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Marty Peretz shows how the president’s efforts have little positive effect outside the US either.

Reuters reports on the brotherly friendship of Tehran and Damascus. It is not a new relationship. In fact, it goes back many years. But since Barack Obama imagines he can change the world by telling his supporters that this is what he’s going to do he sent messengers and missives to the two tyrannies. Nothing came of these courtships, and certainly nothing came of the American effort to get Iran to cease its pursuit of nukes.  

…Almost nobody notices the disasters of U.S. policy outside our borders because the disasters within our borders are so climactic. One of the president’s most ambitious ventures was to bring Syria to heel. He sent many emissaries to Dr. Assad. Their visits all flopped.

But Obama is still pressing Israel to leave the Golan Heights, and Secretary Clinton is trying get Syria to soften the views of the Palestinians. The president and the secretary of state don’t recognize failure. So they court more humiliation.

We have more musings from David Warren. He could be channeling his inner Christopher Hitchens as he writes about religious violence.

…Western security forces are at present trying to prevent anticipated Mumbai-style “soft target” attacks on perhaps five European airports. Should such attacks proceed, we will blame lapses in the same security operations. We will, so far as we are politically correct, avoid talk about the motives for such attacks — which are drawn by the terrorists themselves from religious teachings, principally in the Koran.

Now, if these terrorists were only Buddhists, or Christians, or followers of any of the other religions of mankind, we could openly discuss the connections between ideas and consequences.

David Harsanyi thinks that any power grabs by this administration should be looked at closely.

…My unease over the case of Anwar Awlaki — an American citizen penciled in for targeted assassination by the Obama administration — isn’t based on any conspiratorial daydreams about Barack Obama wanting to randomly knock off citizens.

There is no doubt, in fact, that Awlaki is a despicable character, a member of radical Islamic networks, dangerous and deserving of a most gruesome fate.

In other words, the administration has a straightforward case to make. Yet, when Awlaki’s father asked a court to enjoin the president from killing his despicable son, the administration asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the case by invoking “state secrets.”

With that, the Obama administration argued that the president should be empowered to order the execution of a U.S. citizen — outside a war zone and without exhibiting an imminent threat to other citizens — without any oversight from the judicial or legislative branches of government. And by using the protection of state secrets argument, the administration is also asserting that the public has no right to know why. …

…Clearly, there are legitimate uses for state secrets during a time of war. But let’s face it, we are in perpetual war. If conservatives oppose the intrusive domestic policy of this administration, it defies logic for them not to question a unilateral decision that abuses state power — even if the decision is helpful in a cause they deeply believe in. Does the cause of national security overpower any concern? …

From CNN, Gloria Borger gives a liberal’s view of why the Dems are doing so badly. She understands that the push for Obamacare was a bad move, but she thinks too much of the opinions of political strategists.

…”If we had been cutting deals [with the Democrats], our base voters would have deserted us,” admits one top GOP campaign operative. “We had to prove who we were to get back on the map, and back in their good graces.”

So they did. If conservatives were disappointed that Bush was a big spender, these Republicans would unanimously oppose spending, including the stimulus package. If voters were wary of big government, they would rail against any new government, especially health care.

“This was a matter of proving to our base that we could be trusted again,” says this strategist.

So even when Congress debated financial reform, the GOP felt no danger in opposing it. And in the end, Obama got little credit. Why? The populism that fueled the 2008 campaign has been replaced with the anti-government sentiment of 2010. They don’t trust the government to fix anything, even evil Wall Street.

The GOP frontal attacks were relentless. The Obama White House was wary of allowing its “post-partisan” president to get too partisan. “[Obama] let the Republicans beat him up for far too long without counterpunching,” says Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin. “That’s not happening anymore, but we let them [the GOP] get away with framing the debate for too long.”

The problem for Obama was twofold: His ambitious agenda fed into the GOP narrative. And the GOP narrative was designed to reflect the public’s overwhelming view of government — ineffective and untrustworthy. …

While it is interesting to see how a mainstream lib like Borger looks at the Dems failures, her take leaves a lot to be desired. For example she writes as if the GOP leadership developed a set of cojones only after watching a town hall meeting revolt against Arlen Specter in August 2009. In truth, in one of their finest hours, the leadership of the party opposed the $787 billion stimulus plan right from the very start of the new administration as you will see in this ABC News story dated February 13th 2009 on the bill’s passage in the Senate. In fact, other than three squishy RINOs in the Senate, all Republicans voted against the “stimulus” that has proven to be useless. We only have the opening ‘graphs of the article, but you can click on the link if you want to read it all.

… Three Republicans who supported the measure on earlier votes once again cast their votes for the stimulus package. And, as expected, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, provided the necessary 60th vote for passage. He cast his vote at 10:46 p.m. after the Senate held the vote open for several hours while he flew back from his home state.

Voting in the Senate started at 5:30 p.m., but Brown was attending his mother’s wake at the time and could not secure a commercial flight back to Washington. Eager to ensure the bill’s passage, the White House stepped in and arranged for Brown’s flight back.

Brown now will return to Ohio on an Air Force plane for his mother’s funeral Saturday.

Only 98 senators voted because there is no second senator from Minnesota yet seated, and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who has brain cancer but came to the Capitol earlier in the week to vote on procedural motions, did not vote.

An earlier Senate version of the bill passed the 61-37. In that vote, as with today’s, the only Republicans to support the bill were Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

House Republicans Balk

Earlier today, the House passed the stimulus bill by a vote of 246-183, although a week of negotiations and lobbying by President Obama failed to convince a single Republican to support the bill. …

In the WSJ, William McGurn advises the president to prove he cares about education.

That deafening roar you hear—that’s the sound of Barack Obama’s silence on the future of school reform in the District of Columbia. And if he doesn’t break it soon, he may become the first president in two decades to have left Washington’s children with fewer chances for a good school than when he started. …

…This debate over education is now coming to a head in Washington. In the first months after he took office, Mr. Obama kept quiet when Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) killed off a popular voucher program that allowed low-income D.C. moms and dads to send their kids to the same kind of schools where the president sends his own daughters (Sidwell Friends). This was followed by the president’s silence last month during the D.C. Democratic primary, in which the mayor who appointed the district’s reform-minded schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, went down to defeat. …

…In the past, Mr. Obama has himself spoken honestly about the obstacles to reform, including the close relationship between the teachers unions and his party. This past weekend, Mr. Chavous, now head of the Black Alliance for Educational Opportunity, published an open letter in the New York Times saying it’s time for the president to walk the walk. Along with the recent release of “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” Davis Guggenheim’s superb new film on the children robbed of their dreams by the failing public school system, it all adds to the sense that the moment for Mr. Obama to make himself heard is now.

Tony Blankley thinks we may be at the beginning of a monumental change in government.

The New York Times has written in explaining why the political parties have lost the confidence of the public: “Their machinery of intrigue, their shuffling evasions, the dodges, the chicanery and the deception of their leaders have excited universal disgust, and have created a general readiness in the public mind for any new organization that shall promise to shun their vices.”

The New York Evening Post, in explaining the same condition has written that the people “saw parties without any difference contending for power, for the sake of power. They saw politics made a profession, and public plunder an employment. … They beheld our public works the plaything of a rotten dynasty, enriching gamblers, and purchasing power at our expense.”

The dates of those articles were November and December 1855 (See “The Origins of the Republican Party” by William E. Gienapp, Oxford University Press, 1987).

When those words were written, the Whigs and the Democrats were the two great parties. The Whigs soon went extinct, the dominant Democrats went on to lose every White House election between 1860 and 1912 except for the elections of Grover Cleveland. The Republicans came into being and won all the those elections the Democrats lost.

I have a sense that we may be in the early stages of a similar transformation of our party system as 155 years ago, when the Jacksonian party system failed. …

Toby Harnden comments on an unusual campaign ad from Christine O’Donnell.

…O’Donnell had many weaknesses as a candidate. But  is that she is, as the ad states, like “you” – an ordinary American who’s struggled to pay the bills, done some silly things (dated a witch in college!), exaggerated her CV a tad and been looked down on by elites. Despite being in her 40s, she has a little girl lost kind of demeanour that, as The Other McCain points out, makes her “awfully hard to hate”.

Again and again on the campaign trail, I hear statements about Sarah Palin – the harder-edged prototype for O’Donnell – along the lines of  “when I first heard her, I thought, ‘She’s like me’”. That ability to get people to identify with you on such an elemental level in politics is a powerful thing (though not necessarily enough in itself to win national or even statewide elections). …

…Her new ad says: I’m just like you ordinary Americans and when they’re mocking me they’re mocking you. Which is why Christine O’Donnell might just be crazy like a fox.

From the Economist’s Democracy In America Blog, W. W. blogs about the ad.

BY NOW, you’ve probably seen, or heard tell of, Christine O’Donnell’s new campaign ad in which the Republican Senate candidate from Delaware begins saying, “I’m not a witch”. Ms O’Donnell issues this denial softly, with an air of wearied but good-humoured bemusement. “I’m nothing you’ve heard. I’m you”, she clarifies—just an ordinary Jane, a regular ol’ non-witch.

