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Ed Morrissey kicks the day off with a rundown of Obama’s self-congratulatory address on the US forces reduction in Iraq.

Yesterday, I wrote that Barack Obama had an opportunity to at least share a little credit for the close of combat operations in Iraq with George W. Bush, who wrote the plan for drawing down American troops in Iraq that Obama has followed to the letter, rather than go for Obama’s repeatedly promised all-out 16-month retreat plan from 2007. If his weekly address is any indication, the American electorate will have to wait for some other opportunity for its Chief Executive to show a little class. …

Total mentions of Bush: zero. Total mentions of victory: zero. Total mentions of “I” in speech: six…

Conrad Black, in the National Review, takes an interesting walk through America’s history to see where things went off track.

…The great U.S. economy, a stupefying engine of productivity and applied talent, became a mighty Ponzi scheme, as the whole nation, addicted to debt-paid instant gratification, spent the future on consumption and non-durable assets. Except for a few academic flakes, no one — business, government, academia, the financial press — saw what was coming. And so there is no obvious body of vindicated opinion to take over now; it is a terrible and vacuous crisis of leadership. And courage fled, arm-in-arm, with official judgment. The Congress and successive administrations ignored illegal immigration until border-state frictions made it an explosive issue, and have failed to address it seriously since. They ignored abortion, leaving it to the ill-qualified bench to determine when the unborn attain the rights of a person. They ignored income disparity, until the recession stared to shrink the disparity by reducing everyone’s net worth, and they ignore the debt bomb. Annual increases of $750 billion to $1.4 trillion in the money supply stretching forward a decade will destroy the currency and Weimarize America, and there is not a hint of an official preventive response. The Keynesian injection of spending has been shot, in a hare-brained stimulus package designed by cynical Democratic congressional-committee chairmen. The recession is still here, and most tax increases and spending reductions are hazardous to economic growth. No one leads and no one knows.

…What is needed is a colossal reorientation of the country away from consumption and toward investment, the cleaning out of the morass of the plea-bargain justice system and attendant vacuum cleaners of the legal and prison industries (and the gigantic fraud of the War on Drugs), drastic education reform, genuine health-care reform, a redefinition of U.S. national interests in the world to what is essential and defensible, and then restructured alliances to reflect shared interests. Until those issues are addressed, all talk of the American superpower is rubbish. Obama’s is the fourth consecutive failed administration, and each succeeding one will make the festering problems more dangerous and difficult. As the problem is misdirection, not internal degeneracy or imperial overreach, it is a decline that will end in recovery, not a fall. It is like a non-terminal illness: America awaits a correct diagnosis, a curative plan, and a competent professional to supervise the recovery. …

Jennifer Rubin comments on an article about Obama’s unease with military aspects of the presidency.

It is not that we didn’t know this before, but reading the New York Times – surely designed to be as favorable toward Obama as the reporter could possibly manage — one is left slack-jawed. Obama doesn’t like being commander in chief, isn’t good at it, and has relied [on] one tutor, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is leaving next year. The report should be read in full. But a few low-lights:

…Even as he draws down troops in Iraq, he has been abundantly willing to use force to advance national interests, tripling forces in Afghanistan, authorizing secret operations in Yemen and Somalia, and escalating drone strikes in Pakistan. But advisers said he did not see himself as a war president in the way his predecessor did. His speech on Tuesday is notable because he talks in public about the wars only sporadically, determined not to let them define his presidency.

A former adviser to the president, who like others insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the situation candidly, said that Mr. Obama’s relationship with the military was ‘troubled’ and that he ‘doesn’t have a handle on it.’ …

…This was a man not only unprepared to be president but disposed to shirk the most important aspect of the job. It is a measure of his hubris and stubbornness that he has refused to, as Feaver succinctly puts it, “embrace” the role, that is, to commit in word and deed his full attention and effort to leading the country in war. He doesn’t want to be a wartime president? Well, sorry — he is.

In Contentions, J.E. Dyer discusses a strategy that he sees the Obami employing.

Evelyn Gordon’s post from Thursday highlights a Team Obama method that increasingly comes across as precious, annoying, and insidious. I’m not sure there’s a single word to describe it, but it involves a sort of inversion by which the administration of policy conveniently supersedes the purpose and substance of policy. In some cases, obstacles are allowed to dictate outcomes as if the U.S. administration has no discretion over them. In other cases, bureaucratic arcana serve as dodges. And in others, like Obama’s approach to Iran, procedural checklists are wielded as surrogates for policy, generating a kind of lottery in which we all watch to see what fate the procedures will eventually confer on us. …

George Will writes that improving educational achievement for black children requires significant changes outside the classroom.

…Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about “The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped,” written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. …

…the ETS report says: “It is very hard to imagine progress resuming in reducing the education attainment and achievement gap without turning these family trends around — i.e., increasing marriage rates, and getting fathers back into the business of nurturing children.” And: “It is similarly difficult to envision direct policy levers” to effect that.

…Two decades have passed since Barton wrote “America’s Smallest School: The Family.” He has estimated that about 90 percent of the difference in schools’ proficiencies can be explained by five factors: the number of days students are absent from school, the number of hours students spend watching television, the number of pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading material in the students’ homes — and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home. Public policies can have little purchase on these five, and least of all on the fifth.

In the WSJ, Eric Felten writes about a Harvard professor in evolutionary psychology who thinks like a global warming scientist.

Harvard University announced last Friday that its Standing Committee on Professional Conduct had found Marc Hauser, one of the school’s most prominent scholars, guilty of multiple counts of “scientific misconduct.” The revelation came after a three-year inquiry into allegations that the professor had fudged data in his research on monkey cognition. Since the studies were funded, in part, by government grants, the university has sent the evidence to the Feds. …

…Evolutionary psychologists tell elaborate stories explaining modern life based on the conditions and circumstances of our prehistoric ancestors—even though we know very little about those factors. …

…Mr. Hauser had boldly declared that through his application of science, not only could morality be stripped of any religious hocus-pocus, but philosophy would have to step aside as well: “Inquiry into our moral nature will no longer be the proprietary province of the humanities and social sciences,” he wrote. …

…It’s important to note that the Hauser affair also represents the best in science. When lowly graduate students suspected their famous boss was cooking his data, they risked their careers and reputations to blow the whistle on him. They are the scientists to celebrate. …

The Economist has more on the Harvard problems, the associated charges and the consequences for science.

…So far, none of this constitutes conclusive evidence of fraud. Slapdash lab work is not the same as fabricating data and Harvard has kept mum about the precise nature of the charges, citing concerns about privacy. Many researchers, however, fear that this silence itself makes things worse—and not just for Dr Hauser and Harvard. The uncertainty about which of his results (for he has been a prolific researcher) are up to snuff means others in the field are finding it hard to decide what to rely on in their own work. And despite Dr Hauser’s professed sole responsibility, a sizeable number of his present and former wards may unfairly be tainted by association.

At the least, then, Dr Hauser stands accused of setting the study of animal cognition back many years. Trying to discern an animal’s thought processes on the basis of its behaviour is notoriously tricky and subjective at the best of times. Now, his critics fear, no one will take it seriously. As Greg Laden, one of Dr Hauser’s former colleagues, laments in a blog, “the hubris and selfishness of one person can do more in the form of damage than an entire productive career can do in the way of building of our collective credibility.” …

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The first five quarters following the 1981-2 recession averaged growth rates of 6.2%. The first four quarters following 2008-9 recession have averaged 3.0%  The fourth quarter out in the first period had growth of 8,1%. Friday we learned the fourth quarter this time had growth of 1.6%   The WSJ editors have the story.

To no one’s surprise except perhaps Vice President Joe Biden’s, second quarter economic growth was revised down yesterday to 1.6% from the prior estimate of 2.4%, which was down from first quarter growth of 3.7%, which was down from the 2009 fourth quarter’s 5%. Economic recoveries are supposed to go in the other direction….

… Now that the failure is becoming obvious, the liberal explanation is that things would have been worse without all of this government care and feeding. The same economists who recommended the stimulus are now producing studies, based on their Keynesian demand models, claiming that it “saved or created” millions of jobs, even as the overall economy has lost millions of jobs. The counterfactual is impossible to disprove, but the American people can see the reality with their own eyes. … 

In Euro Pacific Capital, Peter Schiff looks back at predictions about the economic recovery.

…The major mental block is that most economists believe that an economy grows as a result of spending. Any policy that encourages spending and discourages savings and investment is considered beneficial. Unfortunately, these policies, which only succeed in growing debt and government, act more as an economic sedative than a stimulant.

On the subject of the “recovery,” I’d like to highlight some of my past predictions, and those of my colleague Michael Pento. With the benefit of hindsight, you can see that although these thoughts were widely dismissed as chronic pessimism at the time of their publication, the current situation supports our conclusions. Although some of our predictions, like for higher bond yields, have yet to materialize. …

Selections from the writings of Michael Pento, Chief Economist at Euro Pacific Capital:

June 30, 2010

“The cause of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the Great Recession beginning in 2007, was one and the same: an overleveraged economy. Excessive debt levels are the direct result of the central bank providing artificially low interest rates and of superfluous lending on the part of commercial banks.

The easy money provided by banks eventually brings debt in the economy to an unsustainable level. At that point, the only real and viable solution is for the public and private sectors to undergo a protracted period of deleveraging. The ensuing depression is, in actuality, the healing process at work, which is marked by the selling of assets and the paying down of debt. Unfortunately, our politicians today are focused on fighting this natural healing process by promoting the accumulation of more debt.”

The Economist blogger “W.W.” from Iowa City comments on what caused the credsis.

