Last week, a little more than 24 hours after the FBI warned senators not to disclose the sensitive information that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was cooperating with the FBI, the White House shared the information with the news media.
Attorney General Eric Holder has been the Obama administration’s point man in revising the nation’s approach to terrorism. Holder said last summer that it was his decision to reinvestigate CIA operatives who had employed enhanced interrogation techniques during the Bush administration, although these individuals had been cleared by the Justice Department’s career prosecutors.
You know how at Super Bowl parties you often have to endure the painful commentary of non-football fans who feel the need to pontificate about various aspects of the game? Well, at least those fans aren’t usually U.S. senators, and they aren’t usually intent on making their peculiar views the basis of a Justice Department investigation.
While everyone seems to be all atwitter (quite literally) about Sarah Palin's hinting that she will run in 2012 "if I believe that that is the right thing to do for our country," it is worth noting the only actual name she mentioned in her Fox News Sunday interview last Sunday—Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. As she told Chris Wallace,
But listen, no, we have some strong, some young turks in this party. Paul Ryan, I'm very impressed with Paul Ryan.... He's good. Man, he is sharp, he is smart, articulate and he is passionate about these common-sense solutions that America has got to adopt to get us on the right road. I can name a whole lot of people.
Not that she does. But as Ryan (who recently turned 40) told our own Matt Continetti in this week's issue, he has no intention of running. At least not at the time this item was posted.
Last week was a big one for nuclear news. First, the Obama administration submitted its proposed budget for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (that’s the agency that, among other things, maintains our warheads). Second, the administration’s chief negotiator for the START follow-on treaty announced an “agreement in principle” with the Russians.
These two things are connected beyond the obvious point of contact. The former is meant to be a down payment on the latter. The administration has been put on notice that it faces substantial opposition in the Senate, not only to the ratification of this new treaty (whatever it ends up being called), but to its other arms control priorities as well. The price, say a coalition of 41 mostly (but not entirely) Republican senators, is a serious commitment to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The administration is therefore loudly trumpeting its request for 13.4 percent increase in funding for the NNSA. Included in that is a $600 million (or nearly 10 percent) bump for the so-called “Weapons Activities” category, a catch-all that includes the all-important “stockpile support” line. Why is that so important? Because what those senators want is “funding for a modern warhead,” which—if there were any—would be in that budget line.
Is it? Aye, there’s the rub. Not that I can see. It’s true, the administration is spending more money. But not on a new warhead design or on any upgrade of an existing design. Rather, the money is going toward a number of other efforts. There is, for instance, more “Life Extension” of the W76, an older-generation SLBM warhead that 20 years ago was slated to be replaced by the more advanced W88—production of which was subsequently cancelled in 1992. There is also money for similar life extension for the B61, a bomb whose design goes back to the 1960s (though some variants are much more recent). There’s funding for a “study” of the W78, one of the two types warheads on our 450 remaining Minuteman III ICBMs. The rest is dedicated to modernizing and maintaining key capabilities that would allow us to make more substantive upgrades to the arsenal later.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t claim to have developed an economic stimulus plan of his own. But he does favor a cluster of proposals that, when packaged together, are a simple, sensible program for rejuvenating the economy.
I take the liberty of dubbing it the McConnell Plan (without asking the Republican leader’s approval). If enacted, the plan would do a great deal more to boost the economy and increase employment than the “jobs bill” that President Obama and congressional Democrats are cooking up.
McConnell’s set of proposals would do several specific things. First and foremost, it would provide a measure of certainty to the business and investment community about the future. The aim: Produce economic conditions conducive to private investment, economic growth, and job creation.
And the plan would restrain the budget deficit and the national debt, without indulging in what is universally regarded as counterproductive during an economic downturn–raising taxes.
McConnell mentioned two steps to reduce uncertainty about the economic future when I interviewed him recently, and he’s repeated them publicly since then. One is to declare the effort to enact Democratic health care reform–ObamaCare–over. “That would be a great relief to American business looking at health care taxes,” he told CNN.
It’s not hard to imagine how this would ease the minds of the CEOs and owners of businesses and prompt them to invest in expansion and begin hiring. However, it would be up to Obama to put his health care legislation “on the shelf,” as McConnell is urging. Instead, the president wants Republicans to join him in tweaking ObamaCare and making it a bipartisan bill. That, in McConnell’s view, is a non-starter.
