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.

MONDAY,  JULY 13,  2009

MORE TROUBLE FOR OBAMACARE - AT 7:31 P.M. ET:  Rasmussen is reporting today that the public attitude toward President Obama's health-care initiative has turned negative: 

More Americans now oppose the health care reform being crafted by President Obama and congressional democrats than support it, Rasmussen polling company reported Monday.

Forty-nine percent of those surveyed said they were at least somewhat opposed to the unfolding health care reform plan, while 46 percent at least somewhat favored it, according to the survey by Rasmussen Reports. Just two weeks ago, the company said, 50 percent were for the reform plan and 45 percent were opposed. The survey questions did not describe the plan in detail.

And more findings...

Among voters not affiliated with either party, those strongly opposed to the health care reform plan have risen 12 points over the past two weeks, from 39 percent to 51 percent, Rasmussen said.

Just 12 percent of those surveyed said their own health care coverage would get better if the reform plan was passed; 39 percent said they expected that their coverage would get worse and 36 percent said it would stay about the same.

COMMENT:  Health care is the most personal of issues.  Americans plainly don't like what they see, if they see anything at all.  As we commented earlier, the details of the "plan" are so vague.  The Obamans and their congressional allies may jam this through in the end, over public opposition, but it's no way to enact a health plan.  If Americans don't like what follows the plan's introduction, it could have major political consequences. 

July 13, 2009   Permalink

AL, AL, ALREADY? - AT 5:40 P.M. ET:  Al Franken is in the United States Senate.  That should immediately send us looking for property in Australia, but fairness demands that we give the man a chance.  Not much of a chance, but a little something.

Al is in the Judiciary Committee, no doubt because of his judicial temperament, as demonstrated by his legendary rants and obscene outbursts.  Hey, there are all kinds of judges, right?

So Al made his debut today as one of the senators questioning Supreme Court nominee Sonia Satomayor.  And it didn't take long before Al made a fool of himself with this absurdity:

Franken told Sotomayor that she was "the most experienced Supreme Court nominee in 100 years."

Al, Al, Al, we hardly knew ye.  Where did Al get such ridiculous stuff?  Among the Supreme Court nominees in the last hundred years were William Howard Taft, who'd already been president of the United States, and Robert H. Jackson, who'd already been attorney general of the United States.  Throw in swells like Brandeis, Frankfurter, Scalia, and Al looks pretty silly.  Which is normal for Al.

Stay tuned.  The Senate is getting more entertaining.

July 13, 2009   Permalink

HANSON ON OBAMA'S DECLINE - AT 10:39 A.M. ET:  Victor Davis Hanson can always be counted on for a perceptive look at what's happening.  He comes through again, commenting on Obama's decline in the polls, and, I think, in public esteem generally:

I think the Obama presidency is going to encounter far more public skepticism than one would expect in the usual post-honeymoon political adjustments. Why? Because our president often acts and talks as if he were at war with what we might loosely call “human nature.”

There is a growing collective recognition that things simply do not work the way Obama thinks they do. They may in the hothouse at Harvard Law School or in the charade of Chicago politics, or among young, hip bloggers right out of Yale, but not necessarily in the larger American landscape or the real world abroad.

And...

First, Obama’s budgetary agenda defies common sense. If it were true that the United States with impunity could borrow $2 trillion this year — and, in the aggregate, run up another $10 trillion in collective debt over the next eight years — then the rules of finance as we know them would be rendered null and void.

And...

Second, there is likewise a spreading feeling of doubt about our foreign policy. All Americans like to be liked — and like to think they are confident enough to admit mistakes. But Obama is beginning to be predictable, boring even, in his once sincere, but now serial apologies about America’s past and present — to almost everyone from Latin Americans and Europeans to Turks and Muslims in general.

And...

In the perfect world of the university lounge, perhaps such noble things transpire. But most Americans suspect that gratuitous magnanimity can earn contempt as often as appreciation. Like serial borrowing, a tab comes due.

Finally...

Americans are waking up to the fact that their president says, promises, and does things that simply do not make sense, at odds with what they know of human physics — with the predictable nature of the way humans have conducted themselves for centuries...

...Because Obama is a revolutionary who seeks to overturn 50 years of doing business in America both at home and abroad, his shortcomings have the potential not only to diminish his own stature through unmet impossible expectations, but to take all those who signed on to his megalomania down with him.

COMMENT:  The fear, of course, is that a great deal of damage can be done before this kind of revolutionary theorizing is finished.  Some observers make the point that a number of Obama's changes will become impossible to dislodge because large chunks of the public will become dependent on them.