This ad is delightful. There’s something inherently great about watching a Senate candidate earnestly deny that she is a witch. But is this ad another ridiculous nail in Ms O’Donnell’s coffin? I don’t think so. In fact, like the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, I think it does just what it is supposed to do.

I take Ms O’Donnell’s message to be that she has been made the target of all manner of scurrilous slander, so desperate are her opponents to keep her from office. But why? As she says, “I’ll go to Washington and do what you’d do”, and this is terrifying to corrupt establishment politicians who subsist on dirty tricks and back-room deals. They’re scared of common people like me and you, Ms O’Donnell seems to say, hence all the bizarre stuff they’re saying about me, which is what they’d say about you were you in my position, which you are, because I’m you. …

John Stossel has an eye-opener on some of the fallout from Obamacare.

…Health insurers Wellpoint, Cigna, Aetna, Humana and CoventryOne will stop writing policies for all children. Why? Because Obamacare requires that they insure already sick children for the same price as well children.

That sounds compassionate, but — in case Obamacare fanatics haven’t noticed — sick children need more medical care. Insurance is about risk, and already sick children are 100 percent certain to be sick when their coverage begins. So if the government mandates that insurance companies cover sick children at the lower well-children price, insurers will quit the market rather than sandbag their shareholders. This is not callousness — it’s fiduciary responsibility. Insurance companies are not charities. So, thanks to the compassionate Congress and president, parents of sick children will be saved from expensive insurance — by being unable to obtain any insurance! That’s how government compassion works.

In 2014, the same rule will kick in for adults. You now know what to expect. …

The Nobel Prize for Literature went to Mario Vargas Llosa who was the subject of a WSJ Interview in June 2007 which found its way into Pickings June 24, 2007.

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Michael Barone reviews recent polls that could indicate historic change in Congressional seats. He also looks at a few specific races.

…However, Gallup also shows the results for two different turnout models. Under its “high turnout model” Republicans lead 53%-40%. Under its “low turnout model” Republicans lead 56%-38%.

These two numbers, if translated into popular votes in the 435 congressional districts, suggest huge gains for Republicans and a Republican House majority the likes of which we have not seen since the election cycles of 1946 or even 1928. For months, people have been asking me if this year looks like ’94. My response is that the poll numbers suggest it looks like 1994, when Republicans gained 52 seats in a House of 435 seats. Or perhaps somewhat better for Republicans and worse for Democrats. The Gallup high turnout and low turnout numbers suggest it looks like 1894, when Republicans gained more than 100 seats in a House of approximately 350 seats.

Having said that, caution is in order. Gallup’s numbers tend to be volatile. Its procedures for projecting likely turnout are very sensitive to transitory responses. They’re useful in identifying shifts in the balance of enthusiasm. But they can overstate the swings to one party or the other.  Scott Rasmussen’s latest generic ballot numbers among likely voters show Republicans with only a 45%-42% lead, much less than the 48%-38% lead he reported two days ago. That’s based on a three-day average, indicating Democrats fared relatively well on the most recent night of interviewing. Perhaps Barack Obama’s attempts to gin up enthusiasm among Democratic voters are bearing fruit. Or perhaps one night’s results were an anomaly.  …

John Fund comments on the change in tune from the Dems.

…Democrats I spoke with last night downplayed the Gallup numbers, pointing out that Gallup’s surveys have been somewhat volatile this year and other polls (such as those by Scott Rasmussen) show a much smaller GOP edge among likely voters, on the order of three percentage points. That would translate into a GOP House gain of 35 to 40 seats, hovering just around what Republican would need to take control of the Speaker’s gavel.

But regardless of where likely voters are right now, it’s a strange political year when Democrats start consoling themselves with Scott Rasmussen, whose polls they have long disparaged as being biased towards Republicans.

Nile Gardiner also blogs about the polling news, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK.

Over the weekend I wrote a piece on how some liberal elites, not least at The New York Times, remain in denial over the scale of the disaster the Left is facing at the polls in November. Well, I hope they’re taking a close look today at the latest Gallup poll, which is enough to make any White House adviser weep.

Gallup’s new survey of more than 3,000 adults, including over 2,700 registered voters (1,800 of whom are highly likely to vote), shows Republicans with “a double-digit advantage” under two separate scenarios – lower and higher turnout. Under the higher turnout scenario, the GOP lead is 13 percentage points, while under the lower turnout scenario it is even higher, at 18 points…

…If Gallup’s poll prove correct on November 2nd, which of course remains nearly a month away, the scale of the Republican victory will be absolutely huge. There is no doubt about it – Gallup’s latest survey is explosive, and points to history in the making for the latest conservative revolution to hit America.

 Rep. Paul Ryan is interviewed by National Review’s Robert Costa about fiscal reform.

Earlier this year, Rep. Paul Ryan, a 40-year-old Republican congressman from Wisconsin, published “A Roadmap for America’s Future,” his blueprint for balancing the budget. Despite much fanfare, Ryan’s proposal — which rigorously tackles federal entitlements, taxes, and spending — was left out of the House GOP’s “Pledge to America.” The omission, he says, does not signal a retreat by him or his party. …

…Ryan says that his GOP colleagues on the Budget Committee are stalwart in their commitment to entitlement reform. “The culture on the Budget Committee is great,” he says. “Anybody who studies this problem or digs deep into the numbers is seriously frightened about the future of this country. They realize the urgency of the moment. After a sober review of the fiscal condition of this country, most people just put politics aside.”

“I spend a lot of my time looking at these baselines,” Ryan says. “Most people don’t know this stuff. Most people in Congress don’t understand just how quickly our fiscal situation has deteriorated. And now the Left thinks that you can keep raising taxes, as if there were no consequences to that.” To fight back, Ryan says Republicans need to focus on two things: “economic growth and reforming the structure of spending.” …

Robert Samuelson discusses the importance of entrepreneurs to the economy.

…American workers are roughly split between firms with less or more than 500 employees. In healthy times, older companies of all sizes do create lots of jobs. But they also lose jobs, as some businesses shrink or vanish. On balance, job creation and destruction cancel each other. All the net job increases occur among startups, finds a study of the 1992-2005 period by economists John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland and Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda of the Census Bureau. Because most startups are necessarily small, this gives a statistical edge to tinier firms in job creation. But, the study says, the effect entirely reflects the impact of new businesses.

… Panner, a registered Democrat, criticizes complex accounting, employment, and health care regulations imposed by federal and state agencies that consume scarce investment funds and time. The fragmented system of business oversight imposes a bureaucratic bias, perhaps unintended, on startups. Any one rule or tax may seem justifiable; but the collective effect can be crushing.

It’s all about risk-taking. The good news is that the entrepreneurial instinct seems deeply ingrained in the nation’s economic culture. Americans like to create; they’re ambitious; many want to be “their own bosses”; many crave fame and fortune. (Panner is already involved with a new startup, TownFlier. It has five employees.) The bad news is that venture capital for startups is scarce and political leaders seem largely oblivious to burdensome government policies. This needs to be addressed. Entrepreneurship won’t instantly cure America’s jobs’ deficit, but without it, there will be no strong recovery.

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David Harsanyi comments on a controversy in the Denver Jewish community.

As a Jew, I’m often asked why my fellow tribesmen are so predictably left-wing. And since we Jews are in constant telepathic contact, I can answer the question. For Jews, liberalism isn’t an ideological choice; it’s a spiritual stand-in. The religion of the average American Jew is liberalism.

So when we talk about the “Jewish community,” we mean a rock-ribbed flank of the Democratic Party. When a spokesperson from a national organization lectures us about “core Jewish values,” he is referring to secular left-wing orthodoxy. …

…Now, I wouldn’t have much problem with boycotts or ignoring Bible thumpers, but philosophical diversity and consistent indignation are evidently not Jewish “values.”

Where, for instance, are complaints from the 80 percent of American Jews who support a president who actively pressures Israel into agreements that threaten her existence, and at the same time bows to robed princes and pleads for the friendship of the most illiberal nations in the world?

Where were calls for boycotts of the Democratic National Convention, where among other Jew-friendly participants like Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson, the gregarious Al Sharpton mingled with the Jewish core values crowd…

George Will reviews a new book on Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s letters, and shares some excerpts.

…”Everyone,” Moynihan liked to say, “is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Now, thanks to Steven Weisman’s meticulous editing of “Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary,” everybody is entitled to Moynihan’s opinions. Some tidbits from the feast:

By 1966, the civil rights movement’s task was to become “a protest movement against situations rather than statutes” — to change from upholding legal rights in the South to addressing problems of class in the North.

…The 1972 presidential campaign “was a routine exercise: Republican moralism, Democratic hysteria, voter indifference.” …

P.J. O’Rourke is interviewed in the NY Post about his new book and more.

…”Long before I was ever a war correspondent, my first experience with pieces of dead bodies — was at LaGuardia. It was Christmas 1975, and I was upstairs when the bomb went off in the locker on the level below. Killed 11 people. The presumption was that it was Puerto Rican nationalists. They were the bombers of the day.

“So I’m sitting at the bar at LaGuardia, waiting for my plane. Ka-WAMMMM! I had just ordered a Jack Daniels on the rocks. Bartender turns to me, says, ‘You want to make that a double?’ Swear to God.”

