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THURSDAY,  JUNE 18,  2009

NEW THREATS FROM NORTH KOREA - AT 8:41 P.M. ET:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military is tracking a ship from North Korea that may be carrying illicit weapons, the first vessel monitored under tougher new United Nations rules meant to rein in and punish the communist government following a nuclear test, officials said Thursday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has ordered additional protections for Hawaii just in case North Korea launches a long-range missile over the Pacific Ocean.

The suspect ship could become a test case for interception of the North's ships at sea, something the North has said it would consider an act of war.

Officials said the U.S. is monitoring the voyage of the North Korean-flagged Kang Nam, which left port in North Korea on Wednesday. On Thursday, it was traveling in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of China, two officials said on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence. 

And then we have this:

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, a Japanese news report said Thursday, as Russia and China urged the regime to return to international disarmament talks on its rogue nuclear program.

The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles (6,500 kilometers), would be launched from North Korea's Dongchang-ni site on the northwestern coast, said the Yomiuri daily, Japan's top-selling newspaper. It cited an analysis by the Japanese Defense Ministry and intelligence gathered by U.S. reconnaissance satellites.

The missile launch could come between July 4 and 8, the paper said.

COMMENT:  We stress that this is speculation, but there are stories floating around that the launch will come on our Independence Day.  What a greeting.

The crunch with North Korea is clearly coming.  The crunch with Iran is underway.  Secretary Gates is properly preparing our defenses.  We await a reaction from our messianic leader.  He should certainly be concerned about Hawaii.  Didn't he live there once?  And in Indonesia?  And in...well, everywhere else?  It's a small world, after all.

The president is taking heat for his wobbly attitude toward the Iranian protests.  This heat will be nothing compared to what he'll get if the North Koreans roll all over him.

June 18, 2009   Permalink

THE GREAT ISSUES OF OUR TIME - AT 8:19 P.M. ET:  Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket informs us of the deep intellectual level of a Senate hearing, presided over by one Barbara Boxer, formerly of Brooklyn, now of someplace in California. You will not believe:

California's Barbara Boxer was chairing a hearing of her Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, examining what in blazes is taking the Army Corps of Engineers so long to properly protect from the sea a Louisiana city that sits below sea level. Good luck with that still. Again.

Boxer was getting a little exasperated, head dramatically on hand and all. As the proper sign of military respect for a female, Brigadier Gen. Michael Walsh was answering "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am."

And finally the ma'am had had enough. "Could you say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am'? It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title." No, really. Watch for yourself. She actually said that. A different attitude than on Memorial Day.

COMMENT:  Boxer is not known as a tower of intellect.  And, sadly, this incident will probably have no effect on her reelection campaign next year.  Some radical feminist groups, silent about the bestial oppression of Muslim women, probably think Boxer has hit upon a major issue.  Oh, mustn't say "hit upon."

This is what passes for a congressional hearing.

June 18, 2009   Permalink

WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL - AT 4:17 P.M. ET:  Now here's an example of leadership, a great statement by Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference:

"The President has the right to draw the line where he chooses to draw it but I am someone who believes that when Ronald Reagan went to the Brandenburg Gate, he did not say 'Mr. Gorbachev, that wall is none of our business.' He went to the Brandenburg Gate and he said, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.' We know from people like Natan Sharansky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn that deep in the gulags of the Soviet Union, when Ronald Reagan was willing to call the Soviet Empire 'the evil empire,' it gave encouragement to the people who were fighting tyranny within the Soviet Union."

Now we're talkin'.  When Republicans are awake, they do very well.  Mr. Obama is under the gun on Iran.  Increasingly, he sounds like a second-line diplomat from a European country, not like an American president.   Mike Pence reminded him of what an American president sounds like.

