Diana West
Friday, October 30, 2009
Pakistani jihad death squads were much in the news this week. In Peshawar, Pakistan, they bombed a marketplace, claiming more than 100 lives, and in Chicago, they were thwarted, according to an FBI affidavit, from carrying out a planned attack on a newspaper in Denmark to kill two Danish journalists, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and cultural editor, Flemming Rose.
It's important to link these events to put them into proper perspective. According to the FBI, the Danish operation -- busted in Chicago with arrests of David Coleman Headley (aka Daood Gilani) and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, both of Pakistani origin with American and Canadian citizenship, respectively -- was planned in conjunction with Pakistani jihadists. One is identified as Individual A, a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the jihadist group behind the 2008 Mumbai massacre, among other atrocities. The other is identified as Ilyas Kashmiri, operations chief of Harakat-ul-Jihad Islami (HUJI). Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal writes that Kashmiri is "considered by U.S. intelligence to be one of Al Qaeda's most dangerous commanders." Roggio further notes that LeT and HUJI, along with several other Pakistan jihadist groups, including Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammed, have merged with Al Qaeda in Pakistan and operate under the name Brigade 313.
While the triggermen behind the Peshawar carnage have not been identified yet, it is highly likely, to say the least, that they come from this same jihad network.
So, let's probe a little. Let's think beyond the scenes of the Pakistani market-turned-charnel-house and the newspaper office in Denmark spared a similar fate. Let's think beyond the "terror" to the point of the terror -- a place we as politically correct multiculturalists are never supposed to go: The point of Islamic terror is to assert Islamic law. Period.
In the Pakistani case, the terror further enmeshes the United States in misbegotten efforts to "stabilize" the jihadist-riddled government, but that serves Islamic law as well. Such terror further asserts the power of those who bring Islamic law to a nation that already embraces its brand of "justice" as the findings of an August Pew poll confirm yet again. An overwhelming 78 percent of Pakistanis believe those who leave Islam should be killed, 80 percent favor whippings and cutting off hands for crimes like theft and robbery, and 83 percent favor stoning adulterers.
And how many billions did the Obama administration just shovel down that hole? As a condition of such aid, Pakistan should be required to dismantle its nukes and trust key components to us for safekeeping while the threat of seizure by "extremists" endures. Isn't that what a bona fide ally would do?
In the Danish case, the Islamic terror is designed to punish and make examples of the two men chiefly responsible for the revolt that began four years ago against the emergence of Islamic law in Denmark. Flemming Rose, having discovered that a Danish publisher couldn't find an artist willing to violate Islamic prohibitions on imagery of Mohammed to illustrate a Danish children's book, commissioned 12 cartoons of Mohammed in 2005 to reassert Denmark's freedom of the press, which in this case also meant freedom from Islamic law. Kurt Westergaard's cartoon -- ask your local newspaper to run it, as the Chicago Sun-Times did this week, to assert America's freedom of the press -- has become the symbol of this victorious affirmation of free speech for which Denmark remains under continued threat of Islamic attack, as this Pakistani plot dramatically shows.
So, what to do about which assault? In Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told government officials: "I want you to know that this fight is not Pakistan's alone. This is our struggle as well." To Denmark, the U.S. government said nothing.
This is exactly backward. Pakistan's struggle, feckless and conflicted as it is has been and will continue to be (Roggio also reports, for example, that Ilyas Kashmiri is a "longtime asset of Pakistan's military and intelligence services") is not America's fight. Rather, this fight is among factions of Islam, and far from being a player in this treacherous game, the United States is a dupe. If Pakistan's nuclear arsenal poses a dire threat to the West (like Iran's), the correct military solution is its destruction, not nation-building around it.
Clinton's statement of solidarity should have been directed to Denmark, a tiny Western nation valiantly asserting the core principles of liberty, and subsequently threatened for doing so with catastrophic attack, meted out according to Islamic law. It is Denmark's struggle that is our own, or should be.
Will we ever learn?
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The Three Envelopes
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 30, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Old Soviet joke:
Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev.
"Niki, I'm dying. Don't have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble."
A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: "Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe."
A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: "Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe."
Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: "Prepare three envelopes."
In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama has already burned through a good 49. Is there anything he hasn't blamed George W. Bush for? The economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad -- everything but swine flu.
It's as if Obama's presidency hasn't really started. He's still taking inventory of the Bush years. Just this Monday, he referred to "long years of drift" in Afghanistan in order to, I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan.
This compulsion to attack his predecessor is as stale as it is unseemly. Obama was elected a year ago. He became commander in chief two months later. He then solemnly announced his own "comprehensive new strategy" for Afghanistan seven months ago. And it was not an off-the-cuff decision. "My administration has heard from our military commanders, as well as our diplomats," the president assured us. "We've consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments, with our partners and our NATO allies, and with other donors and international organizations" and "with members of Congress. "
Obama is obviously unhappy with the path he himself chose in March. Fine. He has every right -- indeed duty -- to reconsider. But what Obama is reacting to is the failure of his own strategy.
There is nothing new here. The history of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is a considered readjustment of policies that have failed. In each war, quick initial low-casualty campaigns toppled enemy governments. In the subsequent occupation stage, two policy choices presented themselves: the light or heavy "footprint."
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we initially chose the light footprint. For obvious reasons: less risk and fewer losses for our troops, while reducing the intrusiveness of the occupation and thus the chances of creating an anti-foreigner backlash that would fan an insurgency.
This was the considered judgment of our commanders at the time, most especially Centcom commander (2003-2007) Gen. John Abizaid. And Abizaid was no stranger to the territory. He speaks Arabic and is a scholar of the region. The overriding idea was that the light footprint would minimize local opposition.
It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, but it proved wrong. The strategy failed. Not just because the enemy proved highly resilient but because the allegiance of the population turned out to hinge far less on resentment of foreign intrusiveness (in fact the locals came to hate the insurgents -- al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan -- far more than us) than on physical insecurity, which made them side with the insurgents out of sheer fear.
What they needed, argued Gen. David Petraeus against much Pentagon brass opposition, was population protection, i.e., a heavy footprint.
In Iraq, the heavy footprint -- also known as the surge -- dramatically reversed the fortunes of war. In Afghanistan, where it took longer for the Taliban to regroup, the failure of the light footprint did not become evident until more recently when an uneasy stalemate began to deteriorate into steady Taliban advances.
That's where we are now in Afghanistan. The logic of a true counterinsurgency strategy there is that whatever resentment a troop surge might occasion pales in comparison with the continued demoralization of any potential anti-Taliban elements unless they receive serious and immediate protection from U.S.-NATO forces.
In other words, Obama is facing the same decision on Afghanistan that Bush faced in late 2006 in deciding to surge in Iraq.
In both places, the deterioration of the military situation was not the result of "drift," but of considered policies that seemed reasonable, cautious and culturally sensitive at the time, but ultimately turned out to be wrong.
Which is evidently what Obama now thinks of the policy choice he made on March 27.
He is to be commended for reconsidering. But it is time he acted like a president and decided. Afghanistan is his. He's used up his envelopes.
Friday, October 30, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Old Soviet joke:
Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev.
"Niki, I'm dying. Don't have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble."
A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: "Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe."
A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: "Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe."
Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: "Prepare three envelopes."
In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama has already burned through a good 49. Is there anything he hasn't blamed George W. Bush for? The economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad -- everything but swine flu.
It's as if Obama's presidency hasn't really started. He's still taking inventory of the Bush years. Just this Monday, he referred to "long years of drift" in Afghanistan in order to, I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan.
This compulsion to attack his predecessor is as stale as it is unseemly. Obama was elected a year ago. He became commander in chief two months later. He then solemnly announced his own "comprehensive new strategy" for Afghanistan seven months ago. And it was not an off-the-cuff decision. "My administration has heard from our military commanders, as well as our diplomats," the president assured us. "We've consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments, with our partners and our NATO allies, and with other donors and international organizations" and "with members of Congress. "
Obama is obviously unhappy with the path he himself chose in March. Fine. He has every right -- indeed duty -- to reconsider. But what Obama is reacting to is the failure of his own strategy.
There is nothing new here. The history of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is a considered readjustment of policies that have failed. In each war, quick initial low-casualty campaigns toppled enemy governments. In the subsequent occupation stage, two policy choices presented themselves: the light or heavy "footprint."
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we initially chose the light footprint. For obvious reasons: less risk and fewer losses for our troops, while reducing the intrusiveness of the occupation and thus the chances of creating an anti-foreigner backlash that would fan an insurgency.
This was the considered judgment of our commanders at the time, most especially Centcom commander (2003-2007) Gen. John Abizaid. And Abizaid was no stranger to the territory. He speaks Arabic and is a scholar of the region. The overriding idea was that the light footprint would minimize local opposition.
It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, but it proved wrong. The strategy failed. Not just because the enemy proved highly resilient but because the allegiance of the population turned out to hinge far less on resentment of foreign intrusiveness (in fact the locals came to hate the insurgents -- al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan -- far more than us) than on physical insecurity, which made them side with the insurgents out of sheer fear.
What they needed, argued Gen. David Petraeus against much Pentagon brass opposition, was population protection, i.e., a heavy footprint.
In Iraq, the heavy footprint -- also known as the surge -- dramatically reversed the fortunes of war. In Afghanistan, where it took longer for the Taliban to regroup, the failure of the light footprint did not become evident until more recently when an uneasy stalemate began to deteriorate into steady Taliban advances.
That's where we are now in Afghanistan. The logic of a true counterinsurgency strategy there is that whatever resentment a troop surge might occasion pales in comparison with the continued demoralization of any potential anti-Taliban elements unless they receive serious and immediate protection from U.S.-NATO forces.
In other words, Obama is facing the same decision on Afghanistan that Bush faced in late 2006 in deciding to surge in Iraq.
In both places, the deterioration of the military situation was not the result of "drift," but of considered policies that seemed reasonable, cautious and culturally sensitive at the time, but ultimately turned out to be wrong.
Which is evidently what Obama now thinks of the policy choice he made on March 27.
He is to be commended for reconsidering. But it is time he acted like a president and decided. Afghanistan is his. He's used up his envelopes.
Fighting the Lies Harder Than Fighting the War
Mona Charen
Friday, October 30, 2009
The war over the war in Gaza is heating up. Next week, the United Nations General Assembly will consider the tendentious Goldstone Report, the highest profile exercise in blaming the victim in the U.N.'s tawdry history. Simultaneously, lawyers in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Norway are drawing up criminal indictments against IDF officers who participated in the Gaza operation. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that a number of names are on a police watch list for arrest and detention should they attempt to enter Britain.
Israel's enemies certainly seek to terrorize and demoralize Israel. But the more important campaign -- which is gaining traction -- is to delegitimize her and to brand Israel's self-defense as a war crime.
Because the United States has not yet descended to that level of moral inversion, I was able to sit down yesterday with Col. Ben Gruber, deputy commander of the armored division of the IDF, and one of the officers who participated in the Gaza campaign. Like 80 percent of the IDF, Gruber is a reservist. In civilian life, he's a computer scientist and father of five.
Soft-spoken and reflective, Gruber tries to think the best of everyone -- even Richard Goldstone. "He could not have read" this report before attaching his name to it, Gruber sighs. Readily acknowledging that mistakes are always made in war, and that those who intentionally transgress deserve punishment, Gruber is dumbfounded that the Goldstone report accuses Israel of "deliberately" targeting civilians.
Consider the assessment of Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and a veteran of the Gulf War and the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia. "During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population."
What army has offered 48 hours notice to its enemies of planned operations? Israel did so, dropping 2 million leaflets in advance of army movements. Twenty-four hours before the IDF moved on a suspected terrorist site, the army phoned civilians to warn them to evacuate. There were 100,000 calls. And five minutes before an operation began, the IDF sent out text messages. The calls and messages contained not just warnings, but instructions on which roads were safe to take and which schools or other buildings could be used for shelter. In the midst of the conflict, hundreds of trucks brought food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza.
In Rafa, Israel sought to close 225 tunnels (with 800 entrances) used to smuggle arms to Gaza from Egypt. The easiest and safest course for the IDF would have been to level the homes without warning that contained the entrances using air power or tanks. In Gaza City, to avoid civilian casualties, IDF infantrymen went house to house, encountering booby traps along the way and fending off seven attempted kidnappings.
Hamas was so confident that Israel would not knowingly shoot at civilians that they hid behind human shields throughout the short war. It was common, when word came of an impending attack, for Hamas to send children out to play in the streets at that moment. "Will I shoot?" Gruber asks. "I will not." There is video of a terrorist with a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder grabbing a 10-year-old boy by the collar and dragging him across the street to deter Israeli snipers. And it worked. Israel has similar video (from Reuters actually) showing U.N. ambulances ferrying armed men. "Yes," says Gruber with resignation, "the 'ambulances' were always at the front."
There are scores of other examples -- Hamas firing from mosques, schools, private homes, and hospitals. The very fact that Hamas used human shields betrays their admission that Israel abides by ethical standards in war fighting. They took advantage of Israel's moral qualms about harming non-combatants. Now they accuse Israel of the crimes they themselves committed -- deliberately targeting civilians by raining down 12,000 missiles on southern Israel since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Gruber grudgingly accepts the moral asymmetry. "I will not shoot a civilian for his sake, but also for the sake of my soul," he explains. The more intolerable injustice is the world's embrace of the lies and calumnies now peddled by the same people who sent those kids into the streets in a war zone.
Friday, October 30, 2009
The war over the war in Gaza is heating up. Next week, the United Nations General Assembly will consider the tendentious Goldstone Report, the highest profile exercise in blaming the victim in the U.N.'s tawdry history. Simultaneously, lawyers in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Norway are drawing up criminal indictments against IDF officers who participated in the Gaza operation. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that a number of names are on a police watch list for arrest and detention should they attempt to enter Britain.
Israel's enemies certainly seek to terrorize and demoralize Israel. But the more important campaign -- which is gaining traction -- is to delegitimize her and to brand Israel's self-defense as a war crime.
Because the United States has not yet descended to that level of moral inversion, I was able to sit down yesterday with Col. Ben Gruber, deputy commander of the armored division of the IDF, and one of the officers who participated in the Gaza campaign. Like 80 percent of the IDF, Gruber is a reservist. In civilian life, he's a computer scientist and father of five.
Soft-spoken and reflective, Gruber tries to think the best of everyone -- even Richard Goldstone. "He could not have read" this report before attaching his name to it, Gruber sighs. Readily acknowledging that mistakes are always made in war, and that those who intentionally transgress deserve punishment, Gruber is dumbfounded that the Goldstone report accuses Israel of "deliberately" targeting civilians.
Consider the assessment of Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and a veteran of the Gulf War and the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia. "During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population."
What army has offered 48 hours notice to its enemies of planned operations? Israel did so, dropping 2 million leaflets in advance of army movements. Twenty-four hours before the IDF moved on a suspected terrorist site, the army phoned civilians to warn them to evacuate. There were 100,000 calls. And five minutes before an operation began, the IDF sent out text messages. The calls and messages contained not just warnings, but instructions on which roads were safe to take and which schools or other buildings could be used for shelter. In the midst of the conflict, hundreds of trucks brought food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza.
In Rafa, Israel sought to close 225 tunnels (with 800 entrances) used to smuggle arms to Gaza from Egypt. The easiest and safest course for the IDF would have been to level the homes without warning that contained the entrances using air power or tanks. In Gaza City, to avoid civilian casualties, IDF infantrymen went house to house, encountering booby traps along the way and fending off seven attempted kidnappings.
Hamas was so confident that Israel would not knowingly shoot at civilians that they hid behind human shields throughout the short war. It was common, when word came of an impending attack, for Hamas to send children out to play in the streets at that moment. "Will I shoot?" Gruber asks. "I will not." There is video of a terrorist with a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder grabbing a 10-year-old boy by the collar and dragging him across the street to deter Israeli snipers. And it worked. Israel has similar video (from Reuters actually) showing U.N. ambulances ferrying armed men. "Yes," says Gruber with resignation, "the 'ambulances' were always at the front."
There are scores of other examples -- Hamas firing from mosques, schools, private homes, and hospitals. The very fact that Hamas used human shields betrays their admission that Israel abides by ethical standards in war fighting. They took advantage of Israel's moral qualms about harming non-combatants. Now they accuse Israel of the crimes they themselves committed -- deliberately targeting civilians by raining down 12,000 missiles on southern Israel since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Gruber grudgingly accepts the moral asymmetry. "I will not shoot a civilian for his sake, but also for the sake of my soul," he explains. The more intolerable injustice is the world's embrace of the lies and calumnies now peddled by the same people who sent those kids into the streets in a war zone.
When Sports-Lefties Go Political
Larry Elder
Thursday, October 29, 2009
We've now established that Rush Limbaugh cannot own an NFL team given his "unacceptable" (read: conservative) political comments. What about sports figures, executives and commentators who offer their left-leaning political thoughts?
Many of us turn to the sports pages before the news section. For just a moment, we can put aside worries about the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, ObamaCare, the "peril" of "global warming," government bailouts and the feds' borrowing and spending.
In sports, we want to read or hear about who ran the fastest, scored the most points, defeated the opponent. In sports, there is an oasis -- until anti-GOP, anti-Bush, anti-conservative comments slap us.
National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern was asked whether Kobe Bryant should continue to play while being prosecuted for rape. Stern responded: "Absolutely. We don't have a Patriot Act in the NBA. That means that you're innocent until proven guilty." What does the Patriot Act --passed to fight terrorism -- have to do with the presumption of innocence or guilt?
New York Times sports writer George Vecsey wrote about how the French handled the allegation that cyclist Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs. Vecsey wrote, "Personally, I think the French have linked Armstrong with George W. Bush, surely a disservice to the cyclist." Nice.
Stephen A. Smith -- the usually insightful and entertaining ESPN analyst -- in an appearance on Chris Matthews' MSNBC show, said, "(Republican former New York Mayor Rudolph) Giuliani is a dictator." Oh.