… this is a story about how policies intended to reduce inequality had the unintended consequence of precipitating America’s worst economic slump since the Depression. It’s very important that we’re straight on what the story is, since different stories may have very different implications for policy. If the story is that the level of inequality itself—and not our ideas about or political reactions to it—indirectly caused the crisis, then we may think that narrowing the gap is a matter of urgent necessity. But if the story is that an ill-conceived political attempt to reduce inequality—and not the fact of inequality itself—led to apocalyptic economic devastation, then we may well conclude that it is better to refrain from equalising initiatives unless we are quite certain they will not backfire. …

We have another good editorial from the WSJ editors on Intel’s CEO, Paul Otellini, discussing the government policies and taxes that hurt the economy.

American business leaders were remarkably quiescent during the Obama Administration’s first 18 months, but more are now speaking up as the threats to the economic recovery and long-term U.S. prosperity become more serious. The latest is Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who warned a technology forum this week that without a change in U.S. government policy “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here. And wealth will not accrue here. Ultimately, we will face an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth—much like we are witnessing today in Europe.”

The bulk of Mr. Otellini’s remarks was pitched broadly at long-term U.S. problems, many of which predate the current Administration. Like many other CEOs, he lamented the decline in U.S. education performance relative to emerging nations. And he focused in particular on the hostile U.S. tax climate that he said is undermining a “culture of investment” that has long been an American comparative advantage.

“Our combined state and federal corporate income tax rate”—about 38%—”is the second highest in the industrial world. It is precisely these high statutory corporate rates that punish the most dynamic and innovative firms and hinders their ability to compete globally,” Mr. Otellini said. “I can tell you that it costs $1 billion more to build, equip and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the U.S. Ninety percent of the cost difference is the result of tax and incentive policies. With such policies, are we surprised that companies are investing overseas?”…

In CNet, Declan McCullagh has more remarks from Paul Otellini and others on how our government makes it tough for businesses to grow.

…Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working.”

Since an unusually sharp downturn accelerated in late 2008, the Obama administration and its allies in the U.S. Congress have enacted trillions in deficit spending they say will create an economic stimulus but have not extended the Bush tax cuts and have pushed to levy extensive new health care and carbon regulations on businesses.

“They’re in a ‘Do’ loop right now trying to figure out what the answer is,” Otellini said.

As a result, he said, “every business in America has a list of more variables than I’ve ever seen in my career.” If variables like capital gains taxes and the R&D tax credit are resolved correctly, jobs will stay here, but if politicians make decisions “the wrong way, people will not invest in the United States. They’ll invest elsewhere.” …

David Goldman has two topics in this blog. He lists his top twenty reasons why the economy isn’t recovering, and he discusses the effects of demographics on various economies. Here are three of his reasons why a recovery is still far off:

…State and local pension funds are being called out on their $3 trillion deficit (actually higher if returns remain as dodgy as I think they will be).

…State and local tax increases will be required in huge volume, either directly, or indirectly through privatization of municipal services, which in turn will lead to layoffs of bloated staffs and price increases.

…The Obama administration will rescind the Bush tax cuts, adding a federal tax increase to the miseries already conspiring to take the economy down.

The Economist has a cheap way to lose weight.

CONSUME more water and you will become much healthier, goes an old wives’ tale. Drink a glass of water before meals and you will eat less, goes another. Such prescriptions seem sensible, but they have little rigorous science to back them up.

Until now, that is. A team led by Brenda Davy of Virginia Tech has run the first randomised controlled trial studying the link between water consumption and weight loss. A report on the 12-week trial, published earlier this year, suggested that drinking water before meals does lead to weight loss. At a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston this week, Dr Davy unveiled the results of a year-long follow-up study that confirms and expands that finding. …

…Why this works is obscure. But work it does. It’s cheap. It’s simple. And unlike so much dietary advice, it seems to be enjoyable too.

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We start off with an excellent article on the Middle East peace process by George Will.

…The biggest threat to peace might be the peace process — or, more precisely, the illusion that there is one. The mirage becomes the reason for maintaining its imaginary “momentum” by extorting concessions from Israel, the only party susceptible to U.S. pressure. Israel is, however, decreasingly susceptible. In one month, history will recycle when the partial 10-month moratorium on Israeli construction on the West Bank expires. Resumption of construction — even here, in the capital, which was not included in the moratorium — will be denounced by a fiction, “the international community,” as a threat to another fiction, “the peace process.”

This, even though no Israeli government of any political hue has ever endorsed a ban on construction in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, where about 40 percent of the capital’s Jewish population lives. Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon, who says “the War of Independence has not ended” 62 years after 1948, says of an extension of the moratorium: “The prime minister is opposed to it. He said that clearly. The decision was for 10 months. [On] Sept. 27, we are immediately going to return” to construction and “Jerusalem is outside the discussion.”

Predictably, Palestinian officials are demanding that the moratorium be extended as the price of their willingness to continue direct talks with Israel — which begin Sept. 2 — beyond Sept. 27. If this demand succeeds, history will remain cyclical: The “peace process” will be sustained by rewarding the Palestinian tactic of making the mere fact of negotiations contingent on Israeli concessions concerning matters that should be settled by negotiations.

And we have an encore presentation from Mark Steyn on the tragic change in Turkey.

…Ten years ago, Turkey’s behavior would have been unthinkable. Ankara was Israel’s best friend in a region where every other neighbor wishes, to one degree or another, the Jewish state’s destruction. Even when Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP was elected to power eight years ago, the experts assured us there was no need to worry. I remember sitting in a plush bar late one night with a former Turkish foreign minister, who told me, in between passing round the cigars and chugging back the Scotch, that, yes, the new crowd weren’t quite so convivial in the wee small hours but, other than that, they knew where their interests lay. Like many Turkish movers and shakers of his generation, my drinking companion loved the Israelis. “They’re tough hombres,” he said admiringly. “You have to be in this part of the world.” If you had suggested to him that in six years’ time the Turkish prime minister would be telling the Israeli president to his face that “I know well how you kill children on beaches,” he would have dismissed it as a fantasy concoction for some alternative universe. …

…As the think-tankers like to say: “Who lost Turkey?” In a nutshell: Kemal Ataturk. Since he founded post-Ottoman Turkey in his own image nearly nine decades ago, the population has increased from 14 million to over 70 million. But that five-fold increase is not evenly distributed. The short version of Turkish demographics in the 20th century is that Rumelian Turkey — i.e., western, European, secular, Kemalist Turkey — has been outbred by Anatolian Turkey — i.e., eastern, rural, traditionalist, Islamic Turkey. Ataturk and most of his supporters were from Rumelia, and they imposed the modern Turkish republic on a reluctant Anatolia, where Ataturk’s distinction between the state and Islam was never accepted. Now they don’t have to accept it. The swelling population has spilled out of its rural hinterland and into the once solidly Kemalist cities. …

…Some Western “experts” like to see this as merely a confident, economically buoyant Turkey’s “re-Ottomanization.” But the virulent anti-Semitism emanating from Erdogan’s fief is nothing to do with the old-time caliphate (where, unlike rebellious Arabs, the Jews were loyal or at least quiescent subjects), and all but undistinguishable from the globalized hyper-Islam successfully seeded around the world by Wahhabist money and so enthusiastically embraced by third-generation Euro-Muslims. Since 9/11, many of us have speculated about Muslim reform, in the Arab world and beyond. It’s hard to recall now but just a few years ago there was talk about whether General Musharraf would be Pakistan’s Ataturk. Instead, what we’re witnessing is the most prominent example of Muslim reform being de-reformed, before our very eyes, in nothing flat. …

Caroline Glick covers a lot of ground in her article on Iran’s nuclear development. We highlight only one part.

…Iran’s nuclear weapons program has spurred a regional nuclear arms race. Riedel imagines a bipolar nuclear Middle East, with Israel on the one side and Iran on the other. He fails to notice that already today Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan and Turkey have all initiated nuclear programs.

…A recent Zogby/University of Maryland poll of Arab public opinion taken for the Brookings Institute in US-allied Arab states Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the UAE shows that the Arab world is populated by jihadists.

As Herb London from the Hudson Institute pointed out in an analysis of the poll, nearly 70 percent of those polled said the leader they most admire is either a jihadist or a supporter of jihad.

The most popular leaders were Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Hizbullah chieftain Hassan Nasrallah, Syrian President Bashar Assad and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. …

In the Telegraph, UK, Nile Gardiner blogs about how Dems are acknowledging that the November elections are not looking good for progressives.

Influential Washington news site Politico has a major piece this morning revealing mounting fears among leading Democrats over worsening prospects for retaining control of the House of Representatives in this November’s mid-terms. …

…The defeatism on the Left strikingly highlighted in this piece is the culmination of a disastrous summer of discontent for the White House, where the president’s approval ratings have plummeted against a backdrop of relentlessly bad economic news, a virtual civil war within the ruling liberal elites, and the impressive rise of the anti-establishment Tea Party movement . As I’ve written previously, we’ve witnessed the most stunning and rapid political decline for a US president in recent American history. …

…The Obama agenda has in many ways been an extraordinary and unprecedented assault on the free enterprise system that made the United States the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. It has succeeded not only in making America weaker, poorer and gravely more indebted, but also in eroding the very principles of liberty and freedom upon which it is based. The backlash will be huge. This November, the sinking Obama presidency is heading for a political iceberg that will rock the foundations not only of Capitol Hill, but the White House as well.

Charles Krauthammer eloquently explains how liberals are the cause of their undoing.

…And now the mosque near Ground Zero. The intelligentsia is near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of connection between Islam and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly with the Obama administration’s pretense that we are at war with nothing more than “violent extremists” of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief. Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct (an admitted redundancy) are declared Islamophobes, the ad hominem du jour.

It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms). Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” — blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims — a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly, “just downright mean”?

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

David Brooks comments on what the government should be doing for the economy. Below are a few places in the article where he almost sounds conservative.

During the first half of this year, German and American political leaders engaged in an epic debate. American leaders argued that the economic crisis was so bad, governments should borrow billions to stimulate growth. German leaders argued that a little short-term stimulus was sensible, but anything more was near-sighted. What was needed was not more debt, but measures to balance budgets and restore confidence.