June 18, 2009   Permalink

NUMBERS TROUBLE - AT 9:25 A.M. ET:  Two new polls spell trouble for President Obama.  Although he remains personally popular, support for the president's policies is increasingly anemic.  From The New York Times:

A substantial majority of Americans say President Obama has not developed a strategy to deal with the budget deficit, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which also found that support for his plans to overhaul health care, rescue the auto industry and close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, falls well below his job approval ratings.

And...

A distinct gulf exists between Mr. Obama’s overall standing and how some of his key initiatives are viewed, with fewer than half of Americans saying they approve of how he has handled health care and the effort to save General Motors and Chrysler. A majority of people said his policies have had either no effect yet on improving the economy or had made it worse, underscoring how his political strength still rests on faith in his leadership rather than concrete results.

Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll produced similar results:

WASHINGTON -- After a fairly smooth opening, President Barack Obama faces new concerns among the American public about the budget deficit and government intervention in the economy as he works to enact ambitious health and energy legislation, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

These rising doubts threaten to overshadow the president's personal popularity and his agenda, in what may be a new phase of the Obama presidency.

COMMENT:  Significantly, the president was also down in foreign policy, at a time when his relatively soft stand on Iran is getting decidedly mixed ratings. 

The honeymoon, if not over, is in its final stretch.  How the president rates this fall will be politically critical, as the nation starts the long march toward the 2010 midterm elections.

June 18, 2009   Permalink

RECOMMENDATION - AT 8:31 A.M. ET:  Go to Gateway Pundit for an extended interview with an Iranian activist.  The translation is provided by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, whom we often quote here.  We're not getting this kind of background from the mainstream media, only from the internet.  Well worth it.

June 18, 2009   Permalink

PETERS SLAMS OBAMA ON IRAN - AT 8:18 A.M. ET:  One thing about Ralph Peters - you never have to wonder where he stands.  He's mad as hell at President Obama for his handling of Iran, and says so:

SILENCE is complicity. Our president's refusal to take a forthright moral stand on the side of the Iranian freedom marchers is read in Tehran as a blank check for the current regime.

And maybe that's what's intended. 

And our president is "troubled," but doesn't believe we should "meddle" in Iran's internal affairs. (Meddling in Israel's domestic affairs is just fine, though.)

We just turned our backs on freedom.

Of course, concepts like that are ruled "unsophisticated" in the parlors of Georgetown or the eating clubs of Princeton.  So Bushlike, the kind of thing a man like Peters, retired Army, would say.  Let us sneer.

For decades, Washington policymakers from both parties have prodded Iranians to throw off their shackles. Last Friday, millions of Iranians stood up. And we're standing down.

That isn't diplomacy. It's treachery.

I love commentators with moral clarity.

To Obama, his dogmatic commitment to negotiations is infinitely more important than a few million protesters chanting the Farsi equivalent of "We Shall Overcome."

This is madness. There is no chance -- zero, null, nada -- that negotiations with the junta of mullahs will lead to the termination (or even a serious interruption) of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our president's faith in his powers of persuasion is beginning to look pathological. Is his program of negotiations with apocalypse-minded, woman-hating, Jew-killing fanatics so sacrosanct that he can't acknowledge human cries for freedom?

No he can't!  The "Yes we can!" list only includes items on the liberal agenda.  Liberating Iran isn't one of them.

Obama's ignorance of history is on naked display -- no sense of the brutality of Iran's Islamist regime, of the years of mass imprisonments, diabolical torture, prison rapes, wholesale executions and secret graves that made the shah's reign seem idyllic. Our president seems to regard the Iranian protesters as spoiled brats...

...Now our president's attempt to vote "present" yet again green-lights the Iranian regime's determination to face down the demonstrators -- and the mullahs understand it as such.

COMMENT:  The president seems quite taken with the so-called "realist" approach of men like Brent Scowcroft, who ran Bush 41's rather cynical foreign policy, a foreign policy that found no punishment for the Chinese crackdown in Tiananmen Square, and turned its back on the anti-Saddam forces in Iraq.  That isn't realism, it's just kicking the can down the road, hoping the next president will solve the problem.

