better.

And Pew's report on Obama's approval:

...51% now approve of Obama’s job performance while 37% disapprove. While that is largely unchanged from July (54%), it is down 10 points from June (61%).

Independents, who approved of Obama’s job performance by nearly two-to-one in June (56% to 29%) are now about evenly divided: 45% approve while 43% disapprove.

Again, opportunity presents itself.  But you can't beat somebody with nobody.  The GOP must build presidential candidates, and give them public platforms. Next year's midterms will be a test run for 2012.

August 19, 2009   Permalink

IRAQ TRAGEDY - AT 5:18 P.M. ET:  It was a bad day in Baghdad, with at least 95 apparently killed in coordinated bombings.  The New York Times reports that American troops couldn't help:

BAGHDAD — Insurgents struck at the heart of the Iraqi government on Wednesday in huge and coordinated bombings that exposed a new vulnerability after Americans ceded control for security here on June 30. Nearby American soldiers stood by helplessly — despite the needs of hundreds of wounded — waiting for a request for help from Iraqi officials that apparently never came.

“As much as we want to come, we have to wait to be asked now,” said an American officer who arrived at one blast site almost three hours later and who spoke in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

Great.  And now Al Qaeda and the other nuthouse groups in Iraq know that they can strike whenever they wish, and American troops can't help unless invited in by Iraqi politicians.

A Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, was quoted by Reuters as telling American and Iraqi military officers: “We must face the facts. We must admit our mistakes, just as we celebrate our victories.”

And Baghdad’s security spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told Iraqiya state television, according to Reuters, that attacks were “a security breach for which Iraqi forces must take most of the blame.”

COMMENT:  At least they admit there were mistakes made in security.  It's a first step.  But Iraq is not won, and it must be won, or at least reasonably secured.  Will the Democratic Party's left allow Obama to do what is necessary, or do we now have one hand tied behind our back?

August 19, 2009   Permalink

GOP LEADS IN GENERIC CONGRESSIONAL POLL - AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen is reporting a solid lead for the GOP in a poll of congressional choices.  The congressional midterm elections are 15 months away:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 38% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

The level of support for Democratic candidates is unchanged this week, but backing for GOP candidates rose one point from a week ago. This is now the eighth straight week Republicans have led on the Generic Ballot.

These findings come at the same time that voters, for the first time in over two years of polling, say they trust Republicans slightly more than Democrats on the handling of the issue of health care.

COMMENT:  It is simply amazing to see how the Dems are blowing it.  Republicans ahead on health care?  Did you ever think you'd see the day?  And the Republicans don't even have a plan.  In effect, the people are voting for "none of the above."

August 19, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 9:07 A.M. ET - From Noah Pollack at Contentions.  Noting Yale University Press's disgraceful refusal to publish those Muhammad cartoons that created so much fuss in Denmark a few years ago in a book about the cartoons, Pollack points out that a key player in the censorship is Marcia Inhorn, head of Yale's Middle East Studies department, who wrote this about a trip to the Mideast: 

"I recently returned from a trip to Lebanon, the UAE and Iran—what most Americans would consider a journey into the heart of darkness, a veritable 'axis of evil.'  In fact, the trip was far from perilous, and I was treated as an honoured guest in every setting. . . .I have travelled widely and lived with my family for extended periods of time in Egypt, Lebanon, and the UAE. It saddens me that so few Americans will ever come to know the delights of the Middle East as my family and I have."

To which Pollack properly replies:

What saddens me, by contrast, is how important it is for leftist world travelers to be treated as royalty by their hosts, and how they respond to Potemkin Village–style tours of repressive and dysfunctional countries with hoary tropes about the nobility of the Orient. Because she was treated as an “honoured guest in every setting” in Iran, the fact that the regime promotes war and terrorism around the globe is irrelevant; the fact that it strings up homosexuals from cranes in downtown Tehran doesn’t matter; the fact that it brutally tortures its own dissenters is barely of any concern and neither is the prison rape of young girls before their executions.

COMMENT:  Brilliantly stated.  Inhorn typifies the kind of "scholars" found more and more in Middle East studies departments.  They are front operators for some of the worst regimes in the world, yet they call themselves "progressives," and they teach our children.  The tradition of academic freedom demands that we tolerate their distortions, but let us understand exactly what we are tolerating. 

August 19, 2009   Permalink

I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, TO HEAR THIS - AT 8:20 A.M. ET:  We keep cautioning here at Urgent Agenda that we're taking our eye off foreign policy during the raging debate on health care, but the threats are building.  Those who we're supposed to depend on in the "international community" are, surprise, disappointing us:

The world's nuclear weapons watchdog is hiding data on Iran's drive to obtain nuclear arms, senior Western diplomats and Israeli officials told Haaretz.

