SUNDAY,  SEPTEMBER 13,  2009

TWO DAYS - AT 10:58 P.M. ET:  That's how long it took for President Obama to condemn the murder of an anti-abortion activist in Michigan Friday morning:

OWOSSO, Mich. (AP) -- President Barack Obama on Sunday condemned the killing of an anti-abortion activist in Michigan as activists and others gathered for vigil near the site where he was fatally shot.

Obama called last week's shooting of James Pouillon ''deplorable'' in a two-sentence statement.

''Whichever side of a public debate you're on, violence is never the right answer,'' Obama said in the statement.

COMMENT:  Reminds us of the amount of time it took the president to wander to a microphone during the Iranian uprising and announce that democracy was a good thing.

Mr. Obama was a lot swifter in denouncing, appropriately, of course, the murder of abortionist George Tiller on May 31st.  The White House should have been on top of this Friday afternoon.  The double standard is obvious.

September 13, 2009   Permalink

HUMAN RIGHTS BOTCH - AT 7:54 P.M. ET:  Human Rights Watch, one of the major "human rights" organizations, is increasingly being exposed as the crackpot organization it's become over the years.  (e.g.:  One of its Middle East "experts" was recently revealed as collecting Nazi paraphernalia.)   And other "human rights" groups are coming under scrutiny. 

"Human rights," of course, is a term that has, historically, been appropriated by pro-communist and pro-fascist elements to try to cloak their operations in respectability. 

Iranian freedom activist Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi alerts us to the latest "human rights" farce, as reported on the website of Azarmehr, another Iranian freedom activist.  Press TV, mentioned in the story, is owned by the Iranian regime.  Get this:

I just got home and while channel hopping tuned into Press TV. It was Andrew Gilligan's Forum, which tonight debated torture. The guests included the London Director of Human Rights Watch, Tom Porteous, and the executive director of Reprieve, Clare Algar.

How absurd, actually how disgusting! It is the anniversary of the massacre of Iranian political prisoners in 1988, and the television station where the program is aired from is funded by a junta that is holding show trials and forced confessions on its state TV.

Gilligan is presenting a program debating torture on a TV which is funded by a regime that gang rapes male and female detainees who have taken part in peaceful protests - and the likes of Andrew Gilligan, Tom Porteous and Clare Algar not once mention any human rights abuse in the country where their paymasters are ruling with an iron fist.

COMMENT:  Why should anyone be surprised?  This is the way the game is played.  So-called "human rights activists" appear on a television program funded by one of the most repressive regimes in the world, and just play along.  Then they go back to their offices, write something critical of the United States, and get interviewed by "journalists" eager to hear their views.  It's sickening, but groups like Human Rights Watch are influential, and influence young people. 

Don't expect these groups to be confronted by the mainstream media.  That's not in the script.

September 13, 2009   Permalink

SNOWE JOB - AT 7:41 P.M. ET:  Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, a moderate Republican who often votes with Democrats, is recommending that President Obama take the public option in health-care reform off the table:

A key Republican senator who President Obama hopes will support his effort to overhaul the nation’s health-care system urged him Sunday to take any plan for a new government-run program “off the table.”

Senator Olympia Snowe, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, where the most-watched version of the health care bill is being written, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the so-called public option is “universally opposed by all Republicans in the Senate” and “therefore, there’s no way to pass a plan that includes the public option.”

Ms. Snowe, who has previously criticized the public option, said she thought it unwise at this juncture to be clinging to the public option because doing so “leaves open a legislative possibility that creates uncertainty in this process.” On the other, she said, scuttling the public option for good “could give real momentum to building a consensus on other issues.”

COMMENT:  If Snowe is against it, it's probably dead.  It's unlikely the Dems could get the 60 votes in the Senate needed to override a filibuster, as several Democrats would probably also abandon the public option. 

Obama should do what he's been advised to do, endlessly:  Work on fixing the flaws in the system, not overturning what works for 80% of Americans.

