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TUESDAY,  JUNE 22,  2010

NIKKI WINS – AT 9:07 P.M. ET:  Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary runoff for governor of South Carolina, as expected. 

If elected she will be South Carolina's first female governor and will be the second Indian-American governor, the other being Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. 

In addition, Tim Scott has defeated Paul Thurmond for the Republican nomination for Congress in South Carolina's First Congressional District.  Scott is an African-American.  If elected, he'll be the first black congressman from South Carolina since the Civil War era.  Thurmond is the son of the late Senator Strom Thurmond, who ran for president as a "Dixiecrat" in 1948, abandoning the Democratic Party because the party was embracing civil rights.  The elder Thurmond later become a Republican and moderated his racial views. 

Nikki Haley, Tim Scott.  South Carolina.  Is this a great country, or what?  And maybe it's time that the snotty northern liberals started showing some well-deserved respect for the new, rising South.

June 21, 2010      Permalink

NO, BARACK, YOU DON'T HAVE ABSOLUTE POWER – AT 7:32 P.M. ET:  A federal judge in Bobby Jindal's New Orleans has struck down the temporary ban on deepwater drilling imposed by the Obama administration, in a victory for common sense.  From Fox:

In a victory for drilling proponents, a federal judge struck down President Obama's six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, saying the administration rashly concluded that because one rig failed, the others are in immediate danger, too.

The White House promised an immediate appeal. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president believes strongly that drilling at such depths does not make sense and puts the safety of workers "at a danger that the president does not believe we can afford."

The Interior Department had halted approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling of 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.

Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.

They argued it was arbitrarily imposed after the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers and blew out the well 5,000 feet underwater. It has spewed anywhere from 67 million to 127 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

COMMENT:  Feldman is correct.  The moratorium is grandstanding.  There also does not seem to be any scientific or engineering basis to it.  We await the administration's appeal.

June 21, 2010     Permalink

HIGH NOON – AT 7:23 P.M. ET:  It's all McChrystal all the time.  The four-star general who spoke truth to cower in a Rolling Stone piece is the king of the internet today.  He's been called home to the White House to explain.

Everyone seems to have a theory as to what will happen when Gary Cooper meets the Chicago boys at high noon.  Charles Krauthammer believes that the best idea making the rounds is that McChrystal should bring his resignation to the White House and present it to the president.  The president should take it, then, citing the national need, reject it.  Obama would come off, for the first time in his presidency, as a big man.

Yet others believe McChrystal has to go.  Otherwise, Obama is stuck with a man who's openly mocked him. 

The most intriguing question:  Did McChrystal actually plan this?  Did he want that harsh criticism of the Obamans to come out, even if it meant his career?  Was he trying to protect himself, not believing the president has the will to win in Afghanistan, and that McChrystal will be given the blame?

Stay tuned.  High drama at the White house tomorrow as Stanley comes marching home again.

June 21, 2010     Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 7:20 A.M. ET:  Surprisingly, from generally liberal columnist Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, on Obama's strange, value-free, feelings-free "intellectualism":

Foreign policy is the realm where a president comes closest to ruling by diktat. By command decision, the war in Afghanistan has been escalated, yet it seems to lack an urgent moral component. It has an apparent end date even though girls may not yet be able to attend school and the Taliban may rule again. In some respects, I agree -- the earlier out of Afghanistan, the better -- but if we are to stay even for a while, it has to be for reasons that have to do with principle. Somewhat the same thing applies to China. It's okay to trade with China. It's okay to hate it, too.

Pragmatism is fine -- as long as it is complicated by regret. But that indispensable wince is precisely what Obama doesn't show. It is not essential that he get angry or cry. It is essential, though, that he show us who he is. As of now, we haven't a clue.

COMMENT:  Isn't it remarkable that a Washington columnist can ask, almost two years after a president's election, who he is.  That is no compliment to Obama.  Great men and women declare their principles, and seek a certain nobility.  They're remembered for standing for something that we can admire. 

What does Obama stand for?  What would he be willing to die for?  To go to war for? 

