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Mort Zuckerman remembers Reagan.

… Reagan provided what Americans wanted most: a strong leader who could and would lead in a principled way. To refresh a phrase once used about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, this man was “not for turning.” He made that clear early on, to the gratified astonishment of the nation, when he fired the striking air traffic controllers—who quickly learned that this commander in chief was not to be taken casually.

Reagan had come into office when the United States was mired in an economic and even psychological downturn, reflecting the doldrums of the Carter years and the perception of his administration as feckless and naive. Reagan was determined that more of the same would not do. Shortly into his presidency, he set about convincing the American public that there had to be a decisive change in direction. His map was stereoscopic: He created a vision of where we’d been and where he intended to take us, unafraid to spell out what was to be feared, unabashed in the evocation of dreams for the future. He personified Harry Truman’s definition of a leader—a man who had the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and to like it. It was never easy, even when he made it look so.

As if born with the instinct to be a transformational president, Reagan knew how to instill confidence in a nation that felt it had lost its way. Add to that his transparent likability, and you can understand why Americans felt so good about him and better about themselves when they listened to him. In the process, he earned an enormous presumption of credibility, affection, and support from the American public, even among those, like myself, who hadn’t voted for him.

How much we miss that quality of leadership today, when it is the political system itself that raises disquiet. Much of our contemporary leadership passes off tough decisions to some other body (the perpetual commissions!) or, worse, to some future generation. The resulting political vacuum has created a sense of government in disarray, unable to make the wise and tough decisions required. … 

At the end of Zuckerman’s article is a link to a Reagan photo essay. We picked one from 1959 with Marilyn Monroe.

David Warren has additional Egyptian thoughts; especially about ElBaradei.

… To my observation, ElBaradei — now presenting himself as a Kerensky for Egypt — is a creature governed by vanity. He is an opportunist, whose peculiar combinations of malice and naiveté exactly suit his prospective coalition partners. He declared himself only recently against the Mubarak regime — having enjoyed a favoured friendship with the Egyptian dictator, until last year. Having judged that his octogenarian friend is now done for, he has generously come home to lead the opposition.

History is littered with figures of his sort.

To say ElBaradei is two-faced would be misleading, for no one advances in Middle Eastern politics with only two faces. But we can already distinguish the face which supplies sweet plausibilities to the western media, while dispensing to each Egyptian class what he thinks it wants to hear.

He is the smooth presence before the western cameras, assuring us that the Muslim Brotherhood has been misrepresented, and that they will make perfectly safe partners on the usual roads to peace. And only the Copts of Egypt, and the Jews of Israel, will not be fooled. El-Baradei will even fool himself: for as I said, he is a man of formidable vanity.

He will eat, and then be eaten. …

If you, like Pickerhead, are a Rush Limbaugh fan you will enjoy this piece from Commentary. If you’re not a fan, at least you will understand his appeal.

One of the many strategic errors made by the Obama administration in the early days of 2009 was its decision to take on talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh—though it was, perhaps, hard to blame the president and his people for trying. After all, they were riding the wave of a big electoral win and feeling pretty invincible, with large majorities in both houses of Congress and a messiah in the White House, and Limbaugh had just stunned the country, days before Obama was inaugurated, by summarizing his feelings about the new president in four simple words: “I hope he fails.” Limbaugh impatiently brushed aside the happy talk about compromise and bipartisan cooperation and scoffed at the claim that Obama was a pragmatic, post-ideological, post-partisan, post-racial conciliator and healer. Instead, he saw every reason to believe that Obama would aggressively pursue a leftist dream agenda: an exponential expansion of government’s size and power, a reordering of the American economic system, and a dismantling of America’s role as a world power. Limbaugh was not alone in such views, but he was the only major figure on the right willing to stick his neck out at a time when the rest of the nation seemed dazed into acquiescence by the so-far impeccably staged Obama ascendancy.

Such was the mood of the moment that it seemed a sullen breach of etiquette to utter any such criticism. In any event, the White House quickly concluded that Limbaugh’s statement was a rare blunder and that hay was to be made of it. What better way to sow division among the Republicans, and confine them to a tiny corner of American political life, than to identify Rush Limbaugh as the “real head” of their party and brand him as an unpatriotic extremist and sore loser—or, in the light-touch description of longtime Clinton adviser Paul Begala, as “a corpulent drug addict with an AM radio talk show”? If they could succeed in this angle of attack, they would kill two birds with one stone, marginalizing their most popular antagonist while rendering the opposition party impotent with embarrassment and internal squabbling. Each Republican would face a choice of embracing the glittering “new age” of Obama and gathering a few scraps from beneath the Democratic table or following Rush into the fever swamps of an embittered permanent minority and getting nothing at all.

The Democrats’ strategy backfired. Limbaugh’s vocal opposition to the stimulus package, which he dubbed “Porkulus,” helped galvanize a unanimous Republican vote in opposition—an astonishing achievement of partisan unity that would be repeated in subsequent lopsided votes on health care and other issues—and would lay the blame for these failed policies entirely on the Democrats’ doorstep, culminating in a huge and decisive electoral pushback against the Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. …

… In retrospect, the amazing part of the story is how thoroughly the White House misunderstood Limbaugh’s appeal, his staying power, and his approach to issues. It also points to a curious fact about Limbaugh’s standing in the mind of much of the American media and the American left. Even though they talk about him all the time, he’s the man who isn’t quite there. By which I mean that there is a stubborn unwillingness, both wishful and self-defeating, to recognize Limbaugh for what he is, take him seriously, and grant him his legitimate due. Many of his detractors have never even listened to his show, for example. Some of his critics regularly refer to him as Rush “Lim-bough” (like a tree limb), as if his name is so obscure to them that they cannot even remember how to pronounce it.

In short, he is never quite acknowledged as the formidable figure he clearly is. Instead, he is dismissed in one of two ways—either as a comic buffoon, a passing phenomenon in the hit parade of American pop culture, or as a mean-spirited apostle of hate who appeals to a tiny lunatic fringe. These two views are not quite compatible, but they have one thing in common: they both aim to push him to the margins and render him illegitimate, unworthy of respectful attention. This shunning actually works in Limbaugh’s favor because it creates the very conditions that cause him to be chronically underestimated and keeps his opposition chronically off-balance. Indeed, Limbaugh’s use of comedy and irony and showmanship are integral to his modus operandi, the judo by which he draws in his opponents and then uses their own force to up-end them. And unless you make an effort to hear voices outside the echo chamber of the mainstream media, you won’t have any inkling of what Limbaugh is all about or of how widely his reach and appeal extend. …

David Harsanyi has kudos for some kinds of judicial activism.

For discussion’s sake, let’s just concede that every four years or so the American public is fooled into voting for a demagogue who’s mastered a pleasant-sounding, market-tested populism. Let’s then imagine — this is for discussion only — that this person’s resulting agenda, cheery but mildly authoritarian, passes with public support.

Does the federal court system exist to rubber stamp legislation? Should they check in and see if it’s cool with the public? Or, do we have courts to decide the constitutionality of laws? Do we insulate judges from democracy for a reason? Do we have a Constitution to keep a check on government or to bend to the constant predilections of the electorate?

The White House’s position is clear. When U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled this week that Obamacare was unconstitutional — due to its individual mandate — the White House’s first reaction was to call the ruling “out of the mainstream,” as if it were remotely true or that it even mattered.

The decision, you may not be surprised to hear, is also a case of “judicial activism” and an “overreach.”

Co-opting conservative terms like “judicial activism” is a cute way of trying to turn the tables on those who have some reverence for the original intent of the Founders. …

Joel Kotkin says parts of the Midwest are making a comeback.

… For nearly a half century … the American Midwest has widely been seen as a “loser” region–a place from which talented people have fled for better opportunities. Those Midwesterners seeking greater, glitzier futures historically have headed to the great coastal cities of Miami, New York, San Diego or Seattle, leaving behind the flat expanses of the nation’s mid-section for the slower-witted, or at least less imaginative.

Today that reality may be shifting. While some parts of the heartland, particularly around Detroit, remain deeply troubled, the Midwest boasts some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, luring back its native sons and daughters while attracting new residents from all over the country.

For example, Des Moines, Omaha, Kansas City, Columbus, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Madison have all kept their unemployment rates lower than the national average, according to a recent Brookings survey. They are also among the regions that have been able to cut their jobless rates the most over the past three years.

This contrasts sharply with the travails of the metropolitan economies of the Southeast, Nevada, Arizona and California. Of course, other regions are doing better than the Sun Belt sad sacks. The stimulus and TARP benefited some parts of the Northeast, but even those areas haven’t performed as well as the nation’s mid-section. The only other arc of prosperity has grown around the Washington leviathan, largely a product of an expanded government paid for by the rest of the country. …

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Spengler gives us much more on the food crisis in the Middle East. He also provides examples of the Mubarak efforts made towards modernization which have been poorly received by a recalcitrant Muslim public.

Even Islamists have to eat. It is unclear whether President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt will survive, or whether his nationalist regime will be replaced by an Islamist, democratic, or authoritarian state. What is certain is that it will be a failed state. Amid the speculation about the shape of Arab politics to come, a handful of observers, for example economist Nourel Roubini, have pointed to the obvious: Wheat prices have almost doubled in the past year.

Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer, beholden to foreign providers for nearly half its total food consumption. Half of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day. Food comprises almost half the country’s consumer price index, and much more than half of spending for the poorer half of the country. This will get worse, not better.

Not the destitute, to be sure, but the aspiring and frustrated young, confronted the riot police and army on the streets of Egyptian cities last week. The uprising in Egypt and Tunisia were not food riots; only in Jordan have demonstrators made food the main issue. Rather, the jump in food prices was the wheat-stalk that broke the camel’s back. The regime’s weakness, in turn, reflects the dysfunctional character of the country. 35% of all Egyptians, and 45% of Egyptian women can’t read.

Nine out of ten Egyptian women suffer genital mutilation. US President Barack Obama said Jan. 29, “The right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny … are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.” Does Obama think that genital mutilation is a human rights violation? To expect Egypt to leap from the intimate violence of traditional society to the full rights of a modern democracy seems whimsical.

In fact, the vast majority of Egyptians has practiced civil disobedience against the Mubarak regime for years. The Mubarak government announced a “complete” ban on genital mutilation in 2007, the second time it has done so – without success, for the Egyptian population ignored the enlightened pronouncements of its government. Do Western liberals cheer at this quiet revolt against Mubarak’s authority?

Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt’s First Lady, continues to campaign against the practice, which she has denounced as “physical and psychological violence against children.” Last May 1, she appeared at Aswan City alongside the provincial governor and other local officials to declare the province free of it. And on October 28, Mrs Mubarak inaugurated an African conference on stopping genital mutilation.

The most authoritative Egyptian Muslim scholars continue to recommend genital mutilation. Writing on the web site IslamOnline, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi – the president of the International Association of Muslim Scholars – explains:

‘The most moderate opinion and the most likely one to be correct is in favor of practicing circumcision in the moderate Islamic way indicated in some of the Prophet’s hadiths – even though such hadiths are not confirmed to be authentic. It is reported that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to a midwife: “Reduce the size of the clitoris but do not exceed the limit, for that is better for her health and is preferred by husbands.” ‘

That is not a Muslim view (the practice is rare in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan), but an Egyptian Muslim view. In the most fundamental matters, President and Mrs Mubarak are incomparably more enlightened than the Egyptian public. Three-quarters of acts of genital mutilation in Egypt are executed by physicians.

What does that say about the character of the country’s middle class? Only one news dispatch among the tens of thousands occasioned by the uprising mentions the subject; the New York Times, with its inimitable capacity to obscure content, wrote on January 27, “To the extent that Mr. Mubarak has been willing to tolerate reforms, the cable said, it has been in areas not related to public security or stability.

For example, he has given his wife latitude to campaign for women’s rights and against practices like female genital mutilation and child labor, which are sanctioned by some conservative Islamic groups.” The authors, Mark Landler and Andrew Lehren, do not mention that 90% or more of Egyptian women have been so mutilated. What does a country have to do to shock the New York Times? Eat babies boiled?

Middle East historian Bernard Lewis is interviewed at The Corner.

… And here is a question of the hour: Is Egypt 2011 like Iran 1979? Lewis: “Yes, there are certain similarities. I hope we don’t repeat the same mistakes.” The Carter administration handled events in Iran “poorly.”

The Obama administration should ponder something, as should we all: “At the moment, the general perception, in much of the Middle East, is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy. I think we want to give the exact opposite impression”: one of being a reliable friend and a dangerous enemy. “That is the way to be perceived.”

These revolts are catching, and long have been. Tunisia precipitated Egypt. “One country throws out its tyrant, and the rest are immediately encouraged to do the same.” I ask whether the Jordanians will revolt. Lewis answers, “Depends on what happens in Egypt.”

He notes that “many of our so-called friends in the region are inefficient kleptocracies. But they’re better than the Islamic radicals.” Democrats, however, are best of all: “and they do exist.”

Paul Johnson takes a measure of our place in the world.

… China would be more likely to become an economic–as opposed to a military–threat to the U.S. if it embraced democracy and freedom. Therein lies the paradox, for a truly free and democratic China–and thus an increasingly prosperous and friendly one–must be a welcome phenomenon.

Another factor to consider is India. China has chosen to expand its economy via traditional smokestack industries and cheap, mass-produced exports. In contrast, India is moving more rapidly into high tech. For the time being this means a less showy performance than China’s. But in the long run this offers India a much more promising future, which by 2050 may be apparent.

What is clear today is that India, as a working democracy, a respecter of the rule of law and a potentially hightech superpower, will be an immensely valuable U.S. ally. Therefore, a cardinal object of American policy must be to cultivate India’s friendship and cooperation in every sphere. And at the same time, if the U.S. remains a firm friend and ally of Japan, I doubt there will be much to fear in China’s creating a huge economy. On the contrary, that might well prove, in the end, to be a blessing for mankind.

Thomas Sowell tells us about more EPA regs.

Despite the old saying, “Don’t cry over spilled milk,” the Environmental Protection Agency is doing just that.

We all understand why the Environmental Protection Agency was given the power to issue regulations to guard against oil spills, such as that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or the more recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But not everyone understands that any power given to any bureaucracy for any purpose can be stretched far beyond that purpose.

In a classic example of this process, the EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply with new regulations to file “emergency management” plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how farmers will train “first responders” and build “containment facilities” if there is a flood of spilled milk.

Since there is no free lunch, all of this is going to cost the farmers both money and time that could be going into farming– and is likely to end up costing consumers higher prices for farm products. …

Democracy in America Blog posts on the healthcare court decision.

MONDAY Roger Vinson, a district court judge in Florida,  ruled that Obamacare’s controversial individual mandate is, as the federal government maintains, necessary for the law to function as intended, but that it is not proper, because it oversteps Congress’ commerce-clause powers. Moreover, because the legislation failed to include a severability provision, which would permit the excise of unconstitutional elements while leaving the rest intact, Judge Vinson struck down not only the individual mandate, but the entire act.

Now, the inclusion of a severability clause is not strictly necessary for a judge to void only part of a bill on constitutional grounds, which is why liberal legal eagles were hoping that the Democrats’ failure to do so would not be a problem. However, as National Review’s Avik Roy argues in an excellent post, Judge Vinson makes an independently compelling case for the inextricability of the individual mandate, but really drives it home simply by citing Obamacare’s own advocates and the text of the bill itself. “In order to overturn Judge Vinson’s ruling upon appeal,” Mr Roy notes, “it will be necessary for the government to rebut itself: to disprove its own arguments that the individual mandate is essential to PPACA.”

If the Supreme Court buys this, then a final decision against the constitutionality of the individual mandate on commerce-clause grounds would kill Obamacare entirely, leaving us at the status quo ante. A more humiliating reversal for the Democrats is hard to imagine. …

Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen write on the healthcare bill and the problems it causes the Dems.

Despite talk earlier this week that the health care law was gaining favorability in the wake of the House repeal effort, polls now show it continues to be unpopular among a majority of the American public.

Indeed, directly after the House voted to repeal, a few polls showed slight upticks in favorability. But whatever ground the health care law appeared to have gained proved fleeting. A poll released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health shows the law remains unpopular — with 50 percent of respondents viewing it unfavorably, up 9 percentage points from the last survey.

The health care law is at its “lowest level of popularity ever,” said Jake Tapper of ABC News, citing a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. Rasmussen Reports, which has measured support for repeal since the bill passed, continues to find more than 50 percent of respondents in favor of repeal.

It could even be that no such piece of major legislation has created the continued, vehement public opposition that health care has provoked since the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 — which resulted in the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise.

The Republican Party was created in opposition to that act — and went on to win control of the House in the 1854 elections. Last year’s health care bill in great part spawned the tea party, a driving force behind the GOP’s big House wins. …

Al Gore has actually surfaced to claim the snow storms are caused by global warming. His blog has a pic of his office. We enlarged it so it is now as fuzzy as Gore’s thinking. We also have a link to a bunch of Dems claiming the lack of snow five years back was caused by global warming. Sound like a good start to the humor section?

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At the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, Michael Barone reviews Reagan’s life.

…Another way up was college. Only 6 percent of Americans graduated from college in the late 1920s, and Reagan’s parents had not even attended high school. But at 17 Reagan made the remarkable decision to attend Eureka College, 95 miles from Dixon, financing his education with his earnings as a lifeguard, an athletic half-scholarship he talked his way into, and a job washing dishes. Every so often his mother would send him 50 cents for expenses, and by the end of his college days he was sending money home — and bringing Moon to Eureka with him.

…When he graduated from college in June 1932, unemployment stood at 24 percent, just about the highest rate in American history. He hitchhiked to Chicago and applied for jobs as a radio announcer. He was told that Chicago was the big time and that he should get some seasoning at a small station in “the sticks.” He hitchhiked home, borrowed the Oldsmobile his father could not afford to buy gas for, and drove to Davenport, Iowa, the home of WOC, owned by the Palmer Chiropractic School (the station’s call letters stood for world of chiropractic). Told that there was no opening, he talked the station manager into letting him audition by announcing an imaginary football game between Eureka and Western Illinois. He got the job: $5 and round-trip bus fare to broadcast a University of Iowa football game.

That break surely fortified an innate optimism. In 1933 Reagan moved to another Palmer station, WHO in Des Moines, where as a sports announcer he did what he had heard Chicago announcers do in the 1920s — narrate games from a pitch-by-pitch account received by telegraph (with lots of foul tips when the telegraph broke down). He became something of a local celebrity and a frequent speaker to civic groups, and sent one-third of his paycheck home to his family. He also did political commentaries with future Republican Rep. H.R. Gross. He got raises and made $75 a week (more than $1,200 in today’s dollars), twice what his father had ever made. …

In WaPo, Kevin Huffman reports on what may be the tipping point in the school choice movement. The title is ‘A Rosa Parks moment for education.’

Last week, 40-year-old Ohio mother Kelley Williams-Bolar was released after serving nine days in jail on a felony conviction for tampering with records. Williams-Bolar’s offense? Lying about her address so her two daughters, zoned to the lousy Akron city schools, could attend better schools in the neighboring Copley-Fairlawn district.

…conservatives view the case as evidence of the need for broader school choice. What does it say when parents’ options are so limited that they commit felonies to avoid terrible schools? Commentator Kyle Olson and others across the political spectrum have called this “a Rosa Parks moment for education.”

…The intellectual argument against school choice is thin and generally propagated by people with myriad options. …

…But kids are getting hurt right now, every day, in ways that take years to play out but limit their life prospects as surgically as many segregation-era laws. We can debate whether lying on school paperwork is the same as refusing to move to the back of the bus, but the harsh reality is this: We may have done away with Jim Crow laws, but we have a Jim Crow public education system. …

We’re sorry to see that Newt Gingrich has gone to the dark side: standing up for ethanol subsidies. The WSJ editors take him to task.

…The former Speaker blew through Des Moines last Tuesday for the Renewable Fuels Association summit, and his keynote speech to the ethanol lobby was as pious a tribute to the fuel made from corn and tax dollars as we’ve ever heard. Mr. Gingrich explained that “the big-city attacks” on ethanol subsidies are really attempts to deny prosperity to rural America, adding that “Obviously big urban newspapers want to kill it because it’s working, and you wonder, ‘What are their values?’” …

…Yet today this now-mature industry enjoys far more than cash handouts, including tariffs on foreign competitors and a mandate to buy its product. Supporters are always inventing new reasons for these dispensations, like carbon benefits (nonexistent, according to the greens and most scientific evidence) and replacing foreign oil (imports are up). An historian of Mr. Gingrich’s distinction surely knows all that.

…Now Republicans have another chance to reform government, and a limited window of opportunity in which to do it. The temptation will be to allow their first principles to be as elastic as many voters suspect they are, especially as Mr. Obama appropriates the language of “investments” and “incentives” to transfer capital to politically favored companies. Many Republicans have their own industry favorites, and such parochial interests could undercut their opposition to Mr. Obama’s wider agenda.

