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We have to admit to admiring the statement the president made in support of the mosque in lower Manhattan. Then he proved to be the craven creep we always knew he was. Three of our favorites have comments. First Tunku Varadarajan.
… Many of us who are libertarian—in other words, people opposed as much to the subversion of private rights by a majoritarian maumau-ing as we are to curbs on private affairs by government intervention—found ourselves in pleasantly astonished agreement with the most statist president since FDR. No one hearing his remarks, or reading of them, could have been in any doubt that he was fully, unequivocally, behind the construction of the mosque. So much so that New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, the first public official of consequence to stand up to the mosque’s opponents, described the president’s remarks as “a clarion defense of the freedom of religion.”
The infatuation was not to last more than a day: …
Craig Pirrong as the Streetwise Professor is next.
…Michael Kinsley once said that a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. A corollary to that is that whenever a politician “clarifies” his remarks, it’s because everybody understood perfectly well what the original remarks meant, and that the politician meant them–to his surprise and regret.
Many Democrats are despairing over Obama’s three-left-foot intervention into this extremely touchy issue. He just threw gasoline on the bonfire that is roaring to roast his party in November. And the spinning is just blowing air to feed the fire. Quite a performance.
Jennifer Rubin has an opinion too.
It would be hard to think how Obama could have done a worse job on the Ground Zero mosque controversy. He took a position objectionable to the vast majority of Americans, within 24 hours chickened out, and then sent his press minions forward to assure his base and the Muslim World and its American community (over which he fawns incessantly) that he really does think we must accept a mosque that will produce nothing but pain for his countrymen and a sense of vindication to those who incinerated 3,000 Americans. It’s bad policy, bad politics, and bad execution, with a side order of political cowardice. …
George Will mined his trip to Israel for another column.
When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.
To understand the man who will make it, begin with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s belief that stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948. It is, he says, a campaign to “put the Jew back to the status of a being that couldn’t defend himself — a perfect victim.”
Today’s Middle East, he says, reflects two developments. One is the rise of Iran and militant Islam since the 1979 revolution, which led to al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. The other development is the multiplying threat of missile warfare.
Now Israel faces a third threat, the campaign to delegitimize it in order to extinguish its capacity for self-defense. …
David Harsanyi reacts to the claims the tea parties are filled with radicals.
… “The Republican Party agenda has become the Tea Party agenda, and vice versa,” Democratic Party chairman Tim Kaine recently explained.
The Dems have pulled together a helpful guide called “Tea Party Contract with America,” which, despite its various chilling exaggerations, is actually not an altogether awful agenda compared to the one being implemented in Washington.
If Republicans were smart — lol, right? — they would welcome a debate on radicalism and extremism. A radical, after all, is one who “departs markedly from the usual or customary.” Wasn’t that the promise of the Obama presidency? In that case, the past two years have been a study in economic radicalism.
First, the GOP should concede that they do have a few quirky candidates running around the country who lack the political sophistication of, say, an Alan Grayson or Maxine Waters.
Are these Republican oddballs a bit batty? For sure. But unlike the “stimulus” legislation, a plan to uncover the Hawaiian bunker with the president’s Indonesian passport probably won’t cost taxpayers $1 trillion and millions of jobs.
What’s worse, after all? Suffocating the economy or being a bit cautious?
Also, please keep in mind: Nationalizing health care is not radical. Neither is tripling the budget deficit in two years. …
Investor’s Business Daily Editors figure the administration’s failures might be caused by the cabinet’s lack of real world experience.
… But then, Solis is no different from any number of administration officials who by their comments or actions demonstrate almost daily that they know nothing about creating jobs or anything else to improve the economy.
And why should they? There’s never been an administration led by so few people with any experience in the private sector — including the president, the vice president and even the treasury secretary, who last week wrongly called it a “myth” that raising taxes on high-income Americans would hurt small business.
Solis, for example, has always worked for government, from the Carter White House’s Office of Hispanic Affairs, through a turn as a Los Angles County insurance commissioner, to the California Assembly and Senate, and then to Washington as the representative from California’s 32nd District.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner began his career at the consulting firm Kissinger Associates. But most of his experience has been in government, not the private sector. …
Karlyn Bowman says the GOP faces an uphill battle to win the house.
… the news for Democrats is grim. But picking up 39 seats in the House is still a steep climb for the Republicans. Here are six reasons for the GOP to be cautious.
Vital Statistics on Congress provides the historical comparisons of how anti-incumbent, anti-Washington moods translate into minority party gains. There have been only three occasions in the past 50 years when either party has picked up 39 seats. So the path ahead for Republicans will be hard.
Second, although the Democrats in Congress aren’t popular, neither are the Republicans. Thirty-one percent in the new Quinnipiac poll approved of the way the Democrats in Congress are handling their job. Just 29% approved of how the Republicans are doing theirs.
A third reason to be cautious is that unlike 1994, Democrats are well aware of the challenges they face. …
It is no longer, “Go west young man.” It is, “Go to work for Uncle Sugar.” USA Today has the story on pay for federal employees.
At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.
Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.
The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year. …
Telling Samizdata Quote of the Day.
In most every election, 80% of blacks vote Democratic – the perceived party of free stuff – rather than for the party that ended slavery.
There is a form of Gresham’s Law operating in politics. It its caused by the racial gerrymandering that creates black majority congressional districts. Instead of having to appeal to a broad cross section of the American public, the winners in those districts instead are the most disgusting politicians. Jonah Goldberg explains Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel in that light.
… But the culprit here isn’t racism, it’s the corruption that is almost inevitable when any politician — black or white — is given a job for life. Charlie Rangel, the 80-year-old deposed chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, is also in ethical hot water for a list of reasons too lengthy to recount here (but they include failure to pay taxes on unreported income — awkward, given that he was, until recently, in charge of writing the tax laws). Rangel, one of Washington’s most charming characters, ran his office like a pasha — because he could.
Indeed, that’s long been the problem with the CBC (Congressional Black Caucus): its scandalous lack of accountability. Because of racial gerrymandering (cynically abetted by the GOP in the 1980s), black representatives have been insulated, even more than other incumbents, from democratic competition. Worse, the older generation of CBCers in particular actually believes this claptrap about being the “conscience of the Congress” (the Caucus motto). This has put the CBC to the left not just of the average voter but of the average black voter. Less than 10 percent of the CBC voted to ban partial-birth abortion in 2003, even though a majority of blacks support the ban. A majority of blacks oppose racial quotas and support school choice, but the CBC claims to speak for them when taking the opposite positions. …
Thomas Sowell is tired of the race bean counters.
The bean-counters have struck again– this time in the sports pages. Two New York Times sport writers have discovered that baseball coaches from minority groups are found more often coaching at first base than at third base. Moreover, third-base coaches become managers more often than first-base coaches.
This may seem to be just another passing piece of silliness. But it is part of a more general bean-counting mentality that turns statistical differences into grievances. The time is long overdue to throw this race card out of the deck and start seeing it for the gross fallacy that it is.
At the heart of such statistics is the implicit assumption that different races, sexes and other subdivisions of the human species would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations and income brackets if there was not something strange or sinister going on. …
The Hill has a piece that says either Joe Sestak is lying or Bill Clinton is. Anybody care to guess?
Either former President Bill Clinton is lying, or Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak is. Both can’t be right.
You may remember a few months ago, prior to defeating incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Rep. Sestak went public with allegations the Obama White House sent an emissary to offer him an administration job as a sort of bribe to drop his challenge to Specter. …