…The German economy … is growing at a sizzling (and obviously unsustainable) 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has come down to pre-crisis levels.

…Over the past few years, the Germans have built on their advantages. They effectively support basic research and worker training. They have also taken brave measures to minimize their disadvantages. As an editorial from the superb online think tank e21 reminds us, the Germans have recently reduced labor market regulation, increased wage flexibility and taken strong measures to balance budgets. …

Thomas Sowell recommends Sally Pipes’ new book, The Truth About Obamacare.

…Instead, the media spin is that various countries with government-run medical systems have life expectancies that are as long as ours, or longer. That is very clever as media spin, if you don’t bother to stop and think about it.

Author Sally Pipes did bother to stop and think about it in her book, “The Truth About ObamaCare.” She points out that medical care is just one of the factors in life expectancy.

She cites a study by Professors Ohsfeldt and Schneider at the University of Iowa, which shows that, if you leave out people who are victims of homicide or who die in automobile accidents, Americans live longer than people in any other Western country.

.. In the things that doctors can affect, such as the survival rates of cancer patients, the United States leads the world. …

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In a radical departure from our normal selection of writers who are committed to free minds and free markets, we go to the main stream media to see how this administration is doing in their eyes. We go to Time, Washington Post, Bloomberg News, The Hill, NY Times, The Street.com, and The Daily Beast. We’ll be back to good writers next week.

In Time, Mark Halperin criticizes the president and the Dems for playing politics with Social Security.

In a move as predictable as Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, Democrats are using Social Security scare tactics to gain ground before the November election. President Barack Obama is not only tolerating this classic old politics maneuver by his party — he is leading the charge.

…It is clear why Democrats are raising the specter of Republican efforts to alter Social Security. This tactic has worked in the past, as older voters — who typically turn out at the polls in higher percentages, especially in midterm years — tend to trust Democrats more than Republicans to protect the cherished retirement program. And given the weak economy, Obama’s mushy poll numbers and the lack of traction on the White House’s legislative achievements, it is no surprise that Democratic leaders would turn to the tried-and-true tactic. Also, with some prominent Republicans still calling for a fundamental change to the system by adding private accounts, the GOP has opened itself up to political attack.

But Obama is living in a parallel Vulcan universe if he thinks he and his strategists can spend the next two months using campaign appearances, advertising, robocalls and other voter communication to demonize Republicans on Social Security, and then turn around in January and try to make a deal on that same issue. …

Chris Cillizza contrasts the 1994 GOP takeover with the current national mood, in the WaPo.

Is it déjà vu all over again for Democrats?

Some neutral observers and senior strategists within the party have begun to believe that the national political environment is not only similar to what they saw in 1994 — when Democrats lost control of the House and Senate — but could in fact be worse by Election Day.

A quick look at the broadest atmospheric indicators designed to measure which way the national winds are blowing — the generic ballot and presidential approval — affirms the sense that the political environment looks every bit as gloomy for Democrats today as it did 16 years ago.

“President Obama‘s job [approval] number is likely to be as bad or worse than [Bill] Clinton‘s when November rolls around, the Democratic generic-ballot advantage of plus 12 to plus 15 in 2006 and 2008 is now completely gone, and conservatives are energized like 1994,” said Stu Rothenberg, an independent political analyst and editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, a well-read campaign tip sheet.

The generic ballot — would you vote for an unnamed Democrat or an unnamed Republican? — is either similar or worse for Democrats (depending on which poll you look at) than it was in 1994.

In an August 1994 Washington Post-ABC News poll, 49 percent of respondents said they would vote for the Democrat while 42 percent said they would back the Republican. Last month, 47 percent said they would support the Republican while 46 percent chose the Democrat.

The results were strikingly similar in several other national surveys….

In Bloomberg News, John Gittelsohn and Bob Willis look at the severity of the continuing housing crisis.

…“If foreclosures continue to mount and depress home prices, that could send the economy back into a recession,” said Celia Chen, an economist who tracks the industry for Moody’s Analytics Inc. “The housing market and the broader economy are closely intertwined.”

…With 14.6 million Americans out of work, homeowners are struggling to hold onto their properties. One in seven mortgages were delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter, the highest in records dating to 1979, according to the Washington- based Mortgage Bankers Association. Foreclosures probably will top 1 million this year, said RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based data company. …

…Shadow inventory, or the number of homes repossessed or in default that eventually will be offered for sale, stood at 7.3 million in the first quarter, according to Laurie Goodman, an analyst in New York at mortgage-bond broker Amherst Securities Group LP. As those properties hit the market, prices will come under pressure and buyers will wait for better deals.

“The only thing that’s going to fix the housing markets right now is a work-through of what excess supply is on the markets and improvement in unemployment,” Guy Lebas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop with Betty Liu.” “That process is a very, very long-term process.”

Silla Brush also reports on the continuing foreclosures, in The Hill.

Democrats are finding little success in their nearly two-year campaign to ease the nation’s housing woes. Since coming into office, President Obama has undertaken a series of policy initiatives intended to stabilize home prices, boost demand and reduce foreclosures. But a series of recent reports indicate those policies have not stopped the precipitous decline in housing, which began well before the official start of the recession in December 2007. The National Association of Realtors on Tuesday reported that existing home sales plunged 27.2 percent in July, hitting the lowest level in more than a decade. The decline exceeded even the worst estimates of analysts, many of whom predicted a sales drop of around 14 percent.

There could be more disappointing data on the way. The Mortgage Bankers Association will release a report on mortgage delinquencies Thursday that is expected to show the foreclosure crisis is still going strong. The continued problems in the housing market are bad news for Democrats, who are already struggling to convince the public their policies are moving the economy in the right direction. With the midterm elections less than three months away, voters say the state of the economy is their top concern, and most surveys show the public is souring on Obama’s handling of the issue. The Obama administration has repeatedly defended its housing polices, even while conceding that the market remains weak.

…Still, private forecasters warn it is possible home prices will start declining again, particularly because unemployment is one of the biggest causes of housing market troubles. The national unemployment rate has held steady at 9.5 percent the past two months, but there have been signs this month that the recovery of the job market is faltering. “It’s very possible we’re going to have another decline in the home price market,” said Anthony Sanders, a finance professor at George Mason University.  IHS Global Insight, a private economic firm, estimates that median sales prices for existing single-family homes will continue to decline through the first quarter of 2011. Such a decline would compound ongoing difficulties in the federal efforts to reduce foreclosures. …

Also from The Hill, we learn a senior economist, who advised the Dems on the stimulus package, sees increasing possibility of a double dip recession.

An economist who advised Democrats on the $787 billion stimulus has increased his prediction of the odds of the economy entering a double-dip recession. Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, pegged the chances of a second recession at one in three. Just a few weeks ago, he saw only a 20 percent chance of another economic slowdown. “I don’t think we’ll double-dip, but it will be a close call,” Zandi told reporters Tuesday at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. He cited weak consumer confidence, nervous businesses and investors, and plummeting home sales to explain the gloomier outlook. …

In the NY Times, Gretchen Morgenson discusses the effects of the Fed’s monetary policy.

…It is not lost on these consumers that their minuscule returns are a direct result of the Federal Reserve’s attempt to shore up troubled banks’ financial standing. Sharply cutting interest rates vastly increases banks’ profits by widening the spread between what they pay to depositors and what they receive from borrowers. As such, the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy is yet another government bailout for the very industry that drove the economy to the brink.

Todd E. Petzel, chief investment officer at Offit Capital Advisors, a private wealth management concern, characterizes the Fed’s interest rate policy as an invisible tax that costs savers and investors roughly $350 billion a year. This tax is stifling consumption, Mr. Petzel argues, and is pushing investors to reach for yields in riskier securities that they wouldn’t otherwise go near.

…“If we thought this zero-interest-rate policy was lowering people’s credit card bills it would be one thing but it doesn’t,” he said. Neither does it seem to be resulting in increased lending by the banks. “It’s a policy matter that people are not focusing on,” Mr. Petzel added. …

…Of course, the federal government is a huge beneficiary of low rates; if they were higher, our already ballooning deficits would be heftier still. …

In The Street.com, Jim Cramer doesn’t like what he’s seeing in the market.

The charts show no faith. Doesn’t matter the industry, health care, tech, banks or defense companies. They all look terrible. Just horrible. Not saying, therefore, that everything must go down. Am saying that it is really, really ugly almost everywhere you look. …

…I think that things are better than all of these charts say. But then again the S&P 500 is gripped with one of the ugliest head-and-shoulders patterns I have ever seen, one that won’t be saved by Salesforce(CRM), McDonald’s(MCD), Las Vegas Sands(LVS), Family Dollar (FDO) or F5 Networks(FFIV). A couple of food and beverage and tobacco stocks — Heinz(HNZ), Coors(TAP) and Altria(MO) won’t do the trick.

The charts look sick, sick indeed. I fear only until we get really oversold — looks like that is coming — will we see a cessation. Until then, bet on takeovers on individual stocks.

That seems to be the only tonic the charts show.

Summing up all of the above we hear from Dem pollster Doug Schoen at the Daily Beast. He has worked for Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ed Koch, and the recent FL senate campaign of Jeff Greene.

Not only has President Obama systematically put forward unpopular policies and programs that are not producing real, long-lasting results that reflect the wishes of the American people, he has not generated a sense of competence in the electorate.

Indeed, Obama’s judgment and instincts have been called into question by a series of bad decisions since he has become president. Put simply, rather than emphasizing results and outcomes, he has opted for rhetorical parsing and political gamesmanship every time. Voters have grown disillusioned with the administration’s reactive and seemingly hypocritical governing style, in which the notion of unity of command and a cohesive strategy have proved alien.