…Some pandering is inevitable in presidential politics, but, befitting a college professor, Mr. Gingrich insists on portraying his low vote-buying as high “intellectual” policy. This doesn’t bode well for his judgment as a president. Even Al Gore now admits that the only reason he supported ethanol in 2000 was to goose his presidential prospects, and the only difference now between Al and Newt is that Al admits he was wrong.

In the NYTimes, Landon Thomas gives us a look at the laws and government culture in Greece that hold entrepreneurs back. You will like the picture of a modern day Sisyphus.

…MR. POLITOPOULOS says his problems began when distributors refused to take Vergina and the other brands that he produced. Then, he would contend in a complaint letter he filed with the European Union in 2006, things became worse: his car tires were slashed, threatening calls were received at the brewery, employees were offered money to resign, and trucks carrying his beer were tampered with.

…In 2007, Mr. Politopoulos agreed to drop his complaint and to let the competition commission in Greece — which already had an open investigation into the local beer market — take the lead on the matter.

The Greek competition authority has been investigating antibusiness practices in the beer market since 2002, and a spokesman for the commission said that a decision should be forthcoming within the year. …

…Still, there has been some improvement lately, in the view of Achilles V. Constantakopoulos, a shipping industry scion. He is in the process of investing 1.5 billion euros in a series of high-end tourist resorts on the underdeveloped coastline of the southwest Peloponnese region. But this plan was first conceived a good 25 years ago by Mr. Constantakopoulos’s father and founder of the family fortune, Vasilis, who died last week. The plan has suffered numerous legal setbacks. Only recently did Mr. Constantakopoulos complete the first of four planned resorts, Navarino Dunes.

“There is a problem in Greece,” he said. “In order to do something it has to be provided for in law,” and that can take decades.

But he says he believes that things are changing — and that he expects that the fast-track law for large investments will benefit not only his family’s project, but others as well. “The laws that are in place encourage investment,” he said in his office in Athens, as he nibbled from a plate of figs and nuts. “These days it is easier to get things done.”

Nonetheless, the grinding work of scrapping old laws and creating an open, commercial climate that attracts foreign investors cannot be completed overnight. …

The Country Store points out some revealing quotes from the president’s retainers.

Even when John Heilemann tries to write an Obama puff piece at New York magazine he can’t help revealing some mighty dirty laundry…

…’The president’s friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett sometimes pointed out that not only had he never managed an operation, he’d never really had a nine-to-five job in his life. Obama didn’t know what he didn’t know, yet his self-confidence was so stratospheric that once, in the context of thinking about Emanuel’s replacement, he remarked in all seriousness, “You know, I’d make a good chief of staff.” 

Those overhearing the comment somehow managed to suppress their laughter. ‘

Barack Obama is a legend in his own mind.

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Tony Blankley starts off a section on events in Egypt.

… President Obama may be facing one of those fateful moments now. Of course, if the path were obvious, it would not be fateful. But history and current conditions would suggest that the odds of the revolution resulting in a Western-oriented democracy that serves the interests of the Egyptian people are slim.

Providing public and private support of President Hosni Mubarak and helping to keep some semblance of the status quo (perhaps in the form of an army-led regime) is likely to serve both our immediate geopolitical interests and our ability to shape that regime in the interest of the Egyptian people.

Mr. Obama had a chance in 2009 to respond with strong support for Iran’s Green Revolution – but his near silence crushed the hope of many young Iranians and surely aided (inadvertently) the hated enemy Iranian regime.

Now the president risks getting it wrong in the other direction: undercutting a friendly regime by sincere but ill-considered support for a revolution that is more likely to result in a government adverse to our – and the Egyptian people’s – interests. Note that a recent Pew poll of the Egyptian public disclosed that they preferred “Islamists” over “modernizers” by 59 percent to 27 percent (cited by Barry Rubin at the Gloria Center website). Instant democracy, anyone?

Also, and importantly, if America undercuts its ally of 30 years, we would be seen as feckless – and thus we would undermine the value of our support for allies current and future.

As Ari Shavit wrote in Israel‘s leading liberal paper, Haaretz, the failure to support Mr. Mubarak “symbolizes the betrayal of every strategic ally in the Third World. Throughout Asia, Africa and South America, leaders are now looking at what is going on between Washington and Cairo.” …

Christopher Hitchens doesn’t quite see it that way and since he’s here often, we include his vent.

Not long ago, a close comrade of mine was dining with a person who I can’t identify beyond telling you that his father is a long-term absolutist ruler of an Arab Muslim state. “Tell me,” said this scion to my friend, “is it true that there are now free elections in Albania?” My friend was able to confirm the (relative) truth of this, adding that he had once even acted as an international observer at the Albanian polls and could attest to a certain level of transparency and fairness. The effect of his remarks was galvanic. “In that case,” exclaimed the heir-presumptive, thumping the table, “what does that make us? Are we peasants? Children?” The gloom only deepened, apparently, as the image of the Arab as a laughing stock—lagging behind Albania!—took hold of the conversation.

Who could have predicted that such a comparison would have turned out to be such a catalytic one in the mind of this nervous dauphin? So multifarious are the sources of grievance in the Arab world that it could have been any one of a host of pretexts that ignited a revolt, or revolts. This ought to make one beware of too glibly selecting the ostensibly crucial one. Poverty and unemployment? These are so pervasive that they could explain any rebellion at any time—and in any case Tunisians are among the richest per capita in North Africa. Dictatorship and repression? Again, these are commonplaces, and so far the most conspicuously authoritarian despotisms—Syria and Saudi Arabia, for instance—have been spared the challenge of insurrection. (May these words of mine go out of date with all speed.) …

We get a history lesson as Investor’s Business Daily editors compare El Baradei to Alexander Kerensky. Kerensky, head of Russia’s pre-communist 1917 provisional goverment, died at 89 in New York City.

… ElBaradei brings little to a new government apart from name recognition. He has no power base, no governing philosophy, no party. As such, the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood will use him as a moderate figurehead in a unity government, then discard him when convenient to seize power for themselves.

In this, he resembles the hapless Alexander Kerensky, the ardent socialist who served as prime minister of Russia after its revolution of 1917, only to be discarded and sent into exile by the far more devious and ruthless communists.

At a minimum, the U.S. should let it be known that while we respect Egypt’s genuine democratic urges, an unelected Egyptian regime headed by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood and its soon-to-be puppet ElBaradei is entirely unacceptable.

The Corner and Powerline remind us of the 2004 election and El Baradei’s efforts to defeat Bush.

I’d all but forgotten this — but Powerline remembered:

El Baradei achieved his greatest renown in connection with the pre-war weapons inspections in Iraq, which he headed on behalf of the IAEA. One particularly discreditable moment in his tenure, which sheds considerable light on El Baradei, requires a walk down memory lane.

You probably don’t remember the Al Qaqaa affair, but it dominated the last days of the 2004 presidential campaign. In a last-ditch effort to pull out the race, John Kerry and the Democrats fabricated a story that was intended to undermine President Bush’s national-security credentials: They claimed that the U.S. Army had failed to secure 377 tons of explosives at a weapons depot near Baghdad (Al Qaqaa) that subsequently disappeared, presumably into the hands of terrorists. The story turned out to be a lie, and the day after the election it was completely forgotten — having failed to serve its purpose — but in the last week before the election, the liberal media gave it all the play they could.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph, UK, would have us take a Malthusian view. We don’t agree, totally. Nor does he. But it is worth exploring the thought.

… The surge in global food prices since the summer – since Ben Bernanke signaled a fresh dollar blitz, as it happens – is not the underlying cause of Arab revolt, any more than bad harvests in 1788 were the cause of the French Revolution.

Yet they are the trigger, and have set off a vicious circle. Vulnerable governments are scrambling to lock up world supplies of grain while they can. Algeria bought 800,000 tonnes of wheat last week, and Indonesia has ordered 800,000 tonnes of rice, both greatly exceeding their normal pace of purchases. Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Bangladesh, are trying to secure extra grain supplies.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said its global food index has surpassed the all-time high of 2008, both in nominal and real terms. The cereals index has risen 39pc in the last year, the oil and fats index 55pc.

The FAO implored governments to avoid panic responses that “aggravate the situation”. If you are Hosni Mubarak hanging on in Cairo’s presidential palace, do care about such niceties?

France’s Nicolas Sarkozy blames the commodity spike on hedge funds, speculators, and the derivatives market (largely in London). He vowed to use his G20 presidency to smash the racket, but then Mr Sarkozy has a penchant for witchhunts against easy targets. …

Closing this section is Bret Stephens who channels Mubarak and appreciates his unfolding strategy.

… there are the middle-class demonstrators, the secular professionals and minor businessmen. In theory they’re your biggest threat. In practice they’re your ace in the hole.

What unites the protesters is anger. But anger is an emotion, not a strategy, much less a political agenda. What, really, does “Down With Mubarak” offer the average Egyptian?

If the Brotherhood has its way, Egypt will become a Sunni theocracy modeled on Iran. If the democracy activists have theirs, it’ll be a weak parliamentary system, incapable of exercising authority over the army and a cat’s paw for a Brotherhood that knows its revolutionary history well enough to remember the name of Alexander Kerensky.

Luckily for you, this analysis is becoming plainer by the day to many Egyptians, especially since Mr. ElBaradei, imagining he has the upper hand, stumbled into a political alliance with the Brotherhood. Also increasingly plain is that it’s in your hands to blur the “fine line between freedom and chaos,” as you aptly put it last week, and to give Egyptians a long, hard look at the latter. No, it wasn’t by your cunning design that thousands of violent prisoners made a jailbreak last week. And the decision to take police off the streets was done in the interests of avoiding bloody scenes with protesters.

Yet all the same, the anarchy unleashed on Egyptian streets has played straight into your hands. The demonstrators want a freedom that looks like London or Washington. Your task is to remind them that it’s more likely to look like Baghdad, circa 2006. …

Next we turn to the subject of the president’s attempts at saving his skin. Bill Kristol is first.

So the much-anticipated pivot to the center in the State of the Union speech has happened. As pivots go, President Obama’s wasn’t the most elegant—there were no triple lutzes or extended camel spins—but he didn’t fall on his face either. It seems clear that, for the next two years at least, President Obama is going to give us a break from claims of transforming America, à la FDR, and will work on triangulating to stay in office, à la Bill Clinton. The question is, can Obama pull a Clinton?

We’re skeptical.

