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MONDAY,  MARCH 23,  2009

IF WISHES WERE REALITY - AT 7:01 P.M. ET:   From AP:

WASHINGTON -- If the U.S. and Russia set aside their differences on missile defense and began cooperating against Iran they could make a decisive difference in weakening Iran as a missile threat, a leading Senate Democrat said Monday.

As Golda Meir once said, "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a carriage."

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told a defense conference that missile defense will be at the center of a new set of security talks between Washington and Moscow and could become "a positive political tool" rather than an impediment to better U.S.-Russian relations.

Quite a stunt.  How?

Notably, Levin did not suggest that the Obama administration bargain away the Bush-era plan for extending U.S. missile defenses to eastern Europe. There has been speculation that President Barack Obama would offer to scrap that plan in return for Russian help in persuading Iran to end its nuclear program.

Instead Levin argued for the start of U.S.-Russian cooperation on defenses against Iranian missiles.

"Even if we were simply to begin serious discussions on the subject (it) would send a powerful signal to Iran," Levin said. "Iran would face in a dramatic way a growing unity against her pursuit of dangerous nuclear technology."

COMMENT:  Go back to the carriage line.  If this were to come about successfully then, yes, it would be positive.  But, based on both Russian and Iranian behavior, and the Obama administration's projection of weakness, I'd don't give this idea much of a chance.  Would love to hear from readers.

Look at what an Obama representative said:

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., who is expected to be nominated soon to become the State Department's arms control chief, told the conference that the threat of a future Iranian long-range missile is not sufficient reason to build the U.S. missile defense in Europe as proposed by the Bush administration.

She said it would provide "little, if any" protection for countries that are vulnerable to Iran's existing arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles, which she described as the largest in the Middle East. Iran is "a ways away" from acquiring longer-range missiles that could hit the U.S. and Europe, she said.

COMMENT:  How do you think this will be read in the capitals of East European countries that have signed on to a partnership with us on missile defense?  Can you feel the knife in their backs?

March 23, 2009   Permalink

AND NOW THE OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS - AT 6:51 P.M. ET: 

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Global trade will plunge 9 percent this year, the most since World War II, as the recession deepens, the World Trade Organization said.

“Economic contraction in most of the industrial world and steep export declines already posted in the early months of this year by most major economies -- particularly those in Asia -- make for an unusually bleak 2009 trade assessment,” the Geneva- based WTO said in its annual assessment of world trade.

COMMENT:  One of the elements prolonging the great Depression was regressive trade policies.  Some on the left would like to bring those back to "protect" American workers.  Protectionist schemes usually wind up hurting everyone, so we must be on guard.

March 23, 2009   Permalink

DOW CLOSE - AT 4:03 P.M. ET:  The Dow closed up 498 points, to 7776, pending last-minute adjustments.  Obviously a spectacular day.

March 23, 2009

DOW WOW - AT 3:34 P.M. ET:  The Dow continues to soar upward.  It's now up 401 points, to 7679.  We should point out that the stock market is not necessarily related to the real economy, the economy you and I see every day.  There was a huge stock-market rally lasting from 1933 to 1937, in the heart of the great Depression.  It didn't help the average citizen at all.  What we're seeing today is reaction to the Treasury plan to salvage the banking industry.  The stock boom may well continue, but whether it has any effect on society is another question entirely.

Also up are housing sales.  But read the fine print and we find that the increase is due to the sale of distressed housing.  It's bargain hunting at the lowest economic level.

March 23, 2009

A REAL MAN-MADE DISASTER - AT 2:09 P.M. ET:  From the Washington Post:

The Environmental Protection Agency sent a proposal to the White House on Friday finding that global warming is endangering the public's health and welfare, according to several sources, a move that could have far-reaching implications for the nation's economy and environment.

The proposal -- which comes in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision ordering EPA to consider whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act -- could lay the groundwork for nationwide measures to limit such emissions.

COMMENT:  The economic implications of this are overwhelming, and potentially catastrophic.  And still, anyone who questions the "science" of global warming is denounced as a crackpot, even as distinguished scientists raise the most troubling questions. 

For a provocative take on this, see John Hinderaker's report at Power Line.