“The problem,” wrote Politico’s John Harris and Jim VandeHei this summer, “is that he and his West Wing turn out to be not especially good at politics or communications—in other words, largely ineffective at the very things on which their campaign reputation was built.”

Whenever the American people are looking for leadership from the president, Obama and his administration have systematically put forth conflicting and ambiguous messages. As Maureen Dowd recently noted in a recent column for The New York Times: “He’s with the banks, he’s against the banks. He’s leaving Afghanistan, he’s staying in Afghanistan. He strains at being a populist, but his head is in the clouds.” …

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Do your schools have dance studios and pizza ovens? We get a report on LA’s $578 million school. That’s right, LA has built a K-12 school for 4,200 students that cost $578,000,000. Maybe the president will want to send California some more bail-out cash.

LOS ANGELES – Next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968.

With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation’s most expensive public school ever. …

…Los Angeles is not alone, however, in building big. Some of the most expensive schools are found in low-performing districts — New York City has a $235 million campus; New Brunswick, N.J., opened a $185 million high school in January.

Nationwide, dozens of schools have surpassed $100 million with amenities including atriums, orchestra-pit auditoriums, food courts, even bamboo nooks. The extravagance has led some to wonder where the line should be drawn and whether more money should be spent on teachers. …

The $578 million school is quite an example of what is wrong with public school system priorities. A report on the school from ABC News.

…The facility boasts a state-of-the-art swimming pool, fine art murals, an ornate auditorium suitable for hosting the Oscars, and a faculty dining room that the superintendent says is “better than most restaurants.”

All those amenities add up to an enormous price tag, which works out to about $250,000 per pupil. That $578 million cost is more expensive than the Bird’s Nest stadium built for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, which cost $500 million. It’s also significantly more expensive than the $400 million home of the Denver Broncos, Invesco Field at Mile High.

Critics say the school is a luxury that the Los Angeles Unified School District cannot afford. The district has a $640 million budget shortfall, and over the past two years, 3,000 teachers have been laid off. The district has even proposed shortening the school year by six days to save money.

The money troubles come on top of the district’s serious academic shortfalls. With a dropout rate upwards of 35 percent, LA Unified is one of the lowest-performing school districts in America. …

There is some hope, though. Virginia shows how to make some tough decisions. The WSJ editors comment on another Republican governor who didn’t raise taxes and still balanced his state’s budget.

Here’s something you don’t see often these days: a government running a budget surplus. Governor Robert McDonnell announced last week that Virginia closed fiscal 2010 some $400 million in the black. That’s a radically improved financial picture from a year ago when the state faced a $4.2 billion two-year budget hole.

The usual suspects—the big business lobbies, the Washington Post—thought a major tax increase was needed. So did the previous Governor, Democrat Tim Kaine, who proposed a $2 billion tax hike before he left town, on top of two major Virginia tax increases in the previous eight years.

Mr. McDonnell has proved otherwise. The newly elected Republican put a freeze on hiring and took the knife even to such politically sensitive programs as school aid, police and Medicaid to cut hundreds of millions of dollars. Total state spending has been reset more or less to 2007 levels. If Congress were to do that, the federal deficit could fall by more than $900 billion, or two-thirds. …

In the Corner, Veronique de Rugy alerts us to an article by Tad DeHaven about higher pay for government workers; pay that comes from taxes on productive citizens and sectors of the economy.

In the debate over the difference in pay between private and federal employees, the Cato Institute’s Tad DeHaven makes some very good points that I hadn’t heard before:

…In the private sector, an employee’s compensation is a reflection of his or her value in the market. For instance, one may not like that LeBron James makes millions of dollars playing basketball, but that’s what the market for professional basketball players says his production is worth. It’s no different for a considerably lower-paid employee in the restaurant industry.

What’s a federal employee worth? How does one measure a government employee’s production? Government isn’t subject to market disciplines. It can’t go out of business. It has no competitor. It doesn’t need to earn a profit or even break even. It doesn’t receive its revenue from voluntary transactions – its revenues are obtained via taxation, which is paid by individuals under compulsion and force. …

…Federal and private employees are apples and oranges because the former is dependent on the latter for its existence. …

Ed Morrissey has excellent commentary on the lack of real-world experience in the administration as the reason for its abject failure.

Wonder how Recovery Summer turned into Wreckovery Bummer?  How an administration ginned up its entire economic strategy into one stimulus bill and has done nothing since, even as the economy disintegrated?  Marty Robins advises his readers to check the CVs of the people in charge in Washington to understand just how incompetence has triumphed — and not just Barack Obama’s:

If Washington seems out of ideas on how to get the private-sector jobs machine running again, there’s a pretty straightforward reason — the people in government have virtually no experience in business. …

…This increasing disconnect between the government and the business world is a big, if unrecognized, problem, if for no other reason than that it deprives government officials of the knowledge and experience that successful business leaders can bring to solving difficult problems.

…Obama stuck with ideological allies heavy on academics and with no real-world experience, reflecting his own profile rather than complementing it as an experienced executive would have known to do.  Obamanomics is the result.  It’s a classic command-economy approach that works on every university campus where it’s discussed — and in no real-world setting where it’s ever been tried. …

Robert Samuelson discusses government policies that led to the housing bubble and what changes could be made to those policies and to the government-sponsored enterprises that administrate them.

…In an ideal world, we would discard failed policies. We would trim or end the mortgage-interest tax deduction. We would curtail the GSEs’ loans and guarantees (the promise to repay mortgages that default). The consequences need not be dire. The homeownership rate, already down to 67 percent from its 2004-06 peak of 69 percent, would probably stabilize in the mid-60s. People would save more for down payments. Mortgage rates might rise a bit.

The irony is that, in failure, the GSEs have become more important than ever. Private lenders, which once regarded a mortgage secured by a home as a highly safe investment, now see it as highly risky. Few new mortgages are made without government guarantees. The GSEs continue to operate and, along with other government agencies, guaranteed about 95 percent of new mortgages made in 2009, reports Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry newsletter. Since 1990, the government guarantee share had fluctuated between 30 and 50 percent.

This means that sudden withdrawals of support might deepen housing’s depression. Economists Phillip Swagel of Georgetown University and Donald Marron of the Tax Policy Center, among others, have made sensible proposals to scale back Fannie and Freddie. But done too quickly, they could backfire. …

Peter Schiff gives us a great lesson in economics that liberal politicians don’t understand. He explains why government policies that encourage spending do not help the recovery.

In a CNBC debate last week, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich presented a set of contradictory beliefs that unfortunately reflect the conventional wisdom of modern economists. …

…Reich called for lowering taxes on working Americans and raising taxes on the rich. He argued that middle-income Americans are more likely to spend additional dollars while the rich are more likely to save and invest. As a “demand-side” economist, Reich made clear that spending is superior to savings and investing as a catalyst for growth.

To put it simply: Reich believes that the cart pushes the horse. In his worldview, businesses produce goods and services simply because consumers spend. Therefore, anything that increases spending fuels growth. Unfortunately, he fails to see what should be strikingly obvious: capital formation must precede production, which then allows for consumption.

In a complex society like ours, those relationships are hard to see. However, if we break it down to a simpler level, it becomes more obvious (as I try to accomplish in my new book: How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes). For example, let’s take a look at a simple barter-based economy consisting of only three people: a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker. …

Kudos to the Washington Examiner editors! The editors are challenging Republicans to come up with a plan to reign in government.

…Those Bush years too often displayed little difference between Republicans and Democrats in Washington. Much of the vast expansion of the federal government by Democrats was previewed by the Bush-led Republicans. Obamacare’s overreach? Don’t forget the Republicans’ entitlement-expanding and budget-busting Medicare Part D. In fact, Republicans were off the reservation long before Bush ever entered office. The 1994 Republican revolution marked the first time in more than 40 years that Republicans held a congressional majority. They won while pledging specific policy goals in their Contract with America, including term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and welfare reform. Some significant progress was made but in a few years the revolution was all but abandoned. The Cato Institute’s Ed Crane recently noted that the “combined budgets of the 95 major programs that the Contract with America promised to eliminate … increased by 13 percent.”

Today, most Americans are ready as never before to shrink government and stop the spending madness. This presents the GOP with an opportunity it didn’t have in 1994: an electorate exhausted by Washington politicians and their doubletalk. But the GOP so far seems unwilling to lay out specifics about how it plans to respond to what Americans are saying if they restore the party to majority status in the House and perhaps the Senate. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., boasts of the Republican “YouCut” Web site that solicits ideas from voters, but that effort barely rises above window dressing. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has proposed a “Roadmap to Economic Recovery” as a serious program for entitlement reform, yet the party leadership has not embraced it. Similarly, the Heritage Foundation has compiled 128 policy recommendations across 23 major policy areas for shrinking government and making it work better. The Examiner will be offering a number of ideas on this page in coming days as well. Republican leaders risk squandering a historic opportunity by ignoring such recommendations. The voters are waiting.

In Volokh Conspiracy, David Kopel says, stop giving Obama grief for golf.

In this polarized period of American politics, many people on the Right have been taking cheap shots at President Obama because he plays golf so much.

…Of American Presidents since World War II, the one President who is now almost universally regarded as highly successful and constructive, by persons of all political persuasions, is President Dwight D. Eisenhower. While serving eight years as President of the United States, Eisenhower may have played over eight hundred rounds of golf. In other words, about twice a week. …

…However, President Eisenhower demonstrated beyond any doubt that there is no inherent contradiction between being a good President and being an avid golfer. Indeed, golf helps clear the mind, and hardly any sport is better at fostering humility in participants.  So unless President Obama’s critics are willing to state that President Eisenhower golfed too much, they should stop carping about President Obama’s golfing.

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We have had Ladies’ Days in the past; days when all our selections were penned by the stronger sex. Today, we have gone a step further with a Jennifer Rubin Day. She was on vacation for awhile, and has returned full force. The humor section does have one item from Scott Adams, the proprietor of Dilbert. Scott tells us what is in store for those who wish to build “green.”