First, Clinton’s pivot in 1995 was all well and good, but the reason he was reelected in 1996 was that the economy was growing at more than 4 percent, and unemployment on Election Day was 5.4 percent. The budget deficit was lower than it had been when Clinton took office. His landmark piece of economic legislation, the 1993 budget—passed despite Republican opposition—seemed more or less vindicated by events.

Will the real world be as friendly to the incumbent president in November 2012? It’s doubtful. …

Jennifer Rubin looks to 2012 also.

… As exemplified by the State of the Union address, Obama turned out to be a political adolescent, full of himself, but, ultimately, irresponsible and lightweight. He is unable or unwilling to face up to our greatest domestic challenge: our fiscal mess.

Republicans need to find the grown-up who is both tough and appealing (the two often don’t go hand in hand). The unserious and the irresolute need not apply. And oh, by the way, the same seriousness of purpose candidates display on fiscal matters, coupled with their ability to delineate the bad and good guys in the world (and be candid about the fact that there are good and bad actors), may give us some indication how they are going to conduct foreign policy. It’s no coincidence that Obama finds it difficult to confront Congress on entitlements and to confront despots abroad.

The dig on Obama from many conservatives has been that he doesn’t grasp the essence of America or embrace the role America must play in the world. There’s plenty of evidence for both of those critiques. But in 2012, the most effective Republican is going to be the one who makes the case that he, not Obama, is willing to do the hard and big and important things to restore American prosperity at home and influence abroad.

Michael Barone likes 2012 for the GOP.

… In the Senate, where Democrats have a 53-47 majority, but not iron control, the situation is different. In the 2012 cycle 23 Democrats come up for re-election and only 10 Republicans. You can get a good idea of their political incentives by looking at the 2010 popular vote for the House in their states. Since the mid-1990s, when partisan percentages in presidential and House elections converged, the popular vote for the House has been a pretty good gauge of partisan balance.

Of the 10 Republican senators up for re-election, only two represent states where Democrats won the House vote — Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts. They’re both well ahead in local polls.

For the 23 Democrats up for re-election, the picture is different. Eight represent states where the House vote was 53 to 65 percent Democratic and where Barack Obama got more than 60 percent in 2008. Count them all as safe.

But 12 represent states where Republicans got a majority of the House vote in 2010. These include big states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Virginia, and states like Montana and Nebraska where Republican House candidates topped 60 percent. Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin round out the list.

In another three states — New Mexico, Washington, Minnesota — Republicans won between 46 and 48 percent of the House popular vote. These were solid Obama states in 2008. They don’t look like solid Democratic states now. …

Debra Saunders thinks “government innovation” is a hoot. 

… The problem with left-leaning elites trying to run the U.S. economy from the top down is simple: They think the answer to America’s economic woes is to create more jobs that replicate managers just like them.

They cannot comprehend that, to a good number of American voters, the theme of President Obama’s State of the Union address – government innovation – is an oxymoron.

And so they nodded their heads in recognition of their own greater wisdom as the president intoned, “We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology and especially clean-energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet and create countless new jobs for our people.” As if more of the same deficit spending is the answer.

They fail to recognize that so-called green jobs are the most over-hyped jobs in America. (After years of subsidies and special treatment, they represent 174,000 jobs – less than 1 percent of the total – in California, according to the public policy group Next Ten.) … 

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David Warren is pessimistic about Egypt’s future as a democracy.

…The rhetoric of the Bush administration took them in this way, fondly hoping that with the passage of time, “modern” attitudes would keep spreading, as they once did in Europe, and have done more recently in countries of the Pacific Rim. The “neo-conservatives” sincerely believed that once constitutional democracy is implanted, it will grow, until it can be sustained by habit. India, “the world’s largest democracy,” is the standard example of this sort of miracle.

…I tend to look at the world more darkly than the “neo-conservatives” did.

While I recognize that support for “democracy and freedom” is substantial, within each Arab national society — that the middle class is not a nothing; that each economy depends on it — I doubt this “faction” can prevail. Worse, I think we are watching its final, hopeless bid for power. …

Peter Wehner reminds us of what Bush 43 said about Middle East policy.

As popular unrest sweeps the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunisia to Yemen to Egypt, it’s worth recalling the words and warning of President George W. Bush – in this case, his November 19, 2003, address at Whitehall Palace in London, where Bush said this:

We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. …

As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.

…The core argument Bush made, which is that America must stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity — the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance — was right. No people on earth long to live in oppression and servitude, as slaves instead of free people, to be kept in chains or experience the lash of the whip. …

In Contentions, Max Boot follows up on Peter Wehner’s comments.

…But whatever happens, one thing is already clear: as Pete Wehner has already noted, President Bush was right in pushing his “freedom agenda” for the Middle East.

…Turns out that Bush knew a thing or two. He may not have been all that sophisticated by some standards, but like Ronald Reagan, he grasped basic truths that eluded the intellectuals. Reagan, recall, earned endless scorn for suggesting that the “evil empire” might soon be consigned to the “ash heap of history.” But he understood that basic human desires for freedom could not be repressed forever. Bush understood precisely the same thing, and like Reagan he also realized that the U.S. had to get on the right side of history by championing freedom rather than by cutting disreputable deals with dictators.

Too bad he didn’t have more success in pushing the “freedom agenda.” If he had — if, for example, he had been willing to hold back American aid to force Egypt to make liberal reforms — the U.S. might possibly have averted the explosion currently seen on the streets of Egypt by engineering a more orderly transition to democracy. But in his second term, humbled by setbacks in Iraq, Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, charted a different course. They did little or nothing while Mubarak locked up liberal dissident Ayman Nour. Instead, they concentrated their energies on the vaunted Middle East peace process, which ended in a predictable failure.

Obama has essentially continued this policy, which he — and legions of like-minded thinkers — sees as the height of “realism.” But what’s so realistic about endorsing a sclerotic status quo? The answer is being delivered in the streets of Egypt. So having already endorsed the essentials of the Bush war on terror, Obama is now belatedly embracing the freedom agenda too. Does that mean we’re all neocons now?

Peter Schiff once again hits it out of the ballpark. Schiff explains how the Federal Reserve fueled the housing and financial crises.

…The government has been subsidizing housing since the Roosevelt administration, and we never had a bubble of this proportion. It was not until these guarantees were combined with a 1% federal funds rate that they became supercharged. It was the unfortunate combination of government guarantees and cheap money that produced such a toxic brew.

During the bubble, a large percentage of loans, particularly those in high-priced markets like California, had adjustable rates. These rates were popular as a direct result of the ultra-low fed funds rate, which made them significantly cheaper than traditional thirty-year fixed-rate mortgages. Some of the most popular subprime loans were of the “2/28″ variety, where borrowers enjoyed artificially low “teaser” rates for the first two years only. For conforming loans, Fannie and Freddie actually guaranteed mortgages based solely on borrowers’ ability to afford the teaser rate, even if they could not afford the resets. Therefore, without low rates from the Fed, most of these ARMs never would have been originated.

…Meanwhile, the low rates themselves created investor demand for mortgage debt. With Treasuries and CDs offering pitiful returns, investors were encouraged to look elsewhere for (seemingly) low-risk investments with higher yields. This created unprecedented demand for Fannie- and Freddie-insured debt as well as new varieties of mortgage-backed securities.

Since Wall Street needed additional mortgages to package, lending standards steadily eroded to meet the demand. Much of the demand came from foreign sources looking to recycle large trade surpluses, which would have been much smaller had the Fed not kept rates so low. …

George Will notes how many ways the government can waste your money, and discusses how some Michigan politicians want to spend more for you.

…On May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, in the Utah Territory, a golden spike was driven to celebrate the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. In the 1960s, the United States sent men to the moon. Obama said: Today’s government should take more control of the nation’s resources so it can do innovative things akin to building the transcontinental railroad and exploring space.

The nation heard: You should trust the government whose recent innovations include the ethanol debacle that, four days before the State of the Union, the government expanded. And you should surrender more resources to the government whose recent innovations include the wild proliferation of subprime mortgages.

Obama spoke to a nation limping into a sixth year of declining housing prices (housing accounts for about one-quarter of households’ assets), with an additional 10 to 20 percent decline likely. With 5 million households at least two months’ delinquent on their mortgage payments and 5.5 million households with mortgages at least 20 percent larger than the value of their houses, more housing foreclosures will probably take place this year than the 1 million in 2010, when sales of new homes hit a 47-year low. It is indeed amazing what innovative government can accomplish. …

In the Corner, Rich Lowry takes us on an interesting digression generated from the Sputnik rhetoric.

…Here is a thoughtful e-mail in reply:

…Kennedy’s challenge was to accomplish the goal within the decade. His political motivations for choosing this date are well documented and do not require retelling. What is significant are the key decisions made by individuals within the program permitting NASA to hit the date. It is these decisions with constitute the ‘soul’ of Apollo and represent the power of combining enormous public funding with an almost religious conviction to get the job done.

 I believe the two best examples of individuals assuming tremendous personal, professional and political risk in the interest of realizing on the objective are as follows:

1. George Mueller’s decision to adapt an ‘all-up’ testing regimen for the Saturn V booster 2. George Low’s decision to fly Apollo 8 in 1968…

Bob Dorigo Jones, in the Daily Caller, criticizes Congressman Dennis Kucinich for his lawsuit.

Did you see the report in The Daily Caller on Wednesday about Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich suing a cafeteria on Capitol Hill for $150,000 over a sandwich he purchased there nearly three years ago? Kucinich claims he hurt his tooth by biting into an olive pit that was part of his vegetarian sandwich, and now he wants to settle this in the courts. Ughh!

There is so much wrong with this lawsuit that I hardly know where to begin, but here are some of the reasons why Americans should care about this.

As taxpayers, we all pay for premium dental coverage for Kucinich and all members of Congress. Surely, it has to be some of the best dental care in the world. Has the congressman opted out of this coverage? Or, does he still have the coverage and want to reimburse taxpayers for the cost of his dental care?…

And as you can imagine, the President’s address provided inspiration to many cartoonists. Enjoy.

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In commenting on Obama’s State of the Union address, David Harsanyi says that high-speed rail and government interference in the economy aren’t winners.

…Obama says that “none of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be or where the new jobs will come from.” And by “none of us,” he means you. Because Obama proceeded to give a speech that laid out exactly what needed innovating, which sectors would be innovative, where new jobs would be found and how we were going to get to those jobs. Can you say high-speed rail? The president can. He mentioned railroads six times, because how else are we going to win the 19th century back?

Actually, this fixation with building an extraordinarily expensive, outdated and tax-funded rail system is a great example of why central planning undermines progress.

