SATURDAY,  SEPTEMBER 12,  2009

THE DOUBLE STANDARD - AT 8:54 P.M. ET:  Here is a paragraph from a Washington Post story on today's massive demonstration in the capital against the spending policies of the Obama administration:

Participants in the demonstration spanned the spectrum of conservative anger at Obama, including opponents of his tax, spending and health-care plans and protesters who question Obama's U.S. citizenship and liken his administration to the Nazi regime. By 11 a.m., the route between Freedom Plaza and the Capitol was a sea of demonstrators chanting "USA!" and carrying signs such as, "Taxed enough already," "The audacity of dope" and, "Czars belong in Russia."

COMMENT:  Okay, a bit coarse, but basically accurate.  However, compare please to any number of left-wing demonstrations in Washington, and the way they're reported by the liberal media.  Participants are invariably described as "anti-war activists," "peace activists," "student activists," or some such innocuous label.  In fact, many left-wing demonstrations feature the most vulgar language, anti-American hatred, anti-Semitism, and plain old Marxist venom.  But rarely is that reported by the mainstreams.

I've seen this pattern now for 40 years.  If the demonstration is on the right, the worst is reported.  If it's on the left, everything is sanitized.  If you see examples of this double standard, let us know.  We'd like to publicize them.

September 12, 2009   Permalink

NEEDS FURTHER INVESTIGATION - AT 8:23 P.M. ET:  Sometimes, witnesses have a way of disappearing:

Christopher Kelly, a key figure in the federal corruption investigation of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, is dead, sources said.

Christopher Kelly, 51, of Burr Ridge, was once the master of Blagojevich’s lucrative campaign fund and the “go-to” guy in the ex-governor’s administration.

Kelly was found at 7:01 a.m. by his family, according to a report given to the Cook County Medical Examiner. He was pronounced dead at 10:46 a.m., sources said. Kelly died of an apparent "aspirin overdose," a law enforcement source said.

COMMENT:  An aspirin overdose?  Is that like an ice cream fit?  I'd like to know more about this.  Was he, as they say in polite circles, "suicided"?

It was Blagojevich who appointed Barack Obama's successor, super-hack Roland Burris.  Would like to know more about that as well, and why the president of the United States didn't step in to avoid an embarrassment.

September 12, 2009   Permalink

ONE SMALL STEP FOR THE U.S., ONE GIANT LEAP FOR NORTH KOREA - AT 12:14 P.M. ET:  The United States has made still one more concession in its foreign policy, giving North Korea what North Korea wanted.  From Jake Tapper at ABC News:

The US shifted its policy today, saying it is now willing to meet one on one with North Korea if that is helpful to bring Pyongyang back to the nuclear negotiations.

US envoy Stephen Bosworth got the green light from the other members of the 6-party talks, negotiations to rid Pyongyang of its nuclear program, during meetings in the region in recent days.

North Korea has extended an invitation for Bosworth to visit Pyongyang, but officials say it’s unclear where or when a meeting could take place.

“It's designed to convince North Korea to come back to the six- party process and to take affirmative steps towards denuclearization,” State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said of the decision to meet.

COMMENT:  This comes right after we caved in to Iran, agreeing to meet the Iranians even though they'd taken their nuclear program off the table.  Discussing that program had been the main reason we offered to meet with them in the first place.

It's been concession after concession ever since Obama took office.  The North Koreans wanted one-on-one with the U.S. to boost their prestige and give the appearance of power.  We should have gotten something in return for our agreement, but we apparently did not - in either Iran's case or North Korea's.

Neville Chamberlain must be smiling down there.  Umbrellas are back in style.

September 12, 2009   Permalink

MAJOR ECONOMIC HURDLE - AT 11:16 A.M. ET: The president's political future will depend heavily on whether the economy revives.  One of his chief economic advisers has some gloomy news with profound political implications.  The Politico reports:

The president’s chief economic adviser warned Friday that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay “unacceptably high” for years to come — a situation that would seriously complicate Barack Obama’s ability to convince Americans that he’s beating back the recession.

