SUNDAY,  MAY 3,  2009

GET THE MEN IN THE WHITE COATS - AT 8:45 P.M. ET:  Has Arlen Specter taken complete leave of his senses?  Or does a convert to the Democratic Party have to prove how zany he is from day one?  The senator from Pennsylvania has given us his wisdom on the subject of medical research:

Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, said part of the reason he left the Republican Party last week was disillusionment with its healthcare priorities, and suggested that had the Republicans taken a more moderate track, Jack Kemp may have won his battle with cancer.

No doubt the Kemp family will appreciate that.

Mr. Specter continued: "If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine."

Wait a minute.  On the one hand, he suggests that we didn't pursue President Nixon's war on cancer.  On the other hand he says, "And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine."  And he gives his expert autopsy report on Jack Kemp.

There are pills available for behavior like this, Arlen.  Little pills.  Easy to swallow. 

May 3, 2009   Permalink

A NEW GUY, AND GREAT - AT 11:24 A.M. ET:  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution isn't known as a great den of conservatives.  But they've had conservative representation on their op-ed page.  Today a new writer makes his debut - Kyle Wingfield, previously of the Wall Street Journal's European edition.  It's a great beginning, as he informs readers of some of the realities of Europe.  Sadly, this probably won't be read where it's needed most - in the smug precincts of the northeast, where European is always "better and finer."  But we can read it:

Europeans have smaller cars, but also fewer cars. They may have “free” health care, but even middle-class families often pay more than 50 percent of their incomes in taxes. Their markets may not be caricatured as Wild West capitalism the way ours are, but to be a consumer in Europe is to know what the word “rip-off” means — in pricing, in choice, in service.

There is no such thing as the “European social model” because every nation is different. What they all have in common, though, is that they have spent the last decade or longer trying to move away from the very kind of system we Americans may be on the verge of adopting.

They are doing so because it’s simply unsustainable. Margaret Thatcher’s dictum still holds true: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

Ah, so true.

I won't pretend that America’s way is never messy. The private sector made real mistakes that helped cause the current financial crisis. But bankers could not have created so much havoc on their own. At every step, government amplified the private sector’s errors with its own policy failures — that goes for the Bush and Clinton administrations alike. (And, it seems, the nascent Obama one.)

To say that more government is the answer is to ignore government’s mistakes, in our recent past as well as in all state-heavy systems. Like Europe’s.

I won’t dwell on my European experience, even if it shapes my thinking. But know this: When I first moved to Belgium, I felt I was stepping back in time a few years. I shudder to think that I was actually looking at America’s future.

COMMENT:  We'll be following Mr. Wingfield's writing.  If the above is an example, we're in for some enlightenment.

May 3, 2009   Permalink

FROM THE NORTH - AT 10:31 A.M. ET:  We've noted here before that some of the most perceptive assessments of Barack Obama have come from foreign journalists.  Here, Canadian scribe Rex Murphy proves that in a surgical strike on the Obama way of governing.  From Toronto's Globe and Mail: 

We know that he is the one of the most ambitious men to enter the White House...

...The scope of that ambition is there to see, even if his cool manner and casual demeanour disinclines most to register the evidence. He's a bit of a magician, a deft misdirectionist.

I'm glad someone noticed.

The financial emergency may be looked upon as the greatest sleight of hand in modern or any other politics. The crisis was real - not incidentally, still is, and hot as ever. But Mr. Obama has taken the angst and anxiety of the financial crisis, with the attendant "permission" it gave him for drastic action, and transferred that permission to the overhaul of medical care, education, the wholesale redefinition of energy policy and the imposition of a vast government presence in the operation of American business.

It is, ironically, the so-called "shock doctrine" in action, manipulating a crisis to enact an agenda. Ironically, because it's not dark Cheneyesque "neo-cons" doing the dazzling shuffle, but the great bright vessel of "social justice" and change.

Oh, say it, Rex, say it!