My great fear is that he does stand for things, and that he may be very smart, politically, to not tell us what they are.

June 21, 2010     Permalink 

SOUTH CAROLINA RUNOFF TODAY – AT 6:53 A.M. ET:  History will probably be made in South Carolina today.  Nikki Haley, an Indian-American woman opposed by a sizable chunk of the good-'ol-boy Republican network, is poised to become the GOP nominee for governor, and is ahead in the polls for November.  From The Politico:

CONWAY, S.C. — Nikki Haley, the 38-year-old Indian-American political phenom who might be South Carolina’s next governor, downplays the two attributes that would make her different from her 115 predecessors.

When asked whether someone of her profile, the daughter of immigrants, could have been elected to statewide office when she was growing up here, she has a ready and artful answer.

“I think the timing is right, where people realize this is about issues,” Haley said in an interview. “It’s not about gender; it’s not about race.”

Yet the pink T-shirts some of her supporters wore Monday morning, a day before the Republican gubernatorial runoff, to a rally at a Main Street cafe here, tell a different story.

“If you want something said, ask a man,” read the Margaret Thatcher quote on the back of the “Haley for Governor” shirt. “If you want something done, ask a woman.”

The two messages may seem contradictory — avoiding explicit identity politics while harnessing the energy it has undoubtedly produced — but it’s precisely the finely calibrated mix that has vaulted the third-term Republican state representative and accountant to the verge of national political stardom.

And she's not the only news in South Carolina today:

And she isn’t alone this year: Tim Scott, another state representative, could become South Carolina’s first black Republican congressman since Reconstruction.

COMMENT:  The times they are a-changin', but not necessarily the way the other side would like them to change.  Nikki Haley is a far cry from Bella Abzug, the fire-breathing feminist congresswoman from New York in the 1960s.  And South Carolina is no longer the South Carolina of the Dixiecrats.  The South has risen again, and it's a south that, if Nikki Haley is elected, will have two Indian-American governors, the other being Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.  And both are Republicans.

Conservatism takes many forms.  One of the most creative is in the American South, which has shown that progress and patriotism go side by side.

June 21, 2010     Permalink

A WARNING FROM HISTORY – AT 6:44 A.M. ET:  Thomas Sowell, one of the best minds writing today, and an African-American who won't go along with what is "expected" of him, warns that what is happening in Washington can lead to an increasing tyranny in America.  From Investor's Business Daily:

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.

Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.

"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

Most of the people who are concerned are on the internet, not in the mainstream media.  The very press we used to depend on to safeguard our freedoms has become largely indifferent to them.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation?  Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

And...

If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."

Sowell's logic should make us fear President Obama's choices for court appointments, for the federal courts determine the shape of the Constitution, as it is actually applied.

With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government.

CONSIDER:  Two years ago, did you think that General Motors would be run by Washington? 

And yet, a clear-cut legal case for voter intimidation by the Black Panthers was shelved by the Justice Department, despite overwhelming evidence that it could easily be won, and voters protected.

A great fear being expressed by a number of writers on the right is that, after the Democrats are crushed in November, a lame duck session of Congress, heavily populated by defeated congressmen and senators, will pass sweeping legislation granting more power to the Obama White House.  Even a Republican majority would be incapable of reversing that legislation since Obama could veto anything the GOP could pass.

We're in danger, at home and abroad.  We've got to wake up.

June 21, 2010     Permalink

FASHION NEWS FROM IRAN – AT 6:36 A.M. ET:  One thing about the rulers of Iran, they are fashion conscious, and they have very definite tastes.  From AFP:

Iranian police have issued warnings to 62,000 women who were "badly veiled" in the Shiite holy province of Qom as part of a clampdown on dress and behaviour, a newspaper said on Monday.
Around "62,000 women were warned for being badly veiled" in the province of Qom, Tehran Emrouz newspaper quoted provincial police chief Colonel Mehdi Khorasani as saying.

It was unclear whether all the women issued with warnings were from Qom or the tally included travellers passing through the province.

Khorasani said police had also confiscated around 100 cars for carrying improperly dressed women, adding that "encouraging such relaxations are among the objectives of the enemy."