We used to say that America could stand four years of a bad domestic policy, but that four years of a bad foreign policy could be fatal.  That remains true.  If Obama botches Iran or North Korea, the result could be the loss of an American city, or more than one, via nuclear weapons smuggled in or sailed in deep in the hold of a cargo ship.

The stakes are high.  Americans are waking up.  They always do.  Now it's take to put an alarm clock next to the ears of snoozing journalists.

July 13, 2009  Permalink 

WHEN THEY CALL IT "REFORM," RUN FOR THE HILLS - AT 8:31 A.M. ET:  Obamacare is in trouble in Congress, which may be the best news we've had in a long time.  The Politico notes:

Health care reform proponents are growing pessimistic that they can meet President Barack Obama’s August target for passing a bill — saying the next four weeks must fall together perfectly, without a hitch or a hiccup.

The number of weeks that’s happened recently? Zero.

A series of setbacks has made the task of completing floor votes in both chambers virtually insurmountable, given the plodding pace of the Senate. The official line from the White House and the congressional leadership is it’s possible, but privately, there are a dwindling number of aides who would put money on it.

And without a deal by August, the ripple effects could start to endanger the prospect of health care reform this year altogether — chief among them, the closer it gets to the 2010 midterm elections, the harder it will be to get members to make the tough political decisions needed to vote on a bill.

COMMENT:  Have you read any actual details on what's being proposed?  Have you seen extensive - by that I mean one tenth of Michael Jackson - coverage on what this "reform" will actually mean for you, or do to you? 

It is just remarkable that this is one of the most momentous changes proposed in American life in the last three generations, and there is virtually no public discussion.  That may be intentional, of course.  I suspect there are some political activists who don't want the spotlight thrown on this scheme. 

The story refers to "tough political decisions."  What are they?  Why should they be tough if this is such an advance for civilization?  The story is all about process.  If I need surgery, I'm not interested in congressional process or beltway slang.  I'm interested in good medicine.  Anyone agree?  Write your local journalist.

July 13, 2009   Permalink

SONIA SOTOMAYOR'S CONFIRMATION HEARINGS ABOUT TO BEGIN - AT 7:52 A.M. ET: There'll be full coverage, unless CNN decides to cut away for a three-hour special on Michael Jackson's last thoughts about strawberry ice cream.  From Fox:

WASHINGTON -- The leading Judiciary Committee Republican is charging that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is "out of the mainstream" of legal thinking and has a very activist judicial profile.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama made the assertion just hours before Sotomayor, who would be the third woman to join the court, was to face her initial confirmation hearing.

Sessions also said on CBS's "The Early Show" that he thought the native New York appeals court judge deserves a fair hearing. He quickly added that Republicans on the Judiciary panel won't hesitate to question her closely on her judicial philosophy.

COMMENT:  Republicans should, as part of their responsibility, probe the nominee carefully.  However, this is a done deal.  She'll be confirmed by the Senate.  Then we'll see how she does on the bench.  Supreme Court justices have a way of surprising us, although, unfortunately, the surprises often tilt leftward. 

It's the second, third and possibly forth Obama nominees who worry me.

July 13, 2009   Permalink

OBAMA RETURNS - AT 7:34 A.M. ET:  The president has returned from his trip to Europe, Russia and Africa.  The return was quiet, as there wasn't much to report.  There wasn't even a Neville nicety at the airport during which the chief executive could proclaim peace in our time.

During his trip Mr. Obama said he would have fewer summit conferences in the future, a reflection, no doubt, that he's learned that foreign leaders aren't 17-year-old fans shouting, "Yes we can!"  They take their slogans from American feminism:  "Just say no."

One thing that did come out of this adventure abroad was a vague deadline delivered to the Iranians, who are still busy arresting their dissidents and cracking heads:  If we don't see any progress in negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program by September, there'll be...there'll be...consequences.  There might even be anger and cold stares.  A letter might follow.  Maybe a lawsuit in small-claims court.

But the cagey Iranians have now said that they're about to launch a diplomatic initiative, so forget any deadlines.  All they have to do is affix to a press release a little card saying "have chair, will sit," and the diplomatic establishment will claim to see strobe lights at the end of the tunnel. 

In the midst of a surprisingly cool summer - Al Gore has gone into hiding - Mr. Obama cannot look forward to autumn leaves.  Americans will focus once more on politics in the fall, Republicans will presumably have some game plan in place for the 2010 midterms.  Democratic investigations of BUSH (!!) may be starting, and can easily distract from the president's agenda, or even backfire, as articulate Bushies like Dick Cheney and Douglas Feith start firing back with dreaded facts.

The Obamans are feeling the summer doldrums.  There'd better be some visible change we can believe in by fall.