So O’Rourke, whose cousin lived a couple of blocks from the West 11th Street townhouse where several members of the Weather Underground accidentally blew themselves up in 1970 and whose girlfriend was in the crowd when National Guardsmen killed five student protesters at Kent State two months later, is amused by chatter about “polarization” today. “Bull – - – -,” he says. “Anyone who lived through the Civil Rights era knows this is nothing compared to the polarization — anger, hatred, murder — that went on then. Or to take a better example, 1860. That’s polarized. This is arguing.”

O’Rourke, the reformed ex-radical, editor of National Lampoon during the “Animal House” era, war correspondent and, lately, target of what he calls “ass cancer,” continues the anti-statist argument in his new book, “Don’t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards” (Atlantic Monthly Press). References to Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Adam Smith (to whose “Wealth of Nations” he once devoted an entire volume) prove O’Rourke can do the philosophical heavy lifting — yet make it all float on a fluffy cloud of wit. …

Rob Long, in the National Review, writes witty commentary on the pessimism of the Green fascists. Since the left wants the government out of the bedroom, we want the creeps out of our bathrooms.

…To an environmental bureaucrat, the world looks better when it’s dingier. Bright lights are too festive. Powerful showerheads are too luxurious. To maintain the proper downcast attitude, they want to make sure we’re all a little less comfortable.

It’s all about less with them. As far as the environmental movement is concerned, we’re running out of everything — polar icecaps, sea turtles, crude oil — and the trick is to cut our appetites down to size, to stop wanting to stand under a gushing showerhead in a bright morning bathroom and think, I can handle what’s coming at me today.

It’s not about showerheads and wattage. It’s about optimism. Either you think a more prosperous world is a good thing — that prosperity and ingenuity can solve most of our pressing problems — or you don’t. Either you think that being able to afford an expensive showerhead is a component of a complicated web of incentives designed to inspire the next Thomas Edison to invent something useful — like, say, a battery-powered car or a brighter energy-saving light bulb — or you think that we’re done, we’ve invented everything already and we need to divvy up a shrinking pie. For the Left, there are no light-bulb moments in the future. …

In Media-ite, we learn Fox News is happy to be living rent-free inside the president’s head.

News Corp’s recent donation to the Republican Governors Association given editorial positions at, in particular, Fox News certainly turned heads among Democrats and gave President Obama even more fodder to challenge the company. Yet in light of all the criticism, it seems that the only thing they’re surprised about at Fox News is that the president cares about them at all.

Speaking with an unnamed executive while researching the motivations behind News Corps’ donation, The New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg mined a gemstone of a quote that expresses something quite far from the fear or concern a news organization in any other country would feel when the current White House administration is so preoccupied with what’s going in within:

An executive at Fox News who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity expressed “astonishment” over Mr. Obama’s focus on the network. “We are so in his head,” he said. “Can you believe with all the other things going on in this world he’s preoccupied with Fox News?” …

Scott Adams takes a perverse view of things.

One way of imagining the future is that you and I, the so-called current generation, will selfishly party until we die, leaving to our children nothing but crushing debt, a boiling turd of a planet, and various Apple products. The problem with this analysis is that young adults have most of the guns and muscles. So isn’t the younger generation complicit in stealing from itself? …

Last, to close out our night of humor, we have an article from the Jerusalem Post about Nancy Pelosi’s claim she will continue to be speaker of the house.

… In the weekly briefing, Pelosi said that she believes the Democrats have a chance to retain their congressional majority. A week before, speaking to a women’s group in New York, Pelosi said that she “fully expects to be speaker of the House five weeks from now,” the paper reported. …

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Jennifer Rubin blogs about the Middle East peace process. Says that even liberals see what is happening.

Even Richard Cohen has figured out that it is not Bibi’s intransigence but Obama’s incompetence that is at the root of the non-peace-talks impasse. He writes:

“Obama ought to confer with someone who knows the region — and listen to him or her. Trouble is, many experts have told him that his emphasis on settlements was the wrong way to go. As late as last week and the succession of meetings held at the United Nations, it was clear that Netanyahu would not ask his Cabinet to extend the settlement freeze. Yet not only did the White House reject this warning, the president repeated his call for a freeze. “Our position on this issue is well-known,” Obama told the U.N. General Assembly. “We believe that the moratorium should be extended.” Well, it wasn’t. …

…The pattern repeats itself – Obama beats up on Israel, fails to deliver concessions to the PA,  and then commences begging with the parties not to break off talks and embarrass the U.S. president. Granted, Abbas is no Anwar Sadat, but Obama has made both himself and the PA president look weak and ineffective. …”

In Contentions, Evelyn Gordon shows how Obama’s past actions have hurt his current negotiations with Israel.

I suspect Netanyahu resorted to this flimsy excuse because the real reason is too undiplomatic to state publicly: Obama, by his own actions, has shown he views presidential promises as made to be broken. And Israel’s government is loath to incur the real damage of extending the freeze (which J.E. Dyer ably explained here) in exchange for promises that will be conveniently forgotten when they come due.

Israel, after all, received its last presidential promise just six years ago, in exchange for leaving Gaza. In writing, George W. Bush said the Palestinian Authority must end incitement and terror, voiced support for Israel “as a Jewish state,” vowed to “strengthen Israel’s capability” to defend itself, and said any Israeli-Palestinian deal should leave Israel with the settlement blocs and “defensible borders” and resettle Palestinian refugees in the Palestinian state rather than Israel. He also promised orally that Israel could continue building in the settlement blocs.

But when Obama took office, he denied the oral pledge’s very existence, infuriating even Israeli leftists. As Haaretz’s Aluf Benn wrote, it was possible to argue the policy should change, “but not to lie.” …

John Steele Gordon says that the Dems are the butt of jokes by liberal comedians.

Jon Stewart tears you to shreds, and the audience eats it up big-time (h/t Instapundit). For someone like President Obama, with an ego the size of a Midwestern state, this must be very, very painful to watch. For the rest of us, it’s a lot more hilarious than Steven Colbert’s recent Congressional testimony.

But because all great humor, political or otherwise, must be grounded in truth and the realities of human nature, it must also be very frightening to Obama, in particular, and Democrats, in general. When the people in a mainstream audience fall out of their chairs when Jon Stewart suggests that the slogan for the Democratic campaign this fall should be “We came, we saw, we sucked,” that’s a pretty good indication that the Democrats have lost the country and no longer control the political narrative.

I don’t think the Democrats will be laughing on Nov. 2.

Victor Davis Hanson comments on the Obami’s divisiveness.

…In Obama’s world, there is no such thing as legitimate skepticism of his policies, even though they seem to millions to be radical and contrary to the notions of limited government, lower taxes, and personal freedom, notions that have long set us apart from our Western constitutional cousins in Europe. Instead (as can be seen in his latest Rolling Stone interview), those who oppose his policies — from the tea-party groups that resent his background to that destructive force on the national scene, Fox News — represent darker forces.

Looking back at 20 months, we see this Nixonian them-vs.-us world in which good progressives battle against those who make more than $250,000 per year; greedy doctors taking out tonsils; police who stereotype and act stupidly; Arizonan xenophobes who snatch kids out for ice cream; Islamophobes who would deny constitutional rights to Muslim moderates at Ground Zero; and racists who have traditionally stood in the way (mutatis mutandis, as they do now) of freeing the slaves.

All this psychodrama is beneath a president. It is a prescription for tearing the country in two — and about the dumbest thing you could do just weeks before an election.

Peter Wehner has some Rolling Stone quotes from the president and opines on what they may signify.

Barack Obama’s recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine paints a portrait of a president under siege and lashing out.

For example, the Tea Party is, according to Obama, the tool of “very powerful, special-interest lobbies” — except for those in the Tea Party whose motivations are “a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president.”

Fox News, the president informs us, “is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.”

Then there are the Republicans, who don’t oppose Obama on philosophical grounds but decided they were “better off being able to assign the blame to us than work with us to try to solve problems.” Now there are exceptions — those two or three GOPers who Obama has been able to “pick off” and, by virtue of supporting Obama, “wanted to do the right thing” — meaning that the rest of the GOP wants to do the wrong thing. …

In the WaPo, Michael Gerson notes the arrogance in Obama’s criticism of everyone.

President Obama’s latest interview with Rolling Stone magazine is revealing precisely because it is so typical. Everyone — really just about everyone in American politics — is chided, challenged, instructed, judged or admonished in one way or another. The president’s condescension is universal.

…Some of these criticisms may be legitimate. Piled atop each other in a long interview, they indicate a president disappointed with a nation that can’t manage to live up to his own high standard of public service. The professor issues his grade: all of us need improvement.

A critic who is angry can be confronted as an equal. A critic who is disappointed is asserting his superiority. The method is inseparable from smugness. The view from Olympus may be broad, but it makes a leader distant from the ants below. …

Rick Richman counters Obama’s self-pitying argument that he inherited this mess. Not to mention that Obama has compounded the problems.