…Obama, for example, used the word “invest” — a well-known euphemism for more spending and subsidizing — 13 times in the speech. Didn’t he just get through telling us we didn’t know where modernization would emerge? Didn’t he just explain that free enterprise drove innovation? True, but government knows how to guide the markets in the right direction. Just think of it as an ethanol additive for capitalism. …

And Harsanyi has a good response to the “Sputnik moment” rhetoric.

…The Soviets’ intense effort to erect a façade of accomplishment was achieved by investing in an unnecessary, costly, symbolic, ideology-driven project that did nothing for the aspirations of its citizens or its stagnant, dying economy.

Let’s be sure we’re not on the wrong side of the Sputnik moment.

Charles Krauthammer says the State of the Union address shows that the Big Spender hasn’t changed.

…This entire pantomime about debt reduction came after the first half of a speech devoted to, yes, new spending. One almost has to admire Obama’s defiance. His 2009 stimulus and budget-busting health-care reform are precisely what stirred the popular revolt that delivered his November shellacking. And yet he’s back for more.

It’s as if Obama is daring the voters – and the Republicans – to prove they really want smaller government. He’s manning the barricades for Obamacare, and he’s here with yet another spending – excuse me, investment – spree. To face down those overachieving Asians, Obama wants to sink yet more monies into yet more road and bridge repair, more federally subsidized teachers – with a bit of high-speed rail tossed in for style. That will show the Chinese.

…He’s been chastened enough by the election of 2010 to make gestures toward the center. But the State of the Union address revealed a man ideologically unbowed and undeterred. He served up an insignificant spending cut, yet another (if more modest) stimulus, and a promise to fight any Republican attempt to significantly shrink the size of government. …

We have a couple pieces from Jennifer Rubin on the State of the Union address. 

…the mystery is solved: There is no new Obama, just a less snarly one. But it was also a flat and boring speech, too long by a third. Can you recall a single line? After the Giffords memorial service, this effort seemed like Obama had phoned it in. Perhaps that is because the name of the game is to pass the buck to Congress to do the hard work of digging out of the fiscal mess we are in.

As we expected the laundry list of spending is called “investment.” But it is spending, pure and simple. And there is a ton of it.

There was undisguised hunger for government to pick winners and losers: “We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.” And what special expertise does Obama or the Congress have in sprinkling our money to energy projects? More importantly, how much does GE stand to gain?…

Jennifer Rubin adds a few more thoughts to her commentary on the SOTU.

…First, the terms of the debate on spending have changed entirely, and Obama’s plan to rename “spending” as “investment” therefore failed miserably. The Republicans have rejected it outright. Ryan debunked it effectively. And even liberal pundits on the cable shows last night rolled their eyes. Nearly all of these plans are dead on arrival, and both sides know it.

Another lesson is the importance of the messenger. As Bill Kristol pointed out, Obama was not simply flat but now a pale imitation of Bill Clinton, who tried to perpetuate and grow the federal government by small steps instead of large leaps. He was, frankly, old hat, lacking the magic of 2008. Contrast that will Ryan, who not unlike Obama in 2009, has the ability to present daring and dramatic ideas in so pleasant and congenial a manner as to make them seem nothing more than common sense. As Bill put it, “Yes, Ryan is younger and friendlier and smarter than your typical old guard Republican. But he’s also much more radical in both his thinking and his political strategy.”

And finally, Obama has a peculiar and, I think, ineffective justification for all the spending. The Chinese and the South Koreans are getting ahead because they “invest,” so we must, too! But the Chinese repress freedom and outlaw labor unions, should we go down that road? The Europeans have “invested” well beyond their means, and in the process wrecked their economies. Is that the model? Obama talks increasingly about “exceptionalism,” but he fails to understand a key component of what makes us exceptional: a faith in free markets, dynamic market capitalism, and restraint on the power of government. We need to compete, but not imitate. Obama doesn’t quite grasp that.

And Rubin also comments further on the foreign affairs portion of the SOTU.

…Likewise, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, was concerned about what was missing from Obama’s speech. She praised the president on Iraq and Afghanistan in a statement, but voiced a variety of concerns:

…The President also did not mention the threat posed by Iran and Syria’s sponsorship of terrorism and efforts to undermine its neighbors, on the very day that the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis took a severe step to undermine Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Support for freedom and people yearning to be free must always be at the center of U.S. foreign policy, and I am glad that the President expressed our nation’s support for the people of Tunisia and South Sudan. Yet, the Administration has pursued a ‘reset’ of relations with Russia, which has dismissed the crisis of Russia’s worsening human rights record. It has made concessions to the regime in Havana while the Cuban people remain enslaved. And just last week, China’s leader was honored with a State dinner even as the regime in Beijing continues to imprison those who dare to demand their basic human rights, including the most recent Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Turning to the President’s reference to strong support for our ally South Korea, he is right that the free trade agreement with South Korea will create jobs, and I look forward to working with him to ensure that it passes Congress as soon as possible. But that is not the only ally that merits a job-creating free trade agreement. The pending agreements with Colombia and Panama will also bring jobs and other economic benefits to the U.S., including to my Congressional district in South Florida. Every day that passes without these agreements in place is another lost opportunity for the U.S. economy. …

In Newsweek’s KausFile Blog, Mickey Kaus runs down his comments on SOTU.

SOTU to Snooze To: Reaction to the first karaoke SOTU (since everyone had the words in advance):

1) Obama seemed to have contracted Reich’s Disease, the annoying affect of lecturing to his audience as if they were schoolchildren in the manner of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. He dropped this attitude as the speech war on, then recontracted it for the closing paragraphs. Note: It’s even worse for Obama to lecture than for other politicians to do it, since the reason he is unlikable (to people like me) is that he seems stuck up.

2) Civility is boring! Who knew?  It was way more invigorating when people cheered and shouted “You Lie!” Next time, rigorously separate the parties and give them cheerleaders with megaphones. Yes, boring SOTUs sometimes play well with the electorate. But what about the people who have to cover them?…

Nile Gardiner, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, looks at troubling numbers from the CBO, and discusses Congressman Paul Ryan’s response to the President’s address. His brief discussion of how the UK is dealing with their debt is instructive.

In contrast to the president, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, conveyed a far more credible and serious message in his response to the State of the Union. As Ryan noted:

Our nation is approaching a tipping point.  We are at a moment, where if government’s growth is left unchecked and unchallenged, America’s best century will be considered our past century. …

…. We need to reclaim our American system of limited government, low taxes, reasonable regulations, and sound money, which has blessed us with unprecedented prosperity. And it has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed. That’s the real secret to job creation – not borrowing and spending more money in Washington.  Limited government and free enterprise have helped make America the greatest nation on earth.

Across Europe, governments are at last beginning to acknowledge the sheer scale of the debt problem, and in some cases taking immediate action to deal with it, especially in Britain. In the UK the Coalition plans to eliminate the structural deficit altogether by 2015, and intends to cut 490,000 public sector jobs, nearly one in ten of the 6 million total for the UK…Most UK government departments will have their annual budgets cut by 19 percent. …

It’s good to have a new House Speaker. Judicial Watch details Pelosi’s wasteful abuse of privilege regarding military flights. We have one question: did two million dollars come out of the defense budget to pay for the Pelosi joy rides?

…According to previous documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the former Speaker’s military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over one two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol. …

Judicial Watch also previously uncovered internal Department of Defense (DOD) email correspondence detailing attempts by DOD staff to accommodate Pelosi’s numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft as well as the speaker’s last minute cancellations and changes. For example, in response to a series of requests for military aircraft, one DOD official wrote, “Any chance of politely querying [Pelosi's team] if they really intend to do all of these or are they just picking every weekend?…[T]here’s no need to block every weekend ‘just in case’…” The email also notes that Pelosi’s office had, “a history of canceling many of their past requests.”

Judicial Watch also uncovered emails from the DOD that show the Pentagon worked hand-in-hand with congressional offices prior to releasing documents regarding congressional military travel under the FOIA. These “heads up” emails involved FOIA requests filed…

“Despite the media firestorm over her military travel abuses, Nancy Pelosi continued to use the United States Air Force as her own personal travel agency right up until her final days as House Speaker,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “…We are pleased that Speaker Boehner will not follow Pelosi’s corrupt example and will instead fly commercial. But this scandal is not only about travel by the Speaker of the House. Through the Speaker’s office, other members of the House are able to obtain permission for the use of military luxury travel for congressional delegation trips abroad. These trips, known as CODELs, have exploded in number and cost. Speaker Boehner needs to reform this abuse of our military’s assets. This is the right thing to do for the U.S. Air Force and for the American taxpayer.”

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In USA Today, Michael Gartner gives us a gift that will warm your heart as he tells us about his parents.

…As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, “Do you want to know the secret of a long life?” “I guess so,” I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

“No left turns,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“No left turns,” he repeated. “Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.”

“What?” I said again. “No left turns,” he said. “Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that’s a lot safer. So we always make three rights.”

“You’re kidding!” I said, and I turned to my mother for support. “No,” she said, “your father is right. We make three rights. It works.”

But then she added: “Except when your father loses count.”

I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. “Loses count?” I asked. “Yes,” my father admitted, “that sometimes happens. But it’s not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you’re okay again.”…

Amity Shlaes, in Bloomberg News, reports on how government spending stifles private-sector job growth.

…Yet what if additional federal spending for roads, bridges, schools, and work programs in states doesn’t redeem itself in jobs? Perhaps such spending actually impedes employment in the private sector. Maybe President George W. Bush killed jobs by signing off on stimulus spending. And maybe President Obama is doing more of the same.

…For the past few years Price Fishback, a University of Arizona economist, and Valentina Kachanovskaya, a graduate student at the school, have been studying the effects of federal domestic spending from the point of view of individual states during the 1930s, a period of dramatic unemployment.

…The two Arizona economists see a more modest benefit. They find that each dollar of public works spending and funding jobs for the poor did increase the average amount of personal income, or cash an individual had on hand to purchase goods and services, by $1.67. When government spending under Hoover and Roosevelt involved grants and loans, the figure was $1.39. …

…After that, the news about multipliers gets worse. According to Fishback and Kachanovskaya, a dollar spent by Washington didn’t jump-start job creation. The money may have had no effect or even suffocated nonfarm private-sector employment. The investment did not spill over to most other sectors of the economy in a positive way. A double dip, the depression within the depression, followed record federal investment in the economy in 1936. …

Tony Blankley has a plan of action on how we can get out from under government’s regulatory reign.