The officials and diplomats said that the International Atomic Energy Agency under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was refraining from publishing evidence obtained by its inspectors over the past few months that indicate Iran was pursuing information about weaponization efforts and a military nuclear program.

ElBaradei, who will soon vacate his post, has said that the agency does not have any evidence that suggests Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

But the sources told Haaretz that the new evidence was submitted to the IAEA in a classified annex written by its inspectors in the Islamic Republic. The report was said to have been signed by the head of the IAEA team in Iran.

The classified report, according to the sources, was not incorporated into the agency's published reports. The details, they said, were censored by senior officials of the IAEA in the organization's Vienna headquarters.

COMMENT:  Great, huh?  ElBaradei reflects the twisted idea that the real problem isn't the Iranian nuclear program, but, rather, our worry about it.  We must stop these hotheaded Yankees from being concerned about their own survival.  How narrow.  How unsophisticated.  This is an idea that is actually spreading, an idea that holds that we must learn to live with the Iranian bomb, just as we lived with the Soviet bomb.  Problem is, the Soviet Union wasn't run by suicidal religious zealots for whom martyrdom is welcomed. 

There is new pressure on the IAEA to release its classified reports on Iran in the fall.  I'm not betting on it.

August 19, 2009   Permalink

OH SPARE US - AT 8:01 A.M. ET:  A new White House strategy on health care may be taking shape.  Actually, it looks like an old White House strategy, as Fox reports:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama, trying to regain control of the health-care debate, will likely shift his pitch in September, White House and Democratic officials said, as he faces pressure from supporters to talk more about the moral imperative to provide health insurance to all Americans.

The word "pitch" is exactly right.  This administration places too much faith in the president's salesmanship.  We know about the moral imperative.  It's the plan we don't know about. 

The president is expected to present a more emotional appeal during a conference call Wednesday with liberal religious groups. A senior White House official said the message would be tailored to the groups' moral emphases, although he cautioned the president's message to religious groups may not herald a broader shift in themes.

"This is such a technical issue, it's easy to get bogged down in the weeds," said Dan Nejfelt, a spokesman for Faith in Public Life, one of the groups scheduled for the Wednesday call. "It's important to have a voice saying, 'This is about right and wrong. This is about honoring faith.'"

COMMENT:  Once again this administration is talking down to the American people.  Americans understand the relationship between faith and caring.  But they also know that, as we learned as children, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  It's not enough to mean well, you have to do well.  The complaints about the Democratic "reform" plan is that it's too vague, doesn't really reduce costs, and can lead to the government making medical decisions. 

That doesn't mean Americans are in love with insurance companies.  They're not, and most Republicans agree that the health-care system needs improvement.  What Americans need is detail and information, not a moral lecture.

August 19, 2009   Permalink

WHITE HOUSE CONFUSION - AT 7:52 A.M. ET:  Or, what else is new?  The inability of this White House to run things is becoming the stuff of instant legends.  The president is in trouble on health care, and there are good reasons.  He doesn't exactly come off as a leader who inspires confidence:

WASHINGTON -- The White House fell into full retreat yesterday from its earlier surrender of Democratic plans for a massive new government-run insurance agency as part of its health-care reform bid.

The Obama administration now says it remains fully behind the idea of a "public option" for government-run insurance, despite clear signals over the weekend from top officials that the public option is not a deal-breaker and is just a "sliver" of the overall reforms it seeks.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs blamed the media for misunderstanding the administration's support.

"The administration's position is unchanged," Gibbs insisted in a testy exchange yesterday during which he handed one reporter exact quotes to read from previous speeches.

COMMENT:  They don't seem to realize they have a problem, and it's not just with the press.  It's with leadership.  There is no question but that the White House signalled last week, and over the weekend, that it was open to dropping the public option.  Then the Democratic left went ballistic and refused to take its pills.  Now, a frightened White House is pulling back its earlier position.

Change we can believe in?  We don't even know what the change is.

August 19, 2009   Permalink

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 18,  2009

OBAMA HITS NEW LOW IN GALLUP POLL - AT 7:40 P.M. ET:  Although the president's standing in the Gallup poll is still higher than in the Rasmussen survey, he's registering his worst numbers in Gallup since inauguration.

Gallup today has approval of presidential performance at 52%, and disapproval at 42%.  The figures a month ago were 61% and 32%.

Obama has already slipped below 50% in the Rasmussen poll, and is heading there with Gallup.  Not good, not good.  He's at the point now where moderate members of his own party are starting to ask, "Barack who?"