New York Times sports writer Harvey Araton, in an article about friction between two U.S. Olympic speedskaters, wrote, "At the root of the conflict is (one skater's) belief that (the other skater) has been attempting to swift boat him." You see, "Swift boating," to many liberals, has now become a synonym for "lying." Never mind that the real "Swift boaters" were ex-military men raising legitimate points about the military record of former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Bryant Gumbel, on his HBO "Real Sports" program, said that he wouldn't watch the Winter Olympics. Gumbel said, "Try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention." Gumbel, too, finds soccer boring because he knows "that in soccer they score about as often as Ann Coulter makes sense."
When then-Gov. and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin attended a hockey game in Philadelphia, The New York Times posted a story from a hockey blogger, who wrote, "Palin ... was greeted by resounding (almost deafening) boos from the Flyers crowd." Really? The Associated Press wrote: "The Alaska governor and self-described 'hockey mom' heard a few boos when she walked onto the ice, but that soon turned to polite applause. ... Palin waved to the crowd and smiled as she dropped the puck to applause and cheers." (Maybe Palin attended two different games.) At least the Times quickly pulled down and replaced its post with a more accurate version.
Norman Chad, a syndicated sports columnist, bemoaned the dearth of black sports editors and staff. He asserted, "We're whiter than Newt Gingrich's Fourth of July barbecue."
Maxim magazine asked NBA basketball superstar LeBron James, "If there was one guy on the planet you could dunk on, who would it be?" James responded: "If it doesn't have to be a basketball player, George W. Bush. I would dunk on his ass, break the rim, and shatter the glass." Bush's sport was baseball. Wouldn't former prep-school baller President Barack Obama present a bigger challenge?
Popular television sports analyst and former NBA star Charles Barkley said, "I was a Republican until they lost their minds." He also offered that only two presidents in his lifetime -- Clinton and Carter -- had ever done anything for black people.
Nation magazine's sports editor, Dave Zirin, condemned Limbaugh's interest in purchasing an NFL team as "having somebody in an NFL owner's box who (players) know views them with naked and open contempt because of the color of their skin."
John Salley, former NBA player and co-host of Fox Sports' "Best Damn Sports Show Period," said in an appearance on a podcast: "I have a question: Do you hate Obama? Why are so many people -- who now hate him -- after just 266 days they loved him? (sic) All of white America. Not all of 'em but the majority." So, opposition to policies equals "hate."
New York Times sports columnist Selena Roberts, when it became increasingly clear that Duke lacrosse players were innocent of rape, channeled her inner Dan my-facts-are-wrong-but-my-point's-valid Rather: "What happens if all the charges are dismissed? There is ... the irrefutable culture of misogyny, racial animus and athlete entitlement that went unrestrained that night." Hey, they were falsely accused, but, well, let's examine the big picture.
Now then -- if it's not too much to ask -- how did the Yanks do last night?
Thursday, October 29, 2009
We've now established that Rush Limbaugh cannot own an NFL team given his "unacceptable" (read: conservative) political comments. What about sports figures, executives and commentators who offer their left-leaning political thoughts?
Many of us turn to the sports pages before the news section. For just a moment, we can put aside worries about the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, ObamaCare, the "peril" of "global warming," government bailouts and the feds' borrowing and spending.
In sports, we want to read or hear about who ran the fastest, scored the most points, defeated the opponent. In sports, there is an oasis -- until anti-GOP, anti-Bush, anti-conservative comments slap us.
National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern was asked whether Kobe Bryant should continue to play while being prosecuted for rape. Stern responded: "Absolutely. We don't have a Patriot Act in the NBA. That means that you're innocent until proven guilty." What does the Patriot Act --passed to fight terrorism -- have to do with the presumption of innocence or guilt?
New York Times sports writer George Vecsey wrote about how the French handled the allegation that cyclist Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs. Vecsey wrote, "Personally, I think the French have linked Armstrong with George W. Bush, surely a disservice to the cyclist." Nice.
Stephen A. Smith -- the usually insightful and entertaining ESPN analyst -- in an appearance on Chris Matthews' MSNBC show, said, "(Republican former New York Mayor Rudolph) Giuliani is a dictator." Oh.
New York Times sports writer Harvey Araton, in an article about friction between two U.S. Olympic speedskaters, wrote, "At the root of the conflict is (one skater's) belief that (the other skater) has been attempting to swift boat him." You see, "Swift boating," to many liberals, has now become a synonym for "lying." Never mind that the real "Swift boaters" were ex-military men raising legitimate points about the military record of former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Bryant Gumbel, on his HBO "Real Sports" program, said that he wouldn't watch the Winter Olympics. Gumbel said, "Try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention." Gumbel, too, finds soccer boring because he knows "that in soccer they score about as often as Ann Coulter makes sense."
When then-Gov. and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin attended a hockey game in Philadelphia, The New York Times posted a story from a hockey blogger, who wrote, "Palin ... was greeted by resounding (almost deafening) boos from the Flyers crowd." Really? The Associated Press wrote: "The Alaska governor and self-described 'hockey mom' heard a few boos when she walked onto the ice, but that soon turned to polite applause. ... Palin waved to the crowd and smiled as she dropped the puck to applause and cheers." (Maybe Palin attended two different games.) At least the Times quickly pulled down and replaced its post with a more accurate version.
Norman Chad, a syndicated sports columnist, bemoaned the dearth of black sports editors and staff. He asserted, "We're whiter than Newt Gingrich's Fourth of July barbecue."
Maxim magazine asked NBA basketball superstar LeBron James, "If there was one guy on the planet you could dunk on, who would it be?" James responded: "If it doesn't have to be a basketball player, George W. Bush. I would dunk on his ass, break the rim, and shatter the glass." Bush's sport was baseball. Wouldn't former prep-school baller President Barack Obama present a bigger challenge?
Popular television sports analyst and former NBA star Charles Barkley said, "I was a Republican until they lost their minds." He also offered that only two presidents in his lifetime -- Clinton and Carter -- had ever done anything for black people.
Nation magazine's sports editor, Dave Zirin, condemned Limbaugh's interest in purchasing an NFL team as "having somebody in an NFL owner's box who (players) know views them with naked and open contempt because of the color of their skin."
John Salley, former NBA player and co-host of Fox Sports' "Best Damn Sports Show Period," said in an appearance on a podcast: "I have a question: Do you hate Obama? Why are so many people -- who now hate him -- after just 266 days they loved him? (sic) All of white America. Not all of 'em but the majority." So, opposition to policies equals "hate."
New York Times sports columnist Selena Roberts, when it became increasingly clear that Duke lacrosse players were innocent of rape, channeled her inner Dan my-facts-are-wrong-but-my-point's-valid Rather: "What happens if all the charges are dismissed? There is ... the irrefutable culture of misogyny, racial animus and athlete entitlement that went unrestrained that night." Hey, they were falsely accused, but, well, let's examine the big picture.
Now then -- if it's not too much to ask -- how did the Yanks do last night?
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Guantanamo Laureate
Barack Obama threw many stones at George W. Bush, and now lives in a glass house.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Over the last decade Barack Obama — in campaign mode for various state and federal offices — repeatedly denounced the Bush-era security protocols as either unlawful or of little utility. Indeed, few political figures made the case so unremittingly that the United States had gone rogue in its zealotry to fight terror.
To perpetual candidate Obama, there were no tragic choices, no hazy areas of human frailty, no recognition that well-intentioned public servants were doing their best under trying circumstances to keep Americans safe, and to do so as humanely as possible. Instead, the so-called “war on terror” became an easy target for a demagogue worried more about scoring political points than about understanding the plight of his country at war.
Rendition? Obama once called that “shipping away prisoners in the dead of night.”
Military tribunals? They were nothing more than a “flawed military commission system.”
Preventive detention of terrorists? To Obama that was “detaining thousands without charge or trial.”
How about the surge of troops into Iraq? “Not working.”
And the Patriot Act? “Shoddy and dangerous.”
But nothing so roused candidate Obama’s scorn as the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. To him, it was a “sad chapter in American history”; “a legal black hole”; “a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus”; etc. On the stump he serially caricatured it before cheering audiences as some sort of Soviet-style gulag. Not once but in succession he vowed to close it down by January 2010, to mark a symbolic year’s period of change in the era of Obama.
But that might not happen quite so easily. Around 50 to 60 prisoners who have been released have returned to some sort of terrorist activity — most recently the Guantanamo alumnus Yousef Mohammed al-Shihri, who was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and was killed earlier this month in a terrorist operation at the Saudi-Yemeni border.
Apparently few foreign governments want back their own home-grown terrorists who have been caught on the battlefield — unless we pay huge bribes and quit worrying whether the released prisoners might be tortured or summarily executed upon their arrival home.
Indeed, many nations may have put themselves in a rough spot: If it was rather easy to slur the cowboy Bush as a Nazi-like jailer who wouldn’t close down his shop of horrors and release innocent suspects, it is harder to deal with a kinder, gentler Obama who wants to release terrorist-killers into their care.
Candidate Obama often sounded as if he had always assumed that Bush first created Guantanamo as a monument to his Constitution-shredding paranoia, and only later filled it with largely innocent prisoners. At one point Obama offered his Senate office to help lawyers sue on behalf of Guantanamo prisoners.
But as President Obama has discovered — just as he has dropped his campaign talk of ending renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, and intercepts, and of rapidly withdrawing from Iraq — Guantanamo is a bad choice among a number of worse ones.
In declared wars against uniformed enemies, we might — as we did during World War II — build POW camps and detain captured enemies until the peace was ratified. Even in nebulous wars like the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts, there were most often uniformed fighters, and formal written intentions, armistices, and declarations that marked the beginning or ending of hostilities.
But after 9/11, we faced an enemy that had attacked the continental United States in a deadly fashion beyond the ability of the Nazis, imperial Japanese, and Soviets, but without uniforms — or even conventional military forces as we had known them in the past. Yet al-Qaeda and its Taliban sympathizers were not quite a handful of criminals who could be individually tried and convicted for terrorist acts, given that there were thousands of radical Islamists along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border who had committed mayhem — both on the field of battle as combatants, and in foreign sanctuaries as architects of terrorism.
The ad hoc solution at Guantanamo sprang up, in other words, for want of a better idea of what to do with hundreds of such captured monsters. Were we to put them all on much-celebrated trials, with public defenders or publicity-seeking radical pro bono lawyers, with changes of venue to fairer jury pools in Berkeley or Madison, and with intricate legal disputes over contaminated evidence in Waziristan and lack of Miranda warnings in Kandahar?
The problems of Guantanamo’s existence transcend George W. Bush. That truth is evidenced by the reluctance of Obama himself to summarily close it down, and of his aficionados abroad to make his task easier by accepting their own detained nationals, and of his liberal supporters to extend the same sort of invective to him as they did to Bush for not shutting it down.
But there is one other problem with closing Guantanamo — perhaps the greatest of the paradoxes that will plague Obama. Since he took office, there has been a marked increase in Predator assassination strikes, both inside Pakistan and on its borders. Indeed, in just nine months Obama has approved more Predator strikes than did George Bush in three years. By some accounts, dozens, maybe hundreds, of terrorist suspects and their families have been obliterated from the air since January 2009. In a few cases, women and children near the intended targets have also gone up in the Hellfire-induced smoke; in others we have tragically hit the wrong targets and executed the innocent.
Yet once the Obama administration went down the path of redefining war as courtroom procedure, and assuming that the United States was somehow amoral in not extending habeas corpus and American jurisprudence to captured terrorists, then almost everything the United States does in our newly dubbed “overseas contingency operations” is ripe for legal scrutiny.
Personally, if I were a terrorist suspect, I’d rather be picked up by a Special Forces team in the Hindu Kush, be shipped to Cuba, have my case reviewed by military lawyers, be allowed a Middle Eastern diet, and be provided with a Koran and arrows pointing to Mecca than simply wait to have my head exploded without warning by a Hellfire missile, while sitting inside my mud-brick hideout in Waziristan alongside my soon-to-be-incinerated family.
When Bush ordered such Predator attacks, it was seen as part of a brutal war, in which the United States had few options to stop terrorists from committing another 9/11. In such a messy, horrific struggle, Predators — like Guantanamo — were seen as terrible choices amid more terrible alternatives.
But not now. An administration that wants to investigate former CIA officials for their part in Guantanamo, assures the Europeans and the UN that “Bush did it,” and has made the case that America’s name was sullied through unnecessary and cruel detentions, surely cannot become investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner in one millisecond from the skies over Pakistan. Sorry, no such leeway is allowed messianic moralists.
Even the charismatic Barack Obama cannot convince his liberal base for long that it is horribly wrong to waterboard Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the planner of the mass-murdering on 9/11, but perfectly fine to incinerate an al-Qaeda suspect along with noncombatants in his general vicinity.
In short, Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded for those who loudly promise to undo George Bush’s work, not to trump him.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Over the last decade Barack Obama — in campaign mode for various state and federal offices — repeatedly denounced the Bush-era security protocols as either unlawful or of little utility. Indeed, few political figures made the case so unremittingly that the United States had gone rogue in its zealotry to fight terror.
To perpetual candidate Obama, there were no tragic choices, no hazy areas of human frailty, no recognition that well-intentioned public servants were doing their best under trying circumstances to keep Americans safe, and to do so as humanely as possible. Instead, the so-called “war on terror” became an easy target for a demagogue worried more about scoring political points than about understanding the plight of his country at war.
Rendition? Obama once called that “shipping away prisoners in the dead of night.”
Military tribunals? They were nothing more than a “flawed military commission system.”
Preventive detention of terrorists? To Obama that was “detaining thousands without charge or trial.”
How about the surge of troops into Iraq? “Not working.”
And the Patriot Act? “Shoddy and dangerous.”
But nothing so roused candidate Obama’s scorn as the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. To him, it was a “sad chapter in American history”; “a legal black hole”; “a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus”; etc. On the stump he serially caricatured it before cheering audiences as some sort of Soviet-style gulag. Not once but in succession he vowed to close it down by January 2010, to mark a symbolic year’s period of change in the era of Obama.
But that might not happen quite so easily. Around 50 to 60 prisoners who have been released have returned to some sort of terrorist activity — most recently the Guantanamo alumnus Yousef Mohammed al-Shihri, who was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and was killed earlier this month in a terrorist operation at the Saudi-Yemeni border.
Apparently few foreign governments want back their own home-grown terrorists who have been caught on the battlefield — unless we pay huge bribes and quit worrying whether the released prisoners might be tortured or summarily executed upon their arrival home.
Indeed, many nations may have put themselves in a rough spot: If it was rather easy to slur the cowboy Bush as a Nazi-like jailer who wouldn’t close down his shop of horrors and release innocent suspects, it is harder to deal with a kinder, gentler Obama who wants to release terrorist-killers into their care.
Candidate Obama often sounded as if he had always assumed that Bush first created Guantanamo as a monument to his Constitution-shredding paranoia, and only later filled it with largely innocent prisoners. At one point Obama offered his Senate office to help lawyers sue on behalf of Guantanamo prisoners.
But as President Obama has discovered — just as he has dropped his campaign talk of ending renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, and intercepts, and of rapidly withdrawing from Iraq — Guantanamo is a bad choice among a number of worse ones.
In declared wars against uniformed enemies, we might — as we did during World War II — build POW camps and detain captured enemies until the peace was ratified. Even in nebulous wars like the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts, there were most often uniformed fighters, and formal written intentions, armistices, and declarations that marked the beginning or ending of hostilities.
But after 9/11, we faced an enemy that had attacked the continental United States in a deadly fashion beyond the ability of the Nazis, imperial Japanese, and Soviets, but without uniforms — or even conventional military forces as we had known them in the past. Yet al-Qaeda and its Taliban sympathizers were not quite a handful of criminals who could be individually tried and convicted for terrorist acts, given that there were thousands of radical Islamists along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border who had committed mayhem — both on the field of battle as combatants, and in foreign sanctuaries as architects of terrorism.
The ad hoc solution at Guantanamo sprang up, in other words, for want of a better idea of what to do with hundreds of such captured monsters. Were we to put them all on much-celebrated trials, with public defenders or publicity-seeking radical pro bono lawyers, with changes of venue to fairer jury pools in Berkeley or Madison, and with intricate legal disputes over contaminated evidence in Waziristan and lack of Miranda warnings in Kandahar?
The problems of Guantanamo’s existence transcend George W. Bush. That truth is evidenced by the reluctance of Obama himself to summarily close it down, and of his aficionados abroad to make his task easier by accepting their own detained nationals, and of his liberal supporters to extend the same sort of invective to him as they did to Bush for not shutting it down.
But there is one other problem with closing Guantanamo — perhaps the greatest of the paradoxes that will plague Obama. Since he took office, there has been a marked increase in Predator assassination strikes, both inside Pakistan and on its borders. Indeed, in just nine months Obama has approved more Predator strikes than did George Bush in three years. By some accounts, dozens, maybe hundreds, of terrorist suspects and their families have been obliterated from the air since January 2009. In a few cases, women and children near the intended targets have also gone up in the Hellfire-induced smoke; in others we have tragically hit the wrong targets and executed the innocent.
Yet once the Obama administration went down the path of redefining war as courtroom procedure, and assuming that the United States was somehow amoral in not extending habeas corpus and American jurisprudence to captured terrorists, then almost everything the United States does in our newly dubbed “overseas contingency operations” is ripe for legal scrutiny.
Personally, if I were a terrorist suspect, I’d rather be picked up by a Special Forces team in the Hindu Kush, be shipped to Cuba, have my case reviewed by military lawyers, be allowed a Middle Eastern diet, and be provided with a Koran and arrows pointing to Mecca than simply wait to have my head exploded without warning by a Hellfire missile, while sitting inside my mud-brick hideout in Waziristan alongside my soon-to-be-incinerated family.
When Bush ordered such Predator attacks, it was seen as part of a brutal war, in which the United States had few options to stop terrorists from committing another 9/11. In such a messy, horrific struggle, Predators — like Guantanamo — were seen as terrible choices amid more terrible alternatives.