Excellent cartoons today, and yesterday also.

Jennifer Rubin says that the Obami jumped the gun when they reported that the Middle East peace talks are resuming.

…Well there is certainly less here than even the initial Obama spin would have had us believe. It seems to be that only an initial dinner is set. (”The United States will put its imprimatur on the talks in an orchestrated series of meetings that begin with a White House dinner Sept. 1 hosted by Mr. Obama.”) Beyond that? “Within the negotiations we’ve obviously had a lot of preparatory discussions with the parties on how to structure them,and we’ll need to finalize those, so we’re not in a position now to really talk about that.” Good grief. This has all the makings of a rushed announcement to try to put a horrid week for the White House behind them.” …

…An even more candid statement came from Senate candidate Pat Toomey, who said he was hopeful but also “wary”:

“Too often such talks produce little substance, and devolve into casting unfair blame at Israel for its legitimate efforts to guard its own security, while ignoring the unending violence that is openly encouraged by Palestinian leaders. That is especially the case with negotiations that involve the United Nations, the Russians, and the Europeans. I encourage President Obama to work against that tendency, and to set the tone in these talks by stressing the very real national security concerns Israel is dealing with. …”

Rubin contrasts WaPo’s op-eds on the prez.

You have to give the Washington Post credit — their editors certainly offer a contrast on their op-ed pages. Today, needless to say, you have a Michael Gerson and Eugene Robinson. The difference is stark, and revealing.

From Gerson you have a measured analysis, which takes into account the series of events that have transformed Obama from a cult-like figure into a struggling and rather radioactive one. …

…Then there is Eugene Robinson, who understandably must be at his wit’s end, as the politician in whom he and so many others on the left invested so much effort and so much of their own credibility to promote is now stumbling. His thesis is as bizarre as it is unsupported: “President Obama Is on a Winning Streak,” is the title of his column. …

…What is missing in Robinson’s take — the economy, the poll news, the complete Mosque debacle — makes Gerson’s point. The gap between aspirations and results is now so wide that the only way to bridge it is to fudge the facts and leave out much of what has transpired over the last year. Robinson and Gerson come from opposing political perspectives. But the most noticeable difference is the degree to which they attend to the facts and are able to draw therefrom persuasive conclusions. In that department, there is no comparison.

The Shadow Obami continue to grow in number. It started with the Shadow Cabinet and widened into recess appointments. Obama is determined to give power to radicals with questionable backgrounds, without proper examination by the legislative branch. Rubin tells us about the latest.  We wonder if it is time for Congress to start independent investigations into the people who have not gone through the traditional appointment process.

Obama is using the recess appointment again. Recall that is how he got the SEIU’s lawyer on to the National Labor Relations Board and how he got Donald Berwick past the Senate’s scrutiny. (”‘Senate confirmation of presidential appointees is an essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves as a check on executive power and protects Montanans and all Americans by ensuring that crucial questions are asked of the nominee — and answered,’ [Max] Baucus said in a statement.”)

Now he’s at is again, this time to get an ambassador to El Salvador through. What was her problem? Josh Rogin explains that Mari Carmen Aponte is going to be pushed through “despite lingering GOP concerns about her long-ago relationship with a Cuban operative.” …

…This is yet another instance of both Obama’s preference for appointing questionable characters and his need (which likely will intensify with time) to resort to strong-arm tactics. (After all, none of the Democrats in the Senate really wanted to vote for this woman, did they?) This does not seem to be the sort of president who’s going to tack to the center and learn the art of compromise after November. But we’ll see.

In discussing an unpleasant remark by an Obama fan, Rubin has an inspiring quote from George H.W. Bush.

…But that did get me thinking about George H.W. Bush. And, because I live in the Internet age, I found this speech, which Bush 41 delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals. It is a beautiful statement on religion and faith in public life that is worth reading in full. A sample:

“As I said many times before, prayer always has been important in our lives. And without it, I really am convinced, more and more convinced, that no man or no woman who has the privilege of serving in the Presidency could carry out their duties without prayer. I think of Lincoln’s famous remark, “I’ve been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” The intercessionary prayers that so many Americans make on behalf of the President of the United States, in this instance on behalf of me and also of my family, they inspire us, and they give us strength. And I just wanted you to know that, and Barbara and I are very, very grateful to you. …”

And Rubin comments on the mosque mess that Obama waded into.

…In reality, Obama is stymied when he can’t charm his opposition or shame them into accepting his position.

…If one is really going to advance our interests or mediate successfully between parties with conflicting interests and values, it won’t do to simply stamp your foot and simply insist everyone show empathy toward and defer to the Muslims’ point of view (or that of one segment of Muslims). It’s not going to win over the 68 percent of Americans. It’s not going to bring peace to the Middle East. It’s not going to make Obama an effective or popular president.

Of course I don’t believe Obama is a Muslim. But his excessive deference to Muslim states abroad and now to the American Muslim community has set many Americans’ teeth on edge and fueled conspiratorialists’ suspicions. There’s not much he should or can do about the latter. But the American people, not to mention our allies, sense that there is something very much amiss in all the genuflecting. That, in part, is why the mosque controversy has been so devastating for Obama.

One Obama advisor is likely going to make the mosque mess even worse. Jennifer Rubin points out the statement.

…What is clear is that Axelrod and Jarrett, arguably the most powerful of Obama’s team, also possess the worst instincts:

“…And Axelrod, a canny tactician with a keen sensitivity to political danger, didn’t dissuade his boss from jumping in, citing his own parents’ experiences with religious persecution as Jews in Europe.”

…his disgusting  invocation of the Nazi analogy — make no mistake, the American people get the role of the Nazis in this one, and the Muslims are awarded the status of potential Holocaust victims – suggests his undiluted leftism has rendered him tone deaf and a severe liability for a president who needs his worst instinct to be curbed, not accentuated. …

Rubin adds some interesting political information to the mosque mess from a Democratic source that she interviewed.

…But wasn’t this an act of bravery and courage, as the left punditocracy has trumpeted? Not for those trying to win elections, the operative explained:

“By getting involved in this issue — which was on a glide path to work out fine at the local level — the president and his team have put every Democrat running for Congress in the crosshairs of an issue that is 70-30 the wrong way. “Mr. Candidate, do you agree with your president?” This is just the latest insult these guys have hurled at Congress. And what do you get? Does your 30% base like you more? I can’t remember a White House with so much contempt for its own party. And why? Because they love the sound of their own voice. …”

Rubin gives us some good news about the possible demise of Obamacare.

It was supposed to save them from electoral ruin. It was “historic.” It was going to be the final opportunity to address the issue. It was ObamaCare and now the Democrats, on the brink of an electoral wipe-out, are begging the electorate not to throw them out because they rammed it through. Their pitch? We’ll change ObamaCare. Yes, it has come to this.

Ben Smith reports:

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health-care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.”…

…If the bill is as bad as everyone now concedes it is and it won’t do what was promised (what the Democrats promised), what exactly is the rationale for re-electing the Democrats, who can no longer make a credible argument that it is a good bill, let alone an historic one?

It does give hope, however, that “repeal and reform,” the Republican mantra on ObamaCare, might have bipartisan support after the November election.

Rubin shares the reason for the Dems sudden change of heart about Obamacare.

Charlie Cook, one of the more cautious and respected pollsters and political analysts, is now saying the Democrats will lose the House. Gerald Seib reports…

…To be precise, Republicans need to win 39 Democratic seats to get control of the House, and Mr. Cook’s current estimate is that they are in line for a 35- to 45-seat gain. “But frankly, I think we’re being very conservative with that,” he added. “The odds of it being higher than that range are a lot better than lower.”

As Seib notes, maybe the Democrats finally will gin up their base. Perhaps, he offers, “Democrats might figure out how to do a better job convincing the nation of the wisdom of their policies.” Is that likely? No. And as we’ve seen this week with another round of awful jobs numbers and the Ground Zero debacle, things could very well get even worse.

The desperation of the Democrats is just revving up, comments Rubin.

The Democrats are now in full retreat. Less 75 days before the midterm elections, the Republicans have a historic lead in congressional generic polling. The president’s approval rating is sinking. It is now every man for himself, as the Democrats scramble to be the ones on the electoral lifeboat that will survive the electoral wave. The smarter and more vulnerable Democrats distance themselves from Obama on the Ground Zero mosque. A few savvy Senate Democrats back extension of the Bush tax cuts. And now they’re even promising to “improve” ObamaCare.

But wait. As to the latter, why not do it before the election? Hey, there is time. They claim that they’re not out of touch. They say the bill could use some work. So how about it, fellows? Oh, yes, I guess they don’t really mean it. This would be another gambit, a fraudulent inducement really, to convince voters to spare them the ax. We’ll put immigration reform at the top of the agenda. We’ll pass a budget. We’ll fix ObamaCare. Desperation rivals dishonesty as the central feature of their campaign strategy. …

Rubin comments on the effects of the drilling moratorium, including one sentence that should cut straight to the hearts of Obama supporters.

The Obama team, we are told, can’t figure out how to stem unemployment. But actually, it seems they simply place job creation and preservation below other priorities. This report explains:

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region’s economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects.

The Obama administration, the least transparent in history, however, has been actively misleading the court: ”The administration has said in court filings that the economic effect of suspended drilling wasn’t as severe as the industry asserted.” The administration turns out to have less credibility than Big Oil. …

Scott Adams shares helpful tips for building green.

…When I started researching the field of green building, as part of the planning for our own home, I learned that, in many cases, you can’t get there from here. Allow me to share some of the things we learned. It’s California-centric, but I think you can generalize from my experience.

