I have a new piece up at Power Line, "Four Deaths and a Rule Change."  For anyone interested, it's here.

I also have a new piece up at Hudson New York, "Is The Free Press Failing Us?"  For those interested, it's here.

THURSDAY,  JULY 9,  2009

RECORDING ALERT - AT 10:04 P.M. ET:  Before you read, please make a note to set your TV recorder.   You will not want to miss this:  John Kerry is about to hold major hearings on Afghanistan, reminiscent of the hearings on Vietnam at which he testified as an anti-war veteran.  Oh, the nostalgia.  Oh, the memories.  Oh, youth!

WASHINGTON — Sen. John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says he will hold far-ranging oversight hearings on the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

“End of summer, early fall, we are going to take a hard look at Afghanistan,” Kerry said in an interview with GlobalPost.

I can't wait.

Kerry's proposal for hearings comes as just-deployed U.S. Marines undertake an ambitious and perilous offensive against the Taliban in the south, and as suicide bombings and roadside attacks on U.S. troops have escalated.

Our troops must love the fact that John Kerry is on the case, and will probably undercut their mission.

Between 1966 and 1971, the same committee Kerry chairs, then under Democratic chairman William Fulbright of Arkansas, played an important role in focusing concerns on President Lyndon Johnson’s flawed strategy during the Vietnam War. Kerry, then a 27-year-old decorated combat veteran of that war, rose to prominence as an anti-war leader with his testimony at the committee's hearings.

Now Kerry is in a key position to shape the direction of the war in Afghanistan.

Take a sleeping pill tonight.  Take two.  Maybe your spouse can knock you out with a mallet.

July 9, 2009   Permalink

COMPATIBILITY NEWS - AT 7:43 P.M. ET:  Many observers are starting to notice this.  From Fox:

When the president travels out of country, his secretary of state customarily follows.

Not so with Hillary Clinton.

More and more, President Obama is ditching his top diplomat when he travels abroad. By the time Obama returns from Ghana on Sunday, the last stop on his latest three-country tour, he will have visited nine countries without Clinton.

That's highly unusual for a new secretary of state. Though Clinton has accompanied Obama on several key international visits this year, including Egypt and Trinidad and Tobago, Obama has spent far more time than his predecessors without his foreign policy point person.

Some analysts say this could be a product of Obama's acute interest in diplomacy and international affairs, or perhaps his wariness to promote on the world stage a former rival whose star power could detract from his.

COMMENT:  There'd be a good office pool in just how long Hillary will last.  We speculated early in her term - and it's pure speculation - that she might find it in her interest, especially if Obama fades in the polls, to resign after a year.  Maybe she could say she wants to spend more time with Bill. No, that would never work.  Well, maybe she could hint at policy differences.  That would work, and possibly set her up for some other political office.

The whole relationship seems weird.  The real odd couple.  Maybe Hillary hoped to win a Nobel Peace Prize if something went right.  But she's delusional to think the Norwegians would favor her over Obama. 

Stay tuned.  The soap opera is just starting.

July 9, 2009   Permalink

BULLETIN:  WORLD MAY END IN 96 MONTHS - AT 6:46 P.M. ET:  From London's Independent:

Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned in a grandstand speech which set out his concerns for the future of the planet.

The heir to the throne told an audience of industrialists and environmentalists at St James's Palace last night that he had calculated that we have just 96 months left to save the world.

And in a searing indictment on capitalist society, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and that the "age of convenience" was over.

COMMENT:  Well, now we know.  The prince has spoken, condemning the money society...in St. James's Palace.

A rumor is flying that the prince is giving up the big house and will take a one-bedroom basement flat in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Can't confirm it.

I wonder how much computer power the prince used to make his calculations. 

At least now you can plan.

July 9, 2009   Permalink

INCREDIBLE - AT 9:39 A.M. ET: We always stress that polls are snapshots in time, and contain margins of error.  That being said, the downward trend for President Obama in the Rasmussen poll is stark, and continues today:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 30% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –8. The President’s Approval Index rating has fallen six points since release of a disappointing jobs report last week.

That is the worst showing for the president since inauguration. 

And the figures for overall approval are also getting more grim.  Only 51% approve of the president's performance, while 48% disapprove. 