This is Ozymandian ambition, or the ambition of an Alexander who wept when there were no more worlds to conquer. With ambition on the Obama scale, there will be tears at the end too - either his, that nothing will remain to engage him, or from those who will bear the price of his audacious ambition should the whole great experiment tumble and fail.

COMMENT:  I wish we had more commentary like that here.  We do have some, Charles Krauthammer, Ed Lasky, and the Power Liners are great examples.  But not enough.

Oh, the term "Ozymandian" refers to a poem by Percy Shelley.  You can read it here and draw your own conclusions.

May 3, 2009   Permalink

ISN'T THAT KIND? - AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  From AP: 

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's foreign minister assured his visiting Japanese counterpart that the case of an American journalist imprisoned in Tehran for allegedly spying for the United States will get a fair review on appeal.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said 32-year-old Roxana Saberi's appeal will be "reviewed justly and humanely." He spoke at a joint news conference Saturday with Japan's Hirofumi Nakasone, who expressed concern over the case during his visit to Iran.

Saberi is a dual Iranian-American citizen was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Her father is Iranian and her mother is Japanese. She was arrested in January in Tehran and sentenced last month to eight years in prison after a one-day trial behind closed doors. Her case has raised an international outcry and her lawyer in Iran has appealed the verdict.

COMMENT:  What a game is being played!  This woman is simply a bargaining chip.  She will be released in a grand gesture of "good will" or "humanitarianism."  The grovelers in the Obama administration will "welcome" the release as a sign of what the president's new on-our-knees policy can bring.  And the in-the-tank press will forget to point out that she never should have been imprisoned in the first place.

May 3, 2009   Permalink

ISN'T IT ROMANTIC - AT 9:26 A.M. ET:  Gag me with a spoon:

WASHINGTON – The first couple took full advantage of the cool spring night.

After a date night out on Saturday evening, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama decided to take a stroll when their motorcade arrived back at the White House.

So they began walking on the driveway of the White House South Lawn while holding hands. First they passed the West Wing, then their children's swing set. They kept walking, swinging their hands together.

There were no Secret Service agents right behind them — the agents stood off, in one of the rare moments that the Obamas had private space outside the White House walls.

COMMENT:  If it was private, how come there was an AP photograph with the AP story?

All right, look, it's perfectly fine for the First Duo to take a walk in the park.  But I'd like them to contemplate, the next time they do this, that they wouldn't have this serenity, this chance, this freedom, if it were not for some very brave people who've defended this country through the ages, and some very brave agents who, after 9/11, did everything in their power to keep the nation safe.  Those are things worth discussing.

May 3, 2009   Permalink 

SATURDAY,  MAY 2,  2009

IRANIAN OBSCENITY - AT 6:49 P.M. ET:  Our friend Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi has been keeping us informed of this case.  We hope Mr. Obama and the foreign policy "realists" of this administration are aware of it, too.  From Phil Sherwell of London's Telegraph:

Delara Darabi knew the end was close when she made a panic-filled call to her mother from prison to say that she could see the hangman's noose from her window.

The Iranian artist was executed on Friday for a murder allegedly committed when she was a juvenile and for which she retracted her brief confession, claiming she was covering up for her boyfriend.

The prison authorities hanged Miss Darabi, 23, even though the head of Iran's judiciary granted her a two-month stay of execution on April 19 amid international outrage over her case. They also did not give her lawyer the required 48 hours notice.

Horrific new details have emerged of her last desperate plea for help from Rasht prison as jail guards came to lead her away.

Miss Darabi made a tearful call early on Friday to her parents to say she could see the gallows and noose, according to media reports from Tehran.

"Mother they are going to execute me, please save me," she pleaded. But a prison official then grabbed the phone and told her distraught mother: "We are going to execute your daughter and there's nothing you can do about it."

COMMENT:  Note the comment about "international outrage."  How much outrage did you see coming from the Obama administration, whose cheerleaders are far more concerned about waterboarding known terror masters. 