September 13, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 12:14 P.M. ET:  From the great Michael Barone, one of our best political commentators.  He comments on the breathtaking assertion by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and distinguished philosopher/scientist/statesman/ranter Al Gore, that the debate over global warming is over.  Barone recalls earlier warnings, now forgotten, about overpopulation:

The lesson I take from the overpopulation scare is to be wary when media, university and corporate elites warn that we must change our ways or face disaster 50 years hence, and when they insist, as Al Gore does and Friedman seems to, that the time for argument is over. In our two-party democracy it never is. And shouldn't be.

COMMENT:  I recall a comment by Larry Summers, who is better than the administration he now serves, expressing his skepticism about warnings that we're "running out of" this or that.  He pointed out that the world has rarely run out of anything. 

There are many elitists who try to shut down debate on the ground that "experts" have decided, or that there's a "consensus" at some international conference.  President Obama is one of the worst offenders, often belittling his opponents as quibblers, or even suggesting, as he did recently on health care, that debate isn't helpful. 

We've seen too many experts proved wrong over time.  Debate anything you wish.  That is the American way.

September 13, 2009   Permalink

GRACIOUSNESS, ALWAYS GRACIOUSNESS - AT 11:12 A.M. ET:  Now the Iranians respond to our decision to enter negotiations with them, although they'd said they wouldn't discuss their nuclear program:

Teheran will not negotiate with the West over its nuclear "rights," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said again on Sunday, after the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany accepted the Islamic republic's offer to hold talks.

"From the Iranian nation's viewpoint, [Iran's] nuclear case is closed," Reuters quoted Ahmadinejad as telling Britain's new ambassador to Teheran, citing a report by official media.

Do you love the progress?  Do you love the change we can believe in?

Oh, there's also some news following our cave-in to the North Korean demand that we meet them one-on-one:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, during his most recent meeting with party and military leaders, reportedly gave instructions that the reclusive regime prepare for a third nuclear test, this time using enriched uranium, according to reports from Free Radio of North Korea, based in South Korea.

Kim "emphasized the importance of improvement of nuclear technologies with the aim of attracting the U.S. to direct bilateral talks," according to the radio station's source.

COMMENT:  All of us will go to bed tonight knowing that Barack Obama has made us safer.

Sleep somewhere underground.  Have food and water for three months.

September 13, 2009   Permalink

RASMUSSEN - AT 10:47 A.M. ET:  Today's Rasmussen report is the first where all the polling was done after the president's speech.  The bounce reported yesterday continues, and grows larger, as expected:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 34% of the nation's voters 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 -4. That’s the President’s best Approval Index rating in over a month.

And the president's overall approval rating is up:

Overall, 51% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That represents a one point improvement since his Wednesday night speech and is the President’s best rating in three weeks. Forty-eight percent (48%) now disapprove.

And...

The President’s speech also provided a modest bounce in support for his health care plans. Voters are evenly divided at this time with 48% in favor and 48% opposed.

COMMENT:  The bounce will probably not last, and, even with it, the president's numbers are nothing to write home about.  Still, the tie vote on the health plan will give encouragement to the White House.  They can now claim that Mr. Obama has reversed the downward slide, in public opinion, of his health plan.  To a degree, that's true.  The bleeding (not covered by Obamacare) has stopped for now.

Much will depend on how the opposition maneuvers.  Town meetings and demonstrations are not enough.  The Republicans must be out there, on camera, every day, zeroing in on what's wrong with the president's plan and proposing attractive, understandable alternatives.  Otherwise, Obama and his allies in Congress, if they continue their PR campaign, might just slip their plan through, just as we think we're winning.

Washington reads polls far more religiously than it reads the Bible.  The air has to be taken out of that bounce.

September 13, 2009   Permalink

GREAT WEEKEND, HUH? - AT 10:15 A.M. ET:  There's a rule of thumb in Washington:  Announce all bad news on Friday afternoon, or over the weekend.  Fewer people are tuned in.

This weekend began with the announcement that we were accepting Iran's pathetic offer to begin negotiations - even though the Iranians ruled out any discussion of their nuclear program, which is the main thing we want to talk about.  The weekend continued with the announcement that we're granting North Korea's wish for one-on-one talks with the United States, even though they've constantly defied us, and even though all negotiations with North Korea have ultimately failed. 