July 13, 2009   Permalink

SUNDAY,  JULY 12,  2009

CONFRONTING THE NEW RELIGION - AT 9:52 P.M. ET:  The great Michael Barone takes on the church of global warming, whose parishioners are being confronted by a growing army of infidels:

I am open to arguments on this issue, but as I have written several times it seems to me that many global warming alarmists are motivated by something that is more like religion than science. It makes sense to try to mitigate negative effects of any change in climate or weather, as we are quite capable of doing, technologically and economically...But imposing huge costs on our private sector economy on the basis of computer models of something as complex as climate, and which have not done a good job of predicting the present or recent past, seems the height of folly.

There are people in the ludicrously called "global warming community" who believe that views like Barone's are the equivalent of Holocaust denial, and stating them is a criminal act.  I can see Barone in stripes in Sing Sing. 

"Whaddaya in for, Bud?"

"Aiding and abetting global warming through thought and publication."

"Lucky you didn't get solitary."

As for global warming, why assume that every affect will be negative? I grew up in Michigan and would have been grateful for some global warming as I waited in the dark for the school bus. As (Australian geologist Ian) Plimer explains in the opening chapter of Heaven and Earth, climate has been much warmer and much cooler at various times in the past. Human beings have adapted—and it’s been a lot easier to adapt to warming than cooling.

That does it.  We're demanding that Sonia Satomayor swear out an arrest warrant before her confirming hearings for the Supreme Court start tomorrow.  What we have here is a crime wave.  Or a heat wave.  Or a 20-foot wave.  Or some kind of wave.

July 12, 2009   Permalink

THE WORSHIP ENDS - AT 9:18 P.M. ET:  A good way to finish the weekend.  Experienced Washington hand Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times reports that the time of seeing President Obama as some political messiah is passing:

Barack Obama has fallen back to Earth.

When he ran for president, Obama said his election would be "the moment the rise of the oceans began to slow." And when he made his first big foreign trip in April, he was hailed by adoring crowds -- and almost-as-adoring politicians -- in Britain, Germany, France and the Czech Republic.

But last week, in Russia and Italy, Obamania was little more than a pleasant memory. Yes, his international polling numbers are still high, but the president encountered hardly any adulation in the streets of Moscow or anywhere else...

...And the oceans are still rising too. At the Group of 8 summit, the developing countries said no to a timetable to stop global warming, the reason for the waters' rise.

Reality settles in:

The hard reality of international affairs is that, just as the United States has interests, so do other countries. And when those interests conflict, all the charm and charisma in the world can't resolve the differences.

There are even reports that Chris Matthews hasn't felt a tingle up his leg in weeks.  Physicians have been consulted. 

On Iran, which aides said was a dominant subject of the meetings, there was no sign that Obama got the Russians to budge. The U.S. wants Russia to support tougher economic sanctions to push Iran toward giving up its nuclear fuel production. Russia, which views next-door neighbor Iran as both a business opportunity and a local security problem, has no appetite for that kind of confrontation.

"Iran is Russia's important partner," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on the eve of Obama's visit. "We cooperate and do so very productively." More sanctions "will only deteriorate the situation," he said. And that was his last word on the subject.

The centrifuges keep spinning and the nightsticks in Tehran keep swinging.  There will be a point when the president will run out of conferences.  By that time, though, he may be confronting a bomb, not a theory.

The United States and its allies want Iran to negotiate, but Iran's Islamic leaders, facing challenges to their legitimacy at home, are digging in their heels. The next step, probably in September, is a concerted Western effort to step up economic sanctions against Tehran -- but that may mean a confrontation with Russia and China, which don't agree that sanctions are necessary.

All of which left Obama sounding, at the end of the week, as if he looked forward to getting back to solvable problems -- such as the economy and healthcare. "The one thing I will be looking forward to," he said, "is fewer summit meetings."

COMMENT:  What a mentality.  The president thinks meetings are either a solution or a problem, when it's really facts and attitudes that count.  We recall that Douglas MacArthur once said that all defeats begin with two words:  Too late.  Obama is learning.  But, by the time he comes to the right conclusions and gets himself the right advisers, it may be too late.  What was gained in the Western (i.e. American) victory in the Cold War can slip away.

July 12, 2009   Permalink

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT - AT 12:16 P.M. ET:  You know when the Democrats sense they're in trouble.  They bring in their biggest name - Dick Cheney.  The Dems have taken some hits recently, and some have come from Cheney himself.  His recent, spirited defense of the Bush administration and his critique of President Obama's national security policies stung, and resulted in a sudden boost in Cheney's own poll numbers. 

Now the charges are flying that Cheney ordered the CIA not to reveal details of a secret surveillance program, as The New York Times reports:

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

This dovetails quite nicely, don't you think, with our first story today hinting that Attorney General Holder may start major investigations of the Bush administration.  That will certainly bring the country together and do wonders for those involved in defending it.  The Democrats dream of putting Cheney in the dock, but they should be careful what they wish for.  He snaps back, and knows more about intelligence and defense than all of Congress put together.