As the President and Vice President whine about the whining of their shrinking “base,” as being insufficiently appreciative of the superhuman efforts to confront our problems, they might remember the old saying that “in times like these, we should remember there have always been times like these.” Victor Davis Hanson writes that the problems Obama has faced have not, in fact, been worse than those that other presidents confronted as they entered the presidency:

A recession and 9/11 were not easy in 2001. And 18% interest, 18% inflation, 7% unemployment, and gas lines by 1981 greeted Reagan. Truman took over with a war … a wrecked Asia and Europe, a groundswell of communism, a climate of panic at home, and a soon to be nuclear Soviet Union … capped off soon by a war in Korea. …

John Podhoretz has some positively weird quotes from the prez.

Here are some things Barack Obama said this evening to Democratic donors (I quote from Mark Knoller’s Twitter feed):

“Now’s not the time to quit…it took time to free the slaves…ultimately we’ll make progress.”

“I need you to be fired up.”

“There better not be an enthusiasm gap, people.”

Ordinarily, I don’t think it’s wise to second-guess the communications or rallying skills of a man who garnered 69 million votes. I don’t know if I ran for office that I’d get 6900 votes. But wow. This is some terrible, terrible communicating.

I mean: It took time to free the slaves??? …

Byron York reports that there is no rest for the weary.

It’s often remarked that President Obama has enjoyed a number of getaways, vacations, and mini-vacations during his 20 months in office. But at a Democratic fundraiser Thursday night, the president said, “I’d appreciate a little break.”

…According to the pool report, Obama thanked Phillips for the work he and his wife have done for Team Obama. Then the president mentioned that Phillips and Douglass have an opulent place in Italy and wondered why there had been no invitation to visit. “I’d appreciate a little break and some Tuscan sun,” the president said, according to the pool report. “Some pasta. I can use it.”

Obama reportedly spoke about 15 minutes. After the dinner, he left the Phillips/Douglass home and headed to DAR Constitutional Hall, where he addressed the Democratic National Committee rap concert/fundraiser. Then, it was back to the White House by 9:45 pm, where the president presumably was able to get a little rest.

Toby Harnden looks at Florida’s senate race. He notes that no one is talking about Obama. And happily, Crist’s defection isn’t hurting Rubio.

Representative Kendrick Meek, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in the November 2nd mid-terms, also neglected to let Mr Obama’s name pass his lips during an appearance with the former vice-president in a union hall.

…Two years ago, every Democrat in the country was invoking Mr Obama’s name as they hoped to ride on his coat-tails to electoral victory. This year, he is a near-pariah, with many of the party’s candidates doing everything they can to distance themselves from him.

…This year, Mr Meek is trailing badly in a three-horse race. Marco Rubio, the Republican candidate, backed by the anti-government Tea Party, was initially viewed as too Right-wing for Florida. He now has a seemingly unassailable 13-point lead, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

Behind Mr Rubio, who is on 46 points, is Governor Charlie Crist. The Florida governor, a centrist who pulled out of the Republican primary race when it became clear he would lose, is on 33 points, with Mr Meek at just 18. …

David Warren discusses the possible computer strike on Iran’s nuclear reactor.

It would appear that a significant thing has happened — an act of war with extraordinary consequences — without anyone getting visibly upset. Perhaps I am understating: but the cyber worm attack on the Iranian nuclear facility at Bushehr may well have put it out of commission as effectively as any cruise missile strike by the Israeli or U.S. air force.

We cannot know the extent of damage. Iran is a mostly closed society; the Russians who designed and largely built that reactor have been operating no differently than they did during the Cold War; Pentagon sources seem themselves puzzled; Israelis, if they know something, are not telling; and so on. We can infer that something very bad has happened to the Bushehr reactor from scattered reports, but cannot be sure what that was, or if the cyber worm used to make the bad thing happen was (as various computer security experts have speculated) “Stuxnet.”

They became aware of Stuxnet several months ago, and immediately began trying to reverse engineer, to discover how it works and what it is meant to do. Also, mapping reports of its appearance as sleeping “malware” in thousands of the world’s major industrial computer control systems. (A peculiar concentration was found in Iran, with secondary concentrations in Pakistan and India.) …

David Goldman isn’t sure if the computer strike on Iran is true, but that it is plausible, and reminds us something similar has happened before.

Except for one established fact — that it’s been done before — I wouldn’t touch the Iranian cyberwar story with a barge pole. Lies, half-truths and misinformation surround live intelligence operations like nested hedge-rows, and to ask anyone truly in the know about such things is the equivalent of saying, “Lie to me.” The Israeli spook site Debka (entirely unreliable) reports that the damage to Iranian industrial controls from the “Stuxnet” worm is serious, citing Iranian media threats that Iran will wage a “long-term war” on Israel and the United States–the presumed malefactors–in retaliation. …

…The first documented large-scale cyber attack produced one of America’s most stunning covert victories of the Cold War. In mid-1982, a Siberian natural gas pumping station exploded with the force of three kilotons of TNT. …

No doubt there is an element of psy-ops. Computer controls are finicky at best, and if the Iranian systems are compromised in some way, they cannot know how many “logic bombs” will go off in the future, or which of their IT people might be wandering about with a USB drive containing additional worms. I have no way of sorting truth from psywar. How cool would it be if the story checked out?

In case you need another reason to clean out Congress, Andrew Phillips and Pete Donohue, in the NY Daily News have a story. 

The city will change the lettering on every single street sign – at an estimated cost of about $27.5 million – because the feds don’t like the font.

Street names will change from all capital letters to a combination of upper and lower case on roads across the country thanks to the pricey federal regulation, officials said Wednesday.

…The changes are among many in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices that regularly changes to improve road safety, highway administration spokesman Doug Hecox said. The mixed upper- and lowercase rule was adopted in 2003, but municipalities were given until 2018 to comply completely, Hecox said.

“If it’s such a pressing safety issue, why won’t it be done until 2018?…” said Paul Kelly, 66, a retired Manhattan resident. …

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As soon as Woodward’s new book appeared, you knew Charles Krauthammer would have at it. Here’s that column.

… What kind of commander in chief sends tens of thousands of troops to war announcing in advance a fixed date for beginning their withdrawal? One who doesn’t have his heart in it. One who doesn’t really want to win but is making some kind of political gesture. One who thinks he has to be seen as trying but is preparing the ground — meaning, the political cover — for failure.

Until now, the above was just inference from the president’s public rhetoric. No longer. Now we have the private quotes. Bob Woodward’s new book, drawing on classified memos and interviews with scores of national security officials, has Obama telling his advisers: “I want an exit strategy.” He tells the country publicly that Afghanistan is a “vital national interest,” but he tells his generals that he will not do the kind of patient institution-building that is the very essence of the counterinsurgency strategy that Gens. Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus crafted and that he — Obama — adopted.

Moreover, he must find an exit because “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.” This admission is the most crushing of all.

First, isn’t this the party that in two consecutive presidential campaigns — John Kerry’s and then Obama’s — argued vociferously that Afghanistan is the good war, the right war, the war of necessity, the central front in the war on terror? Now, after acceding to power and being given charge of that very war, Obama confides that he must retreat, lest that very same party abandon him. What happened in the interim? Did it suddenly develop a faint heart? Or was the party disingenuous about the Afghan war all along, using it as a convenient club with which to attack George W. Bush over Iraq, while protecting Democrats from the charge of being reflexively antiwar? …

Streetwise Professor, Craig Pirrong gives us a look at the military’s thinking about Afghanistan that Woodward’s account does not offer. 

…It would be more accurate to say: the military refused to provide Obama with the option he preferred–and which the military knew he preferred.  That option being, of course, a plan for a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan.  Rapid withdrawal being something between an immediate cut and run leaving behind a token force of trainers, and an only slightly lighter version of the plan currently in force.

This refusal frustrated Obama no end, because the military’s obstinacy deprived him of the political cover he desired.  The Pentagon and the uniformed military weren’t about to recommend something they did not believe in.  They said, in effect: if you want to gut the mission in Afghanistan, you take the responsibility, and don’t hide behind us. …

It should be noted, moreover, that the current brass …are deeply concerned about the stress on the Army and Marines in particular, and would be anxious to reduce commitments to the extent they believe prudent.  They also realize that Afghanistan is a logistical nightmare.  The fact that they were  pretty unified on the approach needed in Afghanistan despite their concerns over the stresses an increased commitment would impose on the force speaks volumes. …

Twice last week we carried items about China’s strange aggressiveness; first from Robert Samuelson and then Anne Applebaum. Showing the benefits to the U. S., is a great piece by Walter Russell Mead in the American Interest as he compares China to Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

… Chinese policy today seems bent on following Wilhelm’s road to ruin.  Chinese pressure is pushing countries like India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia towards closer cooperation with the United States.  China’s regional allies are substantially weaker and more problematic: North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan. It’s a picture Wilhelm II would recognize.

Worse, from a Chinese point of view: it will take many years to live down the unpleasant impression its current actions are making.  Twenty years of scrupulously patient effort at getting its neighbors to embrace China’s peaceful rise are being squandered by six weeks of aggressive diplomacy.  Just as Soviet bullying periodically strengthened the NATO alliance by reminding Europeans just how much they needed American protection, so China today is unintentionally solidifying America’s Pacific alliances at no cost to us.