As a rule, the greener the home, the uglier it will be. I went into the process thinking that green homes were ugly because hippies have bad taste. That turns out to be nothing but a coincidence. The problem is deeper. For example, the greenest sort of roof in a warm climate would be white to reflect the sun. If you want a beautiful home, a white roof won’t get you there. Sure, you could put a lovely garden on your roof, because you heard someone did that. But don’t try telling me a garden roof wouldn’t be a maintenance nightmare. And where do you find the expert who knows how to do that sort of thing?

Second, the greenest sort of home would have few windows because windows bleed heat. In particular, if your lot has a view to the west, forget putting windows on that side because your family members will heat up like ants under a magnifying glass. Try telling your architect that you don’t want a lot of windows on the view side. He’ll quit. ..

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Who’s as stupid as Barack Obama, Thomas Friedman, and Paul Krugman? China’s ruling thugs, that’s who.  WSJ OpEd on the coming real estate crash in China.

American enthusiasts of more stimulus have been urging this country to look to China for guidance on how to beat a recession. As they see it, while our politicians debated and dithered and fell short, China’s wise autocrats moved quickly to inject a massive stimulus and restore robust growth.

Despite the global downturn, China’s economic growth rate remains above 10%. But there is mounting evidence that Beijing has misallocated vast amounts of capital, touching off a real-estate crisis that could yet drag the world’s second-largest economy down to earth.

When the global marketplace went into meltdown mode two years ago and Chinese exports dropped off, Beijing mounted a stimulus several times bigger relative to the size of its economy than in this country. It announced a four trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus for infrastructure projects and housing developments. Some of the stimulus was used to encourage local governments to lend money to state-owned companies to develop housing complexes, roads and bridges, on the theory that these are big employment generators because they boost heavy manufacturing—steel, cement—and other sectors of the economy.

Beijing also lowered capital reserve requirements for its state-owned banks ordering them to dole out loans to “support growth.” Though official data are unreliable, in 2009 Beijing apparently handed out somewhere close to 10 trillion yuan in new loans—more than twice the year before—and expanded the country’s total loan portfolio and money supply by one-third, according to Patrick Chovanec, associate professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing.

Prominent progressives in this country hailed the moves. Paul Krugman wrote: …

Charles Krauthammer weighs in on the Ground Zero mosque.

It’s hard to be an Obama sycophant these days. Your hero delivers a Ramadan speech roundly supporting the building of a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York. Your heart swells and you’re moved to declare this President Obama’s finest hour, his act of greatest courage.

Alas, the next day, at a remove of 800 miles, Obama explains that he was only talking about the legality of the thing and not the wisdom — upon which he does not make, and will not make, any judgment.

You’re left looking like a fool because now Obama has said exactly nothing: …

…It takes no courage whatsoever to bask in the applause of a Muslim audience as you promise to stand stoutly for their right to build a mosque, giving the unmistakable impression that you endorse the idea. What takes courage is to then respectfully ask that audience to reflect upon the wisdom of the project and to consider whether the imam’s alleged goal of interfaith understanding might not be better achieved by accepting the New York governor’s offer to help find another site. …

…Ground Zero is the site of the most lethal attack of that worldwide movement, which consists entirely of Muslims, acts in the name of Islam and is deeply embedded within the Islamic world. These are regrettable facts, but facts they are. And that is why putting up a monument to Islam in this place is not just insensitive but provocative.

Just as the people of Japan today would not think of planting their flag at Pearl Harbor, despite the fact that no Japanese under the age of 85 has any possible responsibility for that infamy, representatives of contemporary Islam — the overwhelming majority of whose adherents are equally innocent of the infamy committed on 9/11 in their name — should exercise comparable respect for what even Obama calls hallowed ground and take up the governor’s offer.

Victor Davis Hanson comments on what Obama’s teachable moments have taught us about the president.

…We have learned that President Obama has a bad habit of impugning the motives of those with whom he disagrees. In the Gates case, he rushed to condemn Crowley and the police. Arizonans were not to be seen as desperate citizens trying to enforce federal law, but instead derided as bigots who harass minorities when they go out to get ice cream. And in the mosque case, the president disingenuously implied that opponents of a Ground Zero mosque wanted to deny the legal right of Muslims to build religious centers. …

…as an Ivy League–trained lawyer and former Chicago community organizer, Obama embraces an overarching race/class/gender critique of the United States; the story of America is not so much about an exceptionally independent and prosperous people, a unique Constitution or a vibrant national past in promoting global freedom, but about how the majority oppressed various groups. Clearly, these local instances of purported grievances have excited the president — and almost automatically prompt his customary but unproven declarations that the majority or establishment in each case is biased or unfair. …

Bill Kristol says Obama is not a Muslim, he is a progressive.

…So progressivism seeks to bring big changes to our backward country. Progressives like to dream about passing “the most progressive legislative agenda .??.??. not just in one generation, maybe two, maybe three.” But when progressivism has to give up its grand transformational claims, then we’re back in the world of reality and results, of the practical consequences of policy choices. A political debate over consequences rather than intentions, and over the real world rather than an imagined one, is one that is, as it has been for a long time, good for conservatives and bad for progressives. …

…Progressivism is in retreat. Obama’s problem isn’t that people falsely think he’s a Muslim. It’s that the public is correctly concluding he’s a garden-variety multiculturalist progressive. So November’s election won’t just be a repudiation of one non-Muslim president. It will be a repudiation of a multiculturalist progressive worldview—and of the bitter elites who cling desperately to that worldview and are consumed by antipathy to most Americans, who don’t.

Obama is now blaming the lack of jobs on congress. In the LA Times Blogs, Andrew Malcolm has the story.

Just a few minor things to catch up on for the weekend now that the Fundraiser-in-Chief has gone on another vacation (Don’t worry though. White House chef Sam Kass went along, so the first family need not eat ordinary human food.)

– The Congressional Budget Office says the 2010 federal deficit will be in excess of $1.3 trillion, as in $1,000,000,000,000+. (BTW, the next level we’ll be talking about out of Washington is quadrillion, which has fifteen 0′s.) …

…According to the president, he’s been “adamant” with Congress for months now about a new jobs bill to help small businesses. Obama says this really good bill is stalled in the Senate, where so much administration legislation has been crammed through so effectively by Majority Leader Harry Reid. …

In regards to the troubles of Roger Clemens, the NY Post editors comment on a Congress that doesn’t tolerate lying.

…This is the same Congress that:

* Seems ready to merely reprimand Charlie Rangel — before his trial has even begun — for what in the real world is considered cheating on taxes, violating real-estate laws and abusing one’s office for personal gain.

* Turned a blind eye to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd’s getting a sweetheart deal from the subprime-mortgage giant Countrywide.

* Tolerates Rep. Gregory Meeks of Queens, who claims he “forgot” to list personal loans totaling $55,000 on his financial-disclosure forms.

* Includes at least a half-dozen members who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions from lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti, the ex-aide to the late John Murtha (D-Pa.) who was indicted by the feds two weeks ago. …

You may want to hold off purchasing the hybrid cars. The Economist reports on troubles with batteries.

THE whole point of paying an extra $5,000 or so for a hybrid car was supposed to be that it would deliver more miles to the gallon, possibly a bit of extra pep, and a warm feeling of superiority over the majority of carbon-emitting motorists. For these luxuries, customers were assured that their vehicles’ rechargeable battery pack—two-thirds of a hybrid’s extra cost—would last at least as long as the rest of the car. Try telling that to those who bought Honda Civic hybrids between 2006 and 2008.

Since spring, irate owners of hybrid Civics have been venting their frustration on the web. Some describe how their cars’ batteries can suddenly die while trying to overtake or labour up a hill. Others talk of leaving a car with the battery fully charged, only to return an hour or two later to find it flat. Being barely three or four years old, the Civics in question are unlikely to have done more than 75,000 miles (120,000km) at the very most—about half their expected life. …

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George Will gives historical context to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America’s eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take “risks for peace.”

…The intifada was launched by the late Yasser Arafat — terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner — after the July 2000 Camp David meeting, during which then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to cede control of all of Gaza and more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with small swaps of land to accommodate the growth of Jerusalem suburbs just across the 1949 armistice line. …

…In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called “the Arab world,” Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.

Caroline Glick destroys the president’s argument for the Ground Zero mosque in one concise paragraph. We highlight this below. Read the article to see how Glick exposes Obama’s “civil-rights” stance for what it really is.

Speaking during a Ramadan fast breaking meal at the White House to an audience of people affiliated with various Muslim Brotherhood- related groups in the US, Obama couched his support for the mosque at Ground Zero in constitutional terms.

In his words, “As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. Our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.”

Of course, none of those who have voiced opposition to the mosque project at Ground Zero have claimed that the Islamic group behind the mosque project is acting unlawfully in seeking to construct a mosque. The nearly 70 percent of Americans who oppose building a mosque at Ground Zero oppose the mosque because they believe it is wrong to build a mosque at the site where less than a decade ago Muslims acting in the name of Islam murdered nearly 3,000 people in an act of war against the US and an act of terror against the American people. …

David Harsanyi comments on the name-calling from the Left.

…There are those who continue to make the facile claim that any protest over Park51 is a display in un-American intolerance and contempt for the Constitution. This position treats criticism of faith — religious institutions and symbols included — as tantamount to “bigotry.” …

…You know, though only a fraction of Catholic priests are pedophiles, the entire church is routinely broad-brushed as corrupt and depraved. I’ve not heard those who make generalizations about Catholicism referred to as bigots in Time magazine.

Nor have I heard those who regularly disparage Evangelicals called intolerant. …

In the Daily Beast, Douglas Schoen says the Dems have been governing against the will of the people. It remains to be seen if the GOP can take advantage.  

There is a fundamental problem with the way President Obama has governed.

Since taking office, he has systematically put forth policies the American people do not want. The net result is a crisis of confidence and legitimacy in the American political system and our institutions.

The president is now at record low levels of approval—close to 40 percent overall, and in the mid- to low 30s among swing voters.