August 18, 2009   Permalink

POLLING FOR 2012 - SARAH WEAK AGAINST OBAMA - AT 7:20 P.M. ET:  Advance polling for 2012 is, at this stage, more entertaining than informative, but it does give an early sense of where potential candidates are.  From RealClearPolitics:

New Marist poll of 2012 shows the same thing we've seen from other polls in the Republican primary: Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee are clustered at the top, with others trailing far behind:

Romney 21%
Palin 20%
Huckabee 19%
Gingrich 10%
Jindal 5%
Pawlenty 1%
Undecided 11%

But Sarah doesn't glow in the general-election matchup:

In a hypothetical general election matchup against President Obama, Palin gets crushed 56 to 33. Other than winning Republicans by a margin of 73-20, Palin loses to Obama in every other data cut: by region, income, education, race, age, and gender.

COMMENT:  Sarah has taken a great deal of unfair abuse.  And, as we've written here before, she hasn't, at times, helped herself.  She has a great deal of work to do to raise those general-election numbers.  Her recent foray into the health-care debate was smart and successful, though, showing that she can do it if she bears down.

August 18, 2009   Permalink

WE CAN'T WAIT - AT 5:48 P.M. ET:  I never cease to be amazed at the level of irresponsibility of some people in Hollywood:

Oliver Stone is making his most ambitious stab at American history yet.

The controversial director is creating a 10-part documentary series for Showtime titled "Secret History of America."

Narrated by Stone, the series promises to focus on events that "at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America's unique and complex history of the last 60 years," according to Showtime.

Subjects will include President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, to "the fierce struggle between war and peace in America’s national security complex."

The project includes "newly discovered facts and accounts" from the Kennedy administration, the Vietnam War and the great changes in America’s role in the world since the fall of Communism in the 1980s “through this epic 10-hour series, which I feel is the deepest contribution I could ever make in film to my children and the next generation, I can only hope a change in our thinking will result," Stone said in a statement.

COMMENT:  It is simply incredible that this reckless "filmmaker" would be given a project like this.  Well, maybe it isn't so incredible.  Hollywood is run from the left, and many of those in its young executive ranks were educated in colleges where far-left thinking is considered mainstream. 

Stone made "JFK," which misinformed an entire generation of movie goers about the assassination of President Kennedy.  All you have to do is look at the subjects described in the story - the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, the origins of the Cold War, and Vietnam - to know exactly what this series will be.  It was all our fault, we're militarists, and we've been deceived by our leaders.

What's sad is that some "educators" will undoubtedly use this "documentary series" in the classroom.  The minds of kids will be poisoned by Stone's obsessive anti-Americanism.

August 18, 2009   Permalink

WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST - AT 9:57 A.M. ET:  Afghanistan may be an "ally" in the war on terror, but some of its practices teach us what we're presumably fighting against.  From The New York Times:

Bowing to international pressure and unprecedented protests by hundreds of women on the streets of Kabul, the Afghan government promised in April to review a new law imposing severe restrictions on women in Shiite Muslim families.

Last week, though, Human Rights Watch discovered that a revised version of the Shiite Personal Status Law had been quietly put into effect at the end of July — meaning that Shiite men in Afghanistan now have the legal right to starve their wives if their sexual demands are not met and that Shiite women must obtain permission from their husbands to even leave their houses, “except in extreme circumstances.”

The new law was signed by President Hamid Karzai, who is depending on support from Sheik Muhammad Asif Mohseni, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric, in this week’s presidential election.

COMMENT:  Haven't heard a word from the "feminist" movement, which has been strangely silent on the oppression of Muslim women. 

There are plenty of Muslim moderates, but there are also plenty of extremists, and the extremists have essentially declared war on us.  Even President Obama, in a perfectly fine speech to the VFW yesterday, warned about this.  But too many Americans are forgetting.

August 18, 2009   Permalink

MAKES NO SENSE - AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  You know, I was wondering when someone would write an article like this.  You're probably all aware that General Motors, or Washington Motors, or the People's Car Company, or whatever it's called, is coming out with a car called the Volt.  Available next year.  Runs entirely on electric power, with a small gasoline engine providing only charging of the electric motor.

Incredible gas mileage.  Off the charts.

The only problem is, it will cost $40,000.  Yes, yes, there are federal subsidies under which all of us will help pay for Volt buyers to buy the car - our forced charity is a little grating - but it's still way more expensive than the kind of cars that someone looking for gasoline savings would buy.

Eric Peters, at American Spectator, does the math, and the numbers don't add up:

We live in incoherent times, but maybe someone can explain it to me: How does a $40,000 "economy" car make economic sense?

It doesn't.

Does it compute? Well, let's see... .

For the sake of discussion, we'll take GM's 230 mpg claim at face value. This figure is about four times the published mileage of the 2010 Toyota Prius (50 mpg, average). But the Prius costs just over half as much ($22k). So, the Volt buyer would have to "work off" the approximate $18,000 difference ($12,000 or so, if you subtract the proposed $7,500 government subsidy).