Personally, I am not gloating about this.  America’s goal in Asia is not to win diplomatic or, God forbid, military contests with China.  Our long term goal remains the development of some kind of stable international system in Asia that creates the same kind of long term peace and prosperity there that the European Union (with all its faults) has brought to Europe.  Our interests will be best served when and if China ceases to throw its weight around in a sterile quest for Wilhelmine Weltmacht and seriously dedicates its power and wealth to the construction of a peaceful Asian system with appropriate protections for its neighbors.  The rise of a peaceful German democracy plus an American presence and German memberships in NATO and the EU has helped other Europeans overcome their well founded fear of their Teutonic neighbors.  For all the EU’s many problems, Germany today enjoys more real influence and has more security than the kaisers ever knew. …

…American power in the world has both a ceiling and a floor.  If America gets too powerful and the world looks too unipolar, then countries around the world start acting in ways that cut America down to size.  If China collapsed into years of internal dissension, turbulence and instability, India, Japan and South Korea might well take the opportunity to distance themselves from America.  When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the NATO countries (and especially Germany and France) looked for ways to stake out a more independent world role.

In George W. Bush’s first term, many officials foolishly did and said things that triggered ‘ceiling behavior’ around the world.  They created the impression that America had the power and the will to reshape the entire international order to its taste.  In truth, we lacked both the ability and the will to carry that through; the Bush rhetoric alienated other countries and set off negative reactions around the world in part because it did not fully grasp the dynamics of America’s world role.

But American power has a floor as well as a ceiling.  Just as the defeat in Vietnam ended up by strengthening our ties with Asian countries who were suddenly terrified we would abandon the region in a general retreat, the difficulties the Bush administration experienced did not, as so many of its critics predicted, lead to a general collapse of America’s world position.  A chastened but still powerful America is more or less what most of the world really wants: an America that is strong enough to defend regional power balances in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, but not so strong and cocky that it believes it can remake the world in the short term. …

The Economist compares India to China and says that in the long run, India’s economy will win.

…There are two reasons why India will soon start to outpace China. One is demography. China’s workforce will shortly start ageing; in a few years’ time, it will start shrinking. That’s because of its one-child policy—an oppressive measure that no Indian government would get away with. Indira Gandhi tried something similar in the 1970s, when she called a state of emergency and introduced a forced-sterilisation programme. There was an uproar of protest. Democracy was restored and coercive population policies were abandoned. India is now blessed with a young and growing workforce. Its dependency ratio—the proportion of children and old people to working-age adults—is one of the best in the world and will remain so for a generation. India’s economy will benefit from this “demographic dividend”, which has powered many of Asia’s economic miracles.

The second reason for optimism is India’s much-derided democracy. The notion that democracy retards development in poor countries has gained currency in recent years. Certainly, it has its disadvantages. Elected governments bow to the demands of selfish factions and interest groups. Even the most urgent decisions are endlessly debated and delayed.

…No doubt a strong central government would have given India a less chaotic Commonwealth games, but there is more to life than badminton and rhythmic gymnastics. India’s state may be weak, but its private companies are strong. Indian capitalism is driven by millions of entrepreneurs all furiously doing their own thing. Since the early 1990s, when India dismantled the “licence raj” and opened up to foreign trade, Indian business has boomed. The country now boasts legions of thriving small businesses and a fair number of world-class ones whose English-speaking bosses network confidently with the global elite. They are less dependent on state patronage than Chinese firms, and often more innovative: they have pioneered the $2,000 car, the ultra-cheap heart operation and some novel ways to make management more responsive to customers. Ideas flow easily around India, since it lacks China’s culture of secrecy and censorship. That, plus China’s rampant piracy, is why knowledge-based industries such as software love India but shun the Middle Kingdom. …

Claudia Rosett’s latest is on the UN’s plans to deal with contacts with extraterrestrials. No, really. This would be great comedy if we weren’t picking up the tab.

Just when you thought the United Nations could not possibly become any more inane, out comes a story in London’s Sunday Times that the UN is about to appoint a special envoy for alien life forms. The idea, apparently, is that if aliens contact or land on earth, demanding “Take me to your leader,” the UN will have a designated official ready to step in as chief mouthpiece for the human race.

…The question we ought to be asking is how many U.S. tax dollars the UN plans to lavish on this new arrangement. …

…The UN official reportedly in line for the new role of head of alien outreach is a Malaysian astrophysicist, Mazlan Othman. She currently heads the UN’s Vienna-based Office for Outer Space Affairs, also know as UNOOSA, or OOSA. According to London’s Sunday Times, Othman recently gave a recorded talk, in which she said that in the event of signals from extraterrestrials, humankind should be ready with “a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject.” …

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Daniel Hannan, MP has a new book coming out. He blogs about it in the Telegraph Blogs, UK.

Barack Obama born in Kenya? Pah! If anything, he was born in Brussels. The policies his administration is pursuing amount to comprehensive Europeanisation: European carbon taxes, European foreign policy, European healthcare, European daycare, European disarmament, European industrial intervention and, inevitably, European unemployment rates. …

…I’m not saying that everything in the US is good and everything in the EU is bad, far from it. It’s just that the aspects of Euro-politics which your rulers seem most intent on copying are those which have demonstrably failed: the centralisation of power, higher state spending, welfare dependency, excessive regulation.

Why does this model fail? Why does the current administration seem so drawn to it? Is there still time to turn aside? Can US conservatives get their act together? Will the Tea Party succeed? Is there such a thing as American exceptionalism? Why does the success of the US matter to Britain? I address these and other questions in The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America, out tomorrow.

In the WSJ, Nicole and Mark Crain explain how government regulation hurts the economy, discourages hiring, and increases your cost of living.

The annual cost of federal regulations in the United States increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008, a 3% real increase over five years, to about 14% of U.S. national income. This cost is in addition to the federal tax burden of 21%, for a combined cost of 35% of national income. One out of every three dollars earned in the U.S. goes to pay for or comply with federal laws and regulations, and new policies enacted in 2010 for health care and financial services will increase this burden. …

….In a report released last week for the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration, we find that small businesses bear a disproportionately large share of regulatory costs. The portion of these costs that falls initially on businesses overall was $8,086 per employee in 2008. But these costs are not borne equally by businesses of all sizes. Larger firms benefit from economies of scale in compliance; small businesses do not have that advantage.

…Small manufacturers bear compliance costs that are 110% higher than those of medium-sized firms and 125% higher than large firms’ costs. As much as it is fashionable to blame China for the demise of small manufacturing in America, the evidence suggests that looking for some reasons closer to home is warranted. …

…In per-household terms, the combined federal burden of regulation and taxes is a remarkable $37,962. Increased transparency in both the cost and benefit side of the regulatory equation is necessary to determine whether what we spend is worth the 35% of national income that it costs, and whether the distribution of the burden is relatively efficient. This is particularly true now that the federal government is undertaking Herculean efforts to stimulate the economy while increasing regulations costly to businesses.

Tony Blankley writes about a remarkable movement, and the hope that true change is coming.

…Christopher Lasch‘s “The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy,” posthumously published in 1995. The noted historian, whose intellectual journey carried him from the left in the ’60s to the populist right by the ’90s, would have been giddy over the Tea Party.

…The very idea of virtue and other absolutes has fallen into disfavor with the elites. Lasch described the emergence of elites who “control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set the terms of public debate.” These elites would undermine American democracy in order to fulfill their insatiable desire for wealth and power and to perpetuate their social and political advantages. …

…The Tea Party movement will assert middle-class values, economic nationalism, patriotism and other concepts derided by postmodern elitists. The movement’s central tenets – small government, decentralization of power and an end to profligate spending – are precisely what Lasch prescribed to restore American democracy.

The elites’ fear and loathing of the Tea Party movement is rooted in the recognition that the real change is only now coming. They are right to be fearful, for the ultimate outcome of the Tea Party‘s triumph will be to constrain the elites’ economic and cultural hegemony. This reversal of fortune, with power flowing from the privileged back to the middle class, will take time to fully manifest itself. But an inexorable movement has begun. …

With his trademark clarity of thought and word, Thomas Sowell gives us an explanation of gold and freedom.

One of the many slick tricks of the Obama administration was to insert a provision in the massive Obamacare legislation regulating people who sell gold. This had nothing to do with medical care but everything to do with sneaking in an extension of the government’s power over gold, in a bill too big for most people to read.

Gold has long been a source of frustration for politicians who want to extend their power over the economy. First of all, the gold standard cramped their style because there is only so much money you can print when every dollar bill can be turned in to the government, to be exchanged for the equivalent amount of gold.

When the amount of money the government can print is limited by how much gold the government has, politicians cannot pay off a massive national debt by just printing more money and repaying the owners of government bonds with dollars that are cheaper than the dollars with which the bonds were bought. In other words, politicians cannot cheat people as easily. …

In the National Review, James Capretta reviews the Obami abuses of power related to the establishment of the Obamacare bureaucracy.

…It’s now been six months since Congress passed Obamacare — not a long time given the sweeping nature of the legislation and the long phase-in schedule for its most significant provisions. Even so, it is already abundantly clear that Obamacare’s critics were dead right: The new health law has set in motion a government takeover of American health care, and a very hostile one at that. The Obama administration’s clumsy and overbearing behavior since its passage proves the point.

