THURSDAY,  AUGUST 6,  2009

VIRGINIA UP FOR GRABS - AT 8:48 P.M. ET:  What a difference six months makes?  Did we ever think, six months ago, that Barack Obama would be considered a drag on a ticket in a state that he carried?  Welcome to Virginia.  From Fox News:

Forget the candidates. The outcome of Virginia's race for governor in November may depend primarily on one overriding factor: President Obama's approval rating.

The gubernatorial race between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds may become a referendum on Obama, as voters look less at the candidates in their state and more at the man in the White House.

Last November, Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Virginia in 40 years. But in his first six months in office, the president's poll numbers have dropped considerably among independents, who say they are disillusioned by his economic promises and angered by a health care reform bill they say defines him as a big-government spender.

"He's become a double-edged sword in Virginia," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "The overall impression is that he's trying to do too much too quickly, and he's becoming identified with big spending and big government.

"That doesn't sell well in Virginia," he said.

COMMENT:  And, of course, nothing Obama has launched has been especially successful.  If he's seen as dragging down the Democratic ticket, especially in swing states and districts, the 2010 midterm elections will be turned upside down.

Hillary must be loving this.  Possible opening in 2012?  The party turning to the woman who wuz wronged?  Oh, the movie.  The play.  The book rights.

Stay tuned. 

August 6, 2009   Permalink

CLUNKERISM - THE SEQUEL - AT 8:28 P.M. ET:  The idea is spreading:

Programs that allow homeowners to trade in their old refrigerators and scoop up a rebate — a sort of “cash for clunkers” system for the fridge — are spreading quickly across the country.

Last week, New Jersey began a statewide program that offers residents a $30 rebate by recycling eligible refrigerators or freezers. Old refrigerators and freezers in Vermont also fetch $30, under a program begun last month.

Pickup is free in both states.

This comes as the Senate passes an extension of the cash for clunkers program, in which Uncle Sam helps you buy a car, and educates you as to which car a decent person would buy. 

What I'd like to see is a program that allows young adults to trade in their degrees from elite colleges for real educations.  Sort of cash for clunkheads.  Never happen.

August 6, 2009   Permalink

AFGHAN DILEMMA - AT 7:59 P.M. ET:  First, my apologies for getting back online so late.  I was getting some very good background information today on Iran and Western Europe, and these things can take time. 

We've written here before that there are serious crunches coming up for the Obama administration - Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, and a host of domestic issues, which will collide in the autumn, just as the 2010 midterm campaigns get started.  One of Obama's huge problems is that he never matches rhetoric with policy.  Lots of promises, very little effective execution.  Government as show business.

Now Afghanistan is facing the crunch, as The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON — As the American military comes to full strength in the Afghan buildup, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with a long-promised plan to measure whether the war is being won.

Those “metrics” of success, demanded by Congress and eagerly awaited by the military, are seen as crucial if the president is to convince Capitol Hill and the country that his revamped strategy is working. Without concrete signs of progress, Mr. Obama may lack the political stock — especially among Democrats and his liberal base — to make the case for continuing the military effort or enlarging the American presence.

That problem will become particularly acute if American commanders in Afghanistan seek even more troops for a mission that many of Mr. Obama’s most ardent supporters say remains ill defined and open-ended.

COMMENT:  Let's hope that the Obamans handle this better than health care.   Obama can't worry too much about his liberal base, a good part of which sees every conflict as Vietnam, and opposes virtually any military action anywhere.

But the president does have to worry about everyone else.  He called Afghanistan a correct war during his campaign, and he's poured resources into the struggle.  This is now his war - there's a limit to what he can blame on Bush - and he's got to produce something far more specific and convincing than he has during the health care debate.

August 6, 2009   Permalink

STUNNING - AT 8:22 A.M. ET:  The president is slipping dramatically in approval as we mark 200 days of his presidency:

Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s approval rating is falling amid concerns about the U.S. economy and his push to revamp the U.S. health-care system, a Quinnipiac University poll shows.

Exactly half of the registered voters surveyed from July 27 to Aug. 3 by Quinnipiac said they approve of the job Obama is doing, compared with 42 percent who disapprove. That’s down from 57 percent approval and 33 percent disapproval in a poll taken in late June, according to results released today.

Americans are upset about rising unemployment and worried that health-care plans making their way through Congress will add to the U.S. budget deficit, said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Hamden, Connecticut-based polling institute. The combination has helped drive down the president’s ratings.

A “willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt is, among some voters, evaporating,” Brown told reporters in Washington yesterday.

COMMENT:  There are growing illusions within the administration.  One of them is that the president's declining numbers merely reflect a failure to communicate.  No, they reflect a failure of policy...as well as a failure to communicate.   