“The level of unemployment is unacceptably high,” National Economic Council Director Larry Summers said Friday. “And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.”

Summers’s comments came in a briefing with reporters ahead of Obama’s speech in New York City on Monday, marking the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an event widely regarded as having created a panic that caused the global economic meltdown.

Even with his gloomy forecast for unemployment, Summers said the economy is getting better and made the case that Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package and other fiscal rescue steps headed off even more economic pain.

COMMENT:  Summers is a brilliant economist, and was also a great president of Harvard before being brought down by the forces of political correctness.  if his forecast is correct, we may be facing a "jobless recovery," which, to most Americans, is no recovery at all. 

Politically, this is very bad news for the president.  The unemployment rate is the human side of the recession, the one most voters look at. 

September 12, 2009   Permalink

A SLIGHT BOUNCE - AT 10:23 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen reports that President Obama got a slight bounce from the 23,403rd speech he gave to the American people on Wednesday night.  Two thirds of those polled were polled after the speech, and one third before. 

Some 50% of respondents approve of the job the president is doing, compared with 49% who don't.  The president had been down by as much as six points in recent weeks, and is now up one.

In Ras's presidential approval index, measuring the gap between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove, the president is at minus five, 33% to 38%.  He was down by as much as 14 points within the last month.

So, a slight bounce, but still clearly a dramatic decline for Mr. Obama since the heady days after inauguration.

September 12,  2009   Permalink

CURIOUS - AND DISGRACEFUL - AT 10:07 A.M. ET:  The case of Britain's relationship with Libya gets more and more curious.  Now there is this latest outrage, from Britain's Telegraph.  The SAS is the Special Air Service, a unit of elite commandos:

The SAS has been ordered by the Government to train Libyan special forces despite the country having armed the Irish Republican Army, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

For the past six months Britain’s elite troops have been schooling soldiers working for Col Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, which for years provided Republican terrorists with the Semtex explosive, machine-guns and anti-aircraft missiles used against British troops during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Sources within the SAS have expressed distaste at the agreement, which they believe could be connected to the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

Britain’s relationship with Libya has been under the spotlight since Abdelbaset al Megrahi was freed from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds last month after being diagnosed as suffering from terminal prostate cancer and given three months to live.

COMMENT:  This is a sordid affair.  Although the Obama administration has been cold to Britain since The One took office, we have a right to be outraged at the apparent favors being done for Libya by the Gordon Brown government.

Gordon Brown has faced claims that his Government helped engineer Megrahi’s release to promote Britain’s commercial interests, particularly energy, in Libya.

We wonder if Britain authorities would have felt free to do some of these things if George Bush had been in the White House.  We also wonder whether the Obama White House has been aware of Britain's interactions with Libya, and just doesn't care.  Hey, it's "outreach," right?

September 12, 2009   Permalink

FRIDAY,  SEPTEMBER 11,  2009

FASCINATING - AT 6:39 P.M. ET:  Well, a little serene amusement, for a change.  Rasmussen has done a survey on how people react to certain political labels.  The results are pleasing:

"Progressive” is becoming more of a dirty word, but all political labels – except “being like Ronald Reagan” - are falling into disfavor with many U.S. voters, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

“Liberal” is still the worst and remains the only political description that is viewed more negatively than positively. Being like Reagan is still the most positive thing you can say about a candidate.

Just 15% of voters say they view the description of a candidate as politically liberal as positive, down four points from last November. Forty-one percent (41%) see it as a negative description, up five points form the earlier survey, while 42% say it’s somewhere in between.

Aware of their low ideological ratings, political liberals have shifted in recent times to calling themselves progressives, but that name, too, has begun to lose its luster. Thirty-two percent (32%) now consider it a positive to describe a candidate as politically progressive, but that’s down from 40% just after the last election. Twenty-seven percent (27%) see it as negative label, up from 16%, and 36% put it somewhere in between the two.

COMMENT:  Amazing how the truth gets out, isn't it?  We look forward to "progressive" moving even further south.  Deep south.