…Regarding the vastly damaging economic and deeply annoying personal effect of excessive regulation, we need to take advantage of this momentary diversion of the administration toward at least rhetorical common sense. At the congressional level, as has been promised by new GOP committee chairmen such as Fred Upton at the key House Energy and Commerce Committee, we must identify, publicize and repeal as many oppressive regulations as possible.

This will require the Appropriations Committee to explicitly defund the enforcement of such regulations. And yes, unless the president genuinely follows through with his asserted intentions to rein in regulations, this will mean confrontation between the Republican House and the administration. But the GOP Congress must stand firm.

To help, the conservative media and think tanks need to bring much more focus on abusive regulations. The administration and liberals generally are delighted to let the re-regulation of America continue under the radar. …

In the Washington Examiner, Timothy Carney discusses two political entrepreneurs joining Obama’s team. Liberals worry about the unrestrained greed of big business and conservatives worry about the totalitarian drive of big government. These alliances should cause everyone concern, because they profit politicians and the big businesses they collude with at taxpayers’ expense.

…But the anti-business charge against Obama was always off target. “Anti-free market” was — and is still — more accurate.

Immelt and Daley don’t represent a new side of Barack Obama — they represent the unhealthy collusion of Big Business and Big Government that has always been the essence of Obamanomics.

Check out Daley’s resume. In the 1990s, he ran Amalgamated Bank, owned by a union and described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “one of the city’s most politically connected financial institutions.” Bill’s brother, Mayor Richard Daley, kept the city’s money on deposit at Amalgamated. Later, Bill held a seat on Fannie Mae’s board, pocketing six-figure compensation from the government-sponsored enterprise that used a housing bubble and an implicit government guarantee to fill a slush fund for well-connected Democrats — until taxpayers bailed it out in 2008.

…And Obama’s kind of corporation: GE, which marches in sync with government, pocketing subsidies, profiting from regulation, and lobbying for more of both. …

In Baseball Crank, Dan McLaughlin says that 2012 will not look like 1996, much to liberals’ chagrin.

…Undoubtedly, Obama will have the opportunity to take advantage of many of the same dynamics that favored Clinton’s re-election, and he may succeed for those and other reasons. But history never repeats itself precisely. It is worthwhile to reflect on the many things that worked to Clinton’s benefit that Obama can’t count on:

1) The Democrats Still Hold The Senate: Clinton lost both Houses of Congress in the midterms, the third president of the past century to do so, the others being Truman in 1946 and Eisenhower in 1954. Both were re-elected; Truman used the GOP as a foil to confront, Eisenhower showed he could cooperate with the Democrats, and Clinton did some of both. Each was able in one sense or another to run on the same divided-government rationale that had helped them lose Congress in the first place.

Obama won’t have the same crisp contrast with Congress; the unpopular Harry Reid is still running the Senate, and sooner or later it will become impossible to conceal that fact. History suggests that this can matter: Obama’s the third President in the past century to lose only the House and keep the Senate in the midterms, and the other two – Taft and Hoover – both got slaughtered (Hoover carried just six states and drew 39.7% of the popular vote, Taft carried just two states, finished third in a three-way race and drew just 23.4% of the popular vote).

…3) Obamacare passed; Hillarycare didn’t: As unpopular as the Clinton Administration’s health care plan was, it wasn’t a major issue in the 1996 campaign because it had failed and, with Republicans controlling both Houses of Congress, it wasn’t coming back. (Ditto Clinton’s destructive BTU tax). Not so Obamacare, which remains very much a live issue. There’s clearly a decisive majority supporting repeal right now in the House, and possibly a majority could be mustered in the Senate (certainly if the GOP gains more seats in 2012), but obviously not enough votes to override Obama’s veto. Unless Mitt Romney wins the nomination, the GOP will almost certainly run a presidential candidate who can and will mount a full-throated campaign in favor of repealing the bill. The same will be broadly true of a number of Obama’s big-spending, big-regulating initiatives. …

Pajamas Media has news that makes us admire Texas even more.

The not at all slow death of the Texas Democratic Party continues.  I’ve just gotten word via press release that nine local Democrats up in northeast Texas just switched parties to become Republicans.  From the release

In what is believed to be one of the largest number of officeholders to change party affiliation in Texas, Lamar County GOP Chairman John Kruntorad and State Representative Erwin Cain announced today that 9 local elected Democrats have joined the Republican Party.   This announcement follows unprecedented election gains by the GOP in 2008 and 2010 as Northeast Texans increasingly identify with the conservative platform of the Republican Party. …

They join a few dozen who switched from D to R in Texas leading up to the 2010 elections, and the two state Reps. who switched parties after the elections (bringing the total of state Reps. switching from D to R, to three).  And today’s group of switchers is jumping ship in an area that has been considered yellow dog Democrat for generations.

The Economist reviews a new book about India by Patrick French.

ONE of the startling features of India’s economic progress is how much opposition it stirs at home. Across the political divide, many people are still sceptical of the two-decade-old reform programme that underpins the boom, including leading lights of the ruling Congress party. Their gripes are often rhetorical—even India’s communist parties have grudgingly embraced capitalism in the three states where they rule. But critics still need to be reminded how badly India was served by its former mixed economy.

…While presenting few new ideas, Mr French has a sometimes surprising tendency to lay claim to established ones. That Western power will be diminished in relative terms by Asia’s rise, that Indian politics is becoming ever more dynastic and that the country’s Hindu nationalists need to freshen up their manifesto are all commonplace. Mr French suggests them as insights. Meanwhile he decries lazy journalists who “make a living by reporting ceaseless tales of woe” from India; but these are a dying lot. In recent years, foreign reporting of the country has often gone too far the other way, lauding India’s economic growth with only occasional easy-to-spot regard to the country’s manifold problems.

Mr French is a fine reporter, with an appealing fascination for all things Indian, as his book makes clear. Despite its flaws, it is an accomplished portrait of momentous times in a remarkable country.

Schumpeter’s Notebook Blog in the Economist blogs that India is a work in progress.

MANAGEMENT theorists have fallen in love with India in much the same way that they fell in love with re-engineering fifteen years ago. India is synonymous with rapid growth, frugal innovation and exciting new business models.

I agree with all that (and have promoted it myself). But it is important to remember that India is also a mess.

…The local newspapers are certainly full of stories of India’s economic boom. As usual the advertisements are more interesting than the business pages. There are endless ads for MBAs (not all of them entirely plausible), English courses, computer classes: all signs of a country that is pulling itself up by its boot-straps. But the news pages are full of darker stories—about the Naxalite rebellion, about institutional incompetence and corruption and about the general mess that is Indian politics. …

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Today’s Pickings have a singular focus – an article from last Sunday’s NY Times Magazine about the disarry of the administration’s economic team   In it Peter Baker gives a center-left perspective on the president’s efforts to create jobs. Pickerhead likes this for the perspective you get from reading between the lines. A fundamental illustration of the president’s narcissism and shallowness exists in the first paragraph when he reacts to a presentation with, “I’ve told you before, I want you to come to me with ideas that excite me.”

Three days before Christmas, President Obama gathered his economic team in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room to review themes for his State of the Union address. The edge-of-the-cliff crisis he inherited had passed, but with more than 14 million Americans still out of work, he was looking for bold ways to bring down unemployment. The ideas presented to him, though, seemed familiar and uninspired. “You know, guys,” he said, according to someone in the room, “I’ve told you before, I want you to come to me with ideas that excite me.” Nothing he was hearing excited him.

…Obama has been casting about for ideas. He held two unpublicized meetings last month with outside economists, a group of liberals one day and a group of conservatives the next, soliciting suggestions while deflecting criticism. (He was “a bit defensive,” one participant told me.) He likewise met with labor leaders and convened a four-hour meeting with chief executives from Google, General Electric, Honeywell, Boeing and other corporations. Obama was so intent on the conversation that he canceled a lunch break and asked the executives to bring their chicken, fish and pasta back from a buffet so they could keep talking.

…There is a compelling case that Obamanomics has produced results. An economy that was shrinking in size and bleeding more than 700,000 jobs a month is now growing at 2.6 percent and added 1.1 million jobs last year. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known as the stimulus, produced or saved at least 1.9 million jobs and as many as 4.7 million last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The much-derided Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, started by George W. Bush and continued by Obama, stabilized the financial sector, and the big banks have repaid the money with interest. According to a Treasury Department report sent to Congress this month, TARP will cost taxpayers $28 billion instead of the $700 billion originally set aside. The nearly $80 billion bailout of the auto industry may cost taxpayers only $15 billion, as the restructured General Motors and Chrysler come back to life with strong sales. The stock market has surged; corporate profits are setting records.

All of which seems offset by one simple figure: 9.4 percent. Or perhaps two, if you add $1.3 trillion. The first, of course, is the unemployment rate, which has remained stubbornly above 9 percent for 20 straight months, the longest since the Great Depression. Counting those who are seeking full-time jobs while working part time and those who have stopped looking altogether, it’s closer to 17 percent. At the current rate, it could be 2017 before the country replaces the more than eight million jobs lost since December 2007. The second figure is this year’s federal budget deficit, which has touched off a prairie fire of public protest and emerged as the central issue of the newly installed Republican House. In a recent poll by The Times and CBS News, 82 percent of Americans rated the economy bad, and just 43 percent approved of the way Obama was handling it. “People look at the economy today, and they’re disappointed by what we’ve achieved,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told me last month. “But that just misses the fundamental reality — it could have been so much worse.” The program Obama managed to enact represented an “unbelievably heroic, implausible accomplishment,” Geithner argued, yet one that requires patience. “Even if we had a magic wand,” he said, “it was going to take a long time to dig out.”

The path from crisis to anemic recovery was marked by turmoil inside the White House. The economic team fractured repeatedly over philosophy (should jobs or deficits take priority?) and personality (who got to attend which meetings?), resulting in feuds that ultimately helped break it apart. The process felt like a treadmill, as one former official put it, with proposals sometimes debated for months before decisions were reached. The word commonly used by those involved is “dysfunctional,” and in recent months, most of the initial team has left or made plans to leave, including Larry Summers, Christina Romer, Peter Orszag, Rahm Emanuel and Paul Volcker.

…While Obama and his team were hardly the only ones to underestimate the depth of the problem they inherited in early 2009, their failure to define it from those early days has undermined a bedrock idea of American liberalism, the faith in the capacity of government to play a constructive role in the markets and make up for the limits of individuals to cope with them. Since unemployment has remained so high for so long while deficits have soared, it must mean the stimulus did not work and the money was wasted. Smaller government, less regulation and lower taxes, therefore, would be the only answer. And so, Obama’s challenge may be more fundamental even than reducing unemployment and winning re-election; he wants to prove that liberal economic theory can be adapted to the 21st century.