The other McConnell idea is an extension of the Bush tax cuts, but not Obama-style. The president wants to preserve the tax cuts for individuals earning less than $200,000 a year and couples making less than $250,000.
My point here is not to champion Republicans. It is not to champion democracy. My point is that the ones throwing the temper tantrum right now are the Progressives. They think that the 2008 election gave them the right to operate like China's autocracy, and they are lashing out hysterically at those they perceive as preventing them from doing so. On the one hand, the villains are a small minority in the Senate. Or maybe the villains are the incoherent majority of the people.
The important point is that Progressives are never wrong. Top-down reform is the only way to fix the health care system. Anthropogenic global warming is scientifically proven, and its solution requires strenuous exercise of political control over individual behavior. Deficit spending is necessary and sufficient to create jobs. Technocrats can make banks too regulated to fail. Markets without technocratic control are like adolescents without adult supervision. Individual happiness can be improved by political authorities using scientific knowledge. Concentrated political power is the wave of the future, and it is good.
I am not a populist. I fear the mob. But how can I fear the Progressives any less?
Also read Gerard Alexander on liberal condescension. It occurs to me that American liberals are re-learning the lesson of the old left-wing chant: The people united can never be defeated. And it's driving them up a wall.
Via Geraghty, the St. Pete Times reports: "Marco Rubio says his Stimulus Fundraising Bomb (www.StimulusBomb.com) has raised $411,000, just one week after launching with the goal of raising $787,000 by February 10."
In a just world, Matt Labash would be celebrated as the heir to Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson and other writers in the 1960s and 1970s who were corralled under the rubric of "new journalism," but, well, the world just isn't just. Like the best of the new-journalism practitioners, Mr. Labash inhabits a story so thoroughly that readers feel as if they're at his side, seeing events with his sharp eye, privy to his wisecracks, savoring moments when he reels in what feels like the truth. Sure, executing long-form journalism at this high level has about it a whiff of the Civil War re-enactment—an almost perfect evocation of a bygone era!—but there is also a certain thrilling defiance, displayed by both the writer and the magazine that lets him plow ahead, page after page.
Politico is reporting that Vice President Biden will be delivering a key address on the future of America's nuclear arsenal this Wednesday. Here's what to expect:
--It's likely that Biden will channel Secretary Gates' Oct 2008 speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In that address, the SECDEF spelled out precisely why America needed to modernize and maintain its nuclear arsenal. Gates did so in a most unusual forum, an institution dedicated to ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Obama faces a similar problem, in that he has to explain why he's pumping $11 billion into nuclear upgrades two months after receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for advocating nuclear disarmament.
--Expect the routine "Blame Bush" talk. Obama used this tired template to justify his Afghanistan surge to the anti-war left, so it won't be surprising if Biden invokes the same language for nukes. Don't fall for it. Nuclear revitalization was a process started during the Bush years with the development of the reliable replacement warhead. The Obama administration killed that system and had no plan in place to maintain/modernize our strategic arsenal, until key lawmakers like Senator Jon Kyl forced the issue. The administration is begrudgingly agreeing to modernization because they need Senate support to pass the START follow-on and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, not because they were struck by a sudden urge to do the right thing.
--Still, I think Biden will lay out a convincing case. Indeed, this is an issue all Americans can get behind. With the reliable replacement warhead killed by the White House, our nuclear weapons -- and in particular the limited life components in those weapons -- are aging to unsafe levels. That jeopardizes confidence in our strategic forces, which can seriously destabilize nuclear deterrence.
Regardless of the fact that senate Republicans had to muscle the White House into the right decision, if Biden make the obvious, prudent case for modernization, conservatives should give it a strong backing.
Yesterday on Meet the Press, Obama's counterterrorism adviser John Brennan claimed that Republicans should have known, based on his Christmas Day conversation with them, that terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would be Mirandized:
I explained to them that he was in FBI custody, that Mr. Abdulmutallab was, in fact, talking, that he was cooperating at that point. They knew that "in FBI custody" means that there's a process then you follow as far as Mirandizing and presenting him in front of a magistrate. None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point.
Congressional Republican leaders say Brennan's statement is very misleading: Boehner, McConnell, Bond and Hoekstra assert they were merely given a courtesty calls on non-secure phone lines, and it's absurd to claim they should have known Abdulmutallab would be Mirandized after 50 minutes based on their conversations.