COMMENT:  Other polls show the president stronger, but also slipping.  Clearly, the economy is the driving factor, but I get the feeling there's also a growing sense that Mr. Obama isn't producing results anywhere.  Voters who believed peace would suddenly break out on inauguration day, and that all swords would be beaten into ploughshares, must be miffed.

July 9, 2009    Permalink

REAL NEWS - AT 9:20 A.M. ET:  Major word news.  Merriam-Webster has added more than 100 new words to its Collegiate dictionary.  Most seem pretty routine.  Then there are two that caught my eye: "carbon footprint" and "earmark."

They didn't have to add "carbon footprint."  The definition is already there, under "junk science."

And they didn't have to add "earmark."  That definition is also there, under "corruption."

Oh yes, I just noticed that they added "green collar," defined as "of, relating to, or involving actions for protecting the natural environment. jobs" 

Could have avoided that one, too.  The definition is under "chic."

Our language evolves.

July 9, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 8:01 A.M. ET: The death of Robert McNamara continues to resonate in the press.  It gave the left, of course, a new birth of kookdom.  They could drive the knife in once more, and rejoice in their moral purity.  After all, the left had opposed the Vietnam War from the start.  Of course, it opposed everything else we did to resist Communist expansion, but it was proudest of Vietnam. 

And in McNamara they had the perfect weapon - a participant, the key planner, who later "admitted" he was wrong.  Whether he really meant or not, we will never know.  McNamara, after all, was never above currying favor with the trendies.

But new histories of Vietnam are telling the story of a war that could have been won.  And Seth Lipsky, in today's Wall Street Journal, provides some needed perspective to all the yapping over McNamara's death:

McNamara's great failure, in short, was not that he continued to front for a war he had concluded was wrong and had decided we would lose. It was that he collapsed in a war that he should have known we could win -- and then derided its very purpose. A central tenet of the left, after all, is that all the dying in the Vietnam War was without purpose. Here is how that famous New York Times editorial put it about McNamara: "Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose."

I'm not so sure lack of purpose is what those infantrymen will be whispering to McNamara in whatever purgatory he finds himself. Many did grow cynical with respect to the American expedition -- I talked to hundreds of them in 1970, the year that I covered combat for Pacific Stars and Stripes.

But there also were many GIs who believed in the war in which they were risking their lives. And there were millions of South Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians in and out of uniform who understood the consequences of defeat. It is these people -- if they escaped the killing fields and re-education camps in which so many perished -- who have been living with those consequences ever since.

COMMENT:  The key word is "consequences."  When you lose a war, or pull out, there are consequences, some lasting years, or even decades.  Our withdrawal from Vietnam wrecked American foreign policy until Ronald Reagan rebuilt it in the early 1980s.  And "No more Vietnams" provided a powerful rallying cry for the left, replaced now by "No more Iraqs." 

But it was the people of South Vietnam, and especially Cambodia, who bore the most painful consequences of our withdrawal, and bear them today.  To these people the American left, comfortably installed in universities and newsrooms, has nothing to say.

July 9, 2009   Permalink  

POLL DANCING - AT 7:32 A.M. ET:  I've noticed that the number of articles devoted to President Obama's decline in the polls has increased dramatically this week.  This, from The Politico:

In a potentially alarming trend for the White House, independent voters are deserting President Barack Obama nationally and especially in key swing states, recent polls suggest.

Obama’s job approval rating hit a — still healthy — low of 56 percent in the Gallup Poll on Wednesday. And pollsters are debating whether Obama’s expansive and expensive policy proposals or the ground-level realities of a still-faltering economy are driving the falling numbers.

But a source of the shift appears to be independent voters, who seem to be responding to Republican complaints of excessive spending and government control.

A Dem operative drives in the spike:

“This is a huge sea change that is playing itself out in American politics,” said Democratic pollster Doug Schoen. “Independents who had become effectively operational Democrats in 2006 and 2008 are now up for grabs and are trending Republican.

“They’re saying, ‘Costing too much, no results, see the downside, not sure of the upside,’” he said.

COMMENT:  Do you hear the music?  Do you hear that beat?  An opportunity is opening for conservatives.  Will they seize it, or come up with nothing but platitudes?  It's time to devise realistic, attractive alternatives, like 1994's Contract With America. 