March 23, 2009   Permalink

DOW CONTINUES TO SOAR - AT 1:53 P.M. ET:  The Dow is up 283 points, to 7562.  The rise followed Treasury's announcement of a plan to absorb the banking industry's "toxic assets."

March 23, 2009

INCREDIBLY DENSE - AT 1:47 P.M. ET:  We used to laugh when Communist dictatorships called themselves "the People's Republic of..."  Seems that the Obama administration is similarly twisting the English language for its purposes.  From Ron Kessler at NewsMax:

The new term for terrorism being used by President Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security would be comical if it were not so scary.

Instead of referring to threats from terrorists, Janet Napolitano is referring in her speeches to “man-caused disasters.” In an interview, a reporter for Germany’s Spiegel Online asked Napolitano whether her avoidance of the term terrorism means that “Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose[es] a threat to your country?”

“Of course it does,” Napolitano replied. “I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word ‘terrorism,’ I referred to ‘man-caused’ disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.”

By this logic, the FBI should refer to serial killers and serial rapists as “man-caused afflictions.” After all, we do not want to create fear about serial killers.

COMMENT:  I suspect the real reason is to avoid "offending" the Muslim nations Obama is so eager to embrace.  Why let a little thing like mass murder stand in the way?

March 23, 2009   Permalink

DOW SOARS - AT 10:06 A.M. ET:  The Dow is up 209 points, to 7487, reacting to Treasury's announcement of a plan to save the banking system.

March 23, 2009

REPORT FROM AFGHANISTAN - AT 8:30 A.M. ET:  An Urgent Agenda reader who goes to and from Afghanistan, and has solid expertise, gives us an on-the-scene take on American policy in the country:

I am sure you noted the "trial balloon" launched yesterday by the
administration regarding the dramatic expansion of Afghan security
forces (about which I hinted a couple of weeks ago). If we go through
with it, it represents the bold and expensive step that I doubted
Obama would take. It is one thing to pledge to expand the Afghan
forces to 400,000, but the implications for US responsibilities to
make it succeed are huge. Money for the training and equipment,
troops to advise and mentor, troops to maintain security while the
Afghan formations are readied, the time it will take for it to succeed
(we will still be in Afghanistan in 2012, a source of risk for a
reelection campaign)...expensive obligations, especially in light of a
continuing economic crisis (which the O-Team is addressing with the
exact wrong solutions, if you ask me).

COMMENT:  So the idea is out there to expand dramatically Afghanistan's ability to defend itself.  But will the expansion take place?  Will Obama push it?  Will a liberal Democratic congress, already under pressure from the left to "end this war," supply the funding?  Will we sell out Afghanistan to appease Iran?  Important questions all, and we'll be watching.

March 23, 2009   Permalink

OBAMA ON THE "GOOD" WAR - AT 8:08 A.M. ET:  When he was running for office, which he's still doing, President Obama called the war in Afghanistan the good war, and the war in Iraq the bad war.  Suddenly, Afghanistan doesn't seem so good to him, and it certainly doesn't seem good to his hard-line leftist supporters, who don't think any war America is involved in is good:

KABUL (Reuters) - The new U.S. policy for Afghanistan to be unveiled soon will contain an exit strategy and include greater emphasis on economic development, President Barack Obama said.

With violence rising ahead of elections in August, Obama has already committed an extra 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, but on Sunday he said military force alone would not end the war.

"What we can't do is think that just a military approach in Afghanistan is going to be able to solve our problems," he said in an interview with CBS's "60 minutes."

COMMENT:  You will notice the words.  The word "victory" is missing.  The word "win" is missing.  The word "democracy" is missing.  Those words have little meaning for this crowd.  And what's there?  Why, of course.  It's the "exit strategy."  Imagine if President Roosevelt had spoken of an "exit strategy" after Pearl Harbor. 

Obama is turning quickly into Carter, and we will need a Reagan to restore our national morale.