Yeah, the CIA has a whole department devoted to veils. 

The population of Qom is more than one million, with most of them concentrated in the city itself which is Shiite Iran's clerical nerve-centre.

By law, women in the Islamic republic must be covered from head to foot, with their hair completely veiled, and social interaction is banned between men and women who are not related.

COMMENT:  Now, we await the response of Western "human rights" and "women's rights" groups to this.  Can you hear the silence already?  Forced veiling only gives a hint of the oppression of Iranian women, and Muslim women generally.  And it gives a hint of what's in store for our civilization if this madness is not resisted. 

We hope that someone gives Barack Obama a copy of this story, maybe as he's resting at the 9th or 10th hole.

June 21, 2010     Permalink 

TIME TO PACK – AT 6:32 A.M. ET:  It is hard to know what some people are thinking when they start talking.  From Fox:

The top U.S. war commander in Afghanistan apologized Tuesday for an interview in which he said he felt betrayed by the man the White House chose to be his diplomatic partner, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry.

The article in this week's issue of Rolling Stone depicts Gen. Stanley McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama administration and unable to convince even some of his own soldiers that his strategy can win the war.

In Kabul on Tuesday, McChrystal issued a statement saying: "I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened."

In Rolling Stone, McChrystal is described by an aide as "disappointed" in his first Oval Office meeting with an unprepared President Barack Obama. The article says that although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama called McChrystal on the carpet last fall for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops.

And it gets more juicy:

Asked by the Rolling Stone reporter about what he now feels of the war strategy advocated by Biden last fall – fewer troops, more drone attacks – McChrystal and his aides reportedly attempted to come up with a good one-liner to dismiss the question. "Are you asking about Vice President Biden?" McChrystal reportedly joked. "Who's that?"

Biden initially opposed McChrystal's proposal for additional forces last year. He favored a narrower focus on hunting terrorists.

"Biden?" one aide was quoted as saying. "Did you say: Bite me?"

Another aide reportedly called White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones, a retired four star general, a "clown" who was "stuck in 1985."

Some of the strongest criticism, however, was reserved for Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"The boss says he's like a wounded animal," one of the general's aides was quoted as saying. "Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he's going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous."

COMMENT:  Well, what can one say?  Douglas MacArthur, who wore five stars and who'd accepted the Japanese surrender aboard USS Missouri in 1945, was ousted as commander of UN forces by President Truman during the Korean War, for making public statements questioning American policy.

MacArthur was vastly more popular than the little-known Stan McChrystal, and his firing unleashed an outpouring of near-hatred toward Mr. Truman, who'd made exactly the right call.  MacArthur had clearly been insubordinate.  (Within a year most Americans started to agree with Truman as a result of some of MacArthur's outlandish comments.  Although called "the Republican general," and very much wanting to be president, Mac made virtually no impression at the 1952 GOP convention, which nominated Eisenhower, MacArthur's former aide.)

McChrystal is MacArthur, the smaller sequel.  McChrystal really has to go.  No president, even a very bad one like Obama, can tolerate a general who, with his aides, undermines policy and those making it. 

But will Obama do a Truman?  If McChrystal is smart, he won't give Obama the chance, and will resign.  If McChrystal doesn't take that obvious step, he's in for trouble.  Obama may just keep him on, the better to use him as a whipping boy if we lose in Afghanistan. 

This will be fascinating – to see how Obama handles the situation.  Stand by.

June 21, 2010      Permalink

MONDAY,  JUNE 21,  2010

WHEN EVEN NEWSWEEK NOTICES – AT 7:23 P.M. ET:  Related to the item just below:  When even the moribund Newsweek notices that our foreign policy has gone hopelessly PC, we know we're starting to get the message out:

The Obama administration is deeply concerned with stopping the next Faisal Shahzad—the man who, but for another lesson or two on bomb making, might have blown up Times Square on May 1. But in an administration also eager to ingratiate itself with the Muslim world, how far are Obama and his advisers willing to go to confront the radical Islamism that drives men like Shahzad?