But not now. An administration that wants to investigate former CIA officials for their part in Guantanamo, assures the Europeans and the UN that “Bush did it,” and has made the case that America’s name was sullied through unnecessary and cruel detentions, surely cannot become investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner in one millisecond from the skies over Pakistan. Sorry, no such leeway is allowed messianic moralists.
Even the charismatic Barack Obama cannot convince his liberal base for long that it is horribly wrong to waterboard Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the planner of the mass-murdering on 9/11, but perfectly fine to incinerate an al-Qaeda suspect along with noncombatants in his general vicinity.
In short, Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded for those who loudly promise to undo George Bush’s work, not to trump him.
Fido, a.k.a. the Climate Criminal
Environmental activists live in a fantasyland.
By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The government cannot have my dog.
Don’t tell that to the authors of the new book Time to Eat the Dog?: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living. They calculate that dog owning is much worse than SUV driving for the planet. So when you see a car heading to the dog park with some happy labs drooling out the window, you should think “climate criminals.”
Meanwhile, in less surprising news, cats (long known as the handmaidens of Satan) have roughly the ecological paw print of a Volkswagen Golf.
Authors Robert and Brenda Vale don’t actually suggest you eat your dog. But they do say we’d be better off if we weaned ourselves from pets that treat Gaia like a fire hydrant. Better to play fetch with our pet chickens and then eat them.
The book has gotten lots of press because dogs and cats sell newspapers. What interests me is how environmental activists live in a fantasyland.
The push in Congress for a huge new carbon tax is a dangerous farce. Yes, CO2 levels and global temperatures have risen since the Industrial Revolution, and that’s something to take seriously. But the political reality is that truly meaningful global restrictions on CO2 emissions in the near future simply will not happen, and pretending otherwise is a waste of time, money, and political capital.
Last week, the Pew Research Center released a poll showing that belief in, and concern for, climate change is evaporating. Belief in global warming has dropped from 71 percent in April to 57 percent; only 36 percent believe man is mostly responsible for climate change. Only 35 percent of respondents said it’s a “very serious problem,” down from 41 percent.
This is after more than a decade of near-relentless fearmongering — er, sorry, “education” — from Al Gore, academia, and Hollywood. They can’t persuade the American people to spend trillions for less than a degree Celsius of cooling a century from now.
No doubt the fact that neither climate models nor doomsday predictions have panned out (there has been no increase in global temperatures since 1998) is a big part of the story.
But my hunch is that the bigger reason for the shift is that Democrats are threatening to really do something about it, and the costs no longer seem hypothetical. Throw in a bad economy, and Americans simply balk. And that’s Americans — the notion that China, India, and Brazil are going to don carbon handcuffs is just silly. Those countries want to get rich, and they’ll gladly sell their carbon to do it.
But the anti-global-warming industry seems to be on autopilot, churning out books that only half-jokingly propose eating your pets. Others insist that Americans will have to restrict themselves to only one child, just like in authoritarian China. If those are the costs, free people will not pay them.
In response to popular reluctance, the Jeremiahs are not only getting more shrill, they’re starting to resent democracy itself, sounding more and more like they want to make an end-run around the people.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for example, has made no secret of his envy for China’s ability to Get Things Done. In 2005, he wrote: “I cannot help but feel a tinge of jealousy at China’s ability to be serious about its problems and actually do things that are tough and require taking things away from people.” Last month, he lamented that the GOP’s refusal to bend to Democratic cap-and-trade proposals demonstrated that our system of “one-party democracy” is worse than China’s “one-party autocracy.”
Meanwhile, an international bureaucracy pushes “global governance” to combat climate change, heedless of popular sentiment. America’s founders revolted to protest too much taxation and too little representation. The notion that America will sacrifice its sovereignty and treasure — and dogs! — to reduce warming by a fraction a century from now is absurd.
If you cannot afford — politically, morally, or economically — the solution to a perceived problem, then it’s not a solution. We cannot afford to end the use of carbon-based energy, so a better strategy is to develop remedies for the bad side effects of carbon use.
That’s the case Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner make in their book SuperFreakonomics, which is already being torn apart by environmentalists horrified at the notion they might lose their license to Get Things Done as they see fit.
Is the atmosphere getting too hot? Cool it down by reflecting away more sunlight. The ocean’s getting too acidic? Give it some antacid.
The technology’s not ready. But pursuing it for a couple of decades will cost pennies compared with carbon rationing. Moreover, you just might get to keep your dog.
By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The government cannot have my dog.
Don’t tell that to the authors of the new book Time to Eat the Dog?: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living. They calculate that dog owning is much worse than SUV driving for the planet. So when you see a car heading to the dog park with some happy labs drooling out the window, you should think “climate criminals.”
Meanwhile, in less surprising news, cats (long known as the handmaidens of Satan) have roughly the ecological paw print of a Volkswagen Golf.
Authors Robert and Brenda Vale don’t actually suggest you eat your dog. But they do say we’d be better off if we weaned ourselves from pets that treat Gaia like a fire hydrant. Better to play fetch with our pet chickens and then eat them.
The book has gotten lots of press because dogs and cats sell newspapers. What interests me is how environmental activists live in a fantasyland.
The push in Congress for a huge new carbon tax is a dangerous farce. Yes, CO2 levels and global temperatures have risen since the Industrial Revolution, and that’s something to take seriously. But the political reality is that truly meaningful global restrictions on CO2 emissions in the near future simply will not happen, and pretending otherwise is a waste of time, money, and political capital.
Last week, the Pew Research Center released a poll showing that belief in, and concern for, climate change is evaporating. Belief in global warming has dropped from 71 percent in April to 57 percent; only 36 percent believe man is mostly responsible for climate change. Only 35 percent of respondents said it’s a “very serious problem,” down from 41 percent.
This is after more than a decade of near-relentless fearmongering — er, sorry, “education” — from Al Gore, academia, and Hollywood. They can’t persuade the American people to spend trillions for less than a degree Celsius of cooling a century from now.
No doubt the fact that neither climate models nor doomsday predictions have panned out (there has been no increase in global temperatures since 1998) is a big part of the story.
But my hunch is that the bigger reason for the shift is that Democrats are threatening to really do something about it, and the costs no longer seem hypothetical. Throw in a bad economy, and Americans simply balk. And that’s Americans — the notion that China, India, and Brazil are going to don carbon handcuffs is just silly. Those countries want to get rich, and they’ll gladly sell their carbon to do it.
But the anti-global-warming industry seems to be on autopilot, churning out books that only half-jokingly propose eating your pets. Others insist that Americans will have to restrict themselves to only one child, just like in authoritarian China. If those are the costs, free people will not pay them.
In response to popular reluctance, the Jeremiahs are not only getting more shrill, they’re starting to resent democracy itself, sounding more and more like they want to make an end-run around the people.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for example, has made no secret of his envy for China’s ability to Get Things Done. In 2005, he wrote: “I cannot help but feel a tinge of jealousy at China’s ability to be serious about its problems and actually do things that are tough and require taking things away from people.” Last month, he lamented that the GOP’s refusal to bend to Democratic cap-and-trade proposals demonstrated that our system of “one-party democracy” is worse than China’s “one-party autocracy.”
Meanwhile, an international bureaucracy pushes “global governance” to combat climate change, heedless of popular sentiment. America’s founders revolted to protest too much taxation and too little representation. The notion that America will sacrifice its sovereignty and treasure — and dogs! — to reduce warming by a fraction a century from now is absurd.
If you cannot afford — politically, morally, or economically — the solution to a perceived problem, then it’s not a solution. We cannot afford to end the use of carbon-based energy, so a better strategy is to develop remedies for the bad side effects of carbon use.
That’s the case Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner make in their book SuperFreakonomics, which is already being torn apart by environmentalists horrified at the notion they might lose their license to Get Things Done as they see fit.
Is the atmosphere getting too hot? Cool it down by reflecting away more sunlight. The ocean’s getting too acidic? Give it some antacid.
The technology’s not ready. But pursuing it for a couple of decades will cost pennies compared with carbon rationing. Moreover, you just might get to keep your dog.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
According to Alfred Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who: "during the preceding year, shall have done … the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, 2009 saw a record 205 nominations who competed against President Barack Obama for this year's Nobel Laureate. We don't know the names of other nominees who were passed over because Nobel Foundation statutes do not permit information about nominations, considerations or investigations relating to awarding the prize to be made public for at least 50 years after a prize has been awarded. Nominations from 1901 to 1955, however, have been released. Past nominees included Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. Since it takes only one qualified person to nominate someone, these nominations do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Nobel committee members.
When I heard that Obama was selected for this year's Nobel Laureate, I felt a bit embarrassed for him, and given his comment in the Rose Garden, he must have felt a bit embarrassed as well. He said, "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize, men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace."
Typically, the Nobel Prize is awarded to someone, or an organization, that has actually done something, even if that something is controversial or unwise. But what has President Obama accomplished compared to other Nobel Laureates? One might speculate that the Nobel Committee selected Obama because it has started an affirmative action policy and has seen the virtues of racial diversity, which is all the rage these days, particularly among the elite. After all, the committee hasn't seen fit to give the award to a person of African ancestry since it honored Nelson Mandela in 1993 and earlier Desmond Tutu (1984), Martin Luther King (1964) and Ralph Bunche (1950). So far as people of African ancestry, the Nobel Committee has a ways to go. While people of African ancestry are roughly 14 percent of the world's population, they are only five percent of the 98 individuals, since 1901, seen fit to be Nobel Laureates. Having awarded the Peace Prize to only three Asians, while Asians are almost 55 percent of the world's population, suggests that the Nobel Committee's Far Eastern diversity problem is insurmountable.
There might be other reasons why Obama was chosen. He has generated considerable goodwill among Europeans because he shares many of their values. Europeans are a people with little willingness to defend themselves. They are people who believe that peace treaties, appeasement and disarmament produce peace. As such, Obama has thrown in with their lot not to be a unilateralist and pledging to pursue a world without nuclear weapons. If Europeans had any sense, they should be worried about Obama's vision. Americans pulled their chestnuts out of the fire in World War I, World War II and prevented them from being gobbled up by the communists during the Cold War. If we become a military weakling, who is going to protect Europe against a future tyrant? In addition to Obama's goodwill among Europeans, shouldn't we be worried about the goodwill and praise our president has received from enemies of liberty such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Muammar Qaddafi and Vladimir Putin?
President Obama could rise several notches in my book if he refused the Nobel Peace Prize, with a nice letter to the Nobel Committee that might read: Since you did not see fit to award Ronald Reagan, the U.S. president who did the most for world peace in this century, by peaceably shutting down the Soviet Union, I respectfully decline your offer.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
According to Alfred Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who: "during the preceding year, shall have done … the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, 2009 saw a record 205 nominations who competed against President Barack Obama for this year's Nobel Laureate. We don't know the names of other nominees who were passed over because Nobel Foundation statutes do not permit information about nominations, considerations or investigations relating to awarding the prize to be made public for at least 50 years after a prize has been awarded. Nominations from 1901 to 1955, however, have been released. Past nominees included Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. Since it takes only one qualified person to nominate someone, these nominations do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Nobel committee members.
When I heard that Obama was selected for this year's Nobel Laureate, I felt a bit embarrassed for him, and given his comment in the Rose Garden, he must have felt a bit embarrassed as well. He said, "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize, men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace."
Typically, the Nobel Prize is awarded to someone, or an organization, that has actually done something, even if that something is controversial or unwise. But what has President Obama accomplished compared to other Nobel Laureates? One might speculate that the Nobel Committee selected Obama because it has started an affirmative action policy and has seen the virtues of racial diversity, which is all the rage these days, particularly among the elite. After all, the committee hasn't seen fit to give the award to a person of African ancestry since it honored Nelson Mandela in 1993 and earlier Desmond Tutu (1984), Martin Luther King (1964) and Ralph Bunche (1950). So far as people of African ancestry, the Nobel Committee has a ways to go. While people of African ancestry are roughly 14 percent of the world's population, they are only five percent of the 98 individuals, since 1901, seen fit to be Nobel Laureates. Having awarded the Peace Prize to only three Asians, while Asians are almost 55 percent of the world's population, suggests that the Nobel Committee's Far Eastern diversity problem is insurmountable.
There might be other reasons why Obama was chosen. He has generated considerable goodwill among Europeans because he shares many of their values. Europeans are a people with little willingness to defend themselves. They are people who believe that peace treaties, appeasement and disarmament produce peace. As such, Obama has thrown in with their lot not to be a unilateralist and pledging to pursue a world without nuclear weapons. If Europeans had any sense, they should be worried about Obama's vision. Americans pulled their chestnuts out of the fire in World War I, World War II and prevented them from being gobbled up by the communists during the Cold War. If we become a military weakling, who is going to protect Europe against a future tyrant? In addition to Obama's goodwill among Europeans, shouldn't we be worried about the goodwill and praise our president has received from enemies of liberty such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Muammar Qaddafi and Vladimir Putin?
President Obama could rise several notches in my book if he refused the Nobel Peace Prize, with a nice letter to the Nobel Committee that might read: Since you did not see fit to award Ronald Reagan, the U.S. president who did the most for world peace in this century, by peaceably shutting down the Soviet Union, I respectfully decline your offer.
A Personal Touch to President Bush
Matt Latimer
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
In "What I Saw at the Revolution," speechwriter Peggy Noonan's chronicle of her time in the Reagan administration, she includes a story about sitting in the Oval Office with President Reagan when his hearing aid starts to beep. As she relates the scene, none of the President's super-serious, gray-looking aides bothered to tell the President about the device's malfunction. Noonan looks on, perhaps a little embarrassed, as the President finally figures it out for himself and pulls the thing out of his ear and fixes it. It's a brief little moment in Reagan's presidency, but something about it stuck with me. Maybe it was because I could picture it in my mind. I could see Reagan there, charmingly non-plussed about the problem, while his aides shifted around uncomfortably in their chairs. Or maybe it was the simple humanness of it all -- a man, a great man, in his seventies coping with old age. Like many young conservatives, I admired Ronald Reagan. I wanted to know everything about him.
There are many stories about great men that, while not always flattering, offer a special glimpse into who they were as people. We know about Lyndon Johnson’s famous dictation sessions from his toilet. We’ve learned about his wily machinations with political figures. We know about Richard Nixon asking Henry Kissinger to pray with him during Watergate and we know about his wild rants directed against his political enemies. These are stories that these prominent men never wanted us to know, but they add a rich texture to who they were as human beings.
Recently, my book SPEECH-LESS was subjected to the usual tut-tutting from over-serious Washingtonians about some of the behind-the-scenes glimpses I offered of well-known figures I worked with during my time on Capitol Hill, at the Pentagon and in the White House. The glimpses of President Bush in particular raised ire.
None of the comments I attributed to the President were all that shocking. He didn't think much of the McCain campaign. Who did? He questioned Barack Obama's qualifications and thought Joe Biden was a big mouth. Not exactly a newsflash. He used salty language about Hillary Clinton. This shouldn’t be a surprise: many Presidents have said equally bracing things and with similarly colorful words. We don't think differently of Harry Truman because he cussed from time to time. (Some people may think more of him for it.)
Another scene in the book hasn't received as much attention. It's a small one, to be sure, but equally telling about the President. In 2007, my dad had come with me to the White House Christmas Party and we stood in line to get our picture taken with President and Mrs. Bush. As we stood getting our picture taken, President Bush leaned over and told my father, “You should be really proud of your son.” My dad was so startled to be in the White House that it was clear he didn't hear what Bush had said. The President noticed that too. He knew what a special moment it would be for me, so he tapped my dad on the shoulder and tried again. "You should be very proud of your son," Bush repeated. My dad beamed. "I am," he said. It is one thing to tell people that George W. Bush could be a generous and thoughtful man. But it is quite another to tell a story that demonstrates it.
Perhaps most telling for me and many other conservatives was the scene I chronicled in which the President expressed his separations from the conservative movement that the rest of us believed in. "I redefined the Republican Party," he told us. With a shrug, he seemed to look at the Goldwater-Buckley-Reagan movement as a relic of the past. That doesn't make him a bad person. But it does explain why many conservatives were uncomfortable with his presidency. He never really thought of himself as a member of the base conservative movement. And as we begin to weigh the Bush record, and what it meant for the Republican Party, that's something Americans need to know.
According to those who actually read my book, President Bush comes off as smart, funny, quick-witted, tart-tongued, occasionally offensive, sometimes playful, keenly self-aware, uncomfortably edgy, deeply compassionate, politically insightful, and blunt (sometimes to a fault). In fact, he was all those things. He was a far more complex and interesting figure than people usually saw on their television screens. Reading what he said in his own words gives him a weight and fullness. a certain realness, that people have a right to observe and measure on their own.
So when I'm asked how I feel about revealing a behind-the-scenes look at President Bush, my answer is I wish I'd revealed even more. Thankfully, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and many others will be publishing their own memoirs, providing their own glimpses of truly historic times and their own behind the curtain looks at a momentous presidency.
I can't wait to read them.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
In "What I Saw at the Revolution," speechwriter Peggy Noonan's chronicle of her time in the Reagan administration, she includes a story about sitting in the Oval Office with President Reagan when his hearing aid starts to beep. As she relates the scene, none of the President's super-serious, gray-looking aides bothered to tell the President about the device's malfunction. Noonan looks on, perhaps a little embarrassed, as the President finally figures it out for himself and pulls the thing out of his ear and fixes it. It's a brief little moment in Reagan's presidency, but something about it stuck with me. Maybe it was because I could picture it in my mind. I could see Reagan there, charmingly non-plussed about the problem, while his aides shifted around uncomfortably in their chairs. Or maybe it was the simple humanness of it all -- a man, a great man, in his seventies coping with old age. Like many young conservatives, I admired Ronald Reagan. I wanted to know everything about him.
There are many stories about great men that, while not always flattering, offer a special glimpse into who they were as people. We know about Lyndon Johnson’s famous dictation sessions from his toilet. We’ve learned about his wily machinations with political figures. We know about Richard Nixon asking Henry Kissinger to pray with him during Watergate and we know about his wild rants directed against his political enemies. These are stories that these prominent men never wanted us to know, but they add a rich texture to who they were as human beings.