September 11, 2009   Permalink

A PROBLEM AMONG FRIENDS - AT 5:58 P.M. ET:  While not as deep in the tank as MSNBC, which now functions as a branch of the White House, CNN has been an Obama-friendly zone.  So we are mildly gratified that the White House actually criticized CNN today over its wild reporting of a non-incident:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs today criticized CNN — not the Coast Guard — over the panic caused by the agency’s training exercise on the Sept. 11 anniversary, saying that the alarm could have been avoided if the network had checked its facts.

Gibbs said he wouldn’t second-guess Coast Guard leadership for holding a Potomac River exercise on the morning of the 9/11 commemoration. But he took a shot at CNN, which initially didn’t know the maneuvers in the Potomac were an exercise and erroneously reported that gunshots were fired — something the homeland security department said didn’t occur.

“Let’s understand that best I can tell there was reporting based on listening to a police scanner that was not verified, and then it was on television and now we’ve raced back to find out that it’s a training exercise. So I think it appears as if a lot of this might have been avoided,” Gibbs said.

COMMENT:  I monitored that coverage.  It would have gotten an F in any journalism school - unless the multicultural aspects of the non-event were mentioned, in which case an A would have been given.

They used a scanner and didn't check?  This is not good.  It makes us wonder about the rest of CNN's "reporting," but we've been wondering for years anyway.

I'm sure that CNN will now upgrade its practices and start listening to guys with cigarette holders standing under lampposts in Georgetown.  Hey, you never know.  They see stuff.

September 11, 2009   Permalink

UTTERLY PATHETIC - AT 5:19 P.M. ET:  The United States has chosen to commemorate September 11, 2001, in the way that the Obama administration knows best - by capitulation and appeasement. 

Earlier this week the Iranian government "responded" to Obama's calls for engagement on its nuclear program by saying it was prepared to discuss a host of international issues...but not that.

And the American response?  We accept.  We accept, of course, along with other nations for whom appeasement is, hey, no problem.  The AP reports.  Airsickness pills required:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States and five partner countries have accepted Iran's new offer to hold talks, even though Iran insists it will not negotiate over its disputed nuclear program, the State Department said Friday.

Even the AP seems a bit embarrassed, and that takes real doing.

Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters that although Iran's proposal for international talks -- presented to the six powers on Wednesday -- was disappointing for sidestepping the nuclear issue, it represented a chance to begin a direct dialogue.

Oh please.  We're absolutely crawling to these thugs.  A chance to begin a dialogue?  The Europeans have been "dialoguing" with Tehran for six years, without any progress.  Will there be any different result because The One is in the White House?

''We are seeking a meeting now based on the Iranian paper to see what Iran is prepared to do,'' Crowley said. ''And then, as the president has said, you know, if Iran responds to our interest in a meeting, we'll see when that can occur. We hope that will occur as soon as possible.''

Talk to us, Ahmadinejad.  Don't take time out to kill more of your own citizens.  Just talk to us.  There could be a set of DVDs in it for you.  Pretty please?

Crowley said Iran's lack of interest in addressing its nuclear program is not a reason to refuse to talk.

''If we have talks, we will plan to bring up the nuclear issue,'' he said.

Well don't bring it up too early in the day and ruin the atmosphere, okay? 

Are all you readers taking those airsickness pills?

'If Iran dissembles in the future, as it has in the past, then we will draw conclusions from that,'' he said.

And we will send an angry letter!

Crowley said the administration will, between now and December, assess where it's diplomatic approach stands. Iran's willingness to deal with the nuclear issues in the proposed new talks will be part of that assessment, he said.

Utterly pathetic.  In December the Iranians will do something to cause us to "review" our position and extend the talks.  Meanwhile, the centrifuges are spinning in Iran.

This makes Jimmah Carter look like a hawk.

Our policy is coming from the White House.  The president of the United States is an embarrassment.  The sad fact is, though, that this policy will get plenty of support in the foreign-policy establishment and the in-the-tank media. 

September 11, 2009   Permalink

DESPICABLE, OF COURSE - AT 10:37 A.M. ET:

OWOSSO, Michigan -- State police at the Corunna post have confirmed a well-known anti-abortion activist was shot multiple times and killed this morning in front of Owosso High School.