Americans, despite all the sneering one hears from the Ivy League and the precincts of mainstream journalism, are actually quite well informed, especially about issues that affect them personaly.  They are asking intelligent questions.  They aren't getting intelligent answers, and they've started to doubt the policy prescriptions of the man at the top.

August 6, 2009   Permalink

MORE "NEWNESS" IN THE WAR ON TERROR - NOT - AT 8:10 A.M. ET:    Soon we'll be told that air conditioning is a new idea.  The Washington Post informs us of the Obama administration's "new" approach to fighting terror, as follows:

The U.S. government must fundamentally redefine the struggle against terrorism, replacing the "war on terror" with a campaign combining all facets of national power to defeat the enemy, John O. Brennan, President Obama's senior counterterrorism adviser, said Wednesday.

Previewing what aides said will be the administration's most comprehensive statement to date on its long-term strategy to defeat al-Qaeda and other violent extremists worldwide, Brennan said in an interview that the United States will maintain "unrelenting" pressure on terrorist havens, including those near the Afghan-Pakistani border, in Yemen and in Somalia.

However, Washington must couple the military strikes that have depleted al-Qaeda's middle ranks with more sustained use of economic, diplomatic and cultural levers to diminish Islamist radicalization, he said, exercising "soft power" in ways that President George W. Bush came to embrace but had trouble carrying out.

COMMENT:  Sound familiar?  I love these stories that announce some new policy that isn't.  This approach has been around for a long time.  It's included in David Petraeus's rewrite of counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq.  It has great merit, but it should not be treated as another pronouncement from the Obaman equivalent of Mount Olympus.  It's an evolving strategy.  The key element is how good the Obamans are at developing it further and carrying it out.

August 6, 2009   Permalink

FRIGHTENING - AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  One of the techniques used by the old Soviet Union was to label dissenters as psychologically impaired.  So this story produced an immediate chill when I read it:

If you ever wondered what is to blame for the world's sluggish reaction to climate change, wonder no longer. The American Psychological Assn. has concluded in a 225-page report that the culprit is...

...human behavior.

That's right! Human behavior. Read all about it here. The panel of eight psychologists is slated to present its findings at a meeting of the American Psychological Assn. on Friday.

It may seem a tad ridiculous to have to even say that human behavior is responsible for the failure of humans to act, let alone take 225 pages to say it.

And...

The task force was convened because the APA wanted to involve psychologists in crafting a solution to climate change and in predicting how people are likely to react to it.

COMMENT:  It's all our fault.  We're not psychologically ready to deal with "climate change."  And we must be made psychologically ready.

These people call themselves scientists.  Yet there is not a single suggestion in this "research" that the "data" on climate change may be wrong.  There is not a single suggestion that all those psychologically impaired members of the proletariat out there might actually be reacting with appropriate, mature skepticism.  To the practitioners of trendy science, no questions are permitted.  And psychology can be very trendy.

What is chilling here is that this nonsense may get into the mainstream through equally trendy journalists.  Those who even raise a doubt about "global warming" can be labeled as psychologically impaired.  It happened in the old Soviet Union, and there are people who have no problem with the practice.

August 6, 2009   Permalink

TODAY'S ANNIVERSARY - AT 7:29 A.M. ET:  Today marks the 64th anniversary of the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.  Prepare yourself for the usual pieties. 

One can legitimately debate whether the bomb should have been used.  However, as one observer pointed out, we can see films and photos of the unfortunate victims of the attack.  We don't have films and photos of those who lived because of it. 

A recent poll on American attitudes toward the use of the bomb produced a disturbing result.  Yes, 61% approved of the decision to drop the bomb, and only 22% called it wrong.  (Any leftist position on any issue usually yields a number between 20 and 30 percent.)

But only 50% of those 18 to 34 approved.

And only 49% of Democrats approved. 

Those results reflect what young people are taught in school.  They also reflect the leftward path of the Democratic Party.  It was a Democratic president, Harry S. Truman, who made the decision to use the bomb.  Truman couldn't come close to the Democratic nomination for president today.

Those who think the decision was wrong might chat up the son or daughter, or grandson or granddaughter, of a soldier who was in the Pacific on August 6, 1945.  The person you'll be talking with might not have existed had President Truman decided otherwise, and the Pacific war continued, with its ghastly toll in American soldiers...and Japanese civilians.

August 6, 2009    Permalink

WEDNESDAY,  AUGUST 5,  2009

STILL A GRIM PICTURE - AT 7:58 P.M. ET:  Despite all the cheerleading that's going on, the American economy continues to shed jobs.  That's the most important human story in an economic downturn.  When we think of the great Depression, that's what we think of - the long lines of the unemployed.  From Fox Business:

A private-sector jobs report showed that employers shed hundreds of thousands of jobs during the month of July, but the pace of the job losses slowed to its best pace since the economic collapse in October last year.