Marc Thiessen writes that the facts don't support Brennan: "the Obama administration announced that its new FBI-led 'High-Value Interrogation Group' (HIG) would not necessarily Mirandize suspects it was questioning." So how were Republican leaders supposed to know Abdulmutallab would be Mirandized? The Washington Post reported on August 24: "Interrogators will not necessarily read detainees their rights before questioning, instead making that decision on a case-by-case basis, officials said. . . . 'It’s not going to, certainly, be automatic in any regard that they are going to be Mirandized,' one official said, referring to the practice of reading defendants their rights. 'Nor will it be automatic that they are not Mirandized.'" (The HIG was not actually set up, to the apparent surprise of Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, when Abdulmutallab was captured.)
"I'm just very concerned," Brennan said yesterday, "on the behalf of the counterterrorism professionals throughout our government that politicians continue to make this a political football and are using it for whatever political or partisan purposes."
But now it's clear that Brennan was the one who was trotting out a partisan talking-point--unsupported by the facts--to attack Republicans yesterday. In fact, there's widespread agreement across the politicalspectrum that it was a mistake to Mirandize Abdulmutallab.
For more on the Obama's mishandling of Abdulmutallab, see Steve Hayes's editorial in the latest issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Iran has formally informed the UN nuclear agency that it will start on February 9 to further enrich uranium stockpiles to a level of 20 percent, further fueling Western concerns that Tehran is secretly seeking a nuclear bomb-making capacity.
"We wrote a letter to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] that we shall start making 20-percent enriched fuel," the head of the Iranian Atomic Organization, Ali-Akbar Salehi, told Iran's Arabic-language state television channel, Al-Alam late on February 7. "We will hand over this official letter to the IAEA on [February 8] and shall start enrichment on [February 9] in the presence of IAEA monitors."
The move essentially circumvents a UN compromise deal aimed at easing Western concerns Iran could use its uranium for a nuclear weapon.
A couple of potential outcomes here. Iran could be playing its usual bait-and-switch diplomatic game, where they talk up their willingness to negotiate right before pulling the plug on a meaningful international compromise (same script the North Koreans used before detonating their own plutonium implosion weapons). Tehran was reaching another decision point with the UN, so -- per their usual routine -- the timing for their predictable egress from the negotiating table was just right.
Second possibility: The Iranians could be prepping the world for the long awaited activation of their Bushehr nuclear power plant, which was expected to come online last year.
Final possibility: It's almost impossible for international observers to differentiate between uranium enrichment for medical purposes and uranium enrichment for weapons purposes. Though the IAEA reports that Iran has already been spinning centrifuges for some time, this could signal Tehran's intention to boost their uranium enrichment to an industrial level. The bogus "20 percent medical purposes" line is simply convenient top cover -- unless IAEA observers were standing in the room, there's no real way to ascertain if Iranian nuke techs are spinning to 20 percent or the 90 percent necessary for a bomb core.
Sanctions clearly won't work. Iran is a master of working the black market, plus sanctions are slow, costly to friendly Western powers, and will ultimately benefit two nations who are helping the Iranians along: Russia and China.
President Obama must go for the jugular and get serious about fanning the flames of Iranian revolution. He can start by treating revolutionaries like Reagan treated the Polish Solidarity movement, recognizing an Iranian government in exile, and initiating an underground logistical line of techno gadgets like laptops and cell phones with encrypted uplinks, radio-broadcasting equipment, GPS transmitters, even iPods to assist in messaging -- anything that will ensure that a democratic revolution, not atomic devices, is the only thing that reaches critical mass.
In my opinion, there's no harm in a televised discussion of health care reform. If Obama hasn't been able to convince the public his way is the right way by now, one more event won't make a difference. Nor will a single C-SPAN broadcast alter the political dynamic that is preventing Democrats from passing a final bill. What's more, Republicans will have an opportunity to present their ideas to lower the cost of individual health insurance and increase consumer choice. So let's say Republicans accept Obama's invitation, which they seem inclined to do anyway.
Perhaps most important, the small bill fits on a single page -- it's therefore easy for politicians to memorize!
Television audiences would see Paul Ryan touting a one-page approach to market-based health care, while Obama defends a thousand-plus-page monstrosity the public disapproves of. That's a debate Republicans and conservatives can win.