Recently, my book SPEECH-LESS was subjected to the usual tut-tutting from over-serious Washingtonians about some of the behind-the-scenes glimpses I offered of well-known figures I worked with during my time on Capitol Hill, at the Pentagon and in the White House. The glimpses of President Bush in particular raised ire.
None of the comments I attributed to the President were all that shocking. He didn't think much of the McCain campaign. Who did? He questioned Barack Obama's qualifications and thought Joe Biden was a big mouth. Not exactly a newsflash. He used salty language about Hillary Clinton. This shouldn’t be a surprise: many Presidents have said equally bracing things and with similarly colorful words. We don't think differently of Harry Truman because he cussed from time to time. (Some people may think more of him for it.)
Another scene in the book hasn't received as much attention. It's a small one, to be sure, but equally telling about the President. In 2007, my dad had come with me to the White House Christmas Party and we stood in line to get our picture taken with President and Mrs. Bush. As we stood getting our picture taken, President Bush leaned over and told my father, “You should be really proud of your son.” My dad was so startled to be in the White House that it was clear he didn't hear what Bush had said. The President noticed that too. He knew what a special moment it would be for me, so he tapped my dad on the shoulder and tried again. "You should be very proud of your son," Bush repeated. My dad beamed. "I am," he said. It is one thing to tell people that George W. Bush could be a generous and thoughtful man. But it is quite another to tell a story that demonstrates it.
Perhaps most telling for me and many other conservatives was the scene I chronicled in which the President expressed his separations from the conservative movement that the rest of us believed in. "I redefined the Republican Party," he told us. With a shrug, he seemed to look at the Goldwater-Buckley-Reagan movement as a relic of the past. That doesn't make him a bad person. But it does explain why many conservatives were uncomfortable with his presidency. He never really thought of himself as a member of the base conservative movement. And as we begin to weigh the Bush record, and what it meant for the Republican Party, that's something Americans need to know.
According to those who actually read my book, President Bush comes off as smart, funny, quick-witted, tart-tongued, occasionally offensive, sometimes playful, keenly self-aware, uncomfortably edgy, deeply compassionate, politically insightful, and blunt (sometimes to a fault). In fact, he was all those things. He was a far more complex and interesting figure than people usually saw on their television screens. Reading what he said in his own words gives him a weight and fullness. a certain realness, that people have a right to observe and measure on their own.
So when I'm asked how I feel about revealing a behind-the-scenes look at President Bush, my answer is I wish I'd revealed even more. Thankfully, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and many others will be publishing their own memoirs, providing their own glimpses of truly historic times and their own behind the curtain looks at a momentous presidency.
I can't wait to read them.
What Happened to Liberalism?
Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
On Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2009, congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) appeared opposite Ralph Nader on "The Ed Schultz Show." When Nader questioned Frank's far-left bona fides, Frank quickly responded, "we are trying on every front to increase the role of government."
This is what today's liberal movement has become. Stripped to its essentials, modern liberalism is now a nakedly ambitious power grab by corrupt officials, their union allies and faux-victimized purloiners of the taxpayer till. Its underlying premises -- the ultimate goodness of government, the ultimate evil of the American population -- are plainly inconsistent with the foundations of constitutional philosophy.
It was not always thus. Over the weekend, I had a chance to re-read one of my favorite authors, John Steinbeck. Steinbeck was considered for decades the leading authorial spokesman for the blue collar left. "The Grapes of Wrath," his most famous work, is undoubtedly a liberal tract -- it condemns the harshness of unbridled capitalism and asks (literally) for the milk of human kindness.
Whereas today's liberal spokespeople have been infected by a virulent anti-Americanism that sees all businessmen as profiteers and all public workers as saints, Steinbeck was a patriot. He worried about the lack of kindness he saw in his fellow men, particularly the willingness to cut corners to make a buck -- but at the same time, he saw the virtue of freedom.
In 1960, Steinbeck wrote a piece in Newsday magazine in which he explained his view of morality. "[It's] very clear that peoples are strong when they are moral in the sense that the good of the group or the nation takes precedence over the selfish good of the individual. And we know from many examples of the past that when this is reversed and the individual raids the public good for his own purposes, the laws of decay have set in." In short, a nation comprised of a group of individuals governed by a common morality is stronger than an agglomeration of atomistic individuals acting solely for their own benefit.
Steinbeck's brand of liberalism made political debate a real possibility. After all, conservatives agree that men are neither angels nor devils, and that not everyone will behave with the same honor as an Ayn Rand-ian hero. Steinbeck's solution to the problem of "immorality" was not necessarily more government, but better men in government, and not necessarily more regulation, but more self-regulation. Communal standards were important, but there was no guarantee that government would be the best judge of communal standards. As Steinbeck wrote shortly before his death, "It is our national conviction that politics is a dirty, tricky and dishonest pursuit and that all politicians are crooks. The reason for this attitude is fairly obvious -- we have had cynical and dishonest officials on all levels of our government."
Steinbeck was embraced by the 1930s New Deal liberals because he wrongly saw FDR's collectivist efforts as a corrective to the moral problem posed by supposed individual exploitation of the system. But Steinbeck's brand of liberalism was rejected wholesale by the left in the 1960s. Suggestions that Americans embrace traditional morality were no longer enough for the left -- a broader transformation of American values was necessary.
Critics labeled Steinbeck a relic of the past, his morality was too old-fashioned. Time magazine said that he had entered "late-middle-aged petulance." Detractors on his left claimed that he was too wedded to capitalism, that he was archaically clinging to nationalistic feelings regarding the military (especially after his reports from Vietnam, which accurately described the Viet Cong as barbaric), and that he was not sufficiently utopian.
And so Steinbeck's philosophy was jettisoned. The American people no longer had the potential for good -- now they were all rapacious individuals dedicated to plundering their fellows. Government was no longer susceptible to corruption; it was now the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, and the best embodiment of the collective. Liberalism, which was once a philosophy of doubt -- doubt about both the individual and the government -- became a philosophy of certainty.
Modern liberalism is now impoverished by its own simplicity. Government is always the solution, and individualism is always the problem. As President Obama so succinctly put it in 2008, "our individual salvation depends on collective salvation." Steinbeck's liberalism put it differently: "It believe that man is a double thing -- a group animal and at the same time an individual. And it occurs to me that he cannot successfully be the second until he has fulfilled the first." The founders would have agreed with Steinbeck. Today's liberals agree with Frank and Obama. The day authentic liberalism died, so did the possibility of bridging the gap between modern liberalism and the founding principles of our country.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
On Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2009, congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) appeared opposite Ralph Nader on "The Ed Schultz Show." When Nader questioned Frank's far-left bona fides, Frank quickly responded, "we are trying on every front to increase the role of government."
This is what today's liberal movement has become. Stripped to its essentials, modern liberalism is now a nakedly ambitious power grab by corrupt officials, their union allies and faux-victimized purloiners of the taxpayer till. Its underlying premises -- the ultimate goodness of government, the ultimate evil of the American population -- are plainly inconsistent with the foundations of constitutional philosophy.
It was not always thus. Over the weekend, I had a chance to re-read one of my favorite authors, John Steinbeck. Steinbeck was considered for decades the leading authorial spokesman for the blue collar left. "The Grapes of Wrath," his most famous work, is undoubtedly a liberal tract -- it condemns the harshness of unbridled capitalism and asks (literally) for the milk of human kindness.
Whereas today's liberal spokespeople have been infected by a virulent anti-Americanism that sees all businessmen as profiteers and all public workers as saints, Steinbeck was a patriot. He worried about the lack of kindness he saw in his fellow men, particularly the willingness to cut corners to make a buck -- but at the same time, he saw the virtue of freedom.
In 1960, Steinbeck wrote a piece in Newsday magazine in which he explained his view of morality. "[It's] very clear that peoples are strong when they are moral in the sense that the good of the group or the nation takes precedence over the selfish good of the individual. And we know from many examples of the past that when this is reversed and the individual raids the public good for his own purposes, the laws of decay have set in." In short, a nation comprised of a group of individuals governed by a common morality is stronger than an agglomeration of atomistic individuals acting solely for their own benefit.
Steinbeck's brand of liberalism made political debate a real possibility. After all, conservatives agree that men are neither angels nor devils, and that not everyone will behave with the same honor as an Ayn Rand-ian hero. Steinbeck's solution to the problem of "immorality" was not necessarily more government, but better men in government, and not necessarily more regulation, but more self-regulation. Communal standards were important, but there was no guarantee that government would be the best judge of communal standards. As Steinbeck wrote shortly before his death, "It is our national conviction that politics is a dirty, tricky and dishonest pursuit and that all politicians are crooks. The reason for this attitude is fairly obvious -- we have had cynical and dishonest officials on all levels of our government."
Steinbeck was embraced by the 1930s New Deal liberals because he wrongly saw FDR's collectivist efforts as a corrective to the moral problem posed by supposed individual exploitation of the system. But Steinbeck's brand of liberalism was rejected wholesale by the left in the 1960s. Suggestions that Americans embrace traditional morality were no longer enough for the left -- a broader transformation of American values was necessary.
Critics labeled Steinbeck a relic of the past, his morality was too old-fashioned. Time magazine said that he had entered "late-middle-aged petulance." Detractors on his left claimed that he was too wedded to capitalism, that he was archaically clinging to nationalistic feelings regarding the military (especially after his reports from Vietnam, which accurately described the Viet Cong as barbaric), and that he was not sufficiently utopian.
And so Steinbeck's philosophy was jettisoned. The American people no longer had the potential for good -- now they were all rapacious individuals dedicated to plundering their fellows. Government was no longer susceptible to corruption; it was now the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, and the best embodiment of the collective. Liberalism, which was once a philosophy of doubt -- doubt about both the individual and the government -- became a philosophy of certainty.
Modern liberalism is now impoverished by its own simplicity. Government is always the solution, and individualism is always the problem. As President Obama so succinctly put it in 2008, "our individual salvation depends on collective salvation." Steinbeck's liberalism put it differently: "It believe that man is a double thing -- a group animal and at the same time an individual. And it occurs to me that he cannot successfully be the second until he has fulfilled the first." The founders would have agreed with Steinbeck. Today's liberals agree with Frank and Obama. The day authentic liberalism died, so did the possibility of bridging the gap between modern liberalism and the founding principles of our country.
Teacher (Mis)Education
Paul Greenberg
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
One of the brighter spots in the Obama administration is the country's new secretary of education, Arne Duncan, who may actually be interested in education -- as opposed to educational administration, bureaucracy, grantsmanship and all the other substitutes that have taken the place of actual learning in American schools.
Whatever he may achieve, Mr. Duncan shows a talent for diagnosing the problem, whether he's putting in a good word for charter schools -- even if his boss has just nixed a voucher program for those who most need it in the nation's capital -- or stressing the need for better teachers.
This time he's put his finger on what may be the source of American education's mediocre or worse performance: Our schools and departments of "education." They're the source of so much of the educanto that has covered the whole subject of education in this country with a thick patina of pseudo-scientific malarkey and fad-a-day theories. No wonder an aging bomber but still ideologue like Bill Ayers has thrived in a college faculty of education up there in Chicago. The way mold does in rotten timbers.
Secretary Duncan says he's been talking to hundreds of bright young teachers, who are the nation's real hope in education, and what he's found is that "most of them say they did not get the hands-on teacher training about managing the classroom that they needed, especially for high-needs students."
To fill that need is going to take a lot more than an annual mickeymouse class at some department of education. Or even promising innovations like KIPP academies and Teach For America, hopeful and impressive as such innovations have been. Real, basic, meaningful reform is going to take a revolution in the way American schools train the teachers of the future.
Secretary Duncan talks a good game. For instance, he says the administration is using part of its stimulus package to reward states that connect data on student achievement to the schools of education their teachers attended. Interesting. At least to the kind of researchers who think improving education is just a matter of graphs and numbers.
But how is student achievement defined? Only by test scores or something less definite and therefore less easily determined? Is student achievement just one factor out of many in determining where all that stimulus money will go? Or is this just another example of pork barrel spending to no clear purpose? Is it even possible in many states to link the schools that teachers attend to how well their students are doing?
Wouldn't it be simpler to just lift the caps that too many states now place on the creation of charter schools, reward those whose students are making marked progress, and close down the others? Or would that be unspeakably sensible?
All these games with numbers may only obscure the basic change that needs to be made in the education of American teachers: If teaching is ever to become a real profession instead of just another union membership, those in it should be prepared the way other professionals are. They should receive a thorough education, the real kind, in the arts and sciences before getting specialized training in their field, the way our physicians, lawyers and MBAs do.
What we see in teaching today is what one would expect if our doctors only had to major in medicine, filling in the rest of their curriculum with electives, and then were allowed to hang up their shingles once they had their undergraduate degree. A frightening prospect. Americans wouldn't put up with that, or at least let's hope they wouldn't. Surely the medical profession wouldn't. It knows better.
Yet we're turning over our most valuable national treasure, our young, to "professionals" who may have only an undergraduate degree, and that in a less than demanding curriculum. One of the reasons special programs geared to make teachers out of older, experienced adults aren't always successful is that many of these older students, especially the more intelligent or energetic, just can't take all the make-work courses required to become a certified teacher.
Like other professionals, the real kind, our teachers should get a well-rounded liberal education before they enter professional schools of education, where they would proceed not just to study child development but serve as interns and residents before being let loose in a classroom.
Talk about a revolution, such an approach -- already being pioneered by the best colleges -- would remake attitudes and goals in American education. And raise the level of respect that Americans ought to have for it. Not to mention the salary structure of teachers.
This Rx for American education is scarcely new. The diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of the problem was thoroughly mapped out decades ago, about the time Americans began to notice that Johnny couldn't read. Especially if Johnny came from a poor and/or broken family, not to mention a poor and broken community. Recommended reading, if only you can find a copy still in print: "The Miseducation of American Teachers" by James D. Koerner, copyright 1963.
Arne Duncan has his work cut out for him. So have we all. The education of teachers is no simple or instant thing. Any more than education itself is. Revolutionizing the education of American teachers will be a long and daunting task -- but it won't get any easier if we keep putting it off.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
One of the brighter spots in the Obama administration is the country's new secretary of education, Arne Duncan, who may actually be interested in education -- as opposed to educational administration, bureaucracy, grantsmanship and all the other substitutes that have taken the place of actual learning in American schools.
Whatever he may achieve, Mr. Duncan shows a talent for diagnosing the problem, whether he's putting in a good word for charter schools -- even if his boss has just nixed a voucher program for those who most need it in the nation's capital -- or stressing the need for better teachers.
This time he's put his finger on what may be the source of American education's mediocre or worse performance: Our schools and departments of "education." They're the source of so much of the educanto that has covered the whole subject of education in this country with a thick patina of pseudo-scientific malarkey and fad-a-day theories. No wonder an aging bomber but still ideologue like Bill Ayers has thrived in a college faculty of education up there in Chicago. The way mold does in rotten timbers.
Secretary Duncan says he's been talking to hundreds of bright young teachers, who are the nation's real hope in education, and what he's found is that "most of them say they did not get the hands-on teacher training about managing the classroom that they needed, especially for high-needs students."
To fill that need is going to take a lot more than an annual mickeymouse class at some department of education. Or even promising innovations like KIPP academies and Teach For America, hopeful and impressive as such innovations have been. Real, basic, meaningful reform is going to take a revolution in the way American schools train the teachers of the future.
Secretary Duncan talks a good game. For instance, he says the administration is using part of its stimulus package to reward states that connect data on student achievement to the schools of education their teachers attended. Interesting. At least to the kind of researchers who think improving education is just a matter of graphs and numbers.
But how is student achievement defined? Only by test scores or something less definite and therefore less easily determined? Is student achievement just one factor out of many in determining where all that stimulus money will go? Or is this just another example of pork barrel spending to no clear purpose? Is it even possible in many states to link the schools that teachers attend to how well their students are doing?
Wouldn't it be simpler to just lift the caps that too many states now place on the creation of charter schools, reward those whose students are making marked progress, and close down the others? Or would that be unspeakably sensible?
All these games with numbers may only obscure the basic change that needs to be made in the education of American teachers: If teaching is ever to become a real profession instead of just another union membership, those in it should be prepared the way other professionals are. They should receive a thorough education, the real kind, in the arts and sciences before getting specialized training in their field, the way our physicians, lawyers and MBAs do.
What we see in teaching today is what one would expect if our doctors only had to major in medicine, filling in the rest of their curriculum with electives, and then were allowed to hang up their shingles once they had their undergraduate degree. A frightening prospect. Americans wouldn't put up with that, or at least let's hope they wouldn't. Surely the medical profession wouldn't. It knows better.
Yet we're turning over our most valuable national treasure, our young, to "professionals" who may have only an undergraduate degree, and that in a less than demanding curriculum. One of the reasons special programs geared to make teachers out of older, experienced adults aren't always successful is that many of these older students, especially the more intelligent or energetic, just can't take all the make-work courses required to become a certified teacher.
Like other professionals, the real kind, our teachers should get a well-rounded liberal education before they enter professional schools of education, where they would proceed not just to study child development but serve as interns and residents before being let loose in a classroom.
Talk about a revolution, such an approach -- already being pioneered by the best colleges -- would remake attitudes and goals in American education. And raise the level of respect that Americans ought to have for it. Not to mention the salary structure of teachers.
This Rx for American education is scarcely new. The diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of the problem was thoroughly mapped out decades ago, about the time Americans began to notice that Johnny couldn't read. Especially if Johnny came from a poor and/or broken family, not to mention a poor and broken community. Recommended reading, if only you can find a copy still in print: "The Miseducation of American Teachers" by James D. Koerner, copyright 1963.
Arne Duncan has his work cut out for him. So have we all. The education of teachers is no simple or instant thing. Any more than education itself is. Revolutionizing the education of American teachers will be a long and daunting task -- but it won't get any easier if we keep putting it off.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Democrats' Policies Based on Dogma, Hopes, Dreams, not Reality
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
How is one to rationally explain the Democrats' belief that the government taking over another one-sixth of the American economy is a good thing?
