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Jake Tapper noticed one of the “accomplishments” of the recent nuclear summit was a retread. This reminds Pickerhead of his first trip to Moscow. It was a trade mission that allowed my visit to pose as a business expense. After one general meeting that accomplished little beyond creating hot air, I remarked to my interpreter, “This is nothing but a circle jerk.” Soon as I said that, I knew I had tasked his English skills too much. But, that’s what we had in Washington this week.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced today that Russia would shut down its final plutonium reactor, the ADE-2 reactor that has producing weapons-grade plutonium for nearly 52 years in Zheleznogorsk, a once-secret city in Siberia.
According to 2008 report from the International Panel on Fissile Materials, the ADE-2 reactor was originally supposed to shut down last year, after construction of a replacement plant in Zheleznogorsk was completed. …
Corner post from Seth Leibsohm is a good summit summary.
… And if you want to know how badly our foreign muscle has weakened, this story in the Brazilian press this morning informs you: “Brazil has joined forces with Turkey in opposition to sanctions against Iran.”
So, in sum: We had a summit that accomplished nothing except a) angering the American and international press corps, b) closing down Washington for two days, and c) misleading everyone for 24 hours that China and others were on board with something to help stop Iran when that just wasn’t true. This just isn’t serious foreign or defense policy. In fact, it’s a dangerous, even Neronian policy — except it won’t be Rome that will burn.
More summit summations from Nile Gardner in Telegraph Blogs, UK. He contrasts the summit to Netanyahu’s speech at Yad Vashem on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
… Netanyahu’s warning about the dangers of appeasement is exactly the message the world needs to hear. In contrast, the Nuclear Security Summit has largely been a feel-good exercise by a president who consistently projects weakness over strength, and for world leaders who enjoyed an extravagant, two-day foreign junket at US taxpayers’ expense in the capital of the free world. …
… large political summits don’t necessarily make the world safer, but strong American leadership in the face of tyrannical regimes definitely does, as Ronald Reagan demonstrated. Unfortunately that kind of backbone is in short supply at the White House today, with a president more concerned with PR spin than confronting and defeating evil on the world stage.
Marty Peretz has finally seen the light and understands what a foreign policy disaster this administration has become. The occasion for this revelation was knowledge Syria has armed Hezbollah with Scud missiles. They have a range of 430 miles and can strike Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Israel’s nuclear installations at Dimona.
I don’t know whether I should have ended the headline above with a question mark or an exclamation point. The first of my options would suggest that the president might actually learn from his palpable mistakes. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. But, to tell you the truth, I felt that would be playing with my readers. My alternative would hint—more than hint, I suppose—at my utter exasperation with Obama’s foreign policy. I don’t really want to go there. Still, are you not really exasperated with him and with it? Or are you one of those who care only about domestic affairs? …
… And, thinking about the utter collapse of American policy in so many areas of the world, I wonder why there is so little oversight and even so little questioning of the diplomatic apparatus by the Senate.
Peretz also says that Obama’s opinion on Iranian sanctions is just “blather.”
Sometimes a journalist grasps an intricate situation and explains it in just one simple sentence. Here is what the distinguished Timesman John Vinocur has to say in today’s International Herald Tribune about Obama’s policy of sanctions:
“The United States’ notions of U.N. sanctions on Iran have devolved over the past months from crippling ones to ones that bite to the currently described smart ones, which, although packaged with the words tough and strong might not be hard-nosed enough to give the mullahs a half-hour’s lost sleep.” …
When it comes to Obama and the Mid-East, no scales were coming off Roger Simon’s eyes.
Barack Obama has an Israel problem. I won’t say a Jewish problem, because that wouldn’t be “politically correct.” As we all know, anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism (or is it?).
Anyway, the President’s Israel problem couldn’t be more obvious and it seems to have increased, or should I say metastasized, in parallel with his popular decline, almost in the way that classic Jew hatred increased during times of economic downturn (Weimar Republic, etc.) Not that anyone who spent two decades in Reverend Wright’s church with its hero worship of Louis Farrakhan and generally racist tinge was likely to be philo-Semitic. But things have gotten worse. Indeed, his very close friends at the New York Times are now reporting that the President, in the wake of the supposedly surprise announcement of new Jewish housing units in Jerusalem, “has seized control of Middle East policy himself.” They go on to note : “Mr. Obama, incensed by that snub, has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a list of demands, and relations between the United States and Israel have fallen into a chilly standoff.”
Incensed by the snub? List of demands. Chilly standoff? In other words, as we say in Hollywood, this time it’s personal. …
… his behavior has certainly not won the hearts and minds of the Israeli public. A gigantic 91% oppose Obama’s possible attempt to impose a deal on Israel, an unheard of number in opposition to an American president – and that from a populace that tends to the liberal, a country where one of the few, if only, socialist successes ever flourished, the kibbutz.
Of course, Obama’s actions are making every Israeli into a dreaded Likudnik. Why wouldn’t they? When a man acts on inchoate impulses tinged with rage, there’s no telling what he will do. If this goes on much longer, he may even change the voting patterns of the American Jewish public. Stranger things have happened. Just wait.