But will the dynamic change between 2008 and 2012? It is plain that Palin thinks it will not. She is recasting the debate between D.C. outsiders who stand for limited government, unapologetic American foreign policy, and popular rule, and D.C. insiders who want to expand government, increase taxes, cater to America's enemies, and dismiss popular concerns. Only a substantial course correction by Obama and the Democrats in Congress could nullify the political power of Palin's argument. And such a course correction does not seem to be in the works.
Not only has Palin been able to absorb the hatred and mockery directed at her. She has channeled it into a full-out barrage on the Obama agenda that is forceful, direct, and compelling. The Palin on stage in Nashville was the same Palin who debuted in Dayton, Ohio, on August 29, 2008; the same Palin who gave an incredibly effective address at the Republican National Convention less than a week later; the same Palin who went toe-to-toe with Biden and drew thousands of supporters to her rallies. She seemed refreshed. She seemed more powerful than ever -- despite resigning her office on July 3, 2009. Ask yourself: Is there another person in the GOP who will draw larger applause when they address the 2012 GOP convention? I do not think so. The crowd in Nashville broke into a chant of "Run, Sarah, Run!" two years before the first voting in Iowa.
Palin's speech was a window into the Tea Party movement and the future of the Republican party. The reaction to her discussion of national security and social issues revealed that the Tea Partiers share much in common with rank-and-file GOP voters. Palin's emphasis on limited government -- her frequent mention of the Tenth Amendment, for instance -- and less government spending was an attempt to re-capture the conservative voters repelled by George W. Bush's big-government conservatism. The Tea Party movement is a return to an older, more traditional conservatism. Katrina vanden Heuvel is not wrong when she says Palin shares many similarities to Barry Goldwater; she's just wrong to describe those similarities with such venom and condescension.
The attack on Goldwater was that he was too extreme to lead the United States. The attack on Palin is already the same. I wonder, though, if the independent voters who are divided on Palin have less of a problem with her politics and more of a problem with her qualifications. In the Chris Wallace interview, for example, Palin was excellent when she was asked for her quick-hit reactions to various issues; her response when asked if Eric Holder should resign was a classic of direct, straight-talk, down-home political rhetoric. But when Wallace asked her to describe "the Palin plan," her answer was vague. The independents who are key to winning elections require more substance.
Still, the elections are a political lifetime away. Right now, there is only one politician who fuses politics and celebrity in the manner of President Obama. It is Sarah Palin.
The LA Times reports that the president of the National Organization for Women is still outrageously outraged over the incredibly tame Focus on the Family/Tebow ad last night:
NOW president Terry O'Neill said [the Tebow ad] glorified violence against women. "I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it," she said. "That's what comes across to me even more strongly than the anti-abortion message. I myself am a survivor of domestic violence, and I don't find it charming. I think CBS should be ashamed of itself."
The "violence against women" O'Neill refers to occurs when Tim Tebow tackles his mom Pam in an attempt at slapstick.
The only thing more analyzed than quarterback play after the Super Bowl is the commercials: Were they funny, offensive, pointless? Money well spent, or 30 seconds of confusion? How does the MTV set view the last 25 years of politics?
Okay, that last question is rarely asked; Super Bowl spots aren't exactly political science tracts. But will.i.am, the brains behind the Black Eyed Peas, made an effort to change that this Sunday with his spot for FLO TV. Remixing the halftime act's "My Generation" and splicing micro clips of news events from the last half-century or so, will.i.am provided a neat little window into the worldview of he and his fellow left-liberals.
According to will.i.am, politics since the election of Ronald Reagan has involved the following memorable events: The attempted assassination of President Reagan by John Hinckley Jr., Clinton forging peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, "Winner Al Gore" in Florida, President George W. Bush standing under the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003, and Obama's celebration in Hyde Park underneath an undulating American flag.
Leaving aside will.i.am's summarizing the Reagan legacy with his attempted murder and the Clinton legacy with a nonexistent peace deal, the clips chosen to show our last president reveal that Bush Derangement Syndrome remains alive and well more than a year after his exit from the Oval Office. There is still a small but vocal segment of the far left that contends that Bush's presidency was totally illegitimate, an invention of a bare majority of the Supreme Court. And the "Mission Accomplished" banner has become a subject of fun to all manner of liberal comedians; it was a running joke for an entire season of Fox's Arrested Development. Summarizing the Bush presidency thusly seems at least a little unfair.