March 23, 2009   Permalink

AND THE AMATEURISM CONTINUES - AT 7:43 A.M. ET:  Reader Jean Spik alerts us to another brilliant piece by Michael Ledeen, reporting on the Obama team's latest diplomatic gaffe.  They're coming by the day now, so please watch for the next one:

"He also sent a letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano (a member of the now defunct Communist Party), expressing confidence that the United States and Italy would work together “to overcome the current global political and economic hardships and build a safer world.” The only problem with the letter was that the Italian president does not make policy; that power resides with the prime minister and his cabinet. Perhaps the White House czars have issued an ukase stipulating that the American president writes only to his peers, and thus instead of addressing himself to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, President Obama wrote to a man who holds an almost entirely ceremonial position.

"This imprecision produced the predictable kerfluffle in Rome, as the leftist media and intellectuals pondered the event and concluded that Obama had deliberately stiffed Berlusconi. The Italian prime minister thus joins his British counterpart in wondering what hope they are supposed to find in the recent change in diplomatic protocol in Washington."

COMMENT:  Look, it gets worse.  Gateway Pundit reports that the president just wrote to former French President Jacques Chirac, an anti-American if ever there was one, but has yet to invite the current president of France, the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy, to Washington.

The beat goes on.  It's getting awfully hard to be pro-American.  Punish your friends, reward your enemies.  That seems to be the policy.

March 23, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 7:10 A.M. ET:  An on-the-button quote from Peggy Noonan about the increasingly shaky Obama administration:

These are the two great issues, the economic crisis and our safety. In the face of them, what strikes one is the weightlessness of the Obama administration, the jumping from issue to issue and venue to venue from day to day. Isaiah Berlin famously suggested a leader is a fox or a hedgehog. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In political leadership the hedgehog has certain significant advantages, focus and clarity of vision among them. Most presidents are one or the other. So far Mr. Obama seems neither.

COMMENT:  I'm afraid it's true.  We want the president, like any president, to succeed, and lead the country wisely.  But it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify some of this regime's antics.

March 23, 2009   Permalink

SMALL TIME IS SMALL TIME - AT 6:38 A.M. ET:  It is almost impossible to believe that President Obama did this.  From The Washington Times:

As he empathized with recession-weary Americans, President Obama arranged in the days just before he took office to secure a $500,000 advance for a children's book project, a disclosure report shows.

The terms of the book deal were disclosed in a Senate financial disclosure report filed Tuesday.

COMMENT:  If George Bush had done it, the mainstream press would have gone berserk.  This is incredibly tacky.  The president, if he wanted the book published, should have assigned all funds received to charity.  I'm afraid the Chicago way has come to the White House.

March 23, 2009   Permalink

POLAND PLEADS - AT 6:33 A.M. ET:  This is sad:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Poland said on Sunday it hoped the new U.S. administration would not abandon plans to station a missile defence system on its territory.

President Barack Obama's administration is reviewing U.S. security policy, including the missile shield plan. This has prompted speculation he might shelve a project that has angered Moscow, with which Washington wants to mend ties.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Poland had taken "something of a political risk" in signing an agreement with the Bush administration to host the system.

COMMENT:  This is pathetic - a brave ally of the United States begging for us to maintain our commitments.  What a comedown for this country.  But, of course, this is "realism."  After all, Russia is a larger country than Poland.  Well, it may be realism in the short term, but it's betrayal and treachery in the long term.  And we just won't be America anymore, not that this would matter to some of the elites in the Obama orbit.

March 23, 2009   Permalink

FAMILY SPAT - AT 6:21 A.M. ET:  Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is upset:

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama was at best an "ignoramus" for saying the socialist leader exported terrorism and obstructed progress in Latin America.

"He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he's a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality," said Chavez, who heads a group of left-wing Latin American leaders opposed to the U.S. influence in the region.

COMMENT:  Another enemy leader deeply impressed with President Obama's attempt to "reach out" to the world.  Are they noticing in the White House?  Are they noticing that the "age of Obama" hasn't changed a thing? 

March 23, 2009   Permalink

SUNDAY,  MARCH 22,  2009

HANSON STRIKES AGAIN - AT 10:09 P.M. ET:  Reader James Birdsall alerts us to a superb piece by Victor Davis Hanson on why Americans are depressed:

Why are so many Americans so depressed about things these days? It is perhaps not just the economy.