The GOP now holds a six- to seven-point advantage in the generic vote for Congress—which, come November, almost certainly will give the Republicans control of the House and make control of the Senate a real possibility as well.

Put simply, we are looking at an unprecedented electoral blowout because the administration has made a systematic set of bad decisions that have had an adverse impact on public opinion.

Indeed, those closest to the president have made clear that he is pursuing policies that do not have the support of the American people….

Joel Kotkin, who is in these pages often, doesn’t think it is a good idea for Sarah Palin to be the GOP’s standard bearer in 2012. 

Sarah Palin has emerged as the right’s sweetheart, a cross between a pin-up girl and Joan of Arc. For some activists, like the American Thinker’s Lloyd Marcus, she’s “my awesome conservative sister” who the mainstream media wants to “destroy at any cost.”

On a more serious note, leading right-wing pundit Roger Simon argues Palin’s is now the biggest name in Republicandom, which he admits is not too great an accomplishment. Armed with “something more than intellect,” he praises her unique ability to “connect with the base.” He also believes, citing some polls for 2012, that she could run a close race against President Obama.

These Republicans may grow to regret their embrace of Sarah Palin: She will likely prove less a gem than a poison pearl for conservatives. Sure, she can stir the base, but her crossover appeal remains limited. Recent Pew surveys show that she’s still toxic for the Independents and moderate Democrats who generally determine national elections.

Palin keeps building her brand, but she may also be diminishing the GOP’s. She has helped propel several potentially weak, marginal “Tea Party” candidates such as Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada into the general elections. These could end up losing seats that more earth-bound Republicans could have won.

But if conservatives really want evidence of Palin’s limitations, they only need to talk to people in her home state of Alaska. “She represents a constituency that is rural, but that’s it,” says Jim Egan, executive director of Commonwealth North, a local think tank. “What she says and does makes little sense in the urban environment that most Americans live in.” If it does not sell across the board in Anchorage, home to almost half of Alaskans, you wonder how well her message will play in Omaha or suburban Houston, much less New York or Los Angeles….

The WSJ editors think Patrick Fitzgerald, our modern day Inspector Javert, should resign.

…A more triumphant outcome might have been expected judging by Mr. Fitzgerald’s bravura press conference two years ago, which he held following a pre-dawn arrest at the Blagojevich home. Then, the U.S. Attorney spoke of “what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree” and accused Blagojevich of “the most appalling conduct” that would have “Lincoln roll over in his grave.” It was “a truly new low,” Mr. Fitzgerald told the world.

As the former Justice Department lawyer Victoria Toensing noted in these pages at the time, Mr. Fitzgerald violated prosecutorial ethics by speaking “beyond the four corners of the complaint,” … thus possibly tainting the jury pool.

But then, this was merely one of Mr. Fitzgerald’s extrajudicial public declarations. Another notable episode occurred during his pursuit (as special prosecutor) of former Vice Presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame affair. At a 2005 press conference, Mr. Fitzgerald implied that Mr. Libby had obstructed his investigation into who leaked the former CIA analyst’s name, even though he knew from the start that the real “leaker” was Richard Armitage. …

…This pattern points to a willful prosecutor who throws an exaggerated book at unpopular defendants and hopes at least one of the charges will stick, even as he flouts due process and the presumption of innocence when the political winds are high. If Mr. Fitzgerald doesn’t resign of his own accord, the Justice Department should remove him …

In Commentary, Jonathan Tobin puts Roger Clemens’ indictment in proper perspective. He was indicted for lying to congress. Guess they don’t like the competition.

…But what national peril did steroids pose to the republic and its citizens that made it necessary for both Congress and the Department of Justice to spend so much time and money chasing after Clemens and Bonds?

We are sometimes told that it is because children emulate sports idols and that there is a plague of teen steroid use throughout the land. It is true that there have been cases, prominently featured every time Congress has held hearings on the issue, in which high school athletes committed suicide after supposedly using these substances. But, as tragic as such instances are, it is far from apparent that more than a handful of lives have been lost due to steroid use. Compared with the most prevalent causes — such as domestic violence, the use of recreational drugs and alcohol, peer rejection, and mental illness — steroid use is a statistically insignificant factor in teen suicide in the United States. …

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali takes a macro worldview in discussing the conflicts between Muslim and Western civilizations.

What do the controversies around the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban in France have in common? All four are framed in the Western media as issues of religious tolerance. But that is not their essence. Fundamentally, they are all symptoms of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the “Clash of Civilizations,” particularly the clash between Islam and the West.

Huntington’s argument is worth summarizing briefly for those who now only remember his striking title. The essential building block of the post-Cold War world, he wrote, are seven or eight historical civilizations of which the Western, the Muslim and the Confucian are the most important.

The balance of power among these civilizations, he argued, is shifting. The West is declining in relative power, Islam is exploding demographically, and Asian civilizations—especially China—are economically ascendant. Huntington also said that a civilization-based world order is emerging in which states that share cultural affinities will cooperate with each other and group themselves around the leading states of their civilization. …

Peter Schiff says that Fed policies are going to result in more trouble down the road.

…Like their patrons in the White House and on Capitol Hill, the Fed is totally dedicated to postponing the short-term consequences that would result from breaking America’s addiction to cheap money and easy credit. Compared to this imperative, the long-term economic health of the country barely gets a second thought.

Any moves by the Fed to shrink its balance sheet, thereby withdrawing liquidity from the real estate market, would add significant downward pressure to home prices. Lower house prices would bring on an additional wave of foreclosures, which would then force many previously bailed-out financial institutions back into bankruptcy. (With foreclosure data growing more ominous despite the current stability in house prices, it looks like these institutions are headed back toward bankruptcy even with Fed support.)

To prevent this economic chain-reaction, the Fed will step in with “quantitative easing” as soon as it becomes obvious that the Administration’s stimulus-fueled “recovery” of the past three quarters is fading. The problem is that each round of stimulus, as with each hit of an addictive drug, requires ever larger doses to produce the same result. The more leveraged an economy becomes, the bigger the lever required to move it. So the more the Fed stimulates now, the more it will be forced to stimulate later. The only exit strategy this course allows is an overdose– hyperinflation. …

Craig Pirrong in Streetwise Professor blogs about the market dynamics we are currently seeing.

In today’s WSJ Jerry O’Driscoll summarizes quite well something I was saying at the depths of the crisis in late-’08 and early-’09, and during the debate on the stimulus:

…The declines in home values, investor portfolios and 401(k) plans, and the uncertainties surrounding retirement plans, have all had a big impact. The solution lies in restoring balance sheets. For financial firms, that means raising capital. For consumers and businesses alike, that means saving more of their reduced incomes. …

Yet public policy has focused almost exclusively on stimulating spending without much regard to why spending, especially consumption, has flagged. Until balance sheets (corporate and household) are restored, increased spending cannot be sustained.  [This failure to ask "why" is endemic in current policymaking.  It's been my pet peeve in the whole debate over changing financial regulation.]

…Uncle Sam stomps on the gas, we stomp on the brakes.  All that is produced is a lot of burning rubber and the car doing donuts.

Ed Morrissey comments on the presidential disconnect from reality. 

…Incoherence and hair-splitting is nothing new with this President.  However, as I noted yesterday, Obama has rarely blundered into such an emotional minefield as … this issue has become (fairly or unfairly), and the media hasn’t had to pay much attention to it.  By attempting to once again lecture people on how wrong most of us are on either side of an issue, Obama has exposed himself once again as a person who doesn’t engage well with the American people he seeks to lead.

This goes far beyond the Ground Zero mosque. The same clueless, tone-deaf disconnect at the White House led to the “Recovery Summer” PR campaign, in which Obama and Joe Biden have lectured us about how great things are while all of the evidence points to a significant decline in the economy. While the country demanded a change of economic policy to encourage real growth, the White House and Congress instead insisted on spending nine months to give birth to ObamaCare, a bill so unpopular that six out of ten voters want it repealed.  While joblessness continues to deepen, Obama and the Democrats are taking money out of food stamps to fund a bill that will tell taxpayers how to eat.

The problem is not just incoherence, although that’s a part of it.  It’s arrogance, and that’s nothing new at all from Barack Obama…

Jennifer Rubin catches Maureen Dowd so mad at the pretend prez, she’s wishing W was back.

… she’s fit to be tied about it — so much so that’s she’s praising George W. Bush for saying nice things about Muslims, championing AIDS prevention in Africa, and making a real effort on immigration reform. (I was not pleased with his excessive genuflecting on the first, but we’ve certainly entered the Twilight Zone of politics when she throws Bush in Obama’s face. Nothing like a woman scorned.) Anyway, she’s not done with the unflattering comparisons. Bill Clinton, at least, “never presented himself as a moral guide to the country,” so it’s all the more painful when Obama “flops around” on the mosque and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. …

We get Ed Morrissey back with more on the left-media missing Bush.

How badly did Barack Obama fumble the mosque controversy last weekend?  No fewer than three media columnists now want Obama rescued by George W. Bush.  Byron York reports on the desperate pleas: …

Jeff Jacoby looks at the current 14th Amendment debate from an historical perspective, and ends with these thoughts.

…After all, if the Citizenship Clause no longer protected babies born to illegal immigrants — an estimated 8 percent of all US births — the principal result would be to enlarge the illegal population. “Revoking birthright citizenship,’’ writes Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, “would turn hundreds of thousands of infants into ‘criminals’ — arriving, not across a border, but crying in a hospital.’’ Why would anyone who purports to be concerned about citizenship and the rule of law even suggest something so unjust?

The 14th Amendment says nothing about parents. It does not make citizenship contingent on ancestry, bloodlines, or political favor. The immigration debates may churn, but about this much the Constitution is unequivocal: Anyone born in America is an American. Our nation has been enriched — not “overrun’’ — because of birthright citizenship. The 19th-century nativists who feared otherwise were wrong. Their intellectual heirs today are, too.