Hedieh Mirahmadi, a Muslim community organizer based in Washington, D.C., fears that political correctness has got the better of this administration, to the point where it seems to be almost dissecting radical Islamism out of existence. “You can’t start at just violence because the trajectory is so dangerous. You need to start at that radicalism. The ideology,” Mirahmadi says. Other critics agree. The Obama team, says Scott Carpenter of the Washington Institute for Near East Peace Policy, “is doing some interesting things on the public diplomacy side [outreach to the Muslim world], and on the counterterrorism side. But in this big fat middle, radicalization, they’re doing zero.”

COMMENT:  While the piece contains the still-required swings at President Bush, the overall tone is something of a breakthrough, as Newsweek symbolizes the trendy New York media. 

But one of the most serious problems remains the left wing of the Democratic Party, which calls itself "progressive," but which is really a throwback to the old Henry Wallace faction of the 1940s, a faction that never met a Communist dictatorship it didn't like.  Political reports say that the White House is genuinely frightened of losing the left in this year's midterms if it moves closer to the center.  It should stop worrying.  There are vastly more moderates than leftist "progressives," a good number of whom spend their weekends reading Lenin in the libraries of California colleges. 

June 21, 2010     Permalink

MEMO TO THE PRESIDENT, AND TO A GOOD CHUNK OF OUR LAUGHABLE "INTELLIGENTSIA" – AT 7:05 P.M. ET:  The guy who wanted to blow up part of Times Square pleaded guilty in federal court today, and admitted his motives:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Calling himself a "Muslim soldier," a defiant Pakistan-born U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing, saying his attack was the answer to "the U.S. terrorizing ... Muslim people."

Wearing a white skull cap, Faisal Shahzad entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan just days after a federal grand jury indicted him on 10 terrorism and weapons counts, some of which carried mandatory life prison sentences. He pleaded guilty to them all.

"One has to understand where I'm coming from," Shahzad calmly told U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, who challenged him repeatedly with questions such as whether he worried about killing children in Times Square. "I consider myself ... a Muslim soldier."

The 30-year-old described his effort to set off a bomb in an SUV he parked in Times Square on May 1, saying he chose the warm Saturday night because it would be crowded with people who he could injure or kill.

COMMENT:  Just a misunderstood intellectual, probably a victim of a malfunctioning ATM. 

We call attention to his direct, unvarnished linking of radical Islam to his attempted murder of hundreds.  Strange – he's more honest about it than our president.

June 21, 2010      Permalink

JOURNALISM MARCHES ON, RIGHT OFF A CLIFF – AT 9:52 A.M. ET:  Well, I guess it's progress when you can get them to admit it.  From NewsBusters:

Cut out the middle-woman and install Obama's teleprompter on the Morning Joe set . . .

Give her high marks for candor: on today's show, Mika Brzezinski admitted that she has been "working with the White House" on oil spill talking points. But that still leaves the issue of the journalistic propriety of someone in Brzezinski's position serving as such a blatant shill for the president. H/t tip NB reader Ray R.

Mika could be seen reading from her notes during exchanges with former GE CEO Jack Welch, who was critical of the PBO's handling of the spill. After repeated ribbing from Welch and Joe Scarborough over her use of White House talking points, Mika came clean . . .

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Do you want to know why I have a file that I've been working on with the White House—and I'll be very transparent about that? Because of your friend Rudy Giuliani who came here last week spewing out a whole bunch of nothing.

COMMENT:  Of course, her daddy was Jimmah Carter's national security adviser, so Mika knows her way around the White House.  And considering the Carteresque nature of this presidency, she must feel right at home.

June 21, 2010      Permalink

GATES DROPS THE "D" WORD ON IRAN.  ISN'T THAT A SIN IN OBAMALAND? – AT 9:17 A.M. ET:  From the Washington Times: 

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Sunday that Iran's government is becoming a military dictatorship, with religious leaders being sidelined and, as a result, new sanctions could pressure Tehran into curbing its illegal nuclear program.