First, there are the heavy-handed statements coming out of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Two weeks ago, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to the nation’s insurers with a plainly stated threat: Either the insurers conform to the political agenda of the administration and describe the reasons for premium increases in terms acceptable to the Democratic party, or they will be shut out entirely from the government-managed insurance marketplace. What could possibly have provoked a cabinet secretary to launch such an indiscriminate broadside against an entire industry? Simple: A handful of insurers had dared to utter the truth, noting that the new law has imposed costly insurance mandates that will raise premiums for everyone. For that offense, the federal government has essentially threatened to put the truth-telling insurers out of business. And what’s truly astonishing, and telling, is that the new law almost certainly gives the HHS secretary the power to do so if she really wants to.

Then there is the matter of Dr. Donald Berwick. Recall that President Obama took more than a year to settle on Dr. Berwick as his nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — and then moved in a matter of weeks to put him in place without Senate confirmation. The president tried to blame Republicans for this blatant end-run around constitutional checks and balances, even though Democrats control the Senate and could have held a hearing and a vote if they had wanted to. The truth is that Democrats didn’t want Dr. Berwick to be confirmed in the Senate. They wanted him on the job, for sure, because he is an ardent government-takeover enthusiast, and is prepared to use all of the levers at his disposal to advance that objective. The president and his Democratic allies just wanted to get Dr. Berwick in place without the public’s really noticing. So they chose to circumvent the normal process and put him in the CMS position with a time-limited recess appointment. For the next year and a half, Dr. Berwick is free to use CMS’s enormous new powers to force doctors and hospitals to conform to his vision of effective health care, and he is essentially accountable to no one but the president. …

The ABC Sunday Morning show began to develop a following for Jake Tapper. Then the idiots in charge of ABC put Christiane Amanpour in the anchor’s chair. Jennifer Rubin describes the result.

ABC News decided to put the overtly biased and under-informed Christiane Amanpour in the host chair for “This Week.” Perhaps they thought she had star quality or that MSNBC’s netroot viewers could be lured. But the result is a weekly display of journalistic malpractice. …

AMANPOUR: All right. But really a lot of people — I mean, people from all over the world, frankly, say to me here comes a president with a huge mandate, a huge reservoir of goodwill, huge promises to change, and with all of that, his popularity is down. People don’t appreciate some of the amazing legislative agenda that he’s accomplished. Is this a failure of leadership? Has he allowed the opposition to define him? [Emphasis added.]

Good grief. Is she on the White House payroll?

Peter Wehner agrees with Rubin, and adds these thoughts:

Apropos your posting, Jennifer, Christiane Amanpour has been ABC’s “This Week” host for nine Sundays — and a week ago last Sunday, on September 19, the show dropped to its lowest ratings in the 25-54 age demographic in more than seven years. According to Mediaite, the last time ABC had a lower rating in the demo was the August 24, 2003 show. Year-to-year, the show was down 29 percent in total viewers and 38 percent in the demo, while its popularity declined in both categories week-to-week as well (while that of NBC and CBS grew).

Just like the Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid acknowledged his mistake in making Kevin Kolb the starting quarterback and has now replaced him with Michael Vick, ABC’s brass should recognize the error of its ways and replace Amanpour with Jake Tapper, who not only received higher ratings than Amanpour but is also a far better (and more objective) host. Tapper is, in fact, among the nation’s best political reporters. For reasons Jen details, Amanpour is not.

And we have Steve Krakauer’s piece from Media-ite to which Wehner referred.

…Last Sunday, September 19, the show didn’t just finish in third place, behind NBC’s Meet The Press and CBS’ Face The Nation – it was the lowest ratings in the A25-54 demographic in more than seven years.

… Year-to-year, the show was down 29% in total viewers and 38% in the demo, while it declined in both categories week-to-week as well (while NBC and CBS grew).

It’s not like it had anything to do with the guests either – This Week put together arguably the best guest list last Sunday. Amanpour had a Sunday exclusive with President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as well as an interview with Sec. Hillary Clinton. On paper, it was a strong show. But the ratings, which haven’t been spectacular from the very beginning, have continued to see a decline, despite these high profile bookings. ..

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Mary Anastasia O’Grady is skeptical of Fidel Castro’s recent declaration.

…If the regime is to stay in power, it needs a new source of income to pay the secret police and keep the masses in rice. The best bet is the American tourist, last seen circa 1950 exploiting the locals, according to revolutionary lore, but now needed by the regime. It wants the U.S. travel ban lifted. To prevail, Castro needs to counteract rumors that he is a dictator. Solution: a makeover in the Atlantic. …

…We are supposed to conclude that Cuba is no longer a threat to global stability and that Fidel is a reformed tyrant. But how believable is a guy whose revolution all but wiped out Cuba’s tiny Jewish community of 15,000, and who spent the past 50 years supporting the terrorism of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Syria, Libya and Iran? And how does Castro explain Venezuela, where Cuban intelligence agents run things, Iran is an ally and anti-Semitism has been state policy in recent years? Mr. Goldberg doesn’t go there with Fidel.

…When Castro declares that the Cuban model no longer works, Mr. Goldberg turns to Ms. Sweig, as if there is something profound to be grasped. He is not saying “the ideas of the Revolution” have failed, she explains, but only that the state “has much too big a role” in the economy. Right, except that the state-owned economy is the idea of the revolution. …

China is in the headlines for flexing its naval muscles and provoking regional disputes. In the WaPo, Anne Applebaum looks at the increasing economic strength of this superpower.

…Over the past decade, China has kept silent, lain low and behaved more like a multinational company than a global superpower — and garnered enormous political influence as a result.

The fruits of this success are everywhere. Look at Afghanistan, for example, where American troops have been fighting for nearly a decade, where billions of dollars of American aid money has been spent — and where a Chinese company has won the rights to exploit one of the world’s largest copper deposits. Though American troops don’t protect the miners directly, Afghan troops, trained and armed by Americans, do. And though the mine is still in its early phases, the Chinese businessmen and engineers — wearing civilian clothes, offering jobs — are already more popular with the locals than the U.S. troops, who carry guns and talk security. …

America fights, in other words, while China does business, and not only in Afghanistan. In Iraq, where American troops brought down a dictator and are still fighting an insurgency, Chinese oil companies have acquired bigger stakes in the oil business than their American counterparts. In Pakistan, where billions in American military aid helps the government keep the Taliban at bay, China has set up a free-trade area and is investing heavily in energy and ports.

…Quietly, the Chinese have also cornered the market in rare-earth metals, unusual minerals that have lovely names (promethium, ytterbium) and are vital for the production of cellphones, lasers and computers — not to mention hybrid cars, solar panels and wind turbines. Though China doesn’t control the world’s reserves of these elements, some of which aren’t all that rare, mining them is dirty, labor-intensive and ideally suited for cheap production in a country with low wages and lower environmental standards. Nobody else can compete, which is why China now controls 99 percent of the world’s supply of some of these elements. …

J.E.Dyer explains why China’s provocation of Japan should produce concern.

…Difficult as such positions can be for Asian nations to draw back from, it’s China’s prosecution of a material stake in the disputed economic zone off the Senkaku Islands that may keep both sides in confrontation. Japan has reportedly identified Chinese drilling equipment in the disputed area and suspects that Beijing is preparing to drill for natural gas there. Oil and gas exploration by both nations goes back to 2004; Japan has already stated concerns that drilling performed within China’s acknowledged economic zone could tap gas reserves in the area claimed by Tokyo. Taiwan is another claimant to economic rights in the area, a factor that serves to complicate relations among the parties.

China has assumed a position it cannot back off from gracefully — and one involving its most important economic interests. The outcome of this confrontation will be a point of no return in one way or another. Neither China nor Japan will rest if it loses this face-off. More than economic assets are at stake; this is about power relations and the future of Asia. Of greatest concern in all of this is the basic fact that China was emboldened to pick this fight. Beijing apparently calculates that the U.S. will acquiesce in whatever de facto diplomatic triumph China’s leaders can achieve over Japan.

Japan is unlikely to back down, however. The outcome of this incident matters too greatly to its national future. It’s trite to talk about being at a crossroads, but that’s because the metaphor usually fits. Americans are faced with a choice of our own in this situation: either we are relevant to its resolution — a resolution involving one of our closest allies — or we are not. If we’re not, the status quo of the “Pax Americana” will not last much longer.

The Daily Beast has a must-read article from Philip K. Howard on reforming government.

Government is broken. It spends money we don’t have, takes no responsibility for the future, and suffocates daily freedoms under a thickening blanket of unnecessary bureaucracy and litigation.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are to blame. Instead of appealing to our better nature, they promise short-term self-interest of continued entitlements or lower taxes. Instead of leadership for a responsible society, they attack each other with partisan half-truths, oblivious to the critical need to change course.

Changing leaders is not enough. Decades of accumulated law and bureaucracy have made it impossible for anyone to use common sense. New leaders come to Washington and immediately get stuck in the bureaucratic goo.

Government needs to be cleaned out. Government has a vital role in a crowded society, as a steward of common resources and public services. But it cannot deal effectively with the important challenges of today—whether to contain runaway entitlements or to create clean energy—when resources are committed to goals of past decades. Accumulated law has become a fortress for the status quo. Unnecessary law and bureaucracy also act as a heavy weight on society, making it hard for teachers, doctors, and other citizens to pursue their dreams. Many Americans no longer feel they can make a difference.