The answer is religion.
Given the huge economic failures that the left itself attributes to Medicare and Medicaid and given the economic collapse or near collapse of these systems in other countries, the left's prescriptions can only be explained in one way: The left has made its views a form of religion.
Most individuals on the left are not religious, but virtually all people, secular and religious, liberal and conservative, yearn to believe in dogma, i.e., absolute beliefs that transcend reason. For people on the left in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, belief in the state -- the notion that the state can do a better job at helping people and making a good society -- is one such dogma. This applies especially to educating the young and to health care.
Examples of left-wing dogmas that transcend reason are as numerous as any religion's catechism. One example is the belief that men and women, boys and girls, are basically the same, that the vast majority of characteristics we ascribe to male and female natures are in fact socially induced. This irrational dogma was virtually universally believed and taught by the left-wing faculty when I attended college, and remains so today.
Another is the belief that manmade carbon dioxide emissions are heating the world to the point of imminent worldwide catastrophe, including island nations disappearing underwater, mass starvation, inundation of the world's major coastal areas and much more. The fact that the world has been getting colder for the last eight years is as irrelevant to most people on the left as the absence of archaeological evidence for the biblical exodus is irrelevant to believing Jews and Christians. That includes me; I do not believe in the Hebrew exodus from Egypt because of scientific evidence, but because of faith. But unlike the left's belief in manmade carbon emissions leading to unprecedented and calamitous heating of the planet, I admit my belief is a leap of faith. And my belief in the exodus will not ruin Western economies. In other words, my non-scientific belief in the Jews' exodus is innocuous while the left's non-scientific beliefs (though shrouded in scientific jargon and promulgated by scientists who put dogma over science) are forced on societies.
One cannot understand the left if one does not appreciate the world of dogmas in which most left-wing thinkers live. What the monastery is to monks, the university and the mainstream media are to the left.
That is the only way to explain the left's belief that government-run health care, having the government take over so much more of society, raising taxes yet again, expanding government even more and increasing the number of people employed by the government will all be good for America.
Dogma explains why it is useless to point out to the left how the left has economically crippled California, once the most prosperous, most adventurous, most successful "country" in the world (it has an economy that would make it about the seventh largest country in the world). Likewise, it does not matter to blacks what Democrats have done to their cities. As they watch their cities crumble, they will once again vote overwhelmingly for the party that oversaw this destruction.
None of these facts matters because religious-like dogmas are not derived from facts.
In addition to dogma, the left relies for its policies on "hope," which it often substitutes for analysis. People on the left rarely vote based on reality. They vote based on "hope." That's why the word "hope" is so much more significant to the left than to the right. The last two Democratic presidents ran as candidates of "hope." The right doesn't have "hope" candidates because conservatives don't live on hope. They live in reality, meaning that people are not born basically good; that investing men and women with great state power leads inevitably to abuse of that power; that people stop innovating if they are taxed too highly; and that a perfect health care system is understood to be impossible.
And, finally, the left dreams. Robert F. Kennedy often cited the statement first made by George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and say 'why?' I dream things that never were and say 'why not?'" The left dreams of an America in which health care will constantly improve, health insurance will be given to every American at the same price irrespective of his or her health, doctors will be fairly reimbursed, there will be no waiting lines, and there will not be a dime's increase in the national debt for all of this.
Frankly, I don't yearn for what is unseen. Rather, having a realistic understanding of the limitations of human beings, I am in awe of what I already see -- the unique American achievement of affluence, liberty, decency, opportunity and medical innovations.
And I see this all being squandered for the sake of left-wing dogma, left-wing hopes and left-wing dreams.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
How is one to rationally explain the Democrats' belief that the government taking over another one-sixth of the American economy is a good thing?
The answer is religion.
Given the huge economic failures that the left itself attributes to Medicare and Medicaid and given the economic collapse or near collapse of these systems in other countries, the left's prescriptions can only be explained in one way: The left has made its views a form of religion.
Most individuals on the left are not religious, but virtually all people, secular and religious, liberal and conservative, yearn to believe in dogma, i.e., absolute beliefs that transcend reason. For people on the left in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, belief in the state -- the notion that the state can do a better job at helping people and making a good society -- is one such dogma. This applies especially to educating the young and to health care.
Examples of left-wing dogmas that transcend reason are as numerous as any religion's catechism. One example is the belief that men and women, boys and girls, are basically the same, that the vast majority of characteristics we ascribe to male and female natures are in fact socially induced. This irrational dogma was virtually universally believed and taught by the left-wing faculty when I attended college, and remains so today.
Another is the belief that manmade carbon dioxide emissions are heating the world to the point of imminent worldwide catastrophe, including island nations disappearing underwater, mass starvation, inundation of the world's major coastal areas and much more. The fact that the world has been getting colder for the last eight years is as irrelevant to most people on the left as the absence of archaeological evidence for the biblical exodus is irrelevant to believing Jews and Christians. That includes me; I do not believe in the Hebrew exodus from Egypt because of scientific evidence, but because of faith. But unlike the left's belief in manmade carbon emissions leading to unprecedented and calamitous heating of the planet, I admit my belief is a leap of faith. And my belief in the exodus will not ruin Western economies. In other words, my non-scientific belief in the Jews' exodus is innocuous while the left's non-scientific beliefs (though shrouded in scientific jargon and promulgated by scientists who put dogma over science) are forced on societies.
One cannot understand the left if one does not appreciate the world of dogmas in which most left-wing thinkers live. What the monastery is to monks, the university and the mainstream media are to the left.
That is the only way to explain the left's belief that government-run health care, having the government take over so much more of society, raising taxes yet again, expanding government even more and increasing the number of people employed by the government will all be good for America.
Dogma explains why it is useless to point out to the left how the left has economically crippled California, once the most prosperous, most adventurous, most successful "country" in the world (it has an economy that would make it about the seventh largest country in the world). Likewise, it does not matter to blacks what Democrats have done to their cities. As they watch their cities crumble, they will once again vote overwhelmingly for the party that oversaw this destruction.
None of these facts matters because religious-like dogmas are not derived from facts.
In addition to dogma, the left relies for its policies on "hope," which it often substitutes for analysis. People on the left rarely vote based on reality. They vote based on "hope." That's why the word "hope" is so much more significant to the left than to the right. The last two Democratic presidents ran as candidates of "hope." The right doesn't have "hope" candidates because conservatives don't live on hope. They live in reality, meaning that people are not born basically good; that investing men and women with great state power leads inevitably to abuse of that power; that people stop innovating if they are taxed too highly; and that a perfect health care system is understood to be impossible.
And, finally, the left dreams. Robert F. Kennedy often cited the statement first made by George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and say 'why?' I dream things that never were and say 'why not?'" The left dreams of an America in which health care will constantly improve, health insurance will be given to every American at the same price irrespective of his or her health, doctors will be fairly reimbursed, there will be no waiting lines, and there will not be a dime's increase in the national debt for all of this.
Frankly, I don't yearn for what is unseen. Rather, having a realistic understanding of the limitations of human beings, I am in awe of what I already see -- the unique American achievement of affluence, liberty, decency, opportunity and medical innovations.
And I see this all being squandered for the sake of left-wing dogma, left-wing hopes and left-wing dreams.
Obama's War on Fox Is Liberalism's War on Dissent
David Limbaugh
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Can you imagine the outrage that would have ensued had former President George W. Bush declared off-limits those media outlets he thought (correctly) treated him unfairly?
Heck, the left declared him a dictator simply because he led a war on Iraq that Congress approved. He never tried to shut down his critics. He rarely even objected to their abuse.
But liberal politicians have been spoiled with mainstream media favoritism for so long that they believe anything other than sycophancy is mistreatment. Their selective outrage is as hollow as it is risible.
In fact, Fox News seems much more conservative than it is because no other television network over the past half-century has been anything but decidedly liberal. When the media norm is liberal, liberals equate liberalism with objectivity and deviations from it as bias, just as liberals preach tolerance toward all ideas -- except conservative ones. Their self-delusion is surreal.
Thus, Fox News Channel -- which has a number of liberal hosts, scores of liberal contributors, and nonstop liberal guests -- is painted as conservative because it is the only network that has more than one token conservative host.
Perhaps more of Fox's prominent hosts lean conservative than liberal, but unlike other networks, it scrupulously attempts to present both sides and to delineate its news from its editorializing.
But Obama's war against the network is about much more than Fox News. It is about his and his fellow liberals' intolerance for political dissent and their war on political criticism from any corner. Unless you shower Obama with adulation 24/7, you are ripe for targeting. They will abuse the power and prestige of the office of the presidency to "call you out." They have personally called out Rush Limbaugh and other media critics. They've targeted conservative talk radio for neutering, having assigned a Federal Communications Commission diversity czar that very task.
Unless you refrain from asking even marginally difficult questions of the administration, you are not only boycotted from access to interviews but demonized to boot. This way, Obama scores a twofer: He avoids almost all scrutiny from the mainstream media, scrutiny that even the Founders said is necessary to good government, and he discredits his political critics in the process.
What should alarm all First Amendment proponents is that so many liberals don't really champion the free and open expression of ideas; they only support the advancement of liberal policies, even if that means one-sided dominance to the point of indoctrination in our public schools and universities and in the media.
No bona fide conservative I have ever met would countenance for a millisecond the government suppression, in any way, of a certain political point of view just because it differs from his own. But I have talked with and received e-mails from many liberals who favor Obama's plan to emasculate conservative talk radio, who believe it's acceptable, nay, desirable for universities to present primarily the liberal worldview and for liberal politicians -- with the MSM's help -- to unilaterally declare a false consensus on such hotly disputed issues as man-made global warming.
A handful of liberals, to be fair, have criticized Obama for his war on Fox News and conservative talkers. But most aren't the least bit troubled by it and are probably secretly relishing it. Have you ever heard prominent liberal voices go after Keith Olbermann or other extremely liberal and biased MSNBC or CNN hosts as they have Fox and Sean Hannity?
Obama's approval numbers have cratered more rapidly than those of any other president in modern history, but can you imagine where they'd be and how much more his agenda would be stalemated (for the common good) if the MSM hadn't been covering for him but had been reporting the facts, not to mention the public's opposition to his agenda?
Where is the outrage over Obama's effort to turn this nation into a model of European socialism?
If it weren't for Fox News and conservative talk radio, think tanks, Web sites and blogs, this administration would be implementing its Draconian agenda unopposed, with no scrutiny of its march toward national bankruptcy, its rampant corruption (e.g., its Justice Department's dismissal of voter intimidation charges against New Black Panther members), its hyper-secrecy despite its pledges of transparency, its use of so-called stimulus money to enhance its re-election efforts, its failure to create jobs, its reckless indecision concerning added troops to Afghanistan, the rising death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan -- which the MSM used as a daily bludgeoning tool against the Bush administration -- its refusal to respect the public's repeated rejection of socialized medicine, its lies about Obamacare's costs and features, its mistreatment of Israel, its appeasement of Third World dictators, its apologies for the United States, its consumption of large segments of the private sector, and its cap-and-tax scheme to destroy our economy based on politicized "science."
Just imagine.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Can you imagine the outrage that would have ensued had former President George W. Bush declared off-limits those media outlets he thought (correctly) treated him unfairly?
Heck, the left declared him a dictator simply because he led a war on Iraq that Congress approved. He never tried to shut down his critics. He rarely even objected to their abuse.
But liberal politicians have been spoiled with mainstream media favoritism for so long that they believe anything other than sycophancy is mistreatment. Their selective outrage is as hollow as it is risible.
In fact, Fox News seems much more conservative than it is because no other television network over the past half-century has been anything but decidedly liberal. When the media norm is liberal, liberals equate liberalism with objectivity and deviations from it as bias, just as liberals preach tolerance toward all ideas -- except conservative ones. Their self-delusion is surreal.
Thus, Fox News Channel -- which has a number of liberal hosts, scores of liberal contributors, and nonstop liberal guests -- is painted as conservative because it is the only network that has more than one token conservative host.
Perhaps more of Fox's prominent hosts lean conservative than liberal, but unlike other networks, it scrupulously attempts to present both sides and to delineate its news from its editorializing.
But Obama's war against the network is about much more than Fox News. It is about his and his fellow liberals' intolerance for political dissent and their war on political criticism from any corner. Unless you shower Obama with adulation 24/7, you are ripe for targeting. They will abuse the power and prestige of the office of the presidency to "call you out." They have personally called out Rush Limbaugh and other media critics. They've targeted conservative talk radio for neutering, having assigned a Federal Communications Commission diversity czar that very task.
Unless you refrain from asking even marginally difficult questions of the administration, you are not only boycotted from access to interviews but demonized to boot. This way, Obama scores a twofer: He avoids almost all scrutiny from the mainstream media, scrutiny that even the Founders said is necessary to good government, and he discredits his political critics in the process.
What should alarm all First Amendment proponents is that so many liberals don't really champion the free and open expression of ideas; they only support the advancement of liberal policies, even if that means one-sided dominance to the point of indoctrination in our public schools and universities and in the media.
No bona fide conservative I have ever met would countenance for a millisecond the government suppression, in any way, of a certain political point of view just because it differs from his own. But I have talked with and received e-mails from many liberals who favor Obama's plan to emasculate conservative talk radio, who believe it's acceptable, nay, desirable for universities to present primarily the liberal worldview and for liberal politicians -- with the MSM's help -- to unilaterally declare a false consensus on such hotly disputed issues as man-made global warming.
A handful of liberals, to be fair, have criticized Obama for his war on Fox News and conservative talkers. But most aren't the least bit troubled by it and are probably secretly relishing it. Have you ever heard prominent liberal voices go after Keith Olbermann or other extremely liberal and biased MSNBC or CNN hosts as they have Fox and Sean Hannity?
Obama's approval numbers have cratered more rapidly than those of any other president in modern history, but can you imagine where they'd be and how much more his agenda would be stalemated (for the common good) if the MSM hadn't been covering for him but had been reporting the facts, not to mention the public's opposition to his agenda?
Where is the outrage over Obama's effort to turn this nation into a model of European socialism?
If it weren't for Fox News and conservative talk radio, think tanks, Web sites and blogs, this administration would be implementing its Draconian agenda unopposed, with no scrutiny of its march toward national bankruptcy, its rampant corruption (e.g., its Justice Department's dismissal of voter intimidation charges against New Black Panther members), its hyper-secrecy despite its pledges of transparency, its use of so-called stimulus money to enhance its re-election efforts, its failure to create jobs, its reckless indecision concerning added troops to Afghanistan, the rising death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan -- which the MSM used as a daily bludgeoning tool against the Bush administration -- its refusal to respect the public's repeated rejection of socialized medicine, its lies about Obamacare's costs and features, its mistreatment of Israel, its appeasement of Third World dictators, its apologies for the United States, its consumption of large segments of the private sector, and its cap-and-tax scheme to destroy our economy based on politicized "science."
Just imagine.
Feminists Psychoanalyze Themselves Again
Phyllis Schlafly
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The feminists are going through one of their periodic soul-searching psychological examinations of what the women's liberation movement did or did not do for them, and why they are not happy with the result. Feminist dominance in newspapers, magazines, book publishers, television and academia makes it easy to command a full media rollout for their agonizing.
The media are glad to divert public attention from the failure of Barack Obama's stimulus to create jobs. So, we have ponderous discussions: Maria Shriver's report (with help from a liberal think tank) called "A Woman's Nation Changes Everything," a Time Magazine cover story headlined with the double entendre "The State of the American Woman," Gail Collins' book "When Everything Changed" and articles from all the feminist columnists.
We wonder if it's just a coincidence that this torrent of words immediately precedes Halloween. The writers are scared of their own research because it contradicts much of their gender-neutral ideology.
These well-educated writers long ago identified the major goal of the women's liberation movement as getting more wives out of the home and into the labor force. They've been strikingly successful with this goal -- women are now half the labor force, and 40 percent of women are essential family breadwinners.
In the current recession, the majority of workers laid off have been men (especially from construction and manufacturing). Jobs where women predominate have not been much affected.
Even so, the feminists demanded that the Obama administration give half the stimulus jobs to women rather than to the shovel-ready work that was the reason for passing the stimulus funds. Whatever the feminists demand from the Democrats they get, and the stimulus money was directed to jobs in education, health care and social services.
So what are the feminists complaining about? They want the taxpayers to provide high-quality daycare and paid family leave, to pass laws to prohibit employers from ordering women to work overtime (as men are often required to do) and probably to force men to assume half the household and baby-care duties.
The feminists are still crying about President Richard Nixon vetoing a federal program to make daycare a middle-class entitlement. But Nixon's action was popular then and still is because the majority of Americans don't want their tax dollars to pay for babysitters for other people's children.
No doubt this will come as a shock to the feminists, but Time Magazine reports that "a majority of both men and women still say it is best for children to have a father working and a mother at home."
Women's percentage in the labor force keeps rising because of who is going to college. Thirty years ago, the ratio of males to females on college campuses was 60 to 40; now it's 40 to 60, and women receive the majority of college degrees.
But the feminists are griping because women students choose humanities majors that lead to lesser-paid jobs than male students, who in larger numbers choose math and science. The feminists want government to remedy this gender difference by bribing women with taxpayers' money to make other choices.
Joanne Lipman, who has held several of the biggest jobs in publishing but still whines that "progress for women has stalled," nevertheless makes a couple of sensible comments. She writes that feminists defined "progress for women too narrowly; we've focused primarily on numbers at the expense of attitudes."
She's right about that. Attitude is the problem with feminists -- as long as they believe they are victims of an oppressive patriarchy, they will never be successful.
Women won't be happy as long as they believe the false slogan (repeated in most of these current articles) that women make only 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. The Equal Pay Law was passed in 1963, but it requires only equal pay for equal work, and women in the labor force don't work nearly as many hours per week as men do.