But hey, don't trust me. Watch the video for yourself:
This weekend, the Left freaked out at the revelation that Sarah Palin had notes on her hand during her speech in Nashville. I truly have no idea why this is an issue for the supporters of Capt. TelePrompter, but there you have it.
Chris Christie's election has consequences: "The proposals would require workers and retirees at all levels of government and local school districts to contribute to their own health care costs, ban part-time workers at the state and local levels from participating in the underfunded state pension system, cap sick leave payouts for all public employees and constitutionally require the state to fully fund its pension obligations each year."
New Orleans goes post-racial: "When he takes office May 6, Landrieu will become the city's first white chief executive since his father, Moon Landrieu, left the job in 1978. Early analysis shows that Mitch Landrieu's victory owed to widespread crossover voting by African-Americans, who make up two-thirds of the city's residents."
E.J. Dionne says health-care reform is going to be just like an awesome kitchen renovation. I'm not sure he means to compare Congress to a crooked contractor, but if the wrench fits...
Toward a different fiscal future: "Tax increases cannot plausibly make these problems go away. If taxes were increased sufficiently to accommodate the CBO's projected increase in entitlement spending, long-term U.S. GDP growth rates would be reduced between a half and a full percentage point (an estimate derived from widely cited research by Mr. Engen and Jonathan Skinner of Dartmouth), unacceptably lowering our future living standards. This would be equivalent to erasing all the "growth dividend" gains of the great productivity boom of the 1990s."
A lot of people have been looking to find someone to blame for President Obama's failures: the Constitutional order, the right-wing noise machine, the dull, dim-witted American people. Funnily enough, one person rarely seems to get fingered. Jay Cost makes the case that the only one to blame for this administrations failures is the Big Guy:
Ezra Klein argued that it was time to reform the filibuster because the government cannot function with it intact anymore. Tom Friedman suggested that America's "political instability" was making people abroad nervous. And Michael Cohen of Newsweekblamed "obstructionist Republicans," "spineless Democrats," and an "incoherent public" for the problem.
Nonsense. America is not ungovernable. Her President has simply not been up to the job.
Last week I noted that the Washington Generals are hiring, which was occasion to relive some of the storied franchise's great moments: Red Klotz's invention of the barnstorming losers; their 6-13,000 record against the Harlem Globetrotters; and their final victory against the Globetrotters, in 1971. The last of which prompted this fantastic note from Wade Cook:
According to the Wikipedia reference, the last time the Washington Generals beat the Harlem Globetrotters was in 1971 in Martin, Tennessee. That is my hometown and I saw that game. I was 7 years old. My dad took my older brother and me. We watched the game in the University of Tennessee at Martin gymnasium, where the college team played ball. I was a little boy watching something magical; I remember talking about it for days afterwards.
I've always wondered how those six upsets transpired? Did the Globetrotters just miss some routine shots in the last minutes of the game? Or did the Generals come out looking to win? I asked Wade, who responded,
My impression has always been the latter--the Generals made a concerted
effort to win, for whatever reason.
But that is simply a child's impression and certainly not authoritative. My father is deceased so I can't ask him for his impression. I do clearly remember at the time that he impressed upon us that we had seen something extraordinary.
Separately, some Congressional staff members expressed concern that Mr. Obama’s meeting would simply prolong an already tortuous process. And Democrats still face steep challenges in reconciling the differences between the House and Senate bills.
Some House Democrats are firmly opposed to a proposed tax on high-cost employer-sponsored insurance policies, which they think will hit some middle-class workers and violate Mr. Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000 a year.
Don't forget Bart Stupak, either--his supporters may still balk at the Senate's abortion language. The bottom line is that Congress is stuck on health care, with Pelosi and Reid in a Mexican stand-off over which chamber will hold the next vote.
So why the summit? It makes more sense if you separate it from attempts to actually pass a bill this year. By engaging Republicans, Obama will look bipartisan. By bringing Republicans and Democrats together, he will appear above the fray.
At the end of the day, brute political calculations probably will prevent any of the Republican ideas from being incorporated into a final health bill. (There is a reason why tort-reform hasn't been included: the trial lawyers won't stand for it.) Then again, brute political calculations -- right now there are enough scared House and Senate red-state Democrats to prevent passage of health care reform -- lead me to believe that nothing major will happen on the health-care front in 2010.
So the summit will be window-dressing. The winners will be Obama and the Republicans. The losers? Democrats who are stuck with votes for a bill nobody likes.