I think the answer is clear: all the accustomed referents, the sources of security, of knowledge and reassurance appear to be vanishing. Materially, we still enjoy a sumptuous lifestyle in comparison with past generations—and the world outside our borders. America remains the most sane and successful society on the planet.

But there is a strange foreboding, a deer-in-the-headlights look to us that we may be clueless Greeks in the age of Demosthenes, played-out Romans around AD 450, or give-up French in late 1939—with a sense it cannot go on. Why? Let us count the ways.

And the "ways" will look dead-on to anyone who hasn't been hibernating:

1) About Broke. 

...I think instead the worst element is a sort of ill-feeling about ourselves, an unhappiness as we look in the mirror and see what we are doing to our dignity in this, the hour of our crisis.

We are starting to fathom that when times got iffy, we lacked the resilience of the proverbial Joads and the grit of that tough Depression-era generation, and certainly we seem different sorts from those who built and flew B-17s amid the Luftwaffe.

Instead, this generation has gone quite stark raving mad the last seven months, hysterical, and decided we would simply borrow, charge it, print money, blame, accuse—almost anything other than roll up our sleeves, take a cut in our standard of living, pay off what we owe, admit that we lived too high on the hog, and find a certain nobility in shared sacrifice...

2) Fides?

We have almost destroyed the concept of trust: we don’t think there is any accuracy in AIG statements; don’t really believe GM will make it on its own, or that Goldman-Sachs is honestly run.

All our icons—Ford, General Electric, Citibank, Bank of America—in a mere generation imploded by their own hands, and now we don’t have any real idea of what went wrong, and believe their captains don’t either...

3) A Certain Coarseness.

We also are wearied by a certain crassness in American society in ways we have not seen before—or at least since the mid-19th century. Sorry, I don’t want my President joshing about the Special Olympics on Leno. I don’t want him on Leno at all in his perpetual PR mode. I don’t want him drawing out his picks for the final four on TV. I don’t want him paid for rewriting/revising/ condensing/whatever his earlier book while he’s supposed to be President, or ribbing Gordon Brown about his tennis game in patronizing fashion, or giving the British a pack of un-viewable DVDs after they, in exchange, offered a tasteful gift of historic importance...

4) What is good/bad? We are depressed and listless and angry also because I think that we fear we have lost all sense of calibration. We can’t tell what is good and what is god-awful. Where does a Paris Hilton or Britney Spears come from? What can they do? What determines a modern poem’s line break?...

5) Yes/No/Sorta/Maybe

We sense we are trimmers and redistributors, and wouldn’t dare build a new dam a transcontinental railroad, a new 8 -lane freeway.

Instead we would sue, file reports, argue, quit, delay—anything other than conceive a majestic idea and finish it, sighing, “It is not perfect, but damn good enough and will do.”...

Finally...

Why are Americans hesitant, bewildered after the arrival of the Messiah?

Not for the reason our President attests about high unemployment or shaky GDP or the lack of national health care. We simply are ashamed of our profligacy; we don’t trust those who should be trusted; we put up with the crass and honor the mediocre and ugly; and we fight and bicker over the distribution, never over a share in the creation.

Hope and change, indeed.

COMMENT:  Wonderful piece, well argued.  Read the whole thing.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

POINT TO PONDER - AT 4:12 P.M. ET:  Reader Mike McDaniel makes an excellent point about national security in an e-mail received today.  As follows:

May I suggest that you point out a significant statement Obama made on 60 Minutes when he asked how many terrorists the Bush administration "brought to justice?" That's exactly the point.  War is not about bringing enemy combatants "to justice," but about killing them or removing them from the battlefield until hostilities cease.  Obama, like Clinton before him, is stuck in criminal justice mode, determined to give terrorists more constitutional rights than citizens while inserting them into a revolving door system of criminal justice.  This is not security, but madness.

COMMENT:  And because of our economic crisis, we're not as alert to these changes as we should be.  We may pay a price.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

OBAMA RAPS CHENEY - AT 9:16 A.M. ET: 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama hit back at former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of his policies on terrorism suspects, saying Cheney's approach had brought the United States scorn instead of security.