We await more drama from Tehran.

June 18, 2009   Permalink

IN HIS OWN WAY - AT 7:50 A.M. ET:  We are preparing for major fits of indigestion in the mainstream media as former President George W. Bush struck out at his successor, if only obliquely:

ERIE, Pa.| Former President George W. Bush fired a salvo at President Obama on Wednesday, asserting his administration's interrogation policies were within the law, declaring the private sector not government will fix the economy and rejecting the nationalization of health care.

"I know it's going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we're in," the former president said to applause from members of a local business group. "You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money."

Mr. Bush did not exactly do a Cheney, but he edged closer.  If he does start defending himself publicly, the Obama administration will have deserved it.  I don't recall any administration that has been so harsh on its predecessor, blaming the Bush government for almost everything, including the weather.

During a question-and-answer session, Mr. Bush recounted tough decisions he made in office. Still steely, the former president said he left Washington with the same moral resolve. "When I look in the mirror, I say, 'He did not sell his soul for short-term politics.'"

COMMENT:  We believe here that Mr. Bush's stock will rise in coming years, although we agree that there were flaws in the execution of his policies, and certainly in explaining them.  Like Harry Truman's, Mr. Bush's White House featured some strong resolve, some excellent decisions, and terrible communications.  The current White House features skilful communications and...well, there must be something else.

June 18, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE WEEK - AT 7:22 A.M. ET:  From Wesley Pruden in The Washington Times:

Silver linings are deceptive and often hard to find, but that might be a tiny sliver of silver in that dark cloud bank over Iran. Barack Obama got notice from the election results that his tongue, golden and honeyed though it may be, is no match for reality.

If Iranian voters had thrown Mahout Humdinger into the street, the American president would have assumed that he was the One who did it, and the American press would have led the hosannas for the messiah from the south side of Chicago. Just a few more speeches, a few more respectful bows toward Mecca, and all the rough places would be made smooth and plain. But now even Mr. Obama must wake up and smell the tear gas.

COMMENT: Very well said.  Unfortunately, not enough journalists are saying it. 

June 18, 2009   Permalink

WEDNESDAY,  JUNE 17,  2009

McCAIN BLASTS OBAMA - AT 10:11 P.M. ET:  Senator John McCain properly goes after President Obama over the president's Carteresque approach to the pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran.  The president seems to be getting his inspiration from the peanut farmer from Plains and his operational advice from the apostles of Brent Scowcroft, Bush 41's less-than-brilliant national security adviser.  McCain dissents, as The Politico reports:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized President Barack Obama Wednesday for failing to take a strong leadership role in voicing opposition to the election results in Iran.

“I do not believe that the president is taking the leadership that is incumbent upon an American president, which we have throughout modern history, and that is to advocate for human rights and freedom, and free elections are one of those fundamentals,” McCain said during an interview on CNN.

McCain said the president “obviously doesn’t agree” that Iranians have the right to protest the election results as a “fundamental principle.”

COMMENT:  We'll be discussing this tonight at The Angel's Corner.  McCain is correct, and he is right to use the phrase "incumbent upon an American president..."  We expect certain behavior of our presidents.  Part of that behavior is the upholding of American ideals.

But what happens when we have a president who, clearly, has a certain contempt for his own country and its history?  A president who seems to have no "feel" for American culture?  And those American ideals? 

Well, we see what happens.  Aren't you proud?

June 17, 2009   Permalink 

UP, UP, UP - AT 7:10 P.M. ET:  We have always felt here that a rise in gasoline prices has the potential to alter the political landscape:

NEW YORK (AP) - Retail gas prices climbed for the 50th straight day Wednesday, and crude prices that had slumped all week bounced back.

Historically, filling station prices tend to rise during the summer as millions of Americans take to the road. But a surge in crude prices during the past few months and less production from the refiners that make gasoline has added pressure on prices.