Now reader Joseph J. Gallick alerts us to something new.  From The Washington Post:

Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to administration officials.

The new system will be applied to the more than 600 Afghans held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Obama inherited from the Bush administration.

International human rights organizations have long criticized conditions at the Bagram facility, where detainees have been held -- many of them for years -- without access to lawyers or even the right to know the reason for their imprisonment. Afghans have cited Bagram, where virtually all prisoners in U.S. custody are held, as a major source of resentment toward coalition forces, a senior administration official said.

COMMENT:  First of all, I don't think we should take our cues from "international human rights organizations," some of which are hopelessly corrupt.  Human Rights Watch is a cesspool of dishonesty and bias. 

Obviously, we must meet our international obligations.  However, why do I think this new set of rules will open a Pandora's box that will make it harder and harder to apprehend people who are a danger to our soldiers and to Afghan civilians?  Who'll want to stick his neck out?  When will we read that the American interrogators are under investigation?

We'll see how this plays.  But given Attorney General Holder's recent move to reinvestigate CIA agents of the Bush era, I suspect we know how the script will be written.

September 13,  2009   Permalink

SATURDAY,  SEPTEMBER 12,  2009

THE DOUBLE STANDARD - AT 8:54 P.M. ET:  Here is a paragraph from a Washington Post story on today's massive demonstration in the capital against the spending policies of the Obama administration:

Participants in the demonstration spanned the spectrum of conservative anger at Obama, including opponents of his tax, spending and health-care plans and protesters who question Obama's U.S. citizenship and liken his administration to the Nazi regime. By 11 a.m., the route between Freedom Plaza and the Capitol was a sea of demonstrators chanting "USA!" and carrying signs such as, "Taxed enough already," "The audacity of dope" and, "Czars belong in Russia."

COMMENT:  Okay, a bit coarse, but basically accurate.  However, compare please to any number of left-wing demonstrations in Washington, and the way they're reported by the liberal media.  Participants are invariably described as "anti-war activists," "peace activists," "student activists," or some such innocuous label.  In fact, many left-wing demonstrations feature the most vulgar language, anti-American hatred, anti-Semitism, and plain old Marxist venom.  But rarely is that reported by the mainstreams.

I've seen this pattern now for 40 years.  If the demonstration is on the right, the worst is reported.  If it's on the left, everything is sanitized.  If you see examples of this double standard, let us know.  We'd like to publicize them.

September 12, 2009   Permalink

NEEDS FURTHER INVESTIGATION - AT 8:23 P.M. ET:  Sometimes, witnesses have a way of disappearing:

Christopher Kelly, a key figure in the federal corruption investigation of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, is dead, sources said.

Christopher Kelly, 51, of Burr Ridge, was once the master of Blagojevich’s lucrative campaign fund and the “go-to” guy in the ex-governor’s administration.

Kelly was found at 7:01 a.m. by his family, according to a report given to the Cook County Medical Examiner. He was pronounced dead at 10:46 a.m., sources said. Kelly died of an apparent "aspirin overdose," a law enforcement source said.

COMMENT:  An aspirin overdose?  Is that like an ice cream fit?  I'd like to know more about this.  Was he, as they say in polite circles, "suicided"?

It was Blagojevich who appointed Barack Obama's successor, super-hack Roland Burris.  Would like to know more about that as well, and why the president of the United States didn't step in to avoid an embarrassment.

September 12, 2009   Permalink

ONE SMALL STEP FOR THE U.S., ONE GIANT LEAP FOR NORTH KOREA - AT 12:14 P.M. ET:  The United States has made still one more concession in its foreign policy, giving North Korea what North Korea wanted.  From Jake Tapper at ABC News:

The US shifted its policy today, saying it is now willing to meet one on one with North Korea if that is helpful to bring Pyongyang back to the nuclear negotiations.

US envoy Stephen Bosworth got the green light from the other members of the 6-party talks, negotiations to rid Pyongyang of its nuclear program, during meetings in the region in recent days.