Via Steven Ertelt, this is the supposedly "controversial" Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad that the National Organization for Women fought tooth and nail to keep off the airwaves:
Full Transcript:
PAM TEBOW: I call him my miracle baby. He almost didn't make it into this world. I remember so many times when I almost lost him. It was so hard. Well he's all grown up now, and I still worry about his health. Everybody treats him like he's different, but to me, he's just my baby. He's my Timmy, and I love him.
TIM TEBOW: Thanks mom. Love you too.
Wow. Gloria Allred threatened to sue CBS over this? I wonder if she's embarrassed today. Ditto for The New Republic's Michelle Cottle, who declared before ever seeing the ad, "I do wish CBS weren't running the spot — not because I'm a pro-choice liberal but because I'm a protective parent." Hopefully too many children won't have nightmares after watching a mother call her son a "miracle baby" and say that she loves him.
The ad does link to the Focus on the Family website, which features a longer, more explicit discussion with the Tebows, in which Pam Tebow describes how doctors told her to abort her son, or fetal "tissue" or a "tumor" as the doctors put it. The irony, of course, is that if NOW, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, et. al, hadn't freaked out and tried to stop one woman from telling the world about her decision to choose life, not nearly as many people would be interested in going to the website and hearing the Tebows' full story.
Update: To clarify, this is the pre-game Tebow ad, which is reportedly somehow more controversial than the ad that will run during the game.
When Burger King opted to go with "The King"—a sort of adult version of Ronald McDonald that some have described as "creepy"—it took a huge risk. But it was a calculated risk: BK executives decided they would focus their marketing energies on "super fans" (18- to 34-year-olds) instead of older adults, parents, or children. The ads would be hip. There were no promotions for Happy Meals or fruit snacks or oatmeal. Double cheeseburgers would go for $1, much to the dismay of some franchisees. Has it worked?
Morgan Stanley analyst John Glass tells the Wall Street Journal, "Maybe catering to the super fan was the correct strategy to kick-start the business, but maybe they relied on that for too long." Burger King suffered two straight quarters of decline but received a boost of 13 percent in this last quarter. On the one hand, people are becoming more and more health conscious. On the other, recessions can increase sales among the cheaper chains as customers downscale their dining habits (Alain Ducasse's high-end eatery at the St. Regis in Washington, D.C., for instance, has stopped serving lunch—always a bad sign). McDonald's has performed notably well in the down economy and perhaps its diversified menu is the reason. In any event, it remains to be seen if The King can remain on his throne.
One indicator that might leave one a bit uneasy is this tidbit from the Journal (subscriber only): "Burger King tried to distinguish itself from rivals by addressing young men, in particular, like 'the cool uncle who tells you how it is,' says John Schaufelberger, Burger King's senior vice president of global product marketing and innovation."
How what is? (This may be the cool uncle who lets you drink whatever you want, considering Burger King has now entered the bar business.)
Sarah Palin's speech to the Tea Party convention in Nashville showcased all of the former Alaska governor's strengths. She was confident, funny, down-to-earth, at times emotional--and she took a scalpel to the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. Ignore the critics who will say Palin spent too much time looking at her notes; her off-the-cuff approach and decision not to use a TelePrompTer was clearly calculated to highlight President Obama's reliance on scripted events and canned speeches.
The timing of the speech was also significant. Palin used the talk, broadcast live on Fox News Channel and C-SPAN, to respond to the president's State of the Union address from last week. Palin's mention that today is Ronald Reagan's birthday positioned her squarely among his heiresses. More interesting, Palin started off with a concentrated attack on the Obama administration's national security policies--not an issue for which the Tea Partiers are known. Palin noted that the president spent hardly any time on foreign policy during his annual report to Congress--indeed, she spent more time on our Israeli and Japanese allies, our Iranian and jihadist adversaries, and our strategic competitors than he did. And when Palin said that America needs a commander in chief, not a law professor, the crowd went wild; one was momentarily transported back to her famous speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
The media are playing into Palin's hands. They've used her celebrity as an excuse to cover her relentlessly even though she holds no office--and yet the attention helps her communicate to her supporters and reach out to audiences who may be giving her a second thought.
"We are the loyal opposition, and we have a vision for the future of our country, too," Palin said. She repeatedly said the Tea Party movement does not need a leader. But is there an American politician who inspires such enthusiasm from her supporters (and her detractors)? And isn't that a unique strength in a polarized age in which the ideological stakes are so high?