Government will never fix itself. Washington and state capitals have become disconnected from the public they serve, focused on partisan tug-of-wars instead of on the vital needs of society.

Change can only come from outside pressure. Americans must come together to demand a new approach to governing. …

In Investor’s Business Daily, Brian Deagon writes about the Tea Party’s use of the internet.

Type TeaPartyPatriots.org into your Web browser, and the roots of the upstart political movement are quickly exposed.

On the right are listings of Tea Party events across America — the latest of 6,000 events posted in the 18 months since the movement and Web site sprang up.

At the site’s lower part are state-by-state lists of links to individual Tea Party groups — 2,400 in all, says Robert Gaudet, the software consultant who designed the site. …

…The site has 127,000 registered members, with hundreds signing up each day. Along with other related sites he created, Gaudet estimates that he has an e-mail list of 1 million Tea Party enthusiasts.

The Internet has allowed the Tea Party movement to be radically decentralized. Really, the movement doesn’t use social networking, it is social networking. No single leader sets priorities and marshals forces, yet activists have managed to channel huge sources and attention on political races and issues. …

We hear about another interesting new advance from the Economist, on dirigible transport.

TRANSPORTING large, clunky bits of equipment has always posed a challenge. Roads and railways do not reach everywhere, and even if they did, many cumbersome and heavy constructions need to be hauled in pieces, only to be put together at the final destination. Aeroplane cargo faces even tighter restrictions on shape and size, not to mention the need for runways. Heavy-transport helicopters, such as the Mil Mi-26 or Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane, address some of these difficulties, but their payloads are limited to 20 and nine tonnes, respectively, and the huge rotors create a powerful downdraft that makes handling that payload rather tricky. So people have long been looking for other ways round the problem. Now, Skylifter, an Australian aeronautical firm, thinks it has found the perfect solution.

The company is developing a piloted dirigible capable of carrying loads of up to 150 tonnes over distances as great as 2,000km (1,240 miles) at a speed of 45 knots (83kph). This would permit the craft to transport not just hefty components, but entire buildings, to remote areas. The company envisages modules ranging from rural hospitals and disaster-relief centres to luxury airborne cruise ships.

Rather than use either a spherical or a cigar-shaped aerostat, as the gas-filled envelope of a lighter-than-air craft is known, Skylifter has developed a discus-shaped one. This means that like a traditional, round balloon—and unlike the elongated dirigible blimps that have hitherto been used as serious modes of commercial transport—the craft is “directionless”. In other words, it is oblivious of where the wind happens to be blowing from, which simplifies load-handling in places where the wind is fickle. At the same time, being flatter than a sphere, the aerostat acts less like a sail than a traditional balloon does, making it easier to steer. The flying-saucer shape also acts as a parachute, affording greater control during descent. …

For years, cardiologists have recommended aspirin in low dosages for heart health. Turns out it also prevents bowel cancer. New Scientist has the story.

A LITTLE aspirin might just go as far as a lot when it comes to preventing bowel cancer – with fewer side effects.

So says a five-year retrospective study led by Malcolm Dunlop of the University of Edinburgh, UK, that compared the aspirin habits of 2800 people with cancer and 3000 without. The team found that the risk of getting cancer was 25 per cent lower in those who had been taking 75 milligrams of the drug daily compared with those who had not …

This small reduction in risk is comparable to that from earlier studies in which the doses were much higher. Andrew Chan of Harvard Medical School in Boston is not convinced: “I still believe that lower doses are not as effective as higher ones.” His 20-year follow-ups on 80,000 women and 50,000 men showed that daily doses of 325 milligrams worked best for preventing bowel cancer.

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Robert Samuelson looks at the possibility of a trade war with China.

No one familiar with the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 should relish the prospect of a trade war with China — but that seems to be where we’re headed and probably should be where we are headed. Although the Smoot-Hawley tariff did not cause the Great Depression, it contributed to its severity by provoking widespread retaliation. Confronting China’s export subsidies risks a similar tit-for-tat cycle at a time when the global economic recovery is weak. This is a risk, unfortunately, we need to take.

In a decade, China has gone from a huge, poor nation to an economic colossus. Although its per capita income ($6,600 in 2009) is only one-seventh that of the United States ($46,400), the sheer size of its economy gives it a growing global influence. China passed Japan this year as the second-largest national economy. In 2009, it displaced Germany as the biggest exporter and also became the world’s largest energy user. …

…How much China’s currency is undervalued and how many U.S. jobs have been lost are unclear. The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research group, says a revaluation of 20 percent would create 300,000 to 700,000 U.S. jobs over two to three years. Economist Robert Scott of the liberal Economic Policy Institute estimates that trade with China has cost 3.5 million jobs. This may be high, because it assumes that imports from China displace U.S. production when many may displace imports from other countries. But all estimates are large, though well short of the recession’s total employment decline of 8.4 million. …

David Warren continues his efforts to generate answers to the problems our society is currently facing. In this article, he delves into public education.

… But, in a single phrase, the notion that “education is too important to be left to chance” is so universally accepted, that the public at large is capable of overlooking universal failure. Our state schools… have degenerated into dysfunctional propaganda mills.

We easily accept the associated notion that “in a democracy, public schooling is necessary to assure minimum standards for citizenship.” That schools should provide the machinery for the indoctrination of the masses follows naturally from this. Think it through. The proposition actually reverses the first principle of democracy: that government should answer to citizens, and not citizens to government. And remember, that all “progressive” educational proposals require political compulsion.

…But schools exist for education, not vice versa. We have come to look at the basic issue in an inverted way. There are people alive today who actually think problems with education can be solved by spending more money on schools, in defiance of an easily observed, nearly inverse relation between spending and results. …

The one immediate, radical reform for which I think we should aim, after winning the battle of ideas, is the destruction of all centralized school boards and liquidation of all departments of education. Put every single public and high school in the control of a local parent association, and necessity — the most efficient instructor — will soon teach the parents what they must do. Return the universities to the elitist status quo ante, before governments took them over: for “average” people don’t belong in there. …

Michael Barone writes about two important issues addressed by the Pledge to America.

…On Sept. 23 last week, 12 Republican House members stood in a hardware store in Sterling, Va., and issued a Pledge to America.

…One is to roll back non-defense discretionary spending to 2008 levels. The other is to repeal — not revise or amend or embroider, but repeal — the health care bill signed by Barack Obama…

…But wouldn’t it hurt Republicans, if they have a House majority, to get into a budget fight as it hurt Newt Gingrich’s new majority back in 1995? Not necessarily. The benefits from those spending increases are pretty invisible to the ordinary voters (though visible to public employee union leaders who give millions to Democrats). How many ads are Democratic candidates running bragging about these spending increases?

…Moreover, the macroeconomy is in a very different place than it was during the Gingrich era. Then we were well started into an economic recovery, one aided by Republicans’ partial victories on budget and tax issues. Money didn’t seem scarce and shutting down the government seemed extreme.

Today we are in, if not an official recession, at least an agonizingly slow recovery. And if Democrats complain that it’s unfair for government and public employees to be limited to what they got in 2008, Republicans can reply that an awful lot of their constituents would be very happy to go back to the income levels and the housing equity and the 401(k) balances they had in 2008.

Everyone has been suffering. Why should government be exempt? …

Jennifer Rubin has an amazing story on voter fraud that was discovered by a grass-roots organization. We’ll leave you to read the post and to wonder what, if anything, the government does right.

…The Obama Justice Department isn’t keen on enforcing Section No. 8 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires that states and localities clean up their voting rolls to prevent fraud. So ordinary citizens are doing what the Justice Department won’t — uncovering voter fraud. This report explains that 50 friends took up the effort after seeing what went on in Houston on Election Day 2008:

“What we saw shocked us,” [ Catherine Engelbrecht] said. “There was no one checking IDs, judges would vote for people that asked for help. It was fraud, and we watched like deer in the headlights.”

Their shared experience, she says, created “True the Vote,” a citizen-based grassroots organization that began collecting publicly available voting data to prove that what they saw in their day at the polls was, indeed, happening — and that it was happening everywhere.

“It was a true Tea Party moment,” she remembers. …

We have an article from the WSJ that brings us some concern. Jim Towey was the Director of the White House Office on Faith-Based Initiatives, and writes how Obama has used this office to push a political agenda. This article begs the question of why the government is trying to do the work of churches, charities, and non-profits. We need to have more discussion about what duties we need government to perform, and make government focus on doing those tasks, and only those tasks, effectively and efficiently. The President would not be able to politicize an Office on Faith-Based Initiatives if the office didn’t exist.

…Yet on Tuesday President Obama and his director of faith-based initiatives convened exactly such a meeting to try to control political damage from the unpopular health-care law. “Get out there and spread the word,” Politico.com reported the president as saying on a conference call with leaders of faith-based and community groups. “I think all of you can be really important validators and trusted resources for friends and neighbors, to help explain what’s now available to them.”

…According to the White House website, the faith-based office exists “to more effectively serve Americans in need.” I guess that now means Americans in need of Democratic talking points on health care. Do we really want taxpayer-funded bureaucrats mobilizing ministers to go out to all the neighborhoods and spread the good news of universal coverage?