Twelve grand buys one helluva lot of gas -- even at $3 per gallon. Four thousand gallons, to be precise. If whatever you are driving now gets an average of 25 mpg (half what the Prius gets) that 4,000 gallons would keep you going for 160,000 miles.

That is a long time to wait to break even... .

A very long time.  And by the time you've gone 160,000 miles, the wheels are probably falling off, the car is long out of warranty, and the second, third, and fourth generation technologies are making your car look ridiculous.

Even leaving aside the operating costs, how many people who are really concerned about gas mileage (that is, about the expense of a car) are in a position (or desire) to spend $40,000 on a vehicle? By definition, if you are spending that kind of money on a car, you either don't care much about gas mileage -- or don't really have to care much about it.

And...

We are, truly, through the looking gas.

Forty grand to "save gas" -- with the government carjacking taxpayers (via the IRS) who are smart enough to live within their means by driving cars that are either low-cost or paid-for in order to provide a $7,500 bounty to those who either can't do supermarket math or just like the idea of a government-subsidized Ed Begley, Jr./Leo DiCaprio techno-toy they can toodle around in and tout how "green" they're being.

COMMENT:  I'd love to see how many Volts GM will sell, and to whom.  When the cars turn up in Aspen for some annual conference on global warming, you know we'll have gone completely mad.

August 18, 2009   Permalink

WATCH YOUR WALLET, AND EVERYTHING ELSE - AT 8:26 A.M. ET:  The Iranians are sending signals about "negotiations" with the West.  Be careful.  Be very careful:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A senior Iranian official said Tehran was ready for negotiations with the West on its disputed nuclear program based on mutual respect and without preconditions, state television reported on Tuesday.

U.S. President Barack Obama has given Iran until September to take up a six-power offer of talks on trade benefits if it shelves sensitive nuclear enrichment, or face harsher sanctions.

A little caveat:

Iranian officials have made similar statements in the past about possible discussions on Tehran's nuclear activities, while vowing not to back down in the row with the West.

We have said here before that it's in Iran's interest to respond semi-positively to President Obama's "outreach."  It could then suck the United States into a prolonged negotiation, all the while spinning its nuclear centrifuges. 

We have to put a clear time limit on any talks, and the Iranian feeler, in the absence of any real action, should be viewed with extreme caution.  Remember, negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program have been going on for the better part of a decade, with absolutely no result.

August 18, 2009   Permalink

 
THE BEST WAY OUT - AT 8:07 A.M. ET:  Sometimes the best way out is a strategic retreat, to live to fight another day.  A Democratic "blue dog" congressman as much as said so, responding to a comment at a town-hall meeting about health-care legislation.  I expect this idea may grow in coming days as rational people realize that the health-care "reform" movement has gone off the rails:

PERRY, Florida (CNN) – Acknowledging his amazement at the crowds gathered to debate health care at his town halls, Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Florida, faced three large gatherings on Monday with many questioners voicing skepticism about the proposals being debated in Washington...

...When a questioner, Ray Evans, said he believed the President wants to do too much at once and asked whether Boyd would "be willing to scrap everything" and start over to do pursue reform more incrementally, the congressman responded: "I think that is an excellent idea … we may end up there."

In a later interview with CNN, he said the idea had been been floated with the congressional leadership. He said that with the strong emotions and heated opposition he is seeing, the idea of doing health reform in a more piecemeal fashion is something he is strongly considering.

COMMENT:  Good, good.  Finally, some light.  Get rid of that thousand-page bill and start from scratch, finally taking into consideration the concerns of the American people.

August 18, 2009   Permalink 

THE DEM DILEMMA - AT 7:54 A.M. ET:  There is a civil war brewing in the Democratic Party, and there is no Lincoln around to preserve the union.  Jake Tapper of ABC News has the story:

The president's liberal allies on health care reform have a message for the president: Don't think you can drop the public option without a fight.

"If the president thinks we're gonna get the votes without the public option, he's got another think coming," Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-NY, told ABC News. "That won't pass the House."

Over the weekend, the President seemed to change his tone on whether a final health care reform bill had to include a public option -- something that just two months ago, he indicated was a deal-breaker.

"Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange...including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest," President Obama said on June 23.

But over the weekend, Obama seemed to downplay the importance of the inclusion of the plan in health care reform legislation.

COMMENT:  Yesterday the White House backtracked a bit on the president's compromising comments.  The whole health-care debate is a mess, and the fault must be placed with the president, and his breathtaking lack of leadership.  It seems to me that every major concern raised about Mr. Obama during the campaign last year has turned out to be valid - from his softness in foreign policy to his lack of executive experience.  There is a growing feeling that he isn't doing the job, and that maybe he doesn't have "the right stuff" with which to do it.

August 18, 2009   Permalink