Jonah Goldberg says Sarkozy is not giving up France’s nukes. A reader writes him;
… Sarkozy’s announcement on nukes demonstrates that we’ve crossed some sort of line, and not a good one. This is one of those ‘you know you’re in trouble when…’ moments. You know we’re in trouble when the president of France makes more sense on national security than the president of the United States.
A couple of our favorites look at the Supremes. David Harsanyi is wondering if the American people think like Justice Stevens.
… Do they believe, like Justice Stevens, that government should continue to use racial quotas and preferences rather than allow citizens the freedom to succeed or fail on their own merits — or even their own luck — rather than color of their skin?
Do they believe, like Justice Stevens, that local government should be permitted to throw American citizens off their own property and out of their homes? Do they concur that government should then be able to hand that property over to other private citizens simply because they can pay more taxes? Because, in Kelo vs. City of New London, Stevens, writing for the majority, radically expanded the idea of property as “public use.”
It’s no mystery why Leahy would want to turn the tables on conservatives and make the confirmation hearing about corporations rather than the Constitution or the reckless manner in which justices like Stevens treat it. I would do the same if my agenda’s success was intricately tied to the pliability of the document.
In a very interesting piece, Stuart Taylor thinks he knows why many GOP appointments turn out to be duds like Stevens, or Souter, or Warren, or O’Conner, or Kennedy, or …….
… Blackmun and O’Connor as well as Stevens, on the other hand, clearly “evolved,” as liberal journalists and academics have said approvingly. Their ideological drift has to some extent mirrored the direction of general public opinion, such as diminishing bias against gay people. But the public has never moved sharply to the left — as has Stevens and as did O’Connor and Blackmun — on abortion rights, racial preferences or church-state issues such as school prayer.
While many liberals see this trend as a case of acquiring wisdom on the job, conservative critics including Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia have claimed that their more liberal Republican-appointed colleagues have been moved neither by wisdom, nor by legal principle, nor by general public opinion, but by the leftward march of the intellectual elite, especially in the media and academia.
While I would not dismiss the liberal view, the conservative critique seems more plausible. Indeed, it would be only human, as I wrote in a 2003 column, for justices who arrive without settled ideological convictions to evolve in a liberal direction.
The justices’ reputations are determined in large part by mostly liberal news reporters, commentators and law professors and by liberal feminist, civil rights and professional interest groups such as the American Bar Association. Newly appointed justices who vote conservative are often portrayed as uncompassionate right-wing ideologues. Those who move leftward win praise for enlightenment. (“I ain’t evolving,” the aggressively conservative Thomas has reportedly told clerks.) And the bright young law clerks — the justices’ closest professional collaborators — tend to come from elite law schools where conservative professors are rare birds and general public opinion is widely seen as benighted. …
J. Rubin posts on a Marco Rubio. He might be a modest politician. Is there such a thing?
… Rubio has a bright future that will only get brighter if he proves to be a thoughtful and knowledgable force in the Senate. That he sees himself as not remotely ready for the White House is further evidence of his good character and common sense, qualities in short supply among many pols.
Joel Kotkin says families are not dying out and in fact, are becoming more important.
For over a generation pundits, policymakers and futurists have predicted the decline of the American family. Yet in reality, the family, although changing rapidly, is becoming not less but more important.
This can be traced to demographic shifts, including immigration and extended life spans, as well as to changes of attitudes among our increasingly diverse population. Furthermore, severe economic pressures are transforming the family–as they have throughout much of history–into the ultimate “safety net” for millions of people.
Those who argue the family is less important note that barely one in five households–although more than one-third of the total population–consists of a married couple with children living at home. Yet family relations are more complex than that; people remain tied to one another well after they first move away. My mother, at 87, is still my mother, after all, as well as the grandmother to my daughters. Those ties still dominate her actions and attitudes.
Critically, marriage, the basis of the family, is also far from a dying institution. …
Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics speculates about how good it might be in the November elections. We will see if there are enough people who want to do the work.
Though Election Day is still months away, pundits have already begun to speculate on possible outcomes for this year’s midterms. There’s a general consensus that Democrats will lose seats in November, but beyond that opinions vary widely on how big those losses might be. Some argue that because of the advance notice, passage of health care, and an improving economy (or some combination of all three), Democrats will be able to limit their losses significantly. Others are predicting a repeat of 1994, when Democrats lost 50+ seats and control of the House.
So how bad could 2010 get for the Democrats? Let me say upfront that I tend to agree with analysts who argue that if we move into a “V”-shaped recovery and President Obama’s job approval improves, Democratic losses could be limited to twenty or twenty-five seats.
That said, I think those who suggest that the House is barely in play, or that we are a long way from a 1994-style scenario are missing the mark. A 1994-style scenario is probably the most likely outcome at this point. Moreover, it is well within the realm of possibility …
The Economist says people can listen to your keyboard clicks and find out what you’re typing. Yipes!
CLATTERING keyboards may seem the white noise of the modern age, but they betray more information than unwary typists realise. Simply by analysing audio recordings of keyboard clatter, computer scientists can now reconstruct an accurate transcript of what was typed—including passwords. And in contrast to many types of computer espionage, the process is simple, requiring only a cheap microphone and a desktop computer. …