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In a Hill op-ed, Ron Christie says the polls are so yesterday, and lists some of W’s recent wins.
Recent polls placing President Bush’s approval numbers near 30 percent miss an important distinction: The policies and positions the president has advocated since 2001 have led to significant results in recent days. In short, the presidency of George W. Bush is surging, rather than waning, with little more than one year remaining in his term.
On the domestic front, the tax cuts the president pushed through the Congress have led to remarkable economic growth, low unemployment and record-high tax receipts that members of Congress can hardly wait to spend. New data released last week showed that America added 94,000 jobs in November 2007 — capping a remarkable 51 straight months in which jobs have been created in our economy. Despite partisan claims that the economy is soft, more than 8.3 million jobs have been created since August 2003 and unemployment remains low (4.7 percent). America remains open for business. …
Claudia Rosett says the UN is about to do a rerun of the 2001 trash America and Israel conference in Durban.
In its abuse of American taxpayer dollars and trust, the United Nations has come up with many creative projects over the years, ranging from terrorist schoolhouses in Gaza, to procurement fraud, to per diems for pedophiliac peacekeepers. Now, the U.N. is on the brink of channeling millions in U.S. funds to pay for an encore of its notorious America-bashing, Israel-trashing conference held six years ago in Durban, South Africa.
That U.N. jamboree, which opened in late August, 2001, was supposed to be all about the worthy cause of ending racism. Instead, it turned into such a frenzy of despotic and Islamofascist hatred, targeting America and Israel, that both countries walked out. A few days later, those events were overshadowed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States — hijackings driven by the same kind of hate stoked at the Durban conference.
Instead of saying “never again,†the U.N. is now preparing a repeat performance, which has acquired the nickname of Durban II. Masquerading as a “review†of Durban I, it is already shaping up as another hate-fest. Among the prime planners of this pow-wow are the despotisms of Libya, Cuba, Russia, Pakistan and Iran.
Stuart Taylor wonders about the efficacy of the Clinton camp’s complaints about Obama’s honesty.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is supposed to be smart. But how smart is it for a woman with such a bad reputation for truthfulness and veracity to put those character traits at the center of the campaign?
The irony of her potshots at Barack Obama’s character has hardly gone unnoticed. Nor has the idiocy of her December 2 press release breathlessly revealing that “in kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want to Become President.’ ” This, the Clinton release explained, gives the lie to Obama’s claim that he is “not running to fulfill some long-held plans” to become president. Hillary was not, it appears, joking. …
… let’s take a trip down memory lane — from the tawdriness of the 1992 presidential campaign through the mendacity of the ensuing years — to revisit a sampling of why so many of us came to think that Hillary’s first instinct when in an embarrassing spot is to lie. …
Politico has the story in the GOP two wins last night.
Republicans retained two House seats in special elections Tuesday, including a hotly contested Ohio race that the two parties spent nearly $700,000 trying to win.
Republican officials immediately pointed to the issue of immigration, an increasingly pivotal theme in contests across the nation as well as in the presidential primary race, as a key factor in their Ohio victory. …
Shorts from John Fund.
The Captain was on a roll today. He posts on the GOP election success, Clinton, the National Review support of Mitt Romney, Hitch’s call for the end of the CIA, and concealed carry.
1. Had the Republicans lost their two special election contests to replace deceased GOP House members, one would see the papers filled with analyses of the coming debacle for Republican hopes in 2008. Now that they have won both handily, expect most to either ignore the races altogether or chalk up the wins to local Republican strength. However, pundits cannot easily dismiss the lessons from the race in Ohio: …
2. Hillary Clinton has begun to shift resources to New Hampshire as part of a firewall strategy after seeing Iowa slip from her grasp. However, it may be too late for the Granite State to contain the collapse of her once-invincible primary campaign. CNN shows a dead heat now in New Hampshire, as Hillary has squandered her lead: …
… A loss here would prove devastating to Hillary. She has had a consistent lead in the state that breathed new life into her husband’s faltering campaign in 1992, and a loss to Obama would have the opposite effect. It would give the one-term Senator national credibility and access to even more fundraising than the prodigious amounts he has already accumulated. It leaves the myth of her inevitability in tatters, and opens the door to the harder Left that supports Obama. …
3. The endorsement season seems in full swing now, and this time Santa’s dropped a big gift to Mitt Romney — the National Review endorsement. When William F. Buckley’s venerable journal speaks on effective conservatism, people listen, and Mitt’s team has reason to cheer: …
4. Christopher Hitchens proposes a radical solution to the problem of spin-cycle NIEs and interagency feuding. Rather than continue with efforts to reform the intelligence community, Hitchens argues for the elimination of the CIA and rebuilding our intel efforts from the ground up. It seems like a radical step during a time of war, but the agency may now have angered enough people on both sides of the aisle to make it possible: …
5. Jeanne Assam carried her pistol with her to church on Sunday. She did so legally, having received a license to carry a concealed weapon. If a weapon in church seems incongruous, it also became providential on this particular Sunday, as Assam stopped an assault that may have killed many more people than it did (via Memeorandum and many CapQ readers): …
IBD editors like concealed carry.
Every time there are multiple shootings, like those that occurred over the weekend at the Youth With A Mission missionary training center in Arvada, Colo., and later at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, we are lectured about the easy access to firearms in the U.S. and the dangers it creates.
But many are thankful today that Jeanne Assam, a volunteer security guard at New Life, had easy access to a gun when Matthew Murray entered the east entrance of the church and began firing his rifle. Murray was carrying two handguns, an assault rifle and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
If Jeanne Assam had not had a gun at her side, dozens more might have died in Sunday’s shooting at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. …
John Stossel goes mano a mano, libertarian to libertarian with Ron Paul.
Over the last few months, I’ve received hundreds of e-mails from people asking me to interview Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, so I did.
It’s refreshing to interview a politician who doesn’t mince words. It’s even more refreshing to interview one who understands the benefits of limited government. …
Walter Williams thinks the NAACP has been around long enough.
… The major problems confronting a large segment of the black community have little or nothing to do with racism — problems such as unprecedented illegitimacy, family breakdown, fraudulent education, crime and rampant social pathology. If white people became angels tomorrow, it would do nothing to solve problems that can only be solved by blacks.
But I’m somewhat optimistic. More and more blacks are seeing through race hustlers such as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Doc Cheatham. An even more optimistic note is the financial decline of the NAACP. Declining black support is good evidence that the civil rights struggle is over and won. That’s not to say there are not major problems but they are not civil rights problems. …
John Tierney on how fishermen and Manhattan drivers can prevent the “tragedy of the commons.”