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Claudia Rosett comments on the Obami’s attempt to curry favor with the U.N.. Particularly at a time when our economy is struggling, such an article raises the question of why we fund an organization that is so corrupt, biased, and worthless in any honorable endeavors.
…Packaged as a 29-page report aiming to create “a more perfect union” in “a more perfect world,” this U.S. self-critique was sent by the State Department on Aug. 20 to the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, in preparation for a formal review on Nov. 5 by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. A glaring feature of this report is its disparaging mention of Arizona’s new immigration law. This is the same law that Attorney General Eric Holder condemned in May without reading, and which the Obama administration is challenging in court. State is presenting this situation for review by the U.N., implying that Arizona is violating human rights with a law that has “generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world.”
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer registered her protest in an Aug. 27 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asking that the section on Arizona’s immigration law be removed from the report. Calling it “downright offensive” that Arizona law be offered up by the federal government for a “human rights” review by such U.N. members as Libya and Cuba, Brewer wrote: “The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a State of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional.”
…After an opening bit of lip service to “individual freedoms,” the report, along with lambasting Arizona’s immigration law, goes on to laud ObamaCare as making “great strides” for human rights–never mind that a majority of Americans did not want this regulatory Godzilla of a partisan health care bill. There is a laundry list of new affirmative action quotas, targeted federal grants, and pursuit of “freedom from want” via “social benefits” in which redistribution of wealth is required by law. And there are such items as a reprise of the case cited by Obama in his 2009 Cairo speech, in which the U.S. Justice Department defended the right of a Muslim girl to wear a head covering, or hijab. (This last is presumably to curry favor with Islamic countries, despite the reality that human rights violations in these places tend to involve the punishment of women who prefer not to wear the veil, or, in the case of Saudi Arabia, the full-body abaya). …
Michael Barone discusses another government-financed bubble that may be about to burst.
…Government-subsidized loans have injected money into higher education, as they did into housing, causing prices to balloon. But at some point people figure out they’re not getting their money’s worth, and the bubble bursts.
… The National Center for Education Statistics found that most college graduates are below proficiency in verbal and quantitative literacy. University of California scholars Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks report that students these days study an average of 14 hours a week, down from 24 hours in 1961.
…Transparency could also undermine the numerous dropout factories, public and private, described and listed by the liberal Washington Monthly. More than 90 percent of students there never graduate, but most end up with student loan debt.
…People are beginning to note that administrative bloat, so common in government, seems especially egregious in colleges and universities. Somehow previous generations got by and even prospered without these legions of counselors, liaison officers and facilitators. …
In the Financial Times, Clive Crook has interesting center-left commentary on the coming elections.
…Two other points deserve more attention than they have received. First, most commentators see the midterms as a referendum on Mr Obama. This is wrong. The elections are a referendum on the party in power — that is, on the president’s partnership with Democrats in Congress led by Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate. …
…Mr Obama should have kept his distance from his allies on Capitol Hill. It would have been better for him, and better for them. Centrist voters embraced Mr Obama in 2008 because they thought he would temper a polarised and dysfunctional Congress. He let them down. The reflexive opposition of Republicans is much to blame, but Mr Obama did not try very hard. Pragmatic he may be, but unlike the instinctively centrist Bill Clinton, he leans left. If Ms Pelosi and Mr Reid could deliver irreproachably liberal policies — on healthcare, energy, the stimulus, whatever — that was fine with him. As it turned out, they often had to compromise, but that was because of a sliver of conservative Democrats, not Mr Obama. …
…Strangely, it is not just the centre that is disappointed. Another potentially decisive factor in November is sagging enthusiasm in the Democratic base. You need not look far for the reason. For nearly two years, media progressives have whined about the administration and its works. The White House showed its frustration at this recently when spokesman Robert Gibbs attacked the “professional left”. He was rebuked by progressives, but he was correct. Turn-out in the midterms will be crucial, yet the left has talked itself into apathy. …
Nile Gardiner blogs about the polling numbers, and looks not only at wins, but the issues important to the electorate.
…Another poll by Gallup this week shows Republicans leading the Democrats in Congress on the handling of nine key election issues, including terrorism (a 24 point lead), immigration (15 points), federal spending (15 points), and the economy (11 points). In only one area do the Democrats hold a significant advantage – the environment, which is low down the list of voter priorities. On key economic issues, likely to dominate in November, the Republicans have a seemingly unassailable advantage – the four most important voter issues according to Gallup are the economy, jobs, corruption in government and federal spending.
Gallup’s findings largely mirror another major poll, released by Rasmussen in late August, which found that voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on all ten key issues it regularly surveys. This includes an eight point lead on the economy and national security/ War on Terror, a nine point lead on immigration, and a striking 16-point lead on the issue of taxes. As they do in the Gallup poll, the Republicans have an overwhelming advantage on economic issues, which are likely to prove a major Achilles heel for the Democrats in November.
… According to Rasmussen, just 29 percent of likely voters now believe the country is heading in the right direction, a damning indictment of President Obama’s leadership of the country. …
…The Obama presidency is facing meltdown, and according to the polls is likely to be greatly weakened from November onwards, throwing a major spanner in the works of the ambitious Obama agenda to remake America. A conservative revolution is heading its way to Washington on a wave of anti-government sentiment, and looks unstoppable. Like Jimmy Carter before him, President Obama has succeeded in revitalising conservatism in the United States, and reawakening a sleeping giant. When Barack Obama spoke in his election campaign of bringing “change” to America, I doubt this is quite what he had in mind.
In Politico, Jennifer Haberkorn reports on how Dems are handling Obamacare in their campaigning.
A handful of House Democrats are making health care reform an election year issue — by running against it.
At least five of the 34 House Democrats who voted against their party’s health care reform bill are highlighting their “no” votes in ads back home. By contrast, party officials in Washington can’t identify a single House member who’s running an ad boasting of a “yes” vote — despite the fact that 219 House Democrats voted in favor of final passage in March. …
…Most of the Democrats running ads highlighting their opposition to the law are in conservative-leaning districts and considered the most endangered. They’re using their vote against the overhaul as proof of their willingness to buck party leadership and their commitment to watching the nation’s debt. …
George Will discusses how global warmists have fallen out of favor.
…Environmentalism began as Bambi doing battle with Godzillas, such as the Army Corps of Engineers. Then, says Mead, environmentalism became Godzilla, an advocate of “a big and simple fix for all that ails us: a global carbon cap. One big problem, one big fix.” Mead continues:
“Never mind that the leading green political strategy … is and always has been so cluelessly unrealistic as to be clinically insane. The experts decree and we rubes are not to think but to honor and obey.”
The essence of progressivism, of which environmentalism has become an appendage, is the faith that all will be well once we have concentrated enough power in Washington and have concentrated enough Washington power in the executive branch and have concentrated enough “experts” in that branch. Hence the Environmental Protection Agency proposes to do what the elected representatives of the rubes refuse to do in limiting greenhouse gases. …