John Stossel thinks we need to privatize Social Security.

…No can say the future will be like the past, but we know what the future of the government’s scheme holds: postponed retirement and/or reduced benefits and/or crushing taxes and (most likely, I think) a near-worthless dollar because politicians will print money to “keep” their deceitful pension promises.

Privatization is better. Everything that works well — everything that brings innovation and prosperity — comes from the private sector. Obama is irresponsible to campaign against that.

There’s no ideal fix. But our best hope is separation of economy and government.

In the WSJ, Alex Epstein reminds us that we have had a moratorium on oil drilling before. Remember the GOP disaster that was Richard Nixon?

Which former president does Barack Obama most resemble? When it comes to handling oil spills, the answer is Richard Nixon. Like our current president, Nixon too presided over a major offshore oil blowout—the three million gallon Santa Barbara spill of 1969. And, like Mr. Obama, Nixon responded by whipping up anti-oil sentiment and passing a sweeping moratorium on drilling. …

…For Americans, this meant scarcer, more expensive oil. For American companies, it meant the inability to adapt to any disruptions in the oil market, such as the embargo. And to make matters far worse, Nixon blamed rising gasoline prices on oil companies and ordered extended, market-mangling price controls that prevented demand from adjusting to supply, thus creating shortages. …

…It is hard today to remember how bad the energy crisis was. Imagine getting up two hours earlier to wait in line for gasoline, inching forward in a line of cars, hoping that the fuel doesn’t run out by the time you get to the front of the line—or when you next come back (on one of your government-assigned rationing days, of course). Imagine the chronic feeling that the days of abundant, affordable energy—and the ability to travel where you want, when you want—were over. …

We have more good NRO Shorts. Here are two:

Son Jong Nam was a good, loyal North Korean: For ten years, he served in the “presidential security service.” But then something happened: His wife was accused of remarking on the famine that had spread throughout the land. Eight months pregnant, she was seized by the police. They kicked her in the stomach until the baby died. Son fled with his family to China. His wife died. He found Christianity, and began to evangelize among his fellow North Korean defectors. The Chinese caught him doing this and sent him back to North Korea: where he was tortured almost to death. Released, he sneaked back across the Chinese border, to see his daughter, who had been left in the care of a missionary. He decided to return to North Korea, seeing it as his duty to spread the Word there. He was caught with Bibles: and charged with spying for the United States and South Korea. He was sentenced to public execution by firing squad. But his brother, in South Korea, launched an international campaign to save him. According to a news report, the campaign apparently led the North Koreans “to switch to a less public method: torture.” The brother observed, “There are many ways to kill people in North Korea.” Son Jong Nam was at last tortured to death, age 50. A great man. An evil regime.

We’d like to congratulate Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) for getting so completely under the skin of Princeton professor Paul Krugman, who recently used his New York Times column to call Ryan a “charlatan” and his deficit-reduction plan a “fraud” that had been “drenched in flimflam sauce.” Krugman did not present any new criticisms of Ryan’s plan; he merely repeated the claim that, according to one group of experts, the tax side of it wouldn’t raise enough revenue to eliminate the deficit. Ryan simply responded that experts oftentimes disagree when estimating the effects of policy changes far into the future, and that he would be amenable to tweaking his tax plan to keep revenues at their historical average as a percentage of GDP — this would be sufficient to balance the budget under his plan. Krugman’s real problem with Ryan’s plan, of course, is that he thinks Americans have historically paid too little in taxes, and the budget should be balanced through tax hikes rather than spending cuts. Many of us have made the opposite case, but few have done it so effectively as to elicit such a hilariously self-defeating response from such an influential proponent of higher taxes.

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Spengler looks at the reasons for the opposition to the Ground Zero mosque.

…A million and a quarter Americans have rotated through Afghanistan and Iraq, moreover, and what they have seen horrifies them. For the first time, very large numbers of Americans have had direct exposure to the Muslim world. American servicemen returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are the main source of Americans’ first-hand knowledge of the Muslim world.

Iraq is the first American war in which soldiers stationed overseas are not fraternizing with the locals. Americans are not hostile to foreigners. On the contrary, American soldiers abroad used to fall for the local girls in huge numbers. American soldiers have brought three quarters of a million brides home since World War II. Only a few hundred American soldiers …have requested visas for Iraqi spouses or fiancées, by contrast, a vanishingly small number. Unlike all previous American wars, American boys and Iraqi girls don’t fall in love. Part of the problem is security – it’s harder for Americans to fraternize with the locals than in previous wars – but the bigger issue is cultural. Americans and Arab Muslims come from worlds far less compatible than Americans and say, Vietnamese or Japanese.

…The Global Terrorism Database lists 1,868 attacks on religious figures and institutions through December 2008, including 848 bombings – all but a handful perpetrated by Muslims. It is not only that Muslims seem just as willing to kill one another as to kill Christians or Jews, but that they choose to do so in a fashion intended to horrify their enemies and the world. …

Thomas Sowell discusses the importance of defending the Constitution.

…The Constitution was not only a challenge to the despotic governments of its time, it has been a continuing challenge– to this day– to all those who think that ordinary people should be ruled by their betters, whether an elite of blood, or of books or of whatever else gives people a puffed-up sense of importance.

…It is no coincidence that those who imagine themselves so much wiser and nobler than the rest of us should be in the forefront of those who seek to erode Constitutional restrictions on the arbitrary powers of government. How can our betters impose their superior wisdom and virtue on us, when the Constitution gets in the way at every turn, with all its provisions to safeguard a system based on a self-governing people?

To get their way, the elites must erode or dismantle the Constitution, bit by bit, in one way or another. What that means is that they must dismantle America. This has been going on piecemeal over the years but now we have an administration in Washington that circumvents the Constitution wholesale, with its laws passed so fast that the public cannot know what is in them, its appointment of “czars” wielding greater power than Cabinet members, without having to be exposed to pubic scrutiny by going through the confirmation process prescribed by the Constitution for Cabinet members.  …

Daniel Hannan, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, blogs about Obama’s declining poll numbers.

…Most damagingly of all, Obama has disappointed those in the middle: voters who initially gave him the benefit of the doubt, but who have been stunned by the rapidity and thoroughness with which he has expanded the federal government. Out-of-control borrowing, state healthcare, government daycare, re-federalisation of welfare, eco-statism, regulation of private-sector remuneration, seizure of industries, alienation of old allies – can this really be the presidential candidate who presented himself as being beyond partisanship and who promised tax cuts?…

…Americans, like most people, are wiser than their leaders. They know perfectly well that the money has run out. They understand that recovery depends on rediscovering the ideas of independence, enterprise and devolution encoded at Philadelphia. My guess is that, come November, they will vote accordingly.

The liberal Roger Simon writes on the Mosque Mess. Being a leftie, he doesn’t get that the president’s big mistake was the equivocation.

Q: Will Barack Obama be a one-term president?

A: Yes, he might last that long.

Honest to goodness, the man just does not get it. He might be forced to pull a Palin and resign before his first term is over. He could go off and write his memoirs and build his presidential library. (Both would be half-size, of course.)

Scott Adams is hooked on a website.

…Consider that Newser has access to the same raw ingredients as anyone else. Newser’s website design is little more than a grid of boxes. The photos – and this fascinates me – are nothing but stock photos that have at best a casual relationship to the story they are summarizing. I mention this site because I am psychologically addicted to it. I feel a need to check it twenty times a day. WTF?

Newser’s business reminds me of cooking in the sense that there is no barrier to entry. Everyone has access to the same ingredients, which in this case is content from the Internet. Anyone can summarize that content and put it in little boxes on a website. Anyone can buy stock photos. But there’s something else going on.

Editors are the chefs of the Internet. Newser works, I believe, because somewhere in their back kitchen is an editor who has an uncommon feel for what stories to highlight, how to summarize them in a folksy voice, and in what order and combination they should appear. There’s some genius happening there. When I read news from other places, I often come away feeling deflated. When I read Newser, I always leave in a good mood. That’s why I return so often. It’s a mood enhancer masquerading as some sort of news site. …

And we have NRO Shorts. Here are two:

Al-Qaeda has a new chief of operations, according to the FBI, and he knows the U.S. very well. Adnan Shukrijumah, now 35 years old, came here as a child from his native Saudi Arabia. He lived in Brooklyn, where his father was imam of a mosque. Then the family moved to Florida, where Shukrijumah took some college courses, and where his mother still lives. Shukrijumah left the U.S. early in 2001 and was tagged by the FBI as a threat in 2003. Now thought to be in the Afghanistan–Pakistan border badlands, Shukrijumah has been decisively identified from old videos and photographs by would-be New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi, who had met him at a training camp, and by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, his former boss. Shukrijumah’s promotion comes with some risks to his health. Until recently he shared operational planning duties with two colleagues, but both fell victim to U.S. drone attacks. Let’s hope for a trifecta.

President Obama has prescribed a surge for Afghanistan. Like the surge in Iraq, this surge requires the trust and help of the local population, who will be killed by extremists if their support of the Coalition becomes known. Hugely complicating, if not defeating, our effort has been the release of tens of thousands of classified documents by a group called WikiLeaks: a group of people who fancy themselves righteous whistleblowers. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said that his goal is to “end the war in Afghanistan.” The released documents include the names and locations of many Afghans who have aided the Coalition. The Taliban is studying these documents closely, vowing death to informants. As a Taliban spokesman said, “America is not a good protector of spies.” There is now “a panic among many Afghans,” in the words of one report. WikiLeaks has done grave damage to the American interest, and grave damage to the Afghan people. The person or persons who gave the classified material to WikiLeaks, of course, have done the same. Whether or not WikiLeaks is beyond our legal reach, the leakers presumably are not. The U.S. government should find them and throw the heaviest possible book at them.