Of course, a dramatic lift in the economy can turn those poll numbers around.  But conservatives must leave nothing to chance.

July 9, 2009   Permalink

SLOW BOAT TO NOWHERE - AT 7:12 A.M. ET:  That's a phrase used by the late drama critic, Walter Kerr, to describe a play that meanders around and goes nowhere.  And so we see one act of that play being performed at the G-8 conference in Italy:

Group of Eight leaders said Wednesday that they deplored last month's post-election violence in Iran, adding that while they remained committed to seeking a diplomatic solution to Iran's contentious nuclear program, if no progress is made, leaders will reach new decisions at a G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh in late September.

New decisions, mind you.  Read all about the new decisions.  How many times have you heard about new decisions?  Has one centrifuge stopped spinning in Iran?

What's interesting here is that President Obama, a few months ago, said he'd give the Iranians until December to show progress in nuclear talks.  We sense that the Europeans, some of whom have turned tougher on Iran than Washington, felt this was too much time.  We don't know what the reaction of our fearless president was.

At the same time, the statement was apparently dumbed down to make sure that no specific action was threatened.  Doesn't that make you feel more secure? 

This crowd meets again in Pittsburgh in September.  Let's see what they actually do in regard to Iran.  There's talk of sanctions.  You know, "tough" sanctions, like the kind that have never worked.

July 9, 2009   Permalink

WEDNESDAY,  JULY 8,  2009

AND NOW VIRGINIA - AT 9:17 P.M. ET:  Latest polling from Virginia confirms the trend we've seen elsewhere...the president's popularity is slipping.  From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

A new poll shows President Barack Obama’s popularity in Virginia has slipped below 50 percent.

The Public Policy poll of 617 likely general election voters showed Obama with a 48 percent approval rating, which is within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

The survey showed 46 percent disapproval and 6 percent not sure.

The opinion is highly polarized, the poll shows, with 95 percent of Democrats but only 9 percent of Republicans viewing him favorably. Fifty-two percent of independents disapprove of his performance with only 38 percent approving.

COMMENT:  Virginia is a critical state.  It went for Obama last year, the first time in decades that Virginia went Democratic in a presidential race.  Democrats have to be alarmed at the slippage that's occurred since inauguration. 

This can get much, much worse for Obama unless the economy turns around.  We'll get the usual hype about economic indicators, amplified by the amen corner in the nation's media.  But there's one thing about the economy - average citizens see it every day.  And they don't like what they're seeing.

Foreign crises usually boost presidential popularity, but this president's botched, sometimes casual handling of North Korea, Iran and Latin America has not done a thing for his standing, except to hurt it.

As we've said before, 2010 is shaping up as the most important midterm election in recent history.

July 8, 2009   Permalink

NO WARMTH AT WARMING CONFERENCE - AT 8:46 P.M. ET:  Despite all the yapping, getting international agreement on how to stop "global warming" (which hasn't occurred in a decade) is proving impossible.  The New York Times reports:

L’AQUILA, Italy — The world’s major industrial nations and newly emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on specific cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.

As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings, negotiators for the world’s 17 leading polluters dropped a proposal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by mid-century, and emissions from the most advanced economies by 80 percent. But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

COMMENT:  Apparently, most national governments don't agree with Al Gore that the world is going to come crashing down on us in the next, oh, five days or so.  They have their own economic interests, and suspicions about each other.

I wish more attention would be focused on unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit that still exists, and turning people loose to develop new energy sources that are practical, effective and economical.  It will be done eventually, after we make all the other mistakes, and waste trillions of dollars.

July 8, 2009   Permalink

CYBER ATTACK - AT 7:56 P.M. ET:  The latest on the new cyber attacks against the U.S. Government and others:

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Web sites of the U.S. departments of State, Treasury and Transportation were attacked by unidentified hackers during the July 4 holiday weekend and in some cases the attacks were continuing today, officials said.

In addition, NYSE Euronext, the world’s largest owner of stock exchanges, said it was notified by authorities that it had been the target of a cyber attack aimed at slowing or shutting down its Web site.

