THURSDAY,  APRIL 23,  2009

THE CHRYSLER FADE - AT 7:33 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

DETROIT — The Treasury Department is directing Chrysler to prepare a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that could come as soon as next week, people with direct knowledge of the action said Thursday.

The Treasury has an agreement in principle with the United Automobile Workers union, whose members’ pensions and retiree health care benefits would be protected as a condition of the bankruptcy filing, said these people, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

Moreover, Fiat of Italy would complete its alliance with Chrysler while the company is under bankruptcy protection.

COMMENT:  Can GM be far behind?  And yet Ford seems to be surviving.  Ford didn't take a government bailout. It seems incredible that we've arrived at the point, less than three months into the Obama presidency, where the federal government can order a private corporation into bankruptcy.  But, you take government money, you take the control that goes with it.

GM and Chrysler should have gone into bankruptcy, on their own, months ago.  Now the government may well dictate the kind of cars they manufacture, if they make any at all.

April 23, 2009    Permalink

CAUGHT IN THE ACT - AT 7:24 P.M. ET:  Nancy Pelosi has reportedly been beatin' the drums for an investigation into Bush-era interrogation techniques.  She presents herself as pure as the driven snow.  Not so fast, Nan, as The Politico reports:

Nancy Pelosi denies knowing U.S. officials used waterboarding — but GOP operatives are pointing to a 2007 Washington Post story which describes an hour-ong 2002 briefing in which Pelosi was told about enhanced interrogation techniques in graphic detail.

Two unnamed officials told the paper that Pelosi, then a member of the Democratic minority, didn't raise substantial objections.

COMMENT:  An investigation can come back to haunt the liberal Dems, unless the probe is rigged in advance, which it probably will be.  Obama must bring his party under control on this issue, lest his presidency be undermined by an image of White House weakness and congressional immaturity.

April 23, 2009   Permalink

PAKISTAN SLIDES - AT 7:06 P.M. ET:  From London's Daily Mail:

Pakistan teetered on the brink of collapse today as Taliban fighters threatened to overrun the volatile country.

As violence broke out in the disputed north-west corner, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the state, which has nuclear capability, now posed a 'mortal threat' to the world.

'I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists,' she added.

Mrs Clinton's comments came as Islamabad was forced to deploy troops to protect key buildings and bridges.

COMMENT:  We've been cautioning Urgent Agenda readers to watch Pakistan very closely.  It could become the story of the year, and more.

Note the toughness in Clinton's comments.  We pointed out last night in The Angel's Corner that Clinton always sounds slightly to the right of the White House.  If a policy succeeds, no one will notice the difference in tone.  If it fails, she can always claim, though her "people," that she wanted to be tougher.  No fault foreign policy.

April 23, 2009   Permalink

THIS JUST IN - AT 10:50 A.M. ET:  Important news from the Miami Herald:

CARACAS -- Venezuela has announced its U.S.-based oil company Citgo is donating an island in the Delaware River to the state of New Jersey.

Alejandro Granado, president of Houston-based Citgo, said the donation shows a commitment by President Hugo Chávez's government to environmental conservation. New Jersey's Natural Lands Trust board agreed in January to accept Citgo's donation of Petty's Island, which was previously used for fuel storage and is located in the Delaware River between Pennsauken and Philadelphia.

COMMENT:  You see what a little handshake between friends like Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez can do?  We get an island.  With a slap on the back, who knows?  Maybe a time-share in Caracas.

April 23, 2009   Permalink

IRAQ - ONGOING - AT 10:24 A.M. ET:

April 23 (Bloomberg) -- Two terrorist incidents in Iraq left almost 200 people dead or injured, including Iranian Shiite Muslim pilgrims, as Iraqi security forces announced the arrest of al-Qaeda’s leader in the country.

There were at least 105 casualties among the six busloads of Iranians who were targeted at a roadside restaurant in Diyala province as they made the journey to a shrine in Karbala, Iran’s state-run Fars news agency said without providing details of the number who died. Agence France-Presse put the death toll at 45.

COMMENT:  We forget that Iraq is still a dangerous place, and may get more dangerous as we draw down.  This new attack targeted Iranian pilgrims, which could seriously complicate things.  The struggle isn't over.  One great danger:  the liberal press beating the drums for us to get out even faster.

April 23, 2009   Permalink

IS THIS JOURNALISM? - AT 8:02 A.M. ET:  If you want to know why the mainstream press is losing its credibility, just browse through this piece of salesmanship posing as a news story:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future.

Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington.

Nobody knows how long the honeymoon will last, but Obama has clearly transformed the yes-we-can spirit of his candidacy into a tool of governance. His ability to inspire confidence -- Obama's second book is titled ''The Audacity of Hope'' -- has thus far buffered the president against the harsh political realities of two wars, a global economic meltdown and countless domestic challenges.

COMMENT:  Get that third paragraph.  Can you hear the organ music?  Do you hear the left-wing equivalent of the theme from "Patton"? 

Yet, if you read the whole story, you'll see that the results of the poll were far more nuanced than the opening suggests.  And Rasmussen reports that Obama only has a presidential approval, as of yesterday, of 54 percent, not going through the roof.

The MSM is making this country sound like a budding theocracy.  He has come!  He has come!

April 23, 2009   Permalink

FUROR OVER POSSIBLE PROBE OF BUSH APPOINTEES GROWS - AT 7:25 A.M. ET:  A hard-hitting piece from Bloomberg on the hazards ahead if America goes the show-trial route:

April 23 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is seeking to substitute Bush administration political appointees for intelligence-agency professionals as targets of public outrage over interrogation techniques used on suspected terrorists.

Obama’s decision to rule out prosecuting those who conducted the interrogations reflects his need to avoid antagonizing the Central Intelligence Agency as the U.S. fights two wars and faces terrorist threats. Still, he risks a bruising political fight with Republicans furious over potential prosecutions of senior Bush administration officials.

“When you get one administration prosecuting its predecessor, you start creating the conditions of a banana republic,” said Philip Heymann, a law professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who served as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton. “Every Republican in the country would think this was a dangerous attack on the two-party system.”

COMMENT:  And those Republicans would be right.  I like the "banana republic" analogy.  Of course, we can't say it too loudly.  It's not politically correct.  We must show great respect for banana republics, and for Chiquita Banana herself, a marvelous woman and a fighter for banana dignity.

April 23, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 6:55 A.M. ET:  From Ralph Peters, in the New York Post, on the demands by the left to put on trial Bush officials involved in the interrogation program aimed at terror suspects:

Now the left wants an Inquisition for heretics who failed to share its worldview. Men and women who, in their capacity as public servants, wrestled with difficult legal issues in the course of our battle with terrorists are now to be tried and shamed because the left disagreed with their legal opinions and actions. No matter that most Americans wouldn't view the methods of our interrogators as torture when applied to hardened terrorists (despite the media's ceaseless effort to convince us otherwise). No matter that foreign leaders championed by the left use vastly more brutal techniques.

No matter that interrogators differ on the utility of "harsh" methods or that the information gleaned indisputably saved American lives. No matter that our system of government functioned as it was designed to.

COMMENT:  Absolutely correct.  This is a disgrace, with the potential for enormous damage to the United States, not that the left cares.

April 23, 2009   Permalink

WEDNESDAY,  APRIL 22,  2009

PAKISTAN IN TROUBLE - AT 7:55 P.M. ET:  We've urged Urgent Agenda readers to watch events in Pakistan carefully.  A takeover of the country by Islamic militants would give them control of a nuclear arsenal.  Now there's more reason for concern.  From The New York Times:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Taliban militants have established control of a strategically important area only 70 miles from the capital, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. The move is part of an unrelenting push by the Taliban toward the heart of Pakistan.

Heavily armed militants were patrolling villages and local police had retreated to their station houses in much of the city of Buner, a rural area adjacent to Swat, where the Taliban seized control from the Pakistani army in February, they said. Buner is a gateway to a major Pakistani city, Mardan.

“They take over Buner, then they roll into Mardan and that’s the end of the game,” a senior law enforcement official in the North West Frontier Province said.

COMMENT:  And what are we doing in the U.S.?  Why, we're deciding whether to prosecute Bush administration officials for doing their best to protect the country, and for giving honest legal advice.  Aren't we smart?  Aren't we special?  Aren't we "progressive"?

Our worst enemies can take over a nuclear arsenal while we strut around feeling wonderful about ourselves, and relieved that we didn't do anything too rude to stop them.

April 22, 2009   Permalink

GE TAKES SHAREHOLDER HEAT OVER MSNBC - AT 7:28 A.M. ET:  Finally, we're starting to see some blowback over the outrageous left-wing bias at MSNBC, which is part of NBC, which is part of GE:

Things got testy Wednesday at the GE shareholders meeting courtesy of several complaints about political bias at its media division, NBC Universal.