Lipman also urges feminists to "have a sense of humor" -- a very constructive proposal. When I tell a joke during my college lectures, I can identify the feminists by the students who are not laughing.
Only one sentence in all these feminist articles confronts the fundamental reason that today's women are not as happy as women were in 1972. Time Magazine wrote, "Among the most dramatic changes in the past generation is the detachment of marriage and motherhood."
That's what the feminist movement did to America. All those impressive statistics about women holding well-paying jobs and receiving college degrees will not produce happy women as long as 39 percent of children are born to unmarried mothers who lack a loving husband and look to Big Brother Government as provider.
And one more glaring point: The lack of grandchildren isn't mentioned in these exposes of women's unhappiness. In rejecting marriage, most feminists also rejected the grandchildren who could have provided a significant measure of women's happiness.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The feminists are going through one of their periodic soul-searching psychological examinations of what the women's liberation movement did or did not do for them, and why they are not happy with the result. Feminist dominance in newspapers, magazines, book publishers, television and academia makes it easy to command a full media rollout for their agonizing.
The media are glad to divert public attention from the failure of Barack Obama's stimulus to create jobs. So, we have ponderous discussions: Maria Shriver's report (with help from a liberal think tank) called "A Woman's Nation Changes Everything," a Time Magazine cover story headlined with the double entendre "The State of the American Woman," Gail Collins' book "When Everything Changed" and articles from all the feminist columnists.
We wonder if it's just a coincidence that this torrent of words immediately precedes Halloween. The writers are scared of their own research because it contradicts much of their gender-neutral ideology.
These well-educated writers long ago identified the major goal of the women's liberation movement as getting more wives out of the home and into the labor force. They've been strikingly successful with this goal -- women are now half the labor force, and 40 percent of women are essential family breadwinners.
In the current recession, the majority of workers laid off have been men (especially from construction and manufacturing). Jobs where women predominate have not been much affected.
Even so, the feminists demanded that the Obama administration give half the stimulus jobs to women rather than to the shovel-ready work that was the reason for passing the stimulus funds. Whatever the feminists demand from the Democrats they get, and the stimulus money was directed to jobs in education, health care and social services.
So what are the feminists complaining about? They want the taxpayers to provide high-quality daycare and paid family leave, to pass laws to prohibit employers from ordering women to work overtime (as men are often required to do) and probably to force men to assume half the household and baby-care duties.
The feminists are still crying about President Richard Nixon vetoing a federal program to make daycare a middle-class entitlement. But Nixon's action was popular then and still is because the majority of Americans don't want their tax dollars to pay for babysitters for other people's children.
No doubt this will come as a shock to the feminists, but Time Magazine reports that "a majority of both men and women still say it is best for children to have a father working and a mother at home."
Women's percentage in the labor force keeps rising because of who is going to college. Thirty years ago, the ratio of males to females on college campuses was 60 to 40; now it's 40 to 60, and women receive the majority of college degrees.
But the feminists are griping because women students choose humanities majors that lead to lesser-paid jobs than male students, who in larger numbers choose math and science. The feminists want government to remedy this gender difference by bribing women with taxpayers' money to make other choices.
Joanne Lipman, who has held several of the biggest jobs in publishing but still whines that "progress for women has stalled," nevertheless makes a couple of sensible comments. She writes that feminists defined "progress for women too narrowly; we've focused primarily on numbers at the expense of attitudes."
She's right about that. Attitude is the problem with feminists -- as long as they believe they are victims of an oppressive patriarchy, they will never be successful.
Women won't be happy as long as they believe the false slogan (repeated in most of these current articles) that women make only 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. The Equal Pay Law was passed in 1963, but it requires only equal pay for equal work, and women in the labor force don't work nearly as many hours per week as men do.
Lipman also urges feminists to "have a sense of humor" -- a very constructive proposal. When I tell a joke during my college lectures, I can identify the feminists by the students who are not laughing.
Only one sentence in all these feminist articles confronts the fundamental reason that today's women are not as happy as women were in 1972. Time Magazine wrote, "Among the most dramatic changes in the past generation is the detachment of marriage and motherhood."
That's what the feminist movement did to America. All those impressive statistics about women holding well-paying jobs and receiving college degrees will not produce happy women as long as 39 percent of children are born to unmarried mothers who lack a loving husband and look to Big Brother Government as provider.
And one more glaring point: The lack of grandchildren isn't mentioned in these exposes of women's unhappiness. In rejecting marriage, most feminists also rejected the grandchildren who could have provided a significant measure of women's happiness.
State Budget Shortfalls Reveal Economic Fallacy
Cesar Conda
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
States and localities are facing budget shortfalls and unemployment rates not seen since the recession of the early 1980s. How elected officials choose to solve their budget problems will determine whether economic growth and jobs return to a state or locality or whether residents decide to vote with their feet and move to greener pastures.
A recent National Foundation for American Policy study authored by Dean Stansel, an economics professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, explains the connection between tax policy and economic growth. The study found employment growth between 2000-2006 was 54 percent higher in the 50 metropolitan areas with the lowest tax burden than in the 50 highest-tax metro areas. (Tax burden was measured for state and local taxes as a percent of personal income in 1997 for all 381 metropolitan areas.) The research also showed personal income growth was 80 percent higher between 2000 and 2006 in the 50 areas with the lowest state and local tax burden than in the 50 highest-tax metro areas.
As the study notes, “The results suggest a clear negative relationship between state and local tax burdens and local economic growth.” Stansel found the tax burden was nearly 50 percent higher in the 50 highest-tax areas than in the 50 lowest tax areas (13.1 percent of income vs. 8.8 percent of income). “All else being equal, individuals will tend to flee high-tax areas and flock to low-tax areas,” said Professor Stansel. “That is another reason why we would expect areas with lower taxes to see higher growth of population, employment, and income.”
The lessons locally can be seen nationally. The current Administration in Washington, D.C. is seeking to increase an assortment of taxes on everyone from entrepreneurs to the middle class in the form of increased income tax rates and more mandates, such as higher taxes on health insurance plans, medical devices and individuals who do not purchase insurance.
A simple rule to remember is if you make something more expensive, then you will likely get less of it. If success in business is taxed more, expect less risk-taking in the form of startup ventures. If labor is taxed more heavily and/or new employment costs are mandated on employers, then expect employers to hire fewer new workers than they would otherwise.
The key fallacy of the Bill Clinton years is that because President Clinton and Congress increased taxes in 1993 and the economy performed well throughout the 1990s, then that means the Clinton tax increases “caused” the economic prosperity. If that is true, then does that mean if taxes were raised even higher, such as to 90 percent of personal income, then the economy would have performed even better? Of course not. Did Michael Phelps win gold medals because he ate 12,000 calories a day worth of fatty foods or did he excel at the Olympics because he was a remarkable athlete who honed his skills to perform at a world-class level?
The credit for the good economy in the 1990s goes to entrepreneurs and other innovators and their employees, as well as the stable legal and investment framework in the United States that attracted capital during that decade. Simply because the 1993 Clinton tax increase did not harm the economy enough to prevent the entrepreneurial growth of the private sector that created the prosperity does not mean raising taxes is a prescription for better economic performance.
The U.S. Commerce Department’s revised figures for the fourth quarter of 1992 showed GDP (gross domestic product) increased at an annual rate of 4.7 percent. How could a tax increase that took effect several months after the economy was already growing be responsible for getting the economy back on track? The tax policy that deserves at least some of the credit for the economic performance of the 1990s was the 1997 cut in capital gains tax, which spurred growth and investment and helped bring about federal budget surpluses.
The National Foundation for American Policy study shows the United States is not just one large national economy but is made up of dozens or even hundreds of individual economies where growth in jobs, population and personal income are affected by state and local policies. Even a cursory look at recent state unemployment rates shows levels ranging from a low of 4.3 percent to a high of 15.2 percent. Taxes are not the only factor that affect job creation and where people choose to settle. But in an era when jobs, people and capital can move with seemingly lightening speed, elected officials are unwise to ignore the admonishment to keep taxes as low as possible.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
States and localities are facing budget shortfalls and unemployment rates not seen since the recession of the early 1980s. How elected officials choose to solve their budget problems will determine whether economic growth and jobs return to a state or locality or whether residents decide to vote with their feet and move to greener pastures.
A recent National Foundation for American Policy study authored by Dean Stansel, an economics professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, explains the connection between tax policy and economic growth. The study found employment growth between 2000-2006 was 54 percent higher in the 50 metropolitan areas with the lowest tax burden than in the 50 highest-tax metro areas. (Tax burden was measured for state and local taxes as a percent of personal income in 1997 for all 381 metropolitan areas.) The research also showed personal income growth was 80 percent higher between 2000 and 2006 in the 50 areas with the lowest state and local tax burden than in the 50 highest-tax metro areas.
As the study notes, “The results suggest a clear negative relationship between state and local tax burdens and local economic growth.” Stansel found the tax burden was nearly 50 percent higher in the 50 highest-tax areas than in the 50 lowest tax areas (13.1 percent of income vs. 8.8 percent of income). “All else being equal, individuals will tend to flee high-tax areas and flock to low-tax areas,” said Professor Stansel. “That is another reason why we would expect areas with lower taxes to see higher growth of population, employment, and income.”
The lessons locally can be seen nationally. The current Administration in Washington, D.C. is seeking to increase an assortment of taxes on everyone from entrepreneurs to the middle class in the form of increased income tax rates and more mandates, such as higher taxes on health insurance plans, medical devices and individuals who do not purchase insurance.
A simple rule to remember is if you make something more expensive, then you will likely get less of it. If success in business is taxed more, expect less risk-taking in the form of startup ventures. If labor is taxed more heavily and/or new employment costs are mandated on employers, then expect employers to hire fewer new workers than they would otherwise.
The key fallacy of the Bill Clinton years is that because President Clinton and Congress increased taxes in 1993 and the economy performed well throughout the 1990s, then that means the Clinton tax increases “caused” the economic prosperity. If that is true, then does that mean if taxes were raised even higher, such as to 90 percent of personal income, then the economy would have performed even better? Of course not. Did Michael Phelps win gold medals because he ate 12,000 calories a day worth of fatty foods or did he excel at the Olympics because he was a remarkable athlete who honed his skills to perform at a world-class level?
The credit for the good economy in the 1990s goes to entrepreneurs and other innovators and their employees, as well as the stable legal and investment framework in the United States that attracted capital during that decade. Simply because the 1993 Clinton tax increase did not harm the economy enough to prevent the entrepreneurial growth of the private sector that created the prosperity does not mean raising taxes is a prescription for better economic performance.
The U.S. Commerce Department’s revised figures for the fourth quarter of 1992 showed GDP (gross domestic product) increased at an annual rate of 4.7 percent. How could a tax increase that took effect several months after the economy was already growing be responsible for getting the economy back on track? The tax policy that deserves at least some of the credit for the economic performance of the 1990s was the 1997 cut in capital gains tax, which spurred growth and investment and helped bring about federal budget surpluses.
The National Foundation for American Policy study shows the United States is not just one large national economy but is made up of dozens or even hundreds of individual economies where growth in jobs, population and personal income are affected by state and local policies. Even a cursory look at recent state unemployment rates shows levels ranging from a low of 4.3 percent to a high of 15.2 percent. Taxes are not the only factor that affect job creation and where people choose to settle. But in an era when jobs, people and capital can move with seemingly lightening speed, elected officials are unwise to ignore the admonishment to keep taxes as low as possible.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Lies That Are Disputed
The Left gets history wrong.
By Conrad Black
Monday, October 26, 2009
Most thoughtful commentators bemoan the decline of bipartisanship and the coarsening of political discourse in the United States. The president promised to reach out to the opposition and hoped for 80 Senate votes for his stimulus bill. But he disregarded all Republican suggestions for the bill and acquiesced in its Pelosification into a groaning, creaking, Democratic gravy train.
I remember, as a very young person, the august comparative tranquillity of the Eisenhower era, when the president requested national air time only for matters of indisputable national interest. He never abused this privilege, and there was no call for equal time. The morning after his addresses, two giant, finned Cadillac limousines would convey the Democratic leaders of Congress, Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House to assure the president and the media of the rock-solid support of Congress.
At the heart of the degeneration from that level of trust is an embittering partisan difference over the national interest, built on competing versions of recent U.S. history. Those Democrats who think about these things believe that the Kennedy administration’s response to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a masterpiece of crisis management, an almost scientific path to a bloodless triumph. They believe the Kennedys would never have plunged into Vietnam, that Lyndon Johnson, despite his inestimable services to civil rights and the growth of the compassionate welfare state, blundered into a hopeless war (urged by the same people who had advised Kennedy during the Missile Crisis), and that he misled the public and provided a cautionary tale showing why the U.S. should commit forces to foreign combat only in precisely limited multinational operations of unquestionable virtue.
They believe that President Nixon took over the Vietnam War as his own, also misled the nation, and squandered 30,000 American lives in a shameful pursuit of a “decent interval” between the U.S. withdrawal and the collapse of the Saigon regime. According to this account, the Democrats forced a brave termination of the war with a shutdown of all aid to South Vietnam, and then redeemed the integrity of the U.S. government by forcing the departure of Nixon, a uniquely sleazy and villainous president. This version was frozen and fed to the public by the national media, who touted themselves as the heroic exposers of “imperial” government misfeasance, in Vietnam and Watergate.
Kay Graham’s version of what her late husband called the “rough first draft of history” became liberal holy writ. It was genuflected to like the Infant of Prague, and defended with the tenacity of the garrison of the Alamo. The conservative talk-show personalities who have grown like dandelions in opposition to this orchestrated groupthink, and the media controlled by Rupert Murdoch (Fox and the Wall Street Journal), are reviled as rabble-rousing muckrakers. (Murdoch is a more astute political maneuverer than has been seen in Washington for decades.)
The same liberals tend to believe that Ronald Reagan was “an amiable dunce,” though a “great communicator” and “Teflon man” (as opposed to a great orator and clever statesman). They claim Gorbachev ended the Cold War and Reagan seduced the country with a fools’ paradise of vulgar and easy self-gratification. It need hardly be added that George W. Bush has passed into these canons as a belligerent, pig-headed, semi-literate oaf.
Taken as a whole, this is a vulnerable catechism. We now know that there were 40,000 Soviet soldiers in Cuba in October 1962, and that the nuclear warheads were already in the country and could have been installed and fired in 24 hours. A disaster was avoided not by the portentous calibrations of Kennedy’s entourage, but by the president’s own, inspired, intuition. And it was no great strategic victory; in exchange for Soviet non-deployment in Cuba, the U.S. began the destabilization of the Turkish alliance by removing its long-deployed missiles in Greece and Turkey.
Lyndon Johnson had basically thrown in the towel in Vietnam in October 1966, when he offered Hanoi reciprocal withdrawal of forces from the South. If Ho Chi Minh had not thought that he could militarily defeat the United States, he would have accepted that offer, and crushed the South six months after the U.S. withdrawal. Johnson would not have tried to reintroduce ground forces, but Ho wouldn’t give the U.S. any cover for its disengagement; he was determined to humiliate it completely.
In April 1972, between Nixon’s historic visits to China and the USSR, the South Vietnamese defeated the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong invasion and offensive, with no U.S. ground support but with heavy air support. This formula might have kept South Vietnam afloat for 15 years, until international Communism collapsed. In his Silent Majority speech of November 1969, Nixon said that North Vietnam could not “defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” This is what happened, and the Democrats and the national media have been in steadily more implausible denial for over 30 years.
Watergate was nonsense. The House Judiciary Committee was a shameful riff-raff of grandstanding poseurs. Counsel John Doar’s charges against Nixon were a Stalin-worthy fantasy of what Kafka called “nameless crimes.” The “smoking gun” was tawdry but innocuous, and the only legal vulnerability was the payment of Watergate defendants’ expenses in possible consideration for altered testimony. This may have happened, but in a serious proceeding, it would have been very difficult to prove Nixon knew anything about it. He had a direct connection only to the supplementary payment to Howard Hunt, and it isn’t exactly clear what the consideration was. These were, and were not necessarily more than, what Nixon called “horrendous" mistakes “not worthy of a great president.”
Nixon’s only full term was, except for Lincoln’s one and FDR’s first and third, the most successful in history (founding the Environmental Protection Agency, ending the riots and assassinations and hijackings, ending the draft, reducing the crime rate, stopping inflation, the opening to China, SALT I, the Middle East peace process, and the withdrawal from Vietnam). His ethics were no more unprecedentedly deficient than his presidency aspired in any way to being imperial. Nixon was impeccably honest financially and an unwavering patriot. He had some infelicitous foibles that were worrisome, but they were grotesquely exaggerated by the media.
Thus did the Democrats discover the joys of criminalizing policy differences, which corresponded with the relentless rise of the powers of prosecutors in the country generally. They tried it again in the Iran-Contra foolishness, and the exemplary Caspar Weinberger briefly faced criminal prosecution. The Republicans returned the favor by deposing Speaker Jim Wright, sending Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski to prison, and taking President Clinton’s demeaning but hardly unprecedented peccadilloes to the only Senate impeachment trial of a president since Andrew Johnson.
Along with Truman, Nixon and Reagan did more than anyone else to win the Cold War, the greatest and most bloodless strategic victory in the history of the nation-state. Nixon was a master chess player, from propagator of the Red Scare in the Forties to architect of détente in the Seventies, to friend of Yeltsin in the Nineties. And Reagan was a great poker player; he raised the ante with his Strategic Defense Initiative, which the Democrats mocked, until the USSR was bankrupt. The U.S. now faces the consequences of the Democrats’ crucifixion of the one and over-mockery of the other.
The truth in all these controversies is between the poles, but the indigestible fact is that Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are closer to it than the New York Times and the traditional networks. In this vortex, the gerrymandering of congressional districts and entrenchment of special interests in campaign financing has gridlocked legislation as an earmark contest and an endless war of attrition waged through soundbites, sniping, posturing, and poll-taking. The political class has taken an almost vertical dive in respectability since Stevenson and Eisenhower, or Kennedy and Nixon, contested the presidency.