The victim's identity has not yet been released but the shooting occurred around 7:30 a.m., after most students were off the buses and safely inside the building, said Owosso schools transportation supervisor Jayne Campbell.

State police also confirmed that a suspect was taken into custody about 8:15 a.m. at the suspect's home.

Owosso High School secretary Wendy Smith said the students remain in lockdown this morning and confirmed that no students were involved and all are safe with classes going on as normal. The shooting did not occur on school property, Smith said.

COMMENT:  Obviously an outrage.  However, we'll see how much attention this gets in comparison to the shooting death - also outrageous - of the abortion-providing doctor, George Tiller, in Kansas several months ago.  It will be a test of whether the mainstream media can cover both sides equally.  Place your bets.

September 11, 2009   Permalink

BIT OF A BOUNCE - AT 9:34 A.M. ET:  Polls taken in whole or in part after the president's speech are trickling in, and they show a slight bounce, maybe, for Mr. Obama.  Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 34% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-nine percent (39%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -5. That’s the highest level of Strong Approval and the best Approval Index rating for the President in a month (see trends).

Data for this daily update is collected via nightly telephone surveys and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, nearly two-thirds of interviews for today's update were completed before the President’s speech to Congress Wednesday night. Sunday morning’s update will be the first based entirely upon interviews conducted following the speech. The President has typically enjoyed a bounce in the polls following his national prime time television appearances.

And...

The President’s speech also provided a modest bounce in support for his health care plans. Polling conducted over the past two nights shows that 46% of voters now support the reform proposed by the President and Congressional Democrats. Opposition is down to 51%. However, it’s a partisan bounce as the increase in support comes entirely from within the President’s own party.

COMMENT:  Washington hands are now talking about having a completed health-care "reform" bill by Thanksgiving.  That's more than two months from now.  Mr. Obama's speech will be a vague memory by then, and any bounce will depend on how well he does between today and Turkey time, not on the speech.

September 11, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY, THUS FAR - AT 8:51 A.M. ET:   If I had to name the top five commentators in this country since the 9-11 attacks, I would certainly include Fouad Ajami, who has constantly reminded us of the true nature of those we are opposing, and of our own need to oppose them, and oppose them intelligently.  Here, in the Wall Street Journal, Ajami reflects on 9-11 and its legacy:

Eight years ago, we were visited by the furies of Arab lands. We were rudely awakened from a decade whose gurus and pundits had announced the end of ideology, of politics itself, and the triumph of the world-wide Web and the "electronic herd." We had discovered that on the other side of the world masterminds of terror, and preachers, and their foot-soldiers were telling of America the most sordid of tales. We had become, without knowing it, a party to a civil war in the Arab-Islamic world between the autocrats and their disaffected children, between those who wanted to live a normal life and warriors of the faith bent on imposing their will on that troubled arc of geography.

Our country answered that call, not always brilliantly, for we are fated to be strangers in that world and thus fated to improvise and make our way through unfamiliar alleyways. We met chameleons and hustlers of every shade and had to learn, in a hurry, incomprehensible atavisms and pathologies. We fared best when we trusted our sense of things. We certainly haven't been kept safe by the crowds in Paris and Berlin, or by those in Ankara and Cairo who feign desire for our friendship while they yearn for our undoing.

COMMENT:  Every journalist in America should have that quote posted above his or her desk - especially the part about our not being kept safe by the crowds in Paris and Berlin. 

One of the great myths about 9-11 is that we were flooded with sympathy after the attacks, sympathy that George Bush then trashed.  Wrong.  Whatever sympathy there was lasted a day or two.  Some 48 hours after the attacks, the BBC went on the air with vicious anti-American programming. 

I believe that the anti-Americanism that followed 9-11 stemmed not from George Bush and his policies, but from the fact that we were successfully attacked.  The world loves a winner and despises a loser.  If you're successfully attacked, you get ten minutes of sympathy and ten years of contempt.  Look at our attitude toward the French and how it was formed by their failure to defend themselves successfully against the Nazis in 1940.