Just don't expect to see the fireworks at the company's webcast of Wednesday's event, which contains prepared remarks from CEO Jeff Immelt and CFO Keith Sherin but leaves out their interaction with shareholders.

Just before GE board members were re-elected, shareholders asked about 10 questions of a mostly political nature concerning the viewpoints of MSNBC and CNBC, according to attendees.

First up was a woman asking about a reported meeting in which Immelt and NBC Uni CEO Jeff Zucker supposedly told top CNBC executives and talent to be less critical of President Obama and his policies.

Immelt acknowledged a meeting took place but said no one at CNBC was told what to say or not say about politics.

During the woman's follow-up question, her microphone was cut off. Later, during the umpteenth question about MSNBC, another shareholder's microphone was cut, according to multiple attendees.

"The crowd was very upset with MSNBC because of its leftward tilt," one attendee said. "Some former employees said they were embarrassed by it."

COMMENT:  Just keep cutting off the mikes.  That's apparently GE's answer to worries over the downward spiral at NBC News.  Nothing to hear, folks.  Nothing to hear.

Bill O'Reilly has been pummeling NBC News regularly, and that's adding to the fire.  The best thing would probably be for GE to sell NBC to a responsible media company, although there aren't too many left.  MSNBC has become a public disgrace.

April 22, 2009   Permalink

BOTCHED - AT 7:18 P.M. ET:  From The Politico:

President Barack Obama’s attempt to project legal and moral clarity on coercive CIA interrogation methods has instead done the opposite — creating confusion and political vulnerability over an issue that has inflamed both the left and right.

In the most recent instance, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged in a memo to the intelligence community that Bush-era interrogation practices yielded had "high-value information,” then omitted that admission from a public version of his assessment.

That leaves a top Obama administration official appearing to validate claims by former Vice President Dick Cheney that waterboarding and other techniques the White House regards as torture were effective in preventing terrorist attacks. And the press release created the impression the administration was trying to suppress this conclusion.

COMMENT:  I'll be writing about this at "The Angel's Corner" tonight.  This is the worst-handled issue for the Obama administration thus far, and it may spin out of control.  Left-wing groups are already running TV ads demanding, in effect, a legal lynching of Bush officials whose crime is that they gave advice that the left disagrees with.  This is the criminalization of politics, an obscenity in a democracy.

Only the president can bring this issue under control.  So far he's chosen not to. 

April 22, 2009   Permalink

POLL TREND CONTINUES - AT 6:16 P.M. ET:  We stress again that this is only one poll, but the results of the Rasmussen daily tracker cannot be causing glee at the White House.  The gap between those who approve of Mr. Obama's performance and those who disapprove has shrunk to eight points, 54-46.  The presidential approval index, the spread between those who strongly approve and disapprove, is down to two points, 34-32.

In addition, Rasmussen reports that the generic congressional ballot - preference for either Democrats or Republicans for Congress - is tied at 39% each.

The next congressional election is a bit more than 18 months away.

April 22, 2009    Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 8:37 A.M. ET:  From the great Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal, who always seems to get it right and say it best.  Here she comments on the impact of President Obama's endless apologizing for the United States:

Five decades of teaching in colleges and universities across the land, portraying the U.S. as a power mainly responsible for injustice and evil, whose military might was ever a danger to the world -- a nation built on the fruits of greed, rapacity and racism -- have had their effect. The products of this education find nothing strange in a president quick to focus on the theme of American moral failure. He may not share many of their views, but there is, nonetheless, much that they find familiar about him.

The same can't be said for the large numbers of Americans who caught up with the details of the president's apology tour. Presidents have been transformed by office, and Mr. Obama may yet be one of them. But on the evidence so far, he has, as few presidents before him, much to transform. Or, at least, to understand.

COMMENT:  Absolutely correct.  There's still time for the president to put some spine in his foreign policy.  Jack Kennedy had a bad first year as president, but learned.  Will Obama? 

April 22, 2009   Permalink

TALKS WITH IRAN?  JUST WAIT A SECOND - AT 8:12 A.M. ET:  The Washington Post shows once again that its editorial page, although liberal, has a fierce independence.  Compare please with The New York Times.  From The Post:

LAST WEEK, the Iranian regime brought American journalist Roxana Saberi before a closed court and in a one-hour trial convicted her of espionage -- a blatantly bogus charge. She was sentenced to eight years in prison. On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was last seen inaugurating a new facility for Iran's nuclear program, appeared at the U.N. conference on racism in Geneva to deliver a speech seemingly calculated to cause maximum outrage in the United States and other Western countries. They had, he said, "resorted to military aggression" in order to create Israel "on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question of the Holocaust."