If you read the whole Times story, and I recommend it, you'll see that it has more caveats than a UN resolution.  It may well be that Cheney, whatever he did, was acting well within the law and wise practice. 

It's time to start estimating the costs of the upcoming investigations.  I'm guessing $100-million.  Other bids are welcome.

July 12, 2009   Permalink

ENIVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT - AT 11:45 A.M. ET:  Just a short comment about the president's trip to Europe and Africa.  We'll be doing more of these short takes in the future:

Have you noticed that, with each foreign trip, the president's impact internationally seems to diminish?  What has this trip actually accomplished?  Who acted impressed?  The president is suffering from the following:  1) He is overexposed; 2) He hasn't achieved any success worth noting; 3) He never understood that the public eventually tires even of stars.

Noel Coward once said that there's an invisible curtain between performer and audience.  It's good advice in theater and in politics.  We have too much Obama too much of the time.  It's all about him, not enough about substance, which is often lacking in his news conferences and statements. 

Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard," said, in denying her decline, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small."  The way a president stays big is to keep the picture big.  If it's all about him, he will get small very quickly.

July 12, 2009   Permalink 

THE REAL LINCOLN - AT 11:09 A.M. ET:  We don't use words like "wisdom" very much.  We seem to have replaced it with "education" or "SAT scores."  It is not wisdom we usually look to in this age, but diplomas and degrees.  This, to some extent, represents the triumph of the edutocracy.

But when we think of Lincoln, we think of wisdom, not education.  The man, after all, had a year of formal schooling. 

There's a wonderful, small-town editor out west named Frank Miele.  I don't quote him enough.  He's managing editor of Montana's Daily Inter Lake, and he appreciates wisdom, not merely letters after names.  Today he notes that President Obama is fond of referring to Lincoln, and some borderline nutbag fans are already comparing Obama to President Lincoln.  But which Lincoln?  Miele quotes Lincoln on the subject of genius, of very bright men who know they're very bright men, and it's a cautionary tale for our current present, who has surrounded himself with the brightest and the even brighter.  Frank Miele:

"Towering genius disdains a beaten path." Lincoln warns us. "It seeks regions hitherto unexplored... It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen."

That is an interesting turn of phrase, isn't it? Lincoln would have us believe that for the towering genius, the primary goal is to make a mark on history. Whether for good or ill does not matter.

Thus, Lincoln notes the responsibility of "we the people" to be on guard. "Men of ambition and talents' will continue to spring up among us, he warns -- men comparable to "an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon" -- and, when they do, "they will... naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them... Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs."

COMMENT:  We have a lot of towering geniuses running around Washington these days.  They know much and think much.  They think about what they know.

Harry Truman once said that you can't tell an expert anything because then he's not an expert anymore.  Truman would overrule "experts" routinely because he saw things they refused to see. 

President Obama worships at the altar of intellect and education, but he has little practical experience.  The lack of experience is starting to show.  He should have listened to the ghostly voice of Sam Rayburn, who warned then Vice President Lyndon Johnson about all the intellects surrounding the new president, John F. Kennedy.  We referred to Rayburn's warning earlier in the week.  He lamented that he wished one of the men around Kennedy had run for sheriff.

The president reveres Lincoln.  He might read him the way Frank Miele reads him, in some detail.  Lincoln was truly one of our most intellectual presidents, not because of letters or test scores, but because of the wisdom he brought to his life's work.  His warning about men of genius is part of that wisdom.  Read again, Mr. Obama.

July 12, 2009   Permalink

GET THE SEASICKNESS PILLS - AT 9:28 A.M. ET:  In a fawning piece that would make a North Korean journalist blush, Newsweek examines the life, loves, and needs of Attorney General Eric Holder, who appears about to make some very nasty news.  Please note:

Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."

COMMENT:  Nothing like a good movie line to start the day.  "But that can't be a part of my decision."  He gets on his horse, and rides toward trouble.  Gary Cooper has come back to us, and it's high noon.

The idea that the White House wouldn't be involved in such a profound decision twists credibility out of shape.  And note the editorializing - "the Bush administration's 'brutal' interrogation practices."  If you're going to have a probe, Mr. Journalist, you leave those determinations up to the probers.

So, we may have an investigation of the Bush years after all, just as this president's poll numbers are slipping badly, and just as we enter the 2010 election cycle.  This is almost as convenient as the financial shock of late September, hitting us just in time to clinch the election for Barack Obama. 

Lucky, this Obama.  But how much of it is luck?

July 12, 2009   Permalink