The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the attacks and its Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or CERT, has advised government agencies and private companies on “steps to take to mitigate against such attacks,” Amy Kudwa, a spokeswoman for the department, said in an e-mail today.

COMMENT:  Some stories making the rounds theorize that the attacks came from North Korea, as some South Korean sites were also hacked. 

If it did come from North Korea, you can be sure that the Obama administration will pull out all stops and write a really tough letter to the UN.  Major league complaining.  Threats of further study and anguish.

July 8, 2009   Permalink

GORE'S GONE WILD VIDEO - AT 7:38 P.M. ET:  Al Gore lost it a long time ago, but additional proofs pile up.  Now, he is comparing the fight against "global warming" to the battle to save the world from Hitler.  Delusional, or what?

Each day, more and more scientists - real scientists, not political scientists - step forward to report skepticism about the global warming religion that has gripped the chattering classes.  Gore will not listen.  He speaks.  The Times of London has the story, and a video to match:

Al Gore invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill yesterday when he urged political leaders to follow the example of Britain’s wartime leader in the battle against climate change.

The former US Vice-President accused governments around the world of exploiting ignorance about the dangers of global warming to avoid taking difficult decisions.

Speaking in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by The Times, Mr Gore said: “Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.”

Mr Gore admitted that it was difficult to persuade the public that the threat from climate change was as urgent as that from Hitler.

COMMENT:  Yeah, too bad, Al, but climate change isn't invading France or bombing London.  And there actually hasn't been any warming for about a decade. Can you understand, Al, why your argument is fading away?  Oh, and Al, don't you realize that much of what you're saying depends on computer models, not real science?  Al?  Al?  Where you goin', Al?

Al has apparently been discovered posing in a Spitfire at the Imperial War Museum.

July 8, 2009  Permalink

POLLING JOLT - AT 9:33 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen's daily tracker, just out minutes ago, reports still one more jolting decline for President Obama:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 32% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –5.

The number who strongly disapprove inched up another point to the highest level yet measured to date and the overall Approval Index is at the lowest level yet for Obama.

COMMENT:  This confirms the other indicators we've been reporting.  The president is in choppy waters, bound to get worse once the summer recreation season is over and people once again focus on the news.  What can save him, and seems increasingly unlikely, is a quick economic upturn. 

This does not necessarily translate into good news for Republicans.  It only translates into opportunity.  If the GOP can seize the opportunity, and avoid further personal scandals, it has a good shot in November, 2010.  Now is the time for political entrepreneurship.

July 8, 2009   Permalink

THOUGHT OF THE DAY - AT 8:30 A.M. ET:  From Mike Gerson, formerly President Bush's chief speechwriter, writing in the Washington Post about the Obama administration's huge spending plans, as contrasted with our actual economic condition:

Obama's spending ambitions would have been jaw-dropping even in the best of economic times. Federal spending this year is about 28 percent of gross domestic product -- a figure exceeded only when Franklin Roosevelt was fighting a global war against Germany and Japan. Along the fiscal path Obama has chosen (according to the Congressional Budget Office) our national debt will more than double in 10 years and will amount to 82 percent of the entire economy.

Initially, Obama counted on an atmosphere of economic crisis to grease the passage of any legislation he pronounced an economic need. But it hasn't worked out that way. Whatever their virtues, restricting carbon emissions and expanding the health entitlement do not constitute a direct response to America's financial and economic failures. No economic theory suggests that a round of new federal regulations and entitlements would result in a burst of economic growth.

COMMENT:  And that is the key.  The measures taken thus far don't seem to be working.  The economic downturn is steeper and deeper than many Obamans had thought.  The unemployment statistic, a cold 9.5%, hides many other ailments - people not losing their jobs but having salaries cut, employees forced to take unpaid days off, the lack of incentive to spend on things like cars and clothes.  This translates into lower corporate earnings, and that dulls the entire economy. 

We are in trouble, both domestically and in a foreign policy that goes nowhere, but with noble speeches.  Already, moderate Democrats in Congress are in revolt against the coastal elites, realizing that their constituents are catching on to the impact of the spending craze.  These moderates dread going back to their law practices after the 2010 elections.  They are likely to team with the Republicans to stand in the way of more nutty ideas.