This is not a culture war. The prevailing ethos rests on the vibrating pillars of the demonization of Nixon and the myths of Vietnam. Napoleon famously described history as “lies agreed upon.” What we have now are lies that are disputed. The liberals must relinquish their claimed monopoly on virtue. The conservatives must cease implying that the liberals are traitors. And the national media must re-earn public confidence or be swept into a cul-de-sac by Murdoch, Limbaugh, and the rest.
By Conrad Black
Monday, October 26, 2009
Most thoughtful commentators bemoan the decline of bipartisanship and the coarsening of political discourse in the United States. The president promised to reach out to the opposition and hoped for 80 Senate votes for his stimulus bill. But he disregarded all Republican suggestions for the bill and acquiesced in its Pelosification into a groaning, creaking, Democratic gravy train.
I remember, as a very young person, the august comparative tranquillity of the Eisenhower era, when the president requested national air time only for matters of indisputable national interest. He never abused this privilege, and there was no call for equal time. The morning after his addresses, two giant, finned Cadillac limousines would convey the Democratic leaders of Congress, Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House to assure the president and the media of the rock-solid support of Congress.
At the heart of the degeneration from that level of trust is an embittering partisan difference over the national interest, built on competing versions of recent U.S. history. Those Democrats who think about these things believe that the Kennedy administration’s response to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a masterpiece of crisis management, an almost scientific path to a bloodless triumph. They believe the Kennedys would never have plunged into Vietnam, that Lyndon Johnson, despite his inestimable services to civil rights and the growth of the compassionate welfare state, blundered into a hopeless war (urged by the same people who had advised Kennedy during the Missile Crisis), and that he misled the public and provided a cautionary tale showing why the U.S. should commit forces to foreign combat only in precisely limited multinational operations of unquestionable virtue.
They believe that President Nixon took over the Vietnam War as his own, also misled the nation, and squandered 30,000 American lives in a shameful pursuit of a “decent interval” between the U.S. withdrawal and the collapse of the Saigon regime. According to this account, the Democrats forced a brave termination of the war with a shutdown of all aid to South Vietnam, and then redeemed the integrity of the U.S. government by forcing the departure of Nixon, a uniquely sleazy and villainous president. This version was frozen and fed to the public by the national media, who touted themselves as the heroic exposers of “imperial” government misfeasance, in Vietnam and Watergate.
Kay Graham’s version of what her late husband called the “rough first draft of history” became liberal holy writ. It was genuflected to like the Infant of Prague, and defended with the tenacity of the garrison of the Alamo. The conservative talk-show personalities who have grown like dandelions in opposition to this orchestrated groupthink, and the media controlled by Rupert Murdoch (Fox and the Wall Street Journal), are reviled as rabble-rousing muckrakers. (Murdoch is a more astute political maneuverer than has been seen in Washington for decades.)
The same liberals tend to believe that Ronald Reagan was “an amiable dunce,” though a “great communicator” and “Teflon man” (as opposed to a great orator and clever statesman). They claim Gorbachev ended the Cold War and Reagan seduced the country with a fools’ paradise of vulgar and easy self-gratification. It need hardly be added that George W. Bush has passed into these canons as a belligerent, pig-headed, semi-literate oaf.
Taken as a whole, this is a vulnerable catechism. We now know that there were 40,000 Soviet soldiers in Cuba in October 1962, and that the nuclear warheads were already in the country and could have been installed and fired in 24 hours. A disaster was avoided not by the portentous calibrations of Kennedy’s entourage, but by the president’s own, inspired, intuition. And it was no great strategic victory; in exchange for Soviet non-deployment in Cuba, the U.S. began the destabilization of the Turkish alliance by removing its long-deployed missiles in Greece and Turkey.
Lyndon Johnson had basically thrown in the towel in Vietnam in October 1966, when he offered Hanoi reciprocal withdrawal of forces from the South. If Ho Chi Minh had not thought that he could militarily defeat the United States, he would have accepted that offer, and crushed the South six months after the U.S. withdrawal. Johnson would not have tried to reintroduce ground forces, but Ho wouldn’t give the U.S. any cover for its disengagement; he was determined to humiliate it completely.
In April 1972, between Nixon’s historic visits to China and the USSR, the South Vietnamese defeated the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong invasion and offensive, with no U.S. ground support but with heavy air support. This formula might have kept South Vietnam afloat for 15 years, until international Communism collapsed. In his Silent Majority speech of November 1969, Nixon said that North Vietnam could not “defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” This is what happened, and the Democrats and the national media have been in steadily more implausible denial for over 30 years.
Watergate was nonsense. The House Judiciary Committee was a shameful riff-raff of grandstanding poseurs. Counsel John Doar’s charges against Nixon were a Stalin-worthy fantasy of what Kafka called “nameless crimes.” The “smoking gun” was tawdry but innocuous, and the only legal vulnerability was the payment of Watergate defendants’ expenses in possible consideration for altered testimony. This may have happened, but in a serious proceeding, it would have been very difficult to prove Nixon knew anything about it. He had a direct connection only to the supplementary payment to Howard Hunt, and it isn’t exactly clear what the consideration was. These were, and were not necessarily more than, what Nixon called “horrendous" mistakes “not worthy of a great president.”
Nixon’s only full term was, except for Lincoln’s one and FDR’s first and third, the most successful in history (founding the Environmental Protection Agency, ending the riots and assassinations and hijackings, ending the draft, reducing the crime rate, stopping inflation, the opening to China, SALT I, the Middle East peace process, and the withdrawal from Vietnam). His ethics were no more unprecedentedly deficient than his presidency aspired in any way to being imperial. Nixon was impeccably honest financially and an unwavering patriot. He had some infelicitous foibles that were worrisome, but they were grotesquely exaggerated by the media.
Thus did the Democrats discover the joys of criminalizing policy differences, which corresponded with the relentless rise of the powers of prosecutors in the country generally. They tried it again in the Iran-Contra foolishness, and the exemplary Caspar Weinberger briefly faced criminal prosecution. The Republicans returned the favor by deposing Speaker Jim Wright, sending Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski to prison, and taking President Clinton’s demeaning but hardly unprecedented peccadilloes to the only Senate impeachment trial of a president since Andrew Johnson.
Along with Truman, Nixon and Reagan did more than anyone else to win the Cold War, the greatest and most bloodless strategic victory in the history of the nation-state. Nixon was a master chess player, from propagator of the Red Scare in the Forties to architect of détente in the Seventies, to friend of Yeltsin in the Nineties. And Reagan was a great poker player; he raised the ante with his Strategic Defense Initiative, which the Democrats mocked, until the USSR was bankrupt. The U.S. now faces the consequences of the Democrats’ crucifixion of the one and over-mockery of the other.
The truth in all these controversies is between the poles, but the indigestible fact is that Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are closer to it than the New York Times and the traditional networks. In this vortex, the gerrymandering of congressional districts and entrenchment of special interests in campaign financing has gridlocked legislation as an earmark contest and an endless war of attrition waged through soundbites, sniping, posturing, and poll-taking. The political class has taken an almost vertical dive in respectability since Stevenson and Eisenhower, or Kennedy and Nixon, contested the presidency.
This is not a culture war. The prevailing ethos rests on the vibrating pillars of the demonization of Nixon and the myths of Vietnam. Napoleon famously described history as “lies agreed upon.” What we have now are lies that are disputed. The liberals must relinquish their claimed monopoly on virtue. The conservatives must cease implying that the liberals are traitors. And the national media must re-earn public confidence or be swept into a cul-de-sac by Murdoch, Limbaugh, and the rest.
The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
Paul Greenberg
Monday, October 26, 2009
It won't do, at least not in polite society, to propose wiping a country off the map. That mantra has been left to Iran's raving leader.
Instead, this year's tactic at the always-busy United Nations is to deny Israel the right to defend itself. Which would lead to its destruction soon enough. And that would be the practical effect of bringing its generals and ministers to trial for their "war crimes" in Gaza. That's where the Israelis, after absorbing years of rocket attacks across their southern border, went in and attacked the source of the attacks. Their border with Hamas-controlled Gaza has been quieter since.
Naturally the United Nations, which is a lot better at condoning aggression than enforcing the peace, is outraged -- and doing its best to stir things up again. Its "Human Rights" Council, which has little if anything to do with protecting human rights, especially in Islamic dictatorships, has demanded that Israel be brought before the International Court of Justice for daring to defend itself.
With fine impartiality between aggressors and defenders, an investigation sponsored by the UN produced a report that blamed both Hamas and Israel for their conduct during the late unpleasantness in Gaza, ignoring expert testimony and the conclusions of the Israelis' own extensive investigations.
The UN's Human Rights Council then turned its dubious report into another of its customary anti-Israeli resolutions. The prejudice here was so blatant that even the author of the report said he was saddened by the partisan use to which it was put.
The U.S. delegation and a few scattered European ones objected to this kind of lynch law, but both China and Russia, those great exemplars of human rights, joined the mob. So did the Arab bloc, another bastion of human rights.
The result: A biased jury brought in a biased verdict. What a surprise. Let it be said that at least this arm of the UN has been consistent: According to one count, 80 percent of the condemnations it's ever issued have been aimed at the Jewish state.
In the irony-free precincts of the United Nations, the chairman of the UN's Arab bloc this month is the delegate from Sudan, whose government presided over the genocide in Darfur, which is rapidly being forgotten.
These days even the United States, under our new administration, is adopting a softer, gentler tone toward the genocidal regime in Khartoum. For that matter, Washington is moving to "engage" Teheran and Moscow, too. And the military dictatorship in Burma to boot. Any regime that really violates human rights can hope to get a sympathetic hearing from this new crew at the State Department.
Nothing is likely to come of this latest diplomatic provocation at the United Nations except another delay in the always-stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. But any chance of those negotiations succeeding has always been only an abstraction. Even if the Israelis negotiated under this threat from the UN, with which Palestinian rump state/militia/gang/Iranian front group would they negotiate with? The one in Gaza or Damascus or Beirut on the West Bank?
The essential aim of the Arab side in this "peace process" that produces regular incidents and sporadic wars has never been to create a Palestinian state next to the Jewish one. Or that objective could have been achieved at almost any time during the past century by accepting one of the many proposals for partition of that overly promised land -- going back as far as the Peel Commission of 1937. Or as recently as the Oslo Accords of the 1990s. Or the summit that Yasser Arafat walked out of in the waning days of the Clinton administration in 2000.
Failure has followed failure because this diplomatic charade has never really been about creating still another Arab state in the Middle East but about destroying the Jewish one.
Monday, October 26, 2009
It won't do, at least not in polite society, to propose wiping a country off the map. That mantra has been left to Iran's raving leader.
Instead, this year's tactic at the always-busy United Nations is to deny Israel the right to defend itself. Which would lead to its destruction soon enough. And that would be the practical effect of bringing its generals and ministers to trial for their "war crimes" in Gaza. That's where the Israelis, after absorbing years of rocket attacks across their southern border, went in and attacked the source of the attacks. Their border with Hamas-controlled Gaza has been quieter since.
Naturally the United Nations, which is a lot better at condoning aggression than enforcing the peace, is outraged -- and doing its best to stir things up again. Its "Human Rights" Council, which has little if anything to do with protecting human rights, especially in Islamic dictatorships, has demanded that Israel be brought before the International Court of Justice for daring to defend itself.
With fine impartiality between aggressors and defenders, an investigation sponsored by the UN produced a report that blamed both Hamas and Israel for their conduct during the late unpleasantness in Gaza, ignoring expert testimony and the conclusions of the Israelis' own extensive investigations.
The UN's Human Rights Council then turned its dubious report into another of its customary anti-Israeli resolutions. The prejudice here was so blatant that even the author of the report said he was saddened by the partisan use to which it was put.
The U.S. delegation and a few scattered European ones objected to this kind of lynch law, but both China and Russia, those great exemplars of human rights, joined the mob. So did the Arab bloc, another bastion of human rights.
The result: A biased jury brought in a biased verdict. What a surprise. Let it be said that at least this arm of the UN has been consistent: According to one count, 80 percent of the condemnations it's ever issued have been aimed at the Jewish state.
In the irony-free precincts of the United Nations, the chairman of the UN's Arab bloc this month is the delegate from Sudan, whose government presided over the genocide in Darfur, which is rapidly being forgotten.
These days even the United States, under our new administration, is adopting a softer, gentler tone toward the genocidal regime in Khartoum. For that matter, Washington is moving to "engage" Teheran and Moscow, too. And the military dictatorship in Burma to boot. Any regime that really violates human rights can hope to get a sympathetic hearing from this new crew at the State Department.
Nothing is likely to come of this latest diplomatic provocation at the United Nations except another delay in the always-stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. But any chance of those negotiations succeeding has always been only an abstraction. Even if the Israelis negotiated under this threat from the UN, with which Palestinian rump state/militia/gang/Iranian front group would they negotiate with? The one in Gaza or Damascus or Beirut on the West Bank?
The essential aim of the Arab side in this "peace process" that produces regular incidents and sporadic wars has never been to create a Palestinian state next to the Jewish one. Or that objective could have been achieved at almost any time during the past century by accepting one of the many proposals for partition of that overly promised land -- going back as far as the Peel Commission of 1937. Or as recently as the Oslo Accords of the 1990s. Or the summit that Yasser Arafat walked out of in the waning days of the Clinton administration in 2000.
Failure has followed failure because this diplomatic charade has never really been about creating still another Arab state in the Middle East but about destroying the Jewish one.
Obama at Odds With His Own Vision for the World
Michael Barone
Monday, October 26, 2009
Barack Obama, who found time to go on a 24-hour jaunt to Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to seek the 2016 Olympics games for Chicago, apparently cannot find the time for a 24-hour trip to Berlin on Nov. 9 for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well, we all have our priorities, and the president can't be everywhere at once, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will surely represent the United States ably in Berlin.
Still, it seemed an odd decision to me -- until I went back and got the speech that candidate Obama delivered on July 24, 2008, to a crowd of 200,000 in the Tiergarten in Berlin. As I reread the text, it struck me that there would be an embarrassing contrast between what Obama said in Berlin 15 months ago and many of the policies he has been pursuing in his nine months as president.
Some conservatives were irritated that Obama introduced himself at the Tiergarten as "a fellow citizen of the world." But before that, he declared himself "a proud citizen of the United States," and of his 46 paragraphs only one was devoted to an apology for America's misdeeds ("our share of mistakes," "times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions"). Quite a contrast here with the more profuse apologies he has made abroad this year.
In addition, Obama in seven stirring paragraphs recounted America's airlift of food and fuel to Berlin when the Soviets cut off land access in 1948. True, at one point he suggested that the Berlin Wall came down because "there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." But if that sounds like fuzzy, every-nation-has-the-same-dreams rhetoric, he also spoke of "the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate," evidence of Soviet oppression.
These portions of the Tiergarten speech looking to the past could appropriately be repeated, with different phrasing, in a speech commemorating the fall of the Wall. But the portions of the Tiergarten speech looking to the future would pose some problems.
In the Tiergarten, Obama spoke of "the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan" and of the need "to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida" there. That doesn't mesh very well with his recent reconsideration of the Afghanistan strategy he announced in March and reiterated in August, nor with the White House spin doctors' suggestions that the Taliban and al-Qaida are not necessarily allies any more.
In the Tiergarten, Obama asserted his "resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must and to seek a partnership that extends across this whole continent." That doesn't mesh very well with the "reset button" policy toward Russia that looks past its attacks on Georgia and Ukraine and propitiates the Putin regime with unilateral withdrawal of missile defense installations from Poland and the Czech Republic.
In the Tiergarten, Obama said the United States must "stand with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions." But that message, if sent, has evidently not had the intended effect on the mullah regime, which is drawing out negotiations while presumably continuing its nuclear program apace.
"Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran or the voter in Zimbabwe?" Obama asked in the Tiergarten. "Will we give meaning to the words 'never again' in Darfur?"
Well, the Obama administration has toughened up a bit on its negotiator's recommendation we give "cookies and gold stars" to the Sudanese regime that has terrorized Darfur, and our diplomats have tried to help out in Zimbabwe. But we haven't done much of anything for the dissident in Burma, and Obama, while truckling to the mullahs, showed stony indifference to the thousands protesting the stealing of the June 12 elections in Iran.
Last year, Obama told Berliners that we and they are "heirs to a struggle for freedom." This year, his administration has been busy trying to appease dictatorial and authoritarian regimes. So maybe he was wise to skip a return appearance in Berlin. Let Hillary Clinton gloss over the embarrassing contrast between his rhetoric then and his policies now.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Barack Obama, who found time to go on a 24-hour jaunt to Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to seek the 2016 Olympics games for Chicago, apparently cannot find the time for a 24-hour trip to Berlin on Nov. 9 for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well, we all have our priorities, and the president can't be everywhere at once, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will surely represent the United States ably in Berlin.
Still, it seemed an odd decision to me -- until I went back and got the speech that candidate Obama delivered on July 24, 2008, to a crowd of 200,000 in the Tiergarten in Berlin. As I reread the text, it struck me that there would be an embarrassing contrast between what Obama said in Berlin 15 months ago and many of the policies he has been pursuing in his nine months as president.
Some conservatives were irritated that Obama introduced himself at the Tiergarten as "a fellow citizen of the world." But before that, he declared himself "a proud citizen of the United States," and of his 46 paragraphs only one was devoted to an apology for America's misdeeds ("our share of mistakes," "times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions"). Quite a contrast here with the more profuse apologies he has made abroad this year.
In addition, Obama in seven stirring paragraphs recounted America's airlift of food and fuel to Berlin when the Soviets cut off land access in 1948. True, at one point he suggested that the Berlin Wall came down because "there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." But if that sounds like fuzzy, every-nation-has-the-same-dreams rhetoric, he also spoke of "the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate," evidence of Soviet oppression.
These portions of the Tiergarten speech looking to the past could appropriately be repeated, with different phrasing, in a speech commemorating the fall of the Wall. But the portions of the Tiergarten speech looking to the future would pose some problems.