And where are the "women's rights advocates"?  Nowhere to be seen.  They're more concerned about Miss California endorsing traditional marriage. 

Now the Obama administration is about to engage the Iranian regime on the subject of nuclear weapons.  How far do you think Obama will get?  Can you hear the laughter in Tehran?

May 2, 2009   Permalink

RASMUSSEN'S SATURDAY SURPRISE - AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  Despite his network news conference this week, President Obama registers his worst numbers yet as president in today's Rasmussen daily tracker.  On general presidential approval, some 54% approve of Obama's performance, while 45% disapprove.  It's been that way for three days now. 

But on Ras's presidential approval index - the gap between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove, the number is down to one point - 33-32.  It has never been this tight. 

We stress again that a poll is a snapshot in time, that numbers vary from day to day, and that other polls have Obama stronger.  But the trend in the first hundred days has been downward.  The White House cannot be pleased. 

We'd also point out that the gap in the overall approval rating is only nine points, and some of those who "approve" only somewhat approve.

May 2, 2009   Permalink 

PAKISTANI NUKES, THE WORRY - AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  From the McClatchy newspapers:

WASHINGTON — Pakistan is expanding its nuclear weapons program even as Islamic extremists in northwest Pakistan continue to advance in the direction of several highly sensitive nuclear-related sites, U.S. officials and other experts said this week.

Pakistan's government is completing two new nuclear reactors to produce plutonium for weapons that would be smaller, lighter and more efficient than the 60-odd highly enriched uranium-fueled warheads that Pakistan is now thought to possess, the officials and experts said.

"In the current climate, with Pakistan's leadership under duress from daily acts of violence by insurgent Taliban forces and organized political opposition, the security of any nuclear material produced in these reactors is in question," said an April 23 report by the Institute for Science and International Security .

Some of the officials and experts are more worried that Islamic radicals or sympathizers inside Pakistan's military might get their hands on radioactive material that could be used to make a crude dirty bomb than they are about a theft of one of the heavily guarded weapons themselves.

COMMENT:  President Obama assured us at his news conference this week that the Pakistani nukes are secure, and would be secure.  But he pointedly refused to go into detail.  It's hard to accept the president's statements at face value.  How could the U.S. even know where all the nukes are?  Or all the enriched materials needed to make them? 

Watch this one very closely.

May 2, 2009   Permalink

PROPAGANDISTS AT WORK - AT 8:47 A.M. ET:  He who controls the vocabulary controls the country.  The following is brought to you, apparently, by the same people who "rightsize" rather than "downsize" corporations, and "demonstrate robustly" rather than "riot":  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”

The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

COMMENT:  Oh, they are so wrong here.  This is the kind of thinking done by those who believe the American people are dumb and uniformed.  They are neither.  They know that there are serious disputes over some of these issues, and they want the disputes aired openly before committing the future of the country to some trendy scheme.  They also know that some environmental actions can do as much harm as good, or even more, as with the disastrous banning of DDT in Africa.  The want facts.  Twisting the words simply shows the cynicism of the twisters.

May 2, 2009   Permalink

WELCOME SUPPORT - AT 8:40 A.M. ET:  It's actually news when American universities behave decently in a political case, so this is gratifying, from AP:

EVANSTON, Illinois — Professors, students and alumni of the alma mater of an American journalist imprisoned in Iran are helping orchestrate a hunger strike in hopes of pressuring her release.

The FreeRoxana campaign partly sponsored by people affiliated with Northwestern University is organizing the protest on behalf of Roxana Saberi. She's a 1999 graduate of the university's Medill School of Journalism.

The 32-year-old was arrested in January and convicted last month of spying for the U.S. She was sentenced to eight years in prison after a one-day trial behind closed doors.

COMMENT:  I wonder if there'll be a counter-protest by hard leftists who'll eat something extra in solidarity with the Iranian regime.  I would not be shocked.

May 2, 2009   Permalink