According to Macroeconomic Advisers, the ADP (ADP: 37.72, -0.21, -0.55%) private-sector jobs report indicated that private employers cut 371,000 jobs during the month of July, more than the 350,000-loss that was expected by economists.

However the 371,000 loss is better than the 473,000 jobs lost in the previous month. It's the best number by ADP since the Lehman bankruptcy disrupted the economy in the second half of 2008.

COMMENT:  The fact that the pace of job loss is slowing may be interesting, but it's not predictive of anything.  It's like the saying that the Titanic sank more slowly in the second hour after hitting the iceberg than in the first.  Any significant job loss, extended over many months, is catastrophic.  Only gains in employment are acceptable.

Let's say we lose "only" 100,000 jobs a month, much less than a third of last month's number, but it goes on for three years.  That's more than three and a half million jobs.

So don't be impressed by losses that are "slowing."  We have a way to go.

August 5, 2009   Permalink

HALF-HEARTED CORRECTION - AT 7:10 P.M. ET:  With obvious reluctance and equally obvious indifference, presidential news secretary Robert Gibbs walked back a statement he made yesterday declaring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the elected leader of Iran:

MR. GIBBS: Well, let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday. I denoted that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran. I would say it's not for me to pass judgment on. He's been inaugurated, that's a fact. Whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranian people still have questions about that and we'll let them decide that. But I would simply say he's been inaugurated, and we know that is simply a fact.

Okay, but Gibbs, in keeping with the breathtaking indifference of this administration to democracy, would offer no encouragement to those Iranian freedom fighters risking and losing their lives:

Q: Do you recognize him as the leader, elected fairly or not?

MR. GIBBS: It's not for—it's not for me or for us to denote his legitimacy, except to acknowledge the fact.

Q: Does the White House believe the election was fair?

MR. GIBBS: That's not for us to pass judgment on. I think that's for the Iranian people to decide, and obviously there are many that still have a lot of questions.

Yeah, a lot of questions, Mr. Gibbs.  A lot of questions.  And it's pretty clear that your administration has no interest in having them answered. 

So, we have Bill Clinton going to North Korea.  We have White House contempt for democracy in Iran.  We have insults toward Britain.  We have almost daily sneering at Israel.  We have the awarding of the Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson, who carried water for the Muslim dictatorships at the UN.  We have the attempt to restore an ally of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro to the presidency in Honduras, from which he was legally and constitutionally ousted.

Proud of your country's foreign policy?

August 5, 2009   Permalink

RASMUSSEN - AT 2:51 P.M. ET:  After some days of small gains, President Obama is slipping again in the Rasmussen daily tracker.  For the first time in five days, Mr. Obama is back in negative territory in terms of overall approval.  Some 51% disapprove of his performance, while 49% approve.

Obama stands at minus 8 in Ras's presidential approval index, the gap between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove.  Strongly disapprove is at 39%, strongly approve at 31%.  The president's worst numbers were on July 30th, when the gap was minus 12.

Today's report does not take into account the release by North Korea of those two American journalists.  That might have a slight impact, but I doubt if it would last more than a day or so.

August 5, 2009   Permalink

GOP PROSPECTS - AT 9:22 A.M. ET:  As we look forward to the 2010 midterms - the most crucial in recent memory - we tend to forget that there are important elections this year as well.  And Republican prospects are improving:

Six months into his presidency, Mr. Obama's approval ratings have fallen from the 70s to the low 50s or less and the Democrats' once-muscular lead in the polls also has shrunk. Republicans are leading in this year's two governorship races, in Virginia and New Jersey, and analysts say they likely will capture several more governor's mansions next year.

"It would be hard to envision a political landscape as tilted against Republicans as it was in 2006 and 2008. There is now a body of polling data to suggest that the generic congressional ballot has closed. In the NBC/Wall Street Journal, Democrats have a seven-point advantage, the smallest it's been since April of 2006," said Jennifer Duffy, senior elections analyst at the Cook Political Report.

"That is all good news for Republicans," Ms. Duffy said.

COMMENT:  Yes it is, but a word of caution:  Improvement is not the same as victory.  The New Jersey situation is unique because the current governor, Democrat Jon Corzine, is so unpopular.  Virginia looks good, but is still fluid.

The article points out, looking ahead to 2010, that Democratic senators Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Barbara Boxer of California, are in trouble.  True, but those are Democratic states, and any improvement in the economy would ease the party's woes.  I especially wouldn't count Boxer out.  Her probable Republican opponent, former Hewlett-Packard head Carly Fiorina, carries baggage from her management of HP, her golden parachute, and a not-always-engaging personality. 