Thus has Iran answered President Obama's offer of dialogue and the decision by his administration to join talks on Tehran's nuclear program.

And...

Mr. Obama has always said that talks with Iran must be conducted under the right circumstances and in a way that advances U.S. interests. The administration won't meet that test if it allows negotiations to become a means of vindicating Mr. Ahmadinejad's radical agenda. It should postpone any contact until after the Iranian election in June -- and it should look for clear signs that Iran is acting in good faith before talks begin. The unconditional release of Ms. Saberi and Mr. Levinson would be one.

COMMENT:  Levinson is a former FBI agent held by Iran.  The Post is correct.  We hope the White House notices, even though the loyal brigades of the Daily Kos and moveon.org will probably now cancel their Post subscriptions.

April 22, 2009   Permalink

MORE EUROPEAN INSANITY - AT 7:41 A.M. ET:  From the Washington Post: 

BERLIN, April 21 -- European prosecutors are likely to investigate CIA and Bush administration officials on suspicion of violating an international ban on torture if they are not held legally accountable at home, according to U.N. officials and human rights lawyers.

Many European officials and civil liberties groups said they were disappointed by President Obama's opposition to trials of CIA interrogators who subjected terrorism suspects to waterboarding and other harsh tactics. They said the release last week of secret U.S. Justice Department memos authorizing the techniques will make it easier for foreign prosecutors to open probes if U.S. officials do not.

Some European countries, under a legal principle known as universal jurisdiction, have adopted laws giving themselves the authority to investigate torture, genocide and other human rights crimes anywhere in the world, even if their citizens are not involved. Although it is rare for prosecutors to win such cases, those targeted can face arrest if they travel abroad.

COMMENT:  The march of the European left goes on, as does its collusion with Islamic fundamentalism.  The tragedy here is that the threat by these nutcakes will give extra impetus to leftists in the United States, who dream of bringing down this country.

Oh, we're not alone.  From the Jerusalem Post:

Six Norwegian lawyers plan to file a complaint against former prime minister Ehud Olmert and other top officials for "war crimes" allegedly perpetrated by Israel during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza at the beginning of the year.

The lawyers plan to file their complaint with Norway's chief prosecutor on Wednesday, AFP reported.

The lawyers said they will call for the arrest and extradition of Olmert as well as former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and seven senior IDF officers.

Under the Norwegian penal code, courts may hear cases involving war crimes and other major violations of human rights allegedly committed in other countries.

COMMENT:  Have you noticed that these European "human rights activists" only go after free nations?  With all the horrors elsewhere in the world, you'd think they'd have plenty to do.  But their objective is clear - to damage the nations they despise the most, starting with the United States and Israel. 

It is simply ridiculous that some little country, drunk on European socialism, can try officials of another country simply because they want to.  I suspect both the cases above will go away, but this idea of "universal jurisdiction" makes a mockery of law and justice, and must be fought.

April 22, 2009   Permalink

SOCIAL TRAGEDY - AT 7:28 A.M. ET:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is weighing whether a Connecticut city's decision to scrap a promotion exam for firefighters because too few minorities passed violates the civil rights of top-scoring white applicants.

The justices are hearing arguments Wednesday in a case from New Haven, Conn., that has the potential to change hiring practices nationwide. The court also was expected to issue opinions in cases argued earlier this term.

The firefighters' dispute is one of two major civil rights cases on the court's calendar in the next two weeks. The other deals with a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Underlying both cases are broader questions about racial progress and the ongoing need for legal protections from discrimination for minorities, especially after the election of President Barack Obama.

COMMENT:  This has nothing to do with the election of Barack Obama, contrary to what the story says.  It has everything to do with misguided policies, though well meaning, that twist the idea of equality out of shape.  Under the law, if enough members of minority groups do not do well on a test, the test is automatically considered biased.  This is absurd, of course, and an insult to minorities. 

The correct approach would provide extra help to minorities who might have some difficulty in a subject, the way we provide extra help in school.  After that, we must insist that they compete equally.  You show respect for groups not by condescending attitudes, but by demanding that they produce.  It's amazing what results can be achieved, as our military shows every day.

April 22, 2009   Permalink