"What we've seen is a change in the nature of the regime in Tehran over the past 18 months or so," Mr. Gates said on "Fox News Sunday."

"You have a much narrower-based government in Tehran now," he said. "Many of the religious figures are being set aside."

The defense secretary said Iranians "appear to be moving more in the direction of a military dictatorship."

Iran's supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, "is leaning on a smaller and smaller group of advisers," he said. "In the meantime, you have an illegitimate election that has divided the country."

"There's no doubt that Iran's military and security forces are playing an active role in running the regime," said a U.S. official familiar with assessments on Iran. "Religious leaders like Khamenei continue to make key decisions and rely on the vast security apparatus to carry them out."

Gates expanded on his comments in this exchange with Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: Can we contain a nuclear Iran?

GATES: I don't think we're prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran. I think we're — we — our view still is we do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons. And our policies and our efforts are all aimed at preventing that from happening.

WALLACE: When you say that a — we would not accept a nuclear Iran, does that mean that a military strike either by the U.S. or Israel is preferable to a nuclear Iran?

GATES: I — we obviously leave all options on the table. I think we have some time to continue working this problem.

COMMENT:  We get the sense that Gates is going through the motions in endorsing sanctions, and realizes they probably won't work.  He was wise to avoid discussing "containment" of Iran, as that would imply surrender to Iran's nuclear program and the inevitability of Tehran getting the bomb.  But there's a reckoning ahead, possibly around the time of our 2012 election, two years away.  That's two more years of progress for Iran.

I've said here before that a successful air strike against Iran just before the 2012 election could put Barack Obama back in the White House.  I hate to sound cynical, but...

June 21, 2010      Permalink

EVEN NEW YORKERS GET IT – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  Hard to believe, but even residents of my home state, as well as Californians, are starting to learn that it's a good idea to cut spending to match income.  Most real people learn that in junior high.  From Michael Barone:

"Government in New York is too big, ineffective and expensive," the candidate's website proclaims. "We must get our state's fiscal house in order by immediately imposing a cap on state spending and freezing salaries of state public employees as part of a one-year emergency financial plan, committing to no increase in personal or corporate income taxes of sales taxes and imposing a local property tax cap."

Some right-wing Republican? No, it's Andrew Cuomo, son of three-term Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo. Interestingly, he's the only Democrat with a significant polling lead in the governor races in our eight largest states, which together have 48 percent of the nation's population.

And he's running as a fiscal con...well, not quite.  Let's say he's running as a Dem who might actually look at the amount of a check before signing it.

State governors can't resort to deficit spending without risky gimmicks, and what's more, as Andrew Cuomo's platform suggests, voters don't want them to.

As a result, Republicans are leading or running even in governor races in seven of the eight largest states. In California, Democrat Jerry Brown -- at 72, seeking the office he first won at 36 -- is below 50 percent against eBay billionaire Meg Whitman. In Texas, Rick Perry leads Democrat Bill White, who had a moderate record as mayor of Houston.

In Florida, all polls have shown Republicans leading the one Democrat in statewide office.

In Pennsylvania, Republican Tom Corbett seems likely to regain the governorship for his party in a state where party control has shifted every eight years since 1950.

In Illinois, would-be tax-raiser Pat Quinn, elevated to the governorship when Rod Blagojevich resigned, trails a little-known downstate Republican legislator.

In Ohio, Democrat Ted Strickland, popular for his first two-and-a-half years, is only even with John Kasich, former chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee.

Perhaps most surprisingly, in the nation's No. 1 unemployment state, Michigan, voters are leaning toward replacing tax-raising Democrat Jennifer Granholm with one of the four Republicans running in the August primary over either of the two Democrats.

And voters will respond well to budget cuts made wisely:

You might wonder whether spending cuts will prove as unpopular as big spending programs. That's unclear -- but there's an interesting test case in the nation's 16th largest state, Indiana.