…Nearly 20 months later, however, the faith-based office has failed to be a voice within the administration for compassion. Poverty rates are at record highs, and the economy is producing new waves of homeless families. Meanwhile the faith-based office in the White House and those in 11 federal agencies have no record, no results, and no relevance.

This operation stands in stark contrast to the priority Mr. Bush placed on this office. Every year, he used the grand stage of the State of the Union address to launch new compassion programs. In his first six months in office, he pushed for a vote in Congress to end discrimination against religious charities. New programs to mentor the children of prisoners, expand choices for addicts seeking treatment, and combat the spread of AIDS were launched. They have since transformed countless lives. …

In Politico, Sarah Kliff has more on the administration attempt to use religious leaders.

With nothing else working, President Barack Obama is asking religious leaders to help him sell the public on health care reform.

POLITICO listened in to an Oval Office conference call Tuesday, where Obama and top administration officials, beseeched thousands of faith-based and community organizations to preach the gospel on new insurance reforms, chiefly the Patients’ Bill of Rights.

“Get out there and spread the word,” Obama told leaders from across the religious spectrum on the conference call, organized by the Health and Human Services Center for Faith-Based and Community Partnerships.

…Obama instructed faith leaders to treat the new law as settled fact and use their perches of power to convey that message to congregants and friends. …

…The call included the administration’s highest-ranking health reform officials: Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, White House Office of Health Reform director Nancy Ann-DeParle, and Assistant to the President for Special Products Stephanie Cutter.

Joshua DuBois, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Partnerships, gave activists a rallying cry: “Get the word out there, get information out there. Make use of the resources we’ve described on this call: the website, door hangers, one pagers and so forth. We’ve got work to do.” … 

Toby Harnden blogs about another Obami media campaign.

This smacks of real desperation. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s senior adviser, told liberal bloggers that he wants to “enlist” them to help Democrats in the mid-term elections. To which Susan Madrak of Crooks and Liars responded that the White House was treating the Left like “the girl you’ll take under the bleachers but you won’t be seen with in the light of day” and was guilty of “hippie punching”.

…Axelrod is also asking the mainstream media to help out Democrats. In a Washington Post oped (interesting that the White House can apparently get this for free rather than paying the going rate for what amounts to party political advertising) he calls on “the media to shine a light” on conservative groups supporting Republican candidates in the mid-terms.

The truth is that many in the mainstream media feel a tad embarrassed about how OTT they went with Obama in 2008. Since then, they have been starved of access and, according to a number of White House reporters, treated with near-contempt by administration officials. …

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Daniel Hannan, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, shares a snapshot of India’s importance to the Anglosphere.

The Anglosphere, for anyone who still doesn’t know, is the community of free, English-speaking nations linked, not by governmental decree, but by shared values. …

…When passing through Delhi recently, I pointed out that the city feels more familiar, less foreign, than it did a decade ago – partly because the Indian middle class is ballooning, partly because the English language is more widespread and partly because of migration.

Communities of Indian descent remain in almost every corner of the Commonwealth, including those which British settlers evacuated long ago: Fiji, South Africa, Malaysia, East Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada – and increasingly, of course, the US. …

…Almost all post-colonial governments begin by emphasising their distance from the former occupiers, and India was no exception. But technological change and rapid embourgeoisement are realigning India with the other Anglophone democracies. David Cameron, to his credit, grasps that power is shifting eastward, and sees the opportunity for Britain. Barack Obama, by contrast, seems to scorn the vast ally which Bush had secured. Fortunately, Indians seem content to wait for a different attitude from Washington. They are a patient and courteous people.

Notwithstanding his consternation at O’Donnell’s Delaware win, Charles Krauthammer likes the idea of a Dem campaign against the tea parties.

… what sane Democrat wants to nationalize an election at a time of 9.6 percent unemployment and such disappointment with Obama that just this week several of his own dreamy 2008 supporters turned on him at a cozy town hall? The Democrats’ only hope is to run local campaigns on local issues. That’s how John Murtha’s former district director hung on to his boss’s seat in a special election in Pennsylvania.

Newt Gingrich had to work hard — getting Republican candidates to sign the Contract with America — to nationalize the election that swept Republicans to victory in 1994. A Democratic anti-Tea Party campaign would do that for the Republicans — nationalize the election, gratis — in 2010. As a very recent former president — now preferred (Public Policy Polling, Sept. 1) in bellwether Ohio over the current one by 50 percent to 42 percent — once said: Bring ‘em on.

The Dems are abandoning ship, writes Bill Kristol.

It would be unbecoming for us at The Weekly -Standard?—we do have to uphold standards, after all!—to chortle with glee as the Democratic party melts down. It would be unkind to whoop at the top of our lungs as Obama White House big shots quit or get fired, and to cheer with gusto as the GOP leadership behaves sensibly, the Tea Party goes from strength to strength, and momentum builds towards a huge Election Day repudiation of big government liberalism.

So, instead, we’ll simply point out, calmly and quietly, that the Democratic party is in meltdown, the Obama White House is in disarray, and the voters are in rebellion against both of them.

…This White House will have lost, by the end of this year, a remarkably high percentage of its original senior staff members. The White House counsel, communications director, budget director, and chair of the council of economic advisers are already gone—to say nothing of the estimable Van Jones, special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation. The chief of staff, national security adviser, and top economic policy director will follow shortly. Almost all of them were oh-so-convinced they were the best and brightest, oh-so-contemptuous of others who had labored in those jobs, and oh-so-disdainful of the American people. If we were less good-hearted and generous in spirit, we would be tempted to say: Goodbye and good riddance. …

Craig Pirrong in Streetwise Professor answers Thomas Friedman’s delusions of grandiose central planning.

…What has made the American economy more productive than any in history is the largely uncoordinated actions of millions of individuals, often in competition with one another. Competition among freely assembled cooperative organizations–firms.  Guys in their basements and garages.  Not governments and mandarins and bureaucrats who act like those paid to whip Chinese boat haulers in the old days.

America’s current economic problems are largely a manifestation of the unceasing efforts of the government to impose central direction and control.  And the current political firestorm sweeping the country is directly attributable to millions of people pushing back.
Carlson’s 2d Marine Raider Battalion used the Chinese expression “Gung ho” as a motto: it was soon adopted by the rest of the Marine Corps.  Gung ho means “Pull together,” or “work together in harmony.”  That’s Tom Friedman’s idea of how an economy and a polity should work.  It also happens to be the idea held by Obama, and a good part of Congress and the bureaucracy.

It is appealing to a certain kind of mind that makes analogies between tribes or firms or military units or other formal organizations on the one hand, and entire economies on the other.  A kind of mind that has no comprehension of emergent order, spontaneous organization, ordered liberty, or decentralized coordination through competition and the price system.  ”Gung ho” makes sense as an ethos for a military unit: it makes no sense as an organizing principle for an economy. …

Jonah Goldberg heard from a reader who is more informed on China than Thomas Friedman.

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg:
 
I have appreciated your past articles exposing Thomas Friedman’s ridiculous envy of so-called “progress” in China. But his latest article demonstrates beyond doubt that he has no clue about the real China or its people. Contrary to his protestation, his opinions are based on illusion and have no credibility whatsoever. …
 
…If Thomas Friedman bothered to visit with real Chinese families and saw how they actually lived, he would realize that his admiration for China is misplaced. He would no longer stand in awe of its buildings but rather would admire those Chinese citizens who have managed to remain inspired by the dream of freedom and liberty despite the oppression of their government.
 
(I still have to travel to China so please keep my name confidential in all respects. By the way, doesn’t that request say all that needs to be said about China?)…

It has come to pass that the DOJ disinclination in the Black Panther’s case has broken into mainstream discourse with publication Saturday in WaPo.

A veteran Justice Department lawyer accused his agency Friday of being unwilling to pursue racial discrimination cases on behalf of white voters, turning what had been a lower-level controversy into an escalating political headache for the Obama administration.

Christopher Coates’s testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was the latest fallout from the department’s handling of a 2008 voter-intimidation case involving the New Black Panther Party. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans accuse Justice officials of improperly narrowing the charges, allegations that they strongly dispute.

Filed weeks before the Obama administration took office, the case focused on two party members who stood in front of a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008, one carrying a nightstick. The men were captured on video and were accused of trying to discourage some people from voting.

Coates, former head of the voting section that brought the case, testified in defiance of his supervisor’s instructions and has been granted whistleblower protection. Coates criticized what he called the “gutting” of the New Black Panthers case for “irrational reasons,” saying the decision was part of “deep-seated” opposition among the department’s leaders to filing voting-rights cases against minorities and cases that protect whites.

“I had people who told me point-blank that [they] didn’t come to the voting rights section to sue African American people,” said Coates, who transferred to the U.S. attorney’s office in South Carolina in January. “When you are paid by the taxpayer, that is totally indefensible.”  …

John Stossel has an interesting discussion about the fairness of earning pay and the “fairness” of taking other people’s money.

…Arthur Brooks, who heads the American Enterprise Institute.

“…the fairest system is the one that rewards the makers in society as opposed to rewarding the takers in society.”

Brooks wrote “The Battle,” which argues that the fight between free enterprise and big government will shape our future.

“The way that our