North Korea has extended an invitation for Bosworth to visit Pyongyang, but officials say it’s unclear where or when a meeting could take place.

“It's designed to convince North Korea to come back to the six- party process and to take affirmative steps towards denuclearization,” State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said of the decision to meet.

COMMENT:  This comes right after we caved in to Iran, agreeing to meet the Iranians even though they'd taken their nuclear program off the table.  Discussing that program had been the main reason we offered to meet with them in the first place.

It's been concession after concession ever since Obama took office.  The North Koreans wanted one-on-one with the U.S. to boost their prestige and give the appearance of power.  We should have gotten something in return for our agreement, but we apparently did not - in either Iran's case or North Korea's.

Neville Chamberlain must be smiling down there.  Umbrellas are back in style.

September 12, 2009   Permalink

MAJOR ECONOMIC HURDLE - AT 11:16 A.M. ET: The president's political future will depend heavily on whether the economy revives.  One of his chief economic advisers has some gloomy news with profound political implications.  The Politico reports:

The president’s chief economic adviser warned Friday that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay “unacceptably high” for years to come — a situation that would seriously complicate Barack Obama’s ability to convince Americans that he’s beating back the recession.

“The level of unemployment is unacceptably high,” National Economic Council Director Larry Summers said Friday. “And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.”

Summers’s comments came in a briefing with reporters ahead of Obama’s speech in New York City on Monday, marking the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an event widely regarded as having created a panic that caused the global economic meltdown.

Even with his gloomy forecast for unemployment, Summers said the economy is getting better and made the case that Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package and other fiscal rescue steps headed off even more economic pain.

COMMENT:  Summers is a brilliant economist, and was also a great president of Harvard before being brought down by the forces of political correctness.  if his forecast is correct, we may be facing a "jobless recovery," which, to most Americans, is no recovery at all. 

Politically, this is very bad news for the president.  The unemployment rate is the human side of the recession, the one most voters look at. 

September 12, 2009   Permalink

A SLIGHT BOUNCE - AT 10:23 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen reports that President Obama got a slight bounce from the 23,403rd speech he gave to the American people on Wednesday night.  Two thirds of those polled were polled after the speech, and one third before. 

Some 50% of respondents approve of the job the president is doing, compared with 49% who don't.  The president had been down by as much as six points in recent weeks, and is now up one.

In Ras's presidential approval index, measuring the gap between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove, the president is at minus five, 33% to 38%.  He was down by as much as 14 points within the last month.

So, a slight bounce, but still clearly a dramatic decline for Mr. Obama since the heady days after inauguration.

September 12,  2009   Permalink

CURIOUS - AND DISGRACEFUL - AT 10:07 A.M. ET:  The case of Britain's relationship with Libya gets more and more curious.  Now there is this latest outrage, from Britain's Telegraph.  The SAS is the Special Air Service, a unit of elite commandos:

The SAS has been ordered by the Government to train Libyan special forces despite the country having armed the Irish Republican Army, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

For the past six months Britain’s elite troops have been schooling soldiers working for Col Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, which for years provided Republican terrorists with the Semtex explosive, machine-guns and anti-aircraft missiles used against British troops during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Sources within the SAS have expressed distaste at the agreement, which they believe could be connected to the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

Britain’s relationship with Libya has been under the spotlight since Abdelbaset al Megrahi was freed from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds last month after being diagnosed as suffering from terminal prostate cancer and given three months to live.

COMMENT:  This is a sordid affair.  Although the Obama administration has been cold to Britain since The One took office, we have a right to be outraged at the apparent favors being done for Libya by the Gordon Brown government.

Gordon Brown has faced claims that his Government helped engineer Megrahi’s release to promote Britain’s commercial interests, particularly energy, in Libya.

We wonder if Britain authorities would have felt free to do some of these things if George Bush had been in the White House.  We also wonder whether the Obama White House has been aware of Britain's interactions with Libya, and just doesn't care.  Hey, it's "outreach," right?

September 12, 2009   Permalink