We know what keeps us safe.  But a president who chokes on the word "victory" can't tell us.

September 11, 2009    Permalink

SANE DEMS UNMOVED BY OBAMA HEALTH SPEECH.  INSANE DEMS PERMANENTLY MOVED - AT 8:19 A.M. ET:  From The Washington Times:

President Obama's address to Congress Wednesday night did little to immediately convert factions in the Democratic party to unify behind a health care overhaul plan Thursday, and his call for an end to "bickering" was met by Republican carping that he failed to "reset" the debate.

Liberal House lawmakers said they still want to see the president embrace a government-sponsored public insurance option as part of any bill, and centrist Democrats said they remain worried about the price tag.

"I believe a costly government-run public option is the wrong direction for reform and I will not support it," Rep. Mike Ross, a moderate Blue Dog Democrat from Arkansas who has come out in opposition of the plan that he helped shepherd through committee, said in the aftermath of Mr. Obama's speech.

COMMENT:  They are waiting for the polls.  If the polls swing heavily in the president's direction, many Blue Dogs will stop barking and start licking.  If they don't, conflict will continue, even within the Democratic Party.

September 11, 2009     Permalink

THE ANNIVERSARY - AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  It is September 11th, the eighth anniversary of the day of terror.  This is a unique observance of that day, though.  It is the first time we mark it without George Bush in the White House.

What a difference a year makes.

We have gone from a deeply American president who kept the nation safe, and who understood what that meant, to a president who doesn't seem to like his country very much, and spends much of his time overseas apologizing for it.

Feel safer already?

Eight years ago we knew immediately that the threat was centered in Afghanistan.  Today The New York Times leads with this:  Obama Facing Doubts Within His Own Party on Afghanistan.  One of our two major parties, which spent years heaping abuse on George Bush for his action in Iraq, and accusing him of ignoring "the good war" in Afghanistan, now turns against the "good war" as well.

WASHINGTON — The leading Senate Democrat on military matters said Thursday that he was against sending more American combat troops to Afghanistan until the United States speeded up the training and equipping of more Afghan security forces.

The comments by the senator, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, illustrate the growing skepticism President Obama is facing in his own party as the White House decides whether to commit more deeply to a war that has begun losing public support, even as American commanders acknowledge that the situation on the ground has deteriorated.

Of course, we know that, had Bush not gone into Iraq, the Democratic Party's left would have turned against Afghanistan even earlier.  It's in their DNA.

Who would have thought that, eight years after the real 9-11, we would be investigating the CIA agents who did so much to keep us safe? 

Who would have thought that there'd be a powerful faction of the majority party, and its allies in the media, who would love to prosecute a vice president of the United States, and to disbar lawyers who gave honest advice in those opening months of the war on terror?

Who would have thought that, after years of being falsely accused of being anti-Muslim, the United States would have a president whose middle name is Hussein, although we weren't allowed to mention it while he was running for office?

The attacks of 9-11 are a distant memory now.  Today is to the day of those attacks what December 7, 1949, was to Pearl Harbor, which had been attacked eight years earlier. 

The difference is that we always remembered Pearl Harbor, even after the Japanese were defeated.  Are most Americans, today, remembering 2001?  The intensity seems to be gone, and with it the focus on crushing our enemies.  A veritable fifth column in our universities, recalling their "triumph" over their own country in Vietnam, has been teaching for eight years that 9-11 was all our fault.  Indeed, it took only days after the attacks themselves for college professors and college presidents to start lecturing their own country.  And the campuses that refused to have ROTC then continued to refuse.  For those elements, 9-11 really never happened.

Our current president wants us to observe September 11th now with a day of volunteering.  Well, there's nothing wrong with volunteering, but we have a right to suspect, based on everything else he's said and done, that Mr. Obama would like to take the emphasis off those who attacked us, and their beliefs, and off the American military.  He is a fruit of the sixties generation, far more than Bill Clinton ever was. 

We could have had John McCain making the important speech today.  We don't have to agree with McCain on everything to realize that his ideas about 9-11 are very different from the man who defeated him.

We'll fight harder next time.

September 11, 2009    Permalink