"Refiners slowed production and did a lot of maintenance on the expectation that this was going to be a lousy year for demand," said Fred Rozell, retail pricing director at Oil Price Information Service. "It turns out it wasn't so bad."

COMMENT:  So far the in-the-tank press hasn't asked the White House many questions about gasoline prices.  After all, most reporters either don't drive to work, or drive very short distances.  They may not feel it as much.

But higher energy prices can stifle an economic recovery, fuel (pun intended) inflation, and lead to gas lines, tensions, and discontent.  If prices continue to rise into the 2010 midterm election year, the political effect could be serious.  If, added to these prices, Americans suddenly see sharp rises in electric bills because of global-warming legislation, and both GM and Chrysler continue into failure, things could get very dicey for the party in power.

Gasoline prices, and home-heating-oil prices, aren't abstractions, like the national debt.  People experience them every day.

June 17, 2009   Permalink

OH, THESE COUNTRY PEOPLE, WITH THEIR LITTLE PICKUPS, ARE SUCH A NUISANCE - AT 1:34 P.M. ET:  We've been reporting on this, the emergence of a solid group of moderate Democrats who find it possible to resist The One and his band of followers in Congress.  This has happened in the Democratic Party before.  The Politico reports:

Angered by White House decisions on everything from greenhouse gases to car dealerships, congressional Democrats from rural districts are threatening to revolt against parts of President Barack Obama’s ambitious first-year agenda.

“They don’t get rural America,” said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat who represents California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley. “They form their views of the world in large cities.”

Not only don't they "get" rural America, they don't like rural America.  Those are the people who rush to recruiting stations in time of war, who actually believe their country is worth defending, and who don't feel that the major goal in life is getting 700s on their college boards.  What kind of people could these be?

Without their votes, Democrats can’t move legislation over Republican filibusters — such as the one sure to come if the health care plan that moves through the Senate includes a public option supported by the administration.

In the House, rural Democrats threaten to marshal nearly 50 votes against the climate and energy bill backed by the administration.

One issue is coal.  Many of those running the Democratic Party have probably never seen a lump of coal.  If they do encounter one, they immediately put on their Ralph Lauren gas masks. 

And many of these regions that run on coal also happen to be electoral swing states, leaving Republicans licking their chops.

“It will cost every North Carolinian somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,400 to $3,000 a year in just the electrical surcharge,” said Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican who hails from a state Obama carried last year and would like to win again. “That’s a surcharge larger than their annual electric bill.”

COMMENT:  Look for a restoration of the traditional coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats.  The liberal left thought it would be running things, but Americans have other ideas.  We continue to argue that a well-run Republican campaign next year can reverse some of the losses of the last two congressional elections.  Look at those electrical surcharges projected for North Carolina.  How many voters would vote the masterminds behind those surcharges back into office? 

June 17, 2009   Permalink

ANOTHER EXPRESSION OF DEVOTED PUBLIC SERVICE AND SINCERE INQUIRY - AT 8:22 A.M. ET:  I guess he thinks no one is watching:

WASHINGTON — Congress wants to meet the Uighurs — in sunny Bermuda.

A top Democrat is planning a field hearing in the Atlantic paradise to give four ex-Guantanamo Bay inmates recently resettled there a chance to deny lingering accusations of terrorism ties.

"I hope to conduct a hearing in Bermuda and have these four indivuals testify," said Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.), who chairs a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. He did not set a date.

Field hearings on foreign soil — or sand — are rare.

It would also be uncomfortable for Bermuda and the Obama administration.

Britain has accused its two allies of blindsiding it with a controversial deal that moved hundreds to stage a protest Tuesday outside Bermuda's cabinet building.

Delahunt gave a hint of how a hearing in Bermuda would unfold by assembling a friendly panel on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

COMMENT:  So, let's see:  The released Gitmo detainees are swimming in the Bermuda surf.  And Congressman Delahunt will soon be swimming in that same Bermuda surf, in between these serious "hearings."