The great prospect is Illinois, where Mark Kirk, a very attractive Republican congressman, will be facing...whoever...for Barack Obama's old Senate seat.  Given the nature of the Illinois Democratic Party, its candidate will probably come ready to run for office and plea bargain at the same time.

August 5, 2009   Permalink

THE CLINTON VISIT - AT 8:37 A.M. ET:  There is much debate about the implications of former President Clinton's visit to North Korea, where he picked up the two American journalists held there after they were pardoned by the regime.  Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said last night that he didn't think any significant promises were made by the United States to get the two women released.  The Wall Street Journal is somewhat more skeptical:

Yet Mr. Clinton’s visit is a message unto itself. It will bolster Kim’s bid to dissolve the six-party negotiations in favor of the direct talks with the U.S. he has long sought. It will also dismay some in South Korea and Japan, which have their own hostages in North Korea and will wonder why Mr. Clinton couldn’t obtain their release as well.

If it turns out that if a new nuclear negotiation really was begun during Mr. Clinton’s visit, it will also send the signal to North Korea that the worse its behavior, the more it stands to gain from the U.S. And it will mean that Kim’s price will be even higher to spring the next American hostages.

COMMENT:  Some concern is justified, given the record of the first six months of this administration.  It is an administration that appears to regard process - "engagement" - as the goal, rather than results.  We've seen it before, and it never works.

August 5, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 8:11 A.M. ET:  From former Senator Fred Thompson, writing in the Washington Times:

Seniors are reminded daily by the media that Medicare is going broke, that the country must cut Medicare costs and that the last days of life are by far the most expensive. Now they are being told by the administration -- one that has been less than transparent on this bill and a host of other issues -- that this bill will cut Medicare costs. They are learning that they are "coincidentally" being asked about end-of-life issues at the government's behest, perhaps by a stranger who is receiving Medicare reimbursement payments. How long do you think it will take a Medicare patient to figure out which decisions will cost the government money and which will save the government money?

Pretty grim.  And yet, when seniors, or their families, bring up the subject, they're ridiculed.  And others who bring it up are called right-wing extremists.  Thompson goes on:

So is this a conspiracy to kill off granny? No. Will seniors be forced to make decisions they don't want to make? No. But will "practitioners" be encouraged to have end-of-life discussions that include when it might be best for patients to allow their life to end earlier than it has to? Of course. And seniors have a right to be satisfied that there is not, at the heart of this process, undue consideration given to cost-cutting.

In the end, it depends on how comfortable one is with having the government in the middle of this process. That is what this discussion is really all about.

COMMENT:  That's correct, and it's an important discussion.  And because it's important, those individuals - on our side - who misbehave at town meetings with members of Congress, are doing our cause no good.  Screaming and yelling will persuade no one.  We have faced that kind of shout-'em-down behavior by liberals, and have properly deplored it.  Let's not fall into the trap, which the mainstream media would love to set, and become just like the "Bush lied, thousands died" opposition.

August 5, 2009   Permalink

MEANWHILE, BACK IN FANTASY LAND - AT 7:51 A.M. ET:  Related to the story just below...

Despite President Obama's prediction that it would create new jobs, the climate change bill passed by the House will mean fewer jobs by 2030 than if Congress did nothing at all, according to the first comprehensive study of the measure by the federal government.

The report by the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said the bill would lead to small increases in electricity costs for consumers -- what Democrats said was an affordable sacrifice for the environmental benefits of lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

"We can move to a clean energy future at a cost of less than a postage stamp per family per day," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.

Has anyone looked at the cost of a stamp recently?

And...

The Democrat-controlled House narrowly passed its climate change bill on a 219-212 vote June 26. A week later, Mr. Obama told chief executives that the legislation "holds the promise of millions of new jobs -- jobs, by the way, that can't be outsourced."

Another promise that is fading away. 

August 5, 2009   Permalink

THE PRESIDENT'S HOME STATE - AT 7:41 A.M. ET: 

CHAMPAIGN - Last month was Illinois’ coldest July since 1924.

Preliminary data gathered by researchers at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign shows the average temperature last month was 70.4 degrees. That’s 5.3 degrees below normal.

Climatologist Jim Angel says the previous record, set 85 years ago, was 71.5 degrees.

COMMENT:  Liberals in Congress are basing their cap 'n' trade legislation entirely on theories of global warming, theories that are rapidly coming apart.  Is anyone watching, examining, or is the ideology so powerful that no further consideration of the facts is necessary?

August 5, 2009   Permalink