…Liberals like the Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman argue that the $800 billion package of infrastructure projects, aid to states and tax breaks that Congress eventually passed was inadequate and poorly targeted. “The stimulus was too small and not well-enough designed,” Stiglitz told me. “Most of my concerns have turned out to be valid.” Romer, who has returned to teach at Berkeley, told me she now agrees about the size. In Washington, she said, “you’re not supposed to say the obvious thing, which is that in retrospect of course it should have been bigger. With unemployment at 10 percent, I don’t know how you could say you wouldn’t have done anything different. Of course you would have made it bigger.”

…The crisis forced Obama to confront the larger question of government’s role in the economy. Should taxpayers save large enterprises from failure? When is the risk of not intervening too great? How much should politicians dictate to business? His team engaged in a fierce debate about whether to nationalize the biggest banks, as Stiglitz and Krugman advocated. Summers entertained the idea, at least for purposes of discussion, for banks that could not pass a “stress test” examining their solvency. Geithner and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, argued against it. Ultimately the tests found the banks were in better shape than feared, a critical moment in shoring up confidence. …

…A January 2009 study by Romer and Jared Bernstein, the economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, predicted that if the stimulus passed, unemployment would be at 7 percent at the end of 2010.

“I truly believed that forecast,” Romer told me. “I consulted with every good forecaster who would talk with me, including the Federal Reserve.” …

…The renewed focus on the economy goes back to last August, when after months of grappling with health care, the oil spill and the financial-regulation bill, Obama resolved to redouble efforts to create jobs. While he was on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Obama called his economic advisers and told them to develop a new agenda for the fall, which led to a September proposal to invest more money in infrastructure, make the research-and-development tax credit for businesses permanent and allow companies to deduct more expenses right away. His advisers also began discussing ideas for his next State of the Union, like a payroll tax holiday, ideas that ultimately were worked into last month’s tax deal with Republicans instead.

The president’s search for an agenda that will excite him, and the rest of America, has taken him to the far corners of the economic conversation. He recently asked advisers to present arguments about whether the slow recovery is part of an economic cycle that will ultimately turn around or something different, a “new normal” signaling stagnation as in Japan in the 1990s. “He’s trying to gather different ideas and different perspectives both on where we are and where we’re going,” Goolsbee said.

…Instead, the debate will shift to curbing deficits and redesigning the tax code. Republicans have made shrinking government the core of their economic message, appealing to many Americans who think Obama (and before him, Bush) let spending get out of hand. “We’re at that transition moment,” Lew told me. “We’ve got to look ahead at the very serious fiscal challenges we have.” Obama plans to use the State of the Union to present himself as a fiscal conservative. But it will be a delicate balance for someone who believes government spending helped turn the economy around; he hopes to make the case that he can rein in the deficit but that the deepest cuts should wait until after the recovery gathers momentum. …

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The WSJ Notable & Quotable has an excellent quote from Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh on his radio show, Jan. 20:

The moral code, the moral compass of the state-controlled media is something to behold. Now, some of you may not know the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner hosted a state dinner last night for Hu Jintao of China. Hu Jintao is holding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner in prison in China. Not making it up. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner hosted a dinner for the guy holding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner in prison, and the media does not get the irony of this at all. They’re too busy running around chasing Sarah Palin and radio talk show hosts over “civility.”

In Contentions, Alana Goodman comments on an anti-American song played at the US state dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao.

So that lavish state dinner President Obama hosted for Chinese President Hu Jintao last week? Turns out it was an even worse decision than previously thought. Not only did Obama honor a regime of human-rights abusers, but it turns out they weren’t even appreciative. According to the Epoch Times, a pianist at the event played a well-known Chinese propaganda song that’s about defeating the U.S. in a war. And it sounds like the Chinese government may have known the song would be played beforehand…

…The song apparently thrilled hardliners in China, who saw it as a major humiliation of America…

…The whole concept of the Chinese playing an anti-American song during a state dinner in their honor is too petty and childish to even be insulting. The embarrassing part is that Obama-administration officials didn’t bother to find out the background of the songs on the agenda before they were played. In comparison, the Chinese delegation reportedly knew about the song in advance, and may have been the ones who tipped off news outlets in China beforehand…

…Awful. This is worse than Obama’s bow to the Japanese emperor in 2009. The White House better have a serious explanation for why this song was allowed to be played at its own party. And it should also serve as a lesson to Obama for why we don’t throw state dinners in honor of openly anti-American governments.

David Harsanyi believes China’s power is overrated.

…I often hear talk radio hosts and politicians condemn China’s nefarious role as the largest stakeholder in American debt. How is it China’s fault that Washington spends $1 trillion more than it takes in in revenue? Substantial national debt is our concern, but if we’re going to find people to borrow from, having China vested in American success seems like a good enough idea. (Unless China’s dynamic economy is an elaborate ruse to sink us in the end.)

…We can talk about China’s disgusting record on human rights. It can’t be ignored. But the best cure for illiberalism is probably “wealth and economic power.” How long can communist hard-liners thrive in a nation that sees its economy grow 10 percent a year?

Let’s not forget, as well, that China is still a place of deep poverty, stressed infrastructure, and political upheaval; it’s struggling with problems that dwarf our own. We might be overrating its influence. …

Peter Schiff discusses how China’s monetary policy is distorting both Chinese and American economies.

…To a very large extent the distortions are caused by China’s long-standing policy of pegging its currency, the yuan, to the U.S. dollar. But as China’s economy gains strength, and the American economy weakens, the cost and difficulty of maintaining the peg become ever greater, and eventually outweigh the benefits that the policy supposedly delivers to China.

…In order to buy these dollars, the Chinese central bank must print its own currency. In essence, China is adopting the Fed’s expansionary monetary policy. In the U.S. the inflationary impact of such a strategy is mitigated by our ability to export paper dollars in exchange for inexpensive Chinese imports. Although prices are rising here, they are not rising nearly as much as they would if we had to spend all this newly printed money on domestically produced goods. The big problem for China is that, unlike the U.S., the newly printed yuan are not exported, but remain in China bidding up consumer prices. As a result, inflation is becoming China’s dominant political issue.

…This week, Chinese president Hu Jintao arrives for a summit in Washington, where he will get an earful from President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner about the importance of letting the yuan appreciate. On this point, the Administration actually has it right. But they fail, of course, to grasp the full implications of how a falling dollar and a rising yuan will hurt the U.S. economy. If the Chinese stop buying dollars, Americans will face higher prices and higher interest rates. If Geithner thinks we can take such changes in stride, he is in for a rude awakening. …

…For now the old guard in China still holds sway and the status quo remains intact. But new leaders are expected to be in place by 2014. When fresh hands take the wheel, we may finally see some meaningful change in the global monetary system. 

Robert Samuelson thinks China is a force to be reckoned with, and the US should be making more of an effort to influence Chinese economic decisions.

…Next, consider technology transfer. Big multinational firms want to be in China, but the cost of doing so is often the loss of important technology through required licensing agreements, mandatory joint ventures, reverse engineering or outright theft. American software companies estimate that 85 to 90 percent of their products in China are pirated.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Thomas Hout and Pankaj Ghemawat cite China’s high-speed-rail projects. Initially, foreign firms such as Germany’s Siemens got most contracts; in 2009, the government began requiring foreign firms to enter into minority joint ventures with Chinese companies. Having mastered the “core technologies,” Chinese companies have captured 80 percent or more of the local market and compete with foreign firms for exports. The same thing is occurring in commercial aircraft. China is building a competitor to the Boeing 737 and the Airbus 320; General Electric has entered into a joint venture that will supply the avionics, the electronics that guide the aircraft.

Finally, there’s finance. China’s foreign exchange reserves – earned mainly through massive export surpluses – approached $2.9 trillion at year-end 2010. These vast holdings (which increase by hundreds of billions annually) enable China to expand its influence by sprinkling low-cost loans around the world or making strategic investments in raw materials and companies. The Financial Times recently reported that China – through the China Export-Import Bank and the China Development Bank – has “lent more money to other developing countries over the past two years than the World Bank.” …

Christopher Hitchens tells us more about Tunisia.

…One found the political atmosphere constipated and conformist rather than outright terrifying. Perhaps one reason the Tunisian crowds were able to mobilize so swiftly and to such immediate result—splitting the army leadership from the police in a matter of a few days—was simply that they knew they could. There was scant likelihood of the sort of all-out repression and bloodshed that was met by, say, the protesters against the Iranian mullahs. Thus, and sadly, it’s probably premature to say that the events in Tunis are harbingers of grass-roots movements in other states of the region. (Still, Qaddafi’s own deranged response to the rebellion, ranting about the horrible prospect of a “Bolshevik or American revolution,” was truly heartening. Just to know that he is sweating …)

…When the ancient El Ghriba synagogue there was truck-bombed by al-Qaida in April 2002, the government rushed to express solidarity and to undertake rebuilding, and the Tunisian parliament was unusual in the region for having a Jewish senator. Along the boulevards, young couples in jeans held hands without awkwardness, and I seldom saw a headscarf, let alone a veil or burqa.

I was interested to see an interview last week with a young female protester who described herself and her friends as “children of Bourguiba.” The first president of the country, and the tenacious leader of its independence movement, Habib Bourguiba, was strongly influenced by the ideas of the French Enlightenment. His contribution was to cement, in many minds, secularism as a part of self-government. He publicly broke the Ramadan fast, saying that such a long religious holiday was debilitating to the aspirations of a modern economy. He referred with contempt to face-covering and sponsored a series of laws entrenching the rights of women. During the 1967 war, he took a firm position preventing reprisals against the country’s Jewish community, avoiding the disgraceful scenes that took place that year in other Arab capitals. Long before many other Arab regimes, Tunisia took an active interest in a serious peace agreement with Israel (as well as playing host to the PLO after its expulsion from Beirut in 1982). …

Another ObamaSkeptic emerges writing on the supposed push for deregulation. Jeff Jacoby has thoughts.

…It was only last spring, after all, that The New York Times — in a story headlined “With Obama, Regulations Are Back in Fashion’’ — was reporting on “the surge in rule-making’’ and how the administration “has pressed forward on hundreds of new mandates.’’ In October, a Heritage Foundation report on “Obama’s torrent of new regulation’’ concluded that the federal regulatory burden was increasing at an unprecedented rate: In fiscal 2010 alone, the administration had adopted 43 major new regulations, at an estimated annual cost to the economy of $26.5 billion, a record.