Obama told CBS network's "60 Minutes" program that the policy on detainees at Guantanamo Bay military prison under the administration of former President George W. Bush had been "unsustainable."

COMMENT:  Brought us scorn instead of security?  What have we gotten since The One took office?  Compliments?  Flowers?  Name a single change a single country has made in its attitude toward the U.S.    This is real cult-of-personality stuff: "I'm here, things will be better." 

Show me.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

GROWING UNEASE ABOUT "THE ONE" - AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  We've said often here that some of the best reporting on American politics is done by the British press. We see another example today in The Times of London, in a piece by Tony Allen-Mills, reporting anger at the president, especially his tactics and his ever-present TV image:

WHEN the White House announced last week that President Barack Obama will be returning to the nation’s television screens on Tuesday for a prime-time press conference that will postpone the latest episode of American Idol - the talent show watched by 25m viewers - fans of the programme were quick to respond.

“Stop, please stop, Mr O, we can’t take much more,” one angry viewer wrote on an Idol-related website. “Not again!” complained another. “It’s the same speech he’s been giving for the past year.”

There were dark mutterings that by commandeering evening programming only a few days after he appeared on Jay Leno’s popular late-night chat show, Obama was “just like Fidel Castro [of Cuba] and Hugo Chavez [of Venezuela] - always on camera, always giving speeches and lecturing”.

The barbed response to the prospect of yet another mass-media dose of Obama’s economic prescriptions underlined the dangers the president is facing as he struggles to sell his recovery efforts to a country seething with anger and anxiety over the costs, effectiveness and potential abuse of the government’s trillion-dollar bailout programme.

COMMENT:  The story points out that some of this anger is coming from Democrats.  The Brits have picked up something that is certainly discussed here, but with less focus - that the president may be wearing out his welcome, that the folksy, "we're the ones we've been waiting for" theme isn't resonating much any longer.  Sometimes Mr. Obama comes off as less than serious, less in command than he should be.  Franklin Roosevelt used radio to speak to the nation, but he wasn't on the air as often as Obama is, and he had a commanding presence.  Obama is developing the image of commander-in-training.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL - AT 8:45 A.M. ET:  From Charles Murray, in today's Washington Post:

The trouble is that American elites of all political stripes have increasingly withdrawn to gated communities -- literally or figuratively -- where they never interact at an intimate level with people not of their own socioeconomic class. Over the last half-century, the new generation of elites have increasingly spent their entire lives in the upper-middle-class bubble, never having seen a factory floor, let alone worked on one, never having gone to a grocery store and bought the cheap ketchup instead of the expensive ketchup to meet a budget, and never having had a close friend who hadn't gotten at least 600 on her verbal SAT.

America's elites must once again fall in love with what makes America different. The drift toward the European model can be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional, and why it is so important that America remain exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it is: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth, and immeasurably precious.

COMMENT:  Read the entire piece, on the danger of America becoming more like Europe.  Oh, we would have the "good" life, with cradle-to-grave socialism, but not much would get done, or invented, or even dreamed.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

ANTI-WAR OR JUST ANTI-AMERICAN? - AT 8:25 A.M. ET: 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Before war protesters ended their demonstration Saturday afternoon, several placed cardboard coffins in front of the offices of northern Virginia defense contractors such as KBR Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corp. as riot police stood by.

''Lockheed Martin you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!'' they chanted as part of a demonstration that began in Washington to mark the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq...

...Organizers from the ANSWER Coalition said more than 1,000 groups sponsored the protest to call for an end to the Iraq war, and estimated that about 10,000 people participated.

COMMENT:  What really riles me about these stories - and this began during Vietnam - is that the press gives us so few facts about the "anti-war" protesters.  ANSWER is a Marxist organization.  (Read that pro-Communist.)  But apparently we're not permitted to say it out loud, for that would be "McCarthyism."  No, it wouldn't.  It would be honest, accurate reporting.  I visited many "anti-war" marches in New York during the Vietnam War.  Many of the organizers had far-left credentials.  But then, as now, they were just described as "anti-war."  As Christopher Hitchens has written, they're not anti-war.  They're just anti- some wars, especially those America has a chance of winning.  But the mainstream media keeps it all vague.

March 22, 2009   Permalink