Wonder what our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing today?  They're not swimming in the surf.

They used to call trips like these "junkets."  But now, with the Dems in power, the press will call them "commissions of inquiry."

Oh, get the next to the last paragraph:  "Britain has accused its two allies..."  Bermuda is an ally of Great Britain?  It's a British overseas territory.  But geography is such a middle-class, pre-multicultural, imperialist concept.

June 17, 2009   Permalink 

SHOCKED, SHOCKED - AT 7:23:  From The Washington Times:

Relations between ABC News and President Obama are being criticized as becoming too intimate, as the network announced it would produce a prime-time broadcast from the White House that includes questions solicited from viewers without equal time for the Republican point of view.

Media credibility and fairness are at issue, with waggish bloggers renaming ABC the "All Barack Channel."

At issue is "Prescription for America," a live, one-hour special to be moderated by ABC's Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer, set to air at 10 p.m. June 24 from the East Room. Even before that prime-time hour, Ms. Sawyer will have interviewed Mr. Obama on "Good Morning America," and Mr. Gibson will have anchored "World News Tonight" from the White House's Blue Room.

COMMENT:  I find it shocking, shocking, that some rabid right-wing, Bible-thumping, Iraq-liberating, missile-defending, tax-cutting bloggers would accuse that fine news organization of anything but absolutely balanced reporting.  I'm upset enough to complain to Bill Moyers.

Why, don't you recall Charlie Gibson's fair, balanced and entirely gracious interview with Sarah Palin during the last campaign?  The way he helped her through, showing respect and deference.  Mock this neutral journalist?  That's treason.

You can stop laughing now.

June 17, 2009   Permalink

WHAT DOES THE PRESIDENT WANT, AND WHEN DOES HE WANT IT?  Robert Kagan, in the Washington Post, provides a superbly argued analysis of the Obama policy on Iran, complete with its ugly cynicism.  Yes, we'll sure feel proud of America again, won't we?

Obama's policy now requires getting past the election controversies quickly so that he can soon begin negotiations with the reelected Ahmadinejad government. This will be difficult as long as opposition protests continue and the government appears to be either unsettled or too brutal to do business with. What Obama needs is a rapid return to peace and quiet in Iran, not continued ferment. His goal must be to deflate the opposition, not to encourage it. And that, by and large, is what he has been doing.

If you find all this disturbing, you should. The worst thing is that this approach will probably not prevent the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. But this is what "realism" is all about. It is what sent Brent Scowcroft to raise a champagne toast to China's leaders in the wake of Tiananmen Square. It is what convinced Gerald Ford not to meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the height of detente. Republicans have traditionally been better at it than Democrats -- though they have rarely been rewarded by the American people at the ballot box, as Ford and George H.W. Bush can attest. We'll see whether President Obama can be just as cold-blooded in pursuit of better relations with an ugly regime, without suffering the same political fate.

COMMENT:  What is remarkable is that the press sold Obama to us as an idealistic, more-moral-than-Bush president.  He may be idealistic, although I begin to shudder at what his ideals probably are.  More moral than Bush?  Let's not be silly.

June 17, 2009   Permalink

YOU KNOW, HE JUST MAY BE RIGHT - AT 6:58 A.M. ET: 

PARIS —Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, said it was his “gut feeling” that Iran’s leaders wanted the technology to build nuclear weapons “to send a message to their neighbors, to the rest of the world: don’t mess with us.”

He was speaking in a BBC interview broadcast Tuesday and Wednesday as protesters took to the streets of Teheran and other cities, demanding that last Friday’s disputed election result be overturned and confronting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the leadership’s biggest domestic challenge since the Islamic revolution three decades ago.

COMMENT:  I'm glad the gentleman's gut is finally coming up with the correct answers.  Now if he brain engages, he might be able to propose a solution.

June 17, 2009   Permalink