And even as Obama promises to throttle back the regulatory overdrive, the White House says that ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank — the massive new laws overhauling health care and the financial industry, which will create scores of new agencies and generate hundreds of new regulations — will not be affected. You don’t have to be an Obama-wary conservative to assume that the impact of the president’s order, as the Times put it last week, “is likely to be more political than substantive.’’…

Fred Barnes gives an example of how big government can bring out the worst in big business. We are reminded of an article we featured on March 10th, 2010, where Daniel Henninger reviewed historian Burton Fulsom’s book The Myth of Robber Barons. Henninger explains the premise: market entrepreneurs revolutionize markets and create products that benefit people, while political entrepreneurs work the system for their own benefit.

In General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, President Obama may not have picked the worst possible corporate executive to head his new panel on job creation. But Immelt is pretty close.

Immelt is a classic example of a rent-seeking CEO who may know what’s good for his own company but not what produces economic growth and private sector job creation.  He supported Obama on the economic stimulus, Obamacare, and cap and trade – policies either unlikely to stir growth and jobs or likely to impede faster growth and hiring.

…Immelt is a big player in Washington, having been a member of the president’s earlier Economic Recovery Advisory Board. The new panel he’ll head is the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Immelt’s support for cap-and-trade was pure rent-seeking.  The measure was certain to drive up energy costs and weaken the economy, but GE was expected to benefit enormously. …

He said some people argue for a simple tax on carbon. “But I just think cap and trade is the more practical approach.”  Cap-and-trade would let Washington impose a national ceiling on carbon emissions, and companies could buy or sell emission rights. GE, by gaining rights in a windfall as a result of the legislation, would have many rights to sell. …

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Tony Blankley, who was Newt Gingrich’s press secretary during the 1995 budget battles, has advice for the GOP. 

…We lost that battle for three reasons: 1) because the shutdown was falsely, but effectively, framed in the public mind as motivated by the personal pique of the speaker and the desire of the GOP to “cut Medicare in order to give tax cuts to the rich,” 2) the issue of deficit spending and public debt was of much less concern to the public than it is now and 3) we were not able to deliver our interpretation of the issues directly to even our own supporters.

Back in 1995, there was no Fox News, there was no broadly used Internet and conservative talk radio was not nearly as powerful as it is today.

…Today, we are in the aftermath of an election that was largely about deficit spending, Obamacare and the trillions of dollars most GOP voters correctly think will get us further in debt. So not only is the deficit issue far more powerfully motivating than it was in 1995, but if the GOP fails even to try seriously to reduce the deficit, which means addressing, among other issues, Medicare and Social Security, it is likely to pay harshly in the next election for such inaction.

But equally important, with the massive alternative media, the GOP can effectively frame the issues as necessary for our future prosperity and the creation of millions of new jobs – without having our message filtered out by the once-mighty liberal media. …

Charles Krauthammer advocates repealing the Obamacare monstrosity.

Suppose someone – say, the president of United States – proposed the following: We are drowning in debt. More than $14 trillion right now. I’ve got a great idea for deficit reduction. It will yield a savings of $230 billion over the next 10 years: We increase spending by $540 billion while we increase taxes by $770 billion.

…As National Affairs editor Yuval Levin pointed out when mining this remarkable nugget, this is a hell of a way to do deficit reduction: a radical increase in spending, topped by an even more radical increase in taxes.

…In fact, the whole Obamacare bill was gamed to produce a favorable CBO number. Most glaringly, the entitlement it creates – government-subsidized health insurance for 32 million Americans – doesn’t kick in until 2014. That was deliberately designed so any projection for this decade would cover only six years of expenditures – while that same 10-year projection would capture 10 years of revenue. With 10 years of money inflow vs. six years of outflow, the result is a positive – i.e., deficit-reducing – number. Surprise.

…amending an insanely complicated, contradictory, incoherent and arbitrary 2,000-page bill that will generate tens of thousands of pages of regulations is a complete non-starter. Everything begins with repeal.

Ronald Bailey in Reason columns on Obama’s push for regulation reform saying the president is only for good regs. Reminds us of Saul Bellow saying he was “for all the good things and against all the bad ones.”

…even before the president signed his new executive order, the super-efficient bureaucrats over at the EPA have already apparently done a review of the agency’s new greenhouse gas regulations. As The Hill reports:

…“EPA is confident that our recent and upcoming steps to address GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act comfortably pass muster under the sensible standards the president has laid out,” an EPA official told The Hill in a statement Tuesday.

Policy analyst Sterling Burnett over at the free market think tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis, writes in the vein of Claude Rains as Captain Renault in Casablanca that he is “shocked, shocked” [YouTube] to discover that a federal agency finds its regulations are cost-effective and helpful to business:

‘I was shocked, shocked I say, to find that a regulatory agency would find that none of its current or proposed rules unnecessarily burdens the economy or hurts job retention or growth. … After all, what agency is going to say, “yeah, we were wrong, these rules don’t work, they produce more harm than they prevent,” or “Sure we’re in a recession, and sure these rules won’t do any good [let’s say, for example, in preventing climate change], and sure there are going to be enormous costs but the country should adopt the regulations anyway – at least we’ll look like we are doing something.” ‘

…President Obama has mastered the art of vacuously promising to consider all “good ideas.” The problem is that he thinks that he already has all the good ideas and most of them entail ever more government intrusion into the lives of Americans.

In City Journal, Steven Malanga reports on how we are losing liberty as government departments seize more and more power with regulations.

…Further, the White House is using its rule-making powers in aggressively political ways. In its most notable move, the administration used the threat of extensive new environmental regulations to get Congress to pass a law to fight climate change. When Congress failed to act, the Environmental Protection Agency went ahead with the new rules, which included declaring carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas and demanding that manufacturers seeking permits for new facilities install the “best available technology” to control emissions, though the agency has yet to define what that technology is. A number of states and industry groups have launched lawsuits to fight the regulations. The EPA also issued controversial new goals for gas efficiency in cars and light trucks, with a target of 35.5 miles per gallon, on average, in cars sold in the U.S. by 2016, compared with 25 miles per gallon in 2009.

Other federal agencies have been nearly as busy. At Obama’s request, the Department of Labor now requires firms that contract with the federal government to inform employees that they have the right to unionize and bargain collectively. …The labor department also required any contractor doing stimulus-financed weatherization to pay prevailing wages, which are generally on par with union pay scales.

The union-friendly Obama labor department did, however, get rid of one significant regulation: a Bush-administration rule that unions file disclosure statements on how they spend their members’ money. The disclosure rule had helped prompt a number of investigations of abuses, including a Los Angeles Times series that resulted in the removal of the head of a Service Employees International Union local for misallocating hundreds of thousands of dollars of members’ money. The Obama administration considered the transparency requirement an excessive burden on unions. …

In Pajamas Media, Abraham Miller, who has been watching the moral and academic decay of our universities from inside the beast.

The recent study of 2,300 college students showing that half of them learn nearly nothing in the first two years is generating a lot of conversation. As someone who spent more than three decades in the professoriate, what surprises me is why this is news.

Certainly the students know this. We know this. The college administrators know this. Maybe, it’s only the parents who are suckered into thinking that the tens if not hundreds of thousands they are shelling out for a residential college education is really buying that.

…The next financial bubble is out there. It is comprised of people like your son who are carrying enormous debt without any prospect of paying it off. They are going to default. It’s our fault, you say. Well, you say that now. But if we gave your son the grades he deserved you both would have screamed foul and due processed us to death. If your son is a member of some protected class, we would have had to defend against the accusation that we discriminated against him. Anyhow, he got more than he deserved, and the rest of us subsidized his education directly or indirectly with our tax dollars. Of course, you do know that we are going to have to pick up the defaults, just as we picked up the sub-prime mortgages.

Oh yes, if you think the statistic that half don’t learn anything in the first two years is terrible, how does this one grab you? After four years 36% did not experience significant educational improvement. And that statistic is worse than it appears, because at many institutions nearly half the students drop out after two years. So among the self-selected that continued, more than a third learned almost nothing in four years of college. …

Der Spiegel has an astonishing story of a boy who scared off a pack of wolves with rock music.

…Walter Eikrem listened to music on his mobile phone as he often does as he made his way home from school in the southern Norwegian town of Rakkestad earlier this week. The path leading from the stop where he catches the school bus to his family’s farmhouse traverses a gently sloping hillside. All of a sudden, he made out something gray on the hillside. “At first, I thought it might have been the neighbor’s dogs,” he later told TV2, Norway’s largest commercial broadcaster. What he actually encountered, though, were four wolves.

“I was afraid they would attack me,” Walter told the Norwegian tabloid VG, describing the incident, which took place on Monday. But he didn’t let his fear show. Remembering his parents’ advice, Walter pulled the earphones out of his mobile phone, turned the volume all the way up and blasted heavy metal music over its miniature speakers. At the same time, he yelled as loud as he could while flailing his arms about wildly to scare off the pack of wild animals.

…The plan worked. Eikrem said he was able to drive away the wolves by playing the song “Overcome” by the American hard-rock band Creed. “They didn’t really get scared,” Walter said. “They just turned around and simply trotted away.” …

In the WSJ, James Wilson reviews a collection of essays from Irving Kristol, titled, the Neoconservative Persuasion.

…The views of Kristol and those who wrote for him became especially important because of two major developments in American life: the Great Society (the first issue of the Public Interest appeared in 1965) and the counterculture. The Great Society was an effort to show that a democratic government could do anything, the counterculture a movement that suggested it could do nothing. The first asserted that empowering poor people to challenge the status quo would end their poverty, the latter that student action would remake the human spirit. Kristol’s “neo” views included a decisive skepticism about both claims.

…Kristol decided that the success of neoconservatism arose from its having enlarged “the conservative vision to include moral philosophy, political philosophy, and even religious thought,” thereby making this persuasion “more politically sensible as well as politically appealing.” Perhaps, he added, this has helped make the Republican Party more interested “in the pursuit of happiness by ordinary folk” rather than just in the success of the business community.

Kristol’s neoconservative persuasion put him in opposition not only to conventional liberalism but to parts of American conservatism: He accepted many aspects of the New Deal (Social Security, unemployment insurance) and was upset when business leaders urged him to teach his students about the virtues of the profit motive—there are such virtues, he conceded, but he believed that we may accept them without celebrating them. As for “The Neoconservative Persuasion,” it certainly merits celebration. The publisher’s decision not to provide an index is the only defect in this wonderful book.