In the Tiergarten, Obama spoke of "the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan" and of the need "to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida" there. That doesn't mesh very well with his recent reconsideration of the Afghanistan strategy he announced in March and reiterated in August, nor with the White House spin doctors' suggestions that the Taliban and al-Qaida are not necessarily allies any more.
In the Tiergarten, Obama asserted his "resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must and to seek a partnership that extends across this whole continent." That doesn't mesh very well with the "reset button" policy toward Russia that looks past its attacks on Georgia and Ukraine and propitiates the Putin regime with unilateral withdrawal of missile defense installations from Poland and the Czech Republic.
In the Tiergarten, Obama said the United States must "stand with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions." But that message, if sent, has evidently not had the intended effect on the mullah regime, which is drawing out negotiations while presumably continuing its nuclear program apace.
"Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran or the voter in Zimbabwe?" Obama asked in the Tiergarten. "Will we give meaning to the words 'never again' in Darfur?"
Well, the Obama administration has toughened up a bit on its negotiator's recommendation we give "cookies and gold stars" to the Sudanese regime that has terrorized Darfur, and our diplomats have tried to help out in Zimbabwe. But we haven't done much of anything for the dissident in Burma, and Obama, while truckling to the mullahs, showed stony indifference to the thousands protesting the stealing of the June 12 elections in Iran.
Last year, Obama told Berliners that we and they are "heirs to a struggle for freedom." This year, his administration has been busy trying to appease dictatorial and authoritarian regimes. So maybe he was wise to skip a return appearance in Berlin. Let Hillary Clinton gloss over the embarrassing contrast between his rhetoric then and his policies now.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Obama Is Out Of Control-Are Democrats Okay With That?
Austin Hill
Sunday, October 25, 2009
I reiterated to my interview guest that three Obama Administration appointees have expressed their appreciation for communism. Van Jones, the former “Green Jobs Czar,” was terminated by President Obama when it was discovered that Jones once identified himself as an “avowed communist,” and White House Communications Director Anita Dunn and “manufacturing czar” Ron Bloom have both expressed their fondness for the murderous dictator Mao Tse-Tung.
And then I asked my guest, “what do you and your colleagues make of this?”
My guest was Representative Walt Minnick, the first Democrat elected to Congress from the state of Idaho in roughly fifteen years. Personally and professionally, Mr. Minnick is a respected businessman in Idaho, and is highly regarded in the Boise community.
Politically speaking, Minnick is authentically a “moderate Democrat” (he identified himself as a “Blue Dog Democrat” on my program at Boise, Idaho’s 580 KIDO radio), and, he has frequently voted against his own party. I believe him to be a good man, and I probably have more agreements with him that I have differences.
I invited Congressman Minnick to appear on my program so as to address a variety of issues, mainly the on-going debate over healthcare legislation. On that topic, Minnick bristled at my reference to “nationalized healthcare,” and noted that some of the legislative proposals could prove fiscally disastrous. He then went on to articulate what was, generally speaking, a free-market oriented approach towards “reforming” the healthcare industry.
But I also wanted to know from this respected moderate Democrat what the Democratic Majority in the House – or Democrats anywhere else, for that matter – actually think and believe about this “communism” theme in the Obama White House. Do Democrats, generally, feel the same about communism as many of Obama’s associates apparently do? Is this the “hope” and “change” that a majority of Democrats envisioned for America’s future, as they rallied to elect Barack Obama last year?
For his part, Minnick’s response to my “communism” question was quite telling. After a second of silence, the Congressman assured me that he affirmed President Obama’s right to select whomever he (Obama) wanted to be his advisors; that some of the choices had been better than some of the others; and that, in any event, Obama is no advocate of communism himself. In fact, Minnick asserted passionately that Obama believes in our capitalist economic system – that Obama both grew up in American capitalism, and is one of American capitalism’s many success stories.
For the record, I said nothing during this interview about capitalism, nor did I ask about Obama and his upbringing. I merely raised a simple question about several Obama staffers and their apparent love for communism.
And it was the Congressman, himself, who responded by “defending” Obama, assuring us that our President was both raised in, and accepting of American-styled freedom.
This situation illustrates an ugly reality – an “elephant in the living room,” to use a family psychology metaphor – about which congressional Democrats can no longer remain in denial. And the reality is this: the worldview, “values,” and ideology that are apparently undergirding this presidency are a dramatic departure from those of most Americans. Likewise, the policies of this President weaken private citizens in a variety of different ways, while fortifying the agents of our government – namely, President Obama himself.
Washington’s current-day “values” and tactics may be a good fit in Obama’s Chicago, or in Pelosi’s San Francisco. But they are quickly beginning to alienate elsewhere in the country -even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has been complicit with the Obama agenda, is now suffering the consequences of his actions in his home state of Nevada.
On economic and fiscal issues, it is nearly impossible to believe any longer that President Obama is seeking to “create jobs” or “stimulate” the economy. He has, however, created more government dependence among private citizens. And as a result of his “corporate bailout” policies, he has created a scenario wherein he (Obama) is now an ad hoc C.E.O. of multiple American companies, including GM, Chrysler, and several banking institutions. And he is now determining the salaries of executives running those companies.
On basic human (and Constitutional) freedoms, Obama also provides a radical departure. Using the full force and authority of the presidency itself, Mr. Obama and members of his Administration have repeatedly sought to demonize and discredit multiple private American individuals and institutions who have dared to disagree with him. The list includes, among others, Rush Limbaugh, Executives with the AIG Insurance Corporation, the Fox Newschannel, private share holders of the Chrysler Corporation, Glenn Beck, the insurance industry, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.
In roughly three years, Americans will again select a President. Until then, the only people who can affectively “limit” President Obama are members of the U.S. Congress.
As such, congressional Democrats must make a decision: does their party have any regard for American liberty any longer? Or has their agenda devolved into merely basking in the glow of a charming and charismatic leader, and making excused for that leader, while quenching his undying thirst for power and control?
Democrats – you must decide.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
I reiterated to my interview guest that three Obama Administration appointees have expressed their appreciation for communism. Van Jones, the former “Green Jobs Czar,” was terminated by President Obama when it was discovered that Jones once identified himself as an “avowed communist,” and White House Communications Director Anita Dunn and “manufacturing czar” Ron Bloom have both expressed their fondness for the murderous dictator Mao Tse-Tung.
And then I asked my guest, “what do you and your colleagues make of this?”
My guest was Representative Walt Minnick, the first Democrat elected to Congress from the state of Idaho in roughly fifteen years. Personally and professionally, Mr. Minnick is a respected businessman in Idaho, and is highly regarded in the Boise community.
Politically speaking, Minnick is authentically a “moderate Democrat” (he identified himself as a “Blue Dog Democrat” on my program at Boise, Idaho’s 580 KIDO radio), and, he has frequently voted against his own party. I believe him to be a good man, and I probably have more agreements with him that I have differences.
I invited Congressman Minnick to appear on my program so as to address a variety of issues, mainly the on-going debate over healthcare legislation. On that topic, Minnick bristled at my reference to “nationalized healthcare,” and noted that some of the legislative proposals could prove fiscally disastrous. He then went on to articulate what was, generally speaking, a free-market oriented approach towards “reforming” the healthcare industry.
But I also wanted to know from this respected moderate Democrat what the Democratic Majority in the House – or Democrats anywhere else, for that matter – actually think and believe about this “communism” theme in the Obama White House. Do Democrats, generally, feel the same about communism as many of Obama’s associates apparently do? Is this the “hope” and “change” that a majority of Democrats envisioned for America’s future, as they rallied to elect Barack Obama last year?
For his part, Minnick’s response to my “communism” question was quite telling. After a second of silence, the Congressman assured me that he affirmed President Obama’s right to select whomever he (Obama) wanted to be his advisors; that some of the choices had been better than some of the others; and that, in any event, Obama is no advocate of communism himself. In fact, Minnick asserted passionately that Obama believes in our capitalist economic system – that Obama both grew up in American capitalism, and is one of American capitalism’s many success stories.
For the record, I said nothing during this interview about capitalism, nor did I ask about Obama and his upbringing. I merely raised a simple question about several Obama staffers and their apparent love for communism.
And it was the Congressman, himself, who responded by “defending” Obama, assuring us that our President was both raised in, and accepting of American-styled freedom.
This situation illustrates an ugly reality – an “elephant in the living room,” to use a family psychology metaphor – about which congressional Democrats can no longer remain in denial. And the reality is this: the worldview, “values,” and ideology that are apparently undergirding this presidency are a dramatic departure from those of most Americans. Likewise, the policies of this President weaken private citizens in a variety of different ways, while fortifying the agents of our government – namely, President Obama himself.
Washington’s current-day “values” and tactics may be a good fit in Obama’s Chicago, or in Pelosi’s San Francisco. But they are quickly beginning to alienate elsewhere in the country -even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has been complicit with the Obama agenda, is now suffering the consequences of his actions in his home state of Nevada.
On economic and fiscal issues, it is nearly impossible to believe any longer that President Obama is seeking to “create jobs” or “stimulate” the economy. He has, however, created more government dependence among private citizens. And as a result of his “corporate bailout” policies, he has created a scenario wherein he (Obama) is now an ad hoc C.E.O. of multiple American companies, including GM, Chrysler, and several banking institutions. And he is now determining the salaries of executives running those companies.
On basic human (and Constitutional) freedoms, Obama also provides a radical departure. Using the full force and authority of the presidency itself, Mr. Obama and members of his Administration have repeatedly sought to demonize and discredit multiple private American individuals and institutions who have dared to disagree with him. The list includes, among others, Rush Limbaugh, Executives with the AIG Insurance Corporation, the Fox Newschannel, private share holders of the Chrysler Corporation, Glenn Beck, the insurance industry, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.
In roughly three years, Americans will again select a President. Until then, the only people who can affectively “limit” President Obama are members of the U.S. Congress.
As such, congressional Democrats must make a decision: does their party have any regard for American liberty any longer? Or has their agenda devolved into merely basking in the glow of a charming and charismatic leader, and making excused for that leader, while quenching his undying thirst for power and control?
Democrats – you must decide.
Polling Polls: Americans Independent and Irate
Salena Zito
Sunday, October 25, 2009
A poll of opinion polls shows that Americans are undergoing rapidly changing attitudes.
RealClearPolitics, a national polling aggregator, shows that Americans are becoming less and less thrilled about the direction of the country and with the job Congress is doing. Support has been peeling off steadily, says RealClearPolitics executive editor Tom Bevan.
The danger for the Obama administration and the Democrat Party is the independent voters' shift away from Democrat policies.
“Independents have flipped negative,” warns Bevan, who mans the polls for a living. “That’s not a good thing for any party.”
You need to look no further than the data coming out of the first gubernatorial races since the Democrats took control of Washington to identify voter angst and ire.
Gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia appear to be heading in different directions but are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.
In Virginia, a state that swung first in 2006 to Democrat Jim Webb in his Senate race then further to Obama in 2008, Republican Bob McDonnell is leading Democrat Creigh Deeds by wider margins with each new poll.
In New Jersey -- a state that has been Democratic for years (the last time the state went for the GOP presidential candidate was in 1988) – the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Jon Corzine, continues to average about 40 percent of the vote, while his Republican challenger Chris Christie has fallen more than six points in the past two weeks. The beneficiary of Christie's descent has been Chris Daggett, an independent who is winning support in the double digits.
“What do these phenomena have in common?” says Villanova political science professor Lara Brown. “In two words: disillusionment and disgust.”
Americans, particularly registered and likely voters are disillusioned and disgusted with both political parties and their candidates, who seem to be over-promising, under-delivering, asking for too much, and taking advantage of their positions, explains Brown.
Americans are simply worn out by inflated rhetoric and the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" existence of the Washington insiders who just a few months ago said they were outsiders.
Voters are left wondering what happened to the candidates they voted for? The voters thought their candidates were avengers -- people who were going to clean-up Washington’s corrupt culture, stop partisan bickering and remove those bad Wall Street titans who retained their fat bonuses only because taxpayers bailed out their companies.
Recent polls show Americans are simply fed up:
• A CNN poll last week suggests that most people no longer agree with Obama “on the issues that matter most to them."
• Rasmussen's numbers show that 31 percent “think Congress has a poor understanding of the health care proposal,” down four points from August (which, if you recall the summer town hall meetings, was not a high point for congressional approval). Worse, according the poll, only 18 percent “think the (health care) plan will be a bipartisan effort."
• Another Rasmussen poll shows only 49 percent “think that the economy will be stronger in five years than it is today.”
• Most Americans are "very concerned" about the economy and 60 percent “think the economic conditions are getting worse," a new Gallup poll shows.
Adding to these fears is Iran and its apparent move toward developing nuclear arms (or at least, according to CNN, "9 in 10 Americans" think they are) and we don't seem able to either stop or even (as was promised) talk to them.
Add to that Afghanistan, which people think is spiraling out of control.
And few Americans seem to understand the President's unwillingness to sit down, focus on the issue and make a decision. It is as though they are wondering, "Why is he in motion all the time, and does he ever actually sit at the Oval Office desk to work – like the rest of us?”
Add to this, the embarrassing scandals and all-too "typical" allegations of corruption and partisan politics: Tax problems for Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY; questionable loans for Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn; and adulterous liaisons for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev, and Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina.
Further, only 39 percent of GOPers have a favorable impression of their party chair, Michael Steele, with other polls suggesting that Americans feel like the Republicans are merely "obstructionists."
The White House simply added insult to injury with is fight with Fox News. What happened to the days when presidential administrations stayed above the media fray? Most people are wondering how the White House can even bother to think about this "issue" when it has so many other important matters at hand.
“When you look at all of these things, it is no great surprise that the thousands of Tea Party activists haven't embraced any one political party and that Glenn Beck's anti-administration, small-government, pro-individual freedom tirade continues to draw some of the highest ratings of all three cable news networks,” observes Brown.
What does all of this portend?
Very possibly, a Ross Perot-moment, or the emergence of someone who is going to come forward with serious charts and serious language that angry Americans will see as authentic, rather than the glitz and glamour of the sales pitch of "hope and change."
Sunday, October 25, 2009
A poll of opinion polls shows that Americans are undergoing rapidly changing attitudes.
RealClearPolitics, a national polling aggregator, shows that Americans are becoming less and less thrilled about the direction of the country and with the job Congress is doing. Support has been peeling off steadily, says RealClearPolitics executive editor Tom Bevan.
The danger for the Obama administration and the Democrat Party is the independent voters' shift away from Democrat policies.
“Independents have flipped negative,” warns Bevan, who mans the polls for a living. “That’s not a good thing for any party.”
You need to look no further than the data coming out of the first gubernatorial races since the Democrats took control of Washington to identify voter angst and ire.
Gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia appear to be heading in different directions but are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.
In Virginia, a state that swung first in 2006 to Democrat Jim Webb in his Senate race then further to Obama in 2008, Republican Bob McDonnell is leading Democrat Creigh Deeds by wider margins with each new poll.
In New Jersey -- a state that has been Democratic for years (the last time the state went for the GOP presidential candidate was in 1988) – the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Jon Corzine, continues to average about 40 percent of the vote, while his Republican challenger Chris Christie has fallen more than six points in the past two weeks. The beneficiary of Christie's descent has been Chris Daggett, an independent who is winning support in the double digits.
“What do these phenomena have in common?” says Villanova political science professor Lara Brown. “In two words: disillusionment and disgust.”
Americans, particularly registered and likely voters are disillusioned and disgusted with both political parties and their candidates, who seem to be over-promising, under-delivering, asking for too much, and taking advantage of their positions, explains Brown.
Americans are simply worn out by inflated rhetoric and the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" existence of the Washington insiders who just a few months ago said they were outsiders.
Voters are left wondering what happened to the candidates they voted for? The voters thought their candidates were avengers -- people who were going to clean-up Washington’s corrupt culture, stop partisan bickering and remove those bad Wall Street titans who retained their fat bonuses only because taxpayers bailed out their companies.
Recent polls show Americans are simply fed up:
• A CNN poll last week suggests that most people no longer agree with Obama “on the issues that matter most to them."
• Rasmussen's numbers show that 31 percent “think Congress has a poor understanding of the health care proposal,” down four points from August (which, if you recall the summer town hall meetings, was not a high point for congressional approval). Worse, according the poll, only 18 percent “think the (health care) plan will be a bipartisan effort."
• Another Rasmussen poll shows only 49 percent “think that the economy will be stronger in five years than it is today.”
• Most Americans are "very concerned" about the economy and 60 percent “think the economic conditions are getting worse," a new Gallup poll shows.
Adding to these fears is Iran and its apparent move toward developing nuclear arms (or at least, according to CNN, "9 in 10 Americans" think they are) and we don't seem able to either stop or even (as was promised) talk to them.
Add to that Afghanistan, which people think is spiraling out of control.
And few Americans seem to understand the President's unwillingness to sit down, focus on the issue and make a decision. It is as though they are wondering, "Why is he in motion all the time, and does he ever actually sit at the Oval Office desk to work – like the rest of us?”
Add to this, the embarrassing scandals and all-too "typical" allegations of corruption and partisan politics: Tax problems for Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY; questionable loans for Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn; and adulterous liaisons for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev, and Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina.
Further, only 39 percent of GOPers have a favorable impression of their party chair, Michael Steele, with other polls suggesting that Americans feel like the Republicans are merely "obstructionists."
The White House simply added insult to injury with is fight with Fox News. What happened to the days when presidential administrations stayed above the media fray? Most people are wondering how the White House can even bother to think about this "issue" when it has so many other important matters at hand.
“When you look at all of these things, it is no great surprise that the thousands of Tea Party activists haven't embraced any one political party and that Glenn Beck's anti-administration, small-government, pro-individual freedom tirade continues to draw some of the highest ratings of all three cable news networks,” observes Brown.
What does all of this portend?
Very possibly, a Ross Perot-moment, or the emergence of someone who is going to come forward with serious charts and serious language that angry Americans will see as authentic, rather than the glitz and glamour of the sales pitch of "hope and change."
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