President Obama’s economic policy has run smack into reality. No one believes that he can keep spending even to the massive levels he projects, or eventually lower the deficit, or persuade congress to switch from profligacy to prudence, or … well, you get the idea. Worse still, even if you believe all of these things and more, the deficits projected by the president are simply unsustainable, and would drive the combination of federal, state and local government debt to well over 100 percent in 2020 -- a level that most observers believe will stifle economic growth.
A new paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, professors of economics at the University of Maryland and Harvard University respectively, covers the experience of 44 countries over 200 years and concludes, “Our main finding is that across both advanced countries and emerging markets, high debt/GDP levels (90 percent and above) are associated with notably lower growth outcomes…. Seldom do countries simply ‘grow’ their way out of deep debt burdens.” If you are the worrying sort, add to these your answer to a question put by Larry Summers, now the president’s economic adviser but at the time free to speak his mind, “How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?” Efforts to reach Mr. Summers to obtain his current answer to his question proved unavailing.
Reality bared its teeth in several ways. Friday’s jobs report did not show the hoped-for increase in hiring, but a further loss of 20,000 non-farm jobs. That is a far lower rate of job loss than the 700,000 recorded in the early months of the Obama administration, and the unemployment rate did drop to 9.7 percent. But that decline was due largely to 366,000 more workers becoming so discouraged that they dropped out of the work force. The ugly reality is that the estimate of the number of jobs lost since Obama moved into the White House has been revised upward from 7.2 million to 8.4 million; the number of long-term unemployed (27 weeks and more) has increased by five million; and that even by its own projections unemployment will remain high for the rest of the president’s first and, if he has one, second terms. Some of this the president inherited, but voters are increasingly of the view that the Obama administration, despite or perhaps because of its wild spending, cannot create an atmosphere that will encourage employers to start hiring again.
Then came another brush with reality. Moody’s Investors Service warned that the triple-A rating accorded America’s sovereign debt will “at some point” come under pressure unless “measures are taken to reduce the budget deficit further or the economy rebounds more vigorously than expected.” Neither seems likely. The administration’s own projections call for deficits that are generally regarded as unsustainable for the next ten years, rising again in 2019, long after President Obama has placed his Nobel Peace Prize on the mantel of his Chicago home. Our only hope is that the late Herb Stein, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon and Ford, was right when he said, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Many of us have fond memories of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution. In fact, it seems like it was just yesterday that we were all cheering the throngs of pro-democracy Ukrainians who threw out the nations entrenched post-Soviet oligarchy. And who could forget the faces of the revolution's two dynamic leaders -- presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, his face disfigured from attempted assassination by dioxin poisoning, and his fiery sidekick Yulia Tymoshenko, the blonde-braided orator?
These were the two who were supposed to lead Ukraine to a glorious, democratic future -- and none of us would have guessed that they could fall so far, so fast. Just five short years later, Ukraine has arrived at it's first post-revolution presidential election, and it now appears the Tymoshenko will not only lose her bid to succeed Yuschchenko as president, but she will be defeated by the very man the revolution defeated -- the election-rigging former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych. Furthermore, she will do so without the endorsement of the now hugely unpopular Yushchenko. The former compatriots have now been at each other's throats for years, with the stridently anti-Russian Yushchenko bristling at Tymoshenko's decision to adopt a more conciliatory attitude toward relations with Moscow. They have blamed each other for the recession, they have blamed each other for the two occasions that Russia shut off natural gas to Ukraine, and Yushchenko has even accused Tymoshenko of high treason for not being vocally opposed to Russias war with Georgia.
In a final blow, President Yushchenko has instructed his few remaining supporters to check the "none of the above" box in Sunday's runoff.
However, I think Tymoshenko herself put the final nail in the coffin by declaring Thursday that, if she loses, she will order her supporters into the streets in an attempt to halt a Yanukovych takeover with another Orange Revolution. I partially agree with her reasoning, which centers on her opposition to Yushchenko repealing a law that required all polling stations to be observed by representatives of both runoff candidates. This would theoretically make it easier for Yanukovych to return to his old tricks and rig the vote. However, polls show that Yanukovych probably is the people's choice this time. He will beat her fair and square, and any attempts at removing him by mass protest would be nothing more than an undemocratic attempt to intimidate the electorate into submission (though in reality it will likely not draw much support).