In 2008, even while Indiana voters went 50 percent to 49 percent for Barack Obama, they re-elected spending-cutting Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels by a 58 percent to 40 percent margin. Daniels carried young voters 51 percent to 42 percent and college-educated voters 62 percent to 34 percent. He ran ahead of Ronald Reagan's 1984 showing in Indiana's most affluent county while winning 25 percent from blacks and 37 percent from Latinos. Among all these groups, he ran ahead of John McCain by double digits.

Finally:

His performance is evidence that the polls showing voters in our biggest states favoring smaller government may not just be a passing fancy. Congress may vote more money for the public employee unions. But in New York, Andrew Cuomo seems to have gotten the message.

COMMENT:  And I would hope that voters will be able to resist the ultimate weapon, the last-ditch defense of those who let spending go out-of-control:  "We're doing it for the kids."  They don't tell us that it's the kids who'll get the bill.

Which reminds me:  I think the next big domestic target is going to be education at all levels, but especially at the college level, starting with the parental question, "Just what is my kid getting for $42,000 a year?"  For years education has been treated as a sacred cow.  Now we're learning that the cow isn't sacred, just fat, with much more discipline in order.

June 21, 2010     Permalink

AL QAEDA SPEAKS – AT 8:25 A.M. ET:  Adam Gadahn, the Tokyo Rose of Al Qaeda, has made a statement on behalf of Al Qaeda, and it should be taken seriously.  We have been lulled to sleep by the fact that 9-11 occurred almost nine years ago, but it's a false sleep:

CAIRO – Al-Qaida's U.S.-born spokesman warned President Barack Obama Sunday that the militant group may launch new attacks that would kill more Americans than previous ones.

In a taunting, 24 minute message that dwelled on Obama's setbacks, including the loss of Massachusetts Senate seat to the Republicans, Adam Gadahn set out al-Qaida's conditions for peace with the U.S., including cutting support for Israel and withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

Gadahn said that if you compared the number of dead Muslims "with the relatively small number of Americans we have killed so far, it becomes crystal-clear that we haven't even begun to even the score," he said, dressed in a white robe and turban.

"That's why next time, we might not show the restraint and self-control we have shown up until now," he said. Even if al-Qaida was defeated, "hundreds of millions of Muslims" would still fight the U.S., he added.

Al-Qaida offered the same conditions for an end to hostilities to then President George W. Bush in 2007, including the release of all Muslim prisoners and cutting off aid to Middle East governments.

Gadahn's statement was notable for its mocking tone, in which he described Obama as "a devious, evasive and serpentine American president with a Muslim name," and seemed to delight in his setbacks.

COMMENT:  The mocking tone can be attributed, at least in part, to Obama's weak image.  It is appalling to see an American president laughed at.  We haven't had the experience since Jimmah Carter melted away before our eyes.

I would never underestimate threats like this.  Al Qaeda does not have to pull off another 9-11 to make its presence felt.  The terror attack in Mumbai, India, which centered on the takeover of a major hotel, had an enormous impact, and was relatively simple. 

June 21, 2010      Permalink

RAHM TO GO? – AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  There is buzz on the internet this morning that Rahm Emanuel, tough-talking but practical White House chief of staff, will soon be gone, a victim, in a way, of the adolescent character of the Obama administration.

From London's Telegraph: 

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is expected to leave his job later this year after growing tired of the "idealism" of Barack Obama's inner circle.

Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.

Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.

COMMENT:  Not a shock.  Despite all the yapping about "wanting to spend more time with my family," Emanuel wants a future in politics.  Right now he's like an officer on the Titanic wanting a future in shipping. 

The ship is going down.

You may be sure that speculation will start before Washington teeth are brushed this morning as to who will be the next chief of staff.  No selection would surprise me.  There will be a number of unemployed Democrats after November.  Obama could choose a RINO like former "Republican" Senator Chuck Hagel, or he could stay with the Chicago toughies. 

If the story plays out, Emanuel is wise to be departing early.  You don't want to be associated with a disaster.  My question:  What plans for Hillary Clinton?  Well, her daughter is getting married soon, and she could always resign, saying she wants to spend some time with the groom...just to be sure.  I can't imagine her wanting to stay with this wreckage beyond the two-year mark.

June 21,  2010    Permalink