Do you sense that problems are just building and building?  I do too.

July 8, 2009   Permalink

HUH? - AT 7:50 A.M. ET:  Gateway Pundit alerts us to an interview the president gave to Fox News, in which Mr. Obama found it impossible to say that the West, led by the United States, won the Cold War:

Major Garrett: In your speech this morning you said the Cold War reached its conclusion because of the actions of many nations that were made by many nations over many years. Mr. President are the Russian sensitivities so fragile that you can't say that the Cold War was won, the West won it and it was led by a combination of democratic and Republican presidents?

Barack Obama: There were a whole bunch of people around Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage (like the Iranians today?) and... uh, I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom. We don't have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.

COMMENT:  Who's diminishing anybody?  The heroism of many in Eastern Europe has been consistently chronicled in the United States.  But Obama is one of these anti-triumphalist types who thinks declaring victory is somehow sinful.  True, Churchill cautioned that, in victory, one must show magnanimity.  But Sir Winston always made clear who won, and celebrated victory with the best of them.

Once again, Mr. Obama shows he's out of synch with the culture of his own country.  I think this is beginning to hurt.  People sense it.

July 8, 2009   Permalink

CLINTON TOUGH ON IRAN - AT 6:55 A.M. ET:  The administration must get its act together on Iran (and on everything else).  Different voices are speaking, and often with different slants.  Secretary of State Clinton takes a tough line in an interview with, oddly enough, Venezuelan television.  Would she say the same thing to Fox News?

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Washington would call for more sanctions against Iran if the White House policy of engagement with Tehran failed.

Clinton said U.S. outreach to Iran may not work given the country's recent repression of protests after a disputed election.

"It may not be possible, in which case we would ask the world to join us in imposing even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime," Clinton said in an interview with Venezuelan television station Globovision, broadcast late on Tuesday.  "We have seen in the last weeks that Iran has not respected its own democracy," she said.

COMMENT:  Okay, okay.  But, as Gen. Lauris Norstad, once commander of NATO, famously said, "Toughness is not a policy."  And so far, our Iran policy has had more drift than anything else.  The Obama administration will soon hit the six-month mark, and there really has been no serious action regarding Iran's nuclear program.  Yet, the centrifuges keep spinning, and Iran gets closer to the bomb.

The president has said, vaguely, that he'll give "engagement" until the end of the year to produce results.  Well, then what?  New sanctions, as Clinton is suggesting?  Who will agree to them?  Russia?  Are we serious?  China? 

The talking phase will soon be over.  The president's poll numbers are weakening, and one reason clearly is that he doesn't produce real results.

As we're written here before, it's going to be an interesting autumn.

July 8, 2009   Permalink

OBAMA IN MOSCOW - AT 6:40 A.M. ET:  The president is not a star in Moscow.  Might be best not to play this town again:

MOSCOW — Let other capitals go all weak-kneed when President Obama visits. Moscow has greeted Mr. Obama, who on Tuesday night concluded a two-day Russian-American summit meeting, as if he were just another dignitary passing through.

Crowds did not clamor for a glimpse of him. Headlines offered only glancing or flippant notice of his activities. Television programming was uninterrupted; devotees of the Russian Judge Judy had nothing to fear. Even many students and alumni of the Western-oriented business school where Mr. Obama gave the graduation address on Tuesday seemed merely respectful, but hardly enthralled.

And one logical explanation:

In the background is the question of race, which Russians view through a complicated prism. For decades, Soviet propaganda hammered home the idea that the United States was an irredeemably racist country, as opposed to the Communist bloc nations. But Russia in recent years has been plagued by racist violence against people from the Caucasus region and Central Asia, as well as other immigrants.

COMMENT:  Recent years?  Russia has always been known as deeply racist, something the committed American left could never emotionally accept.  During the mid years of the Cold War, when Russia made major efforts to penetrate Africa, African students were invited to Moscow to study.  The problem was, they were often harassed and even beaten up.  Not good for the Russian image in, say, Kenya.

Also, Russians, especially older Russians, can be deeply cynical about politics.  Politicians have not, after all, traditionally served them well. 

The only thing that really counts is the results of the president's trip.  To soon to know, but no one was making any concessions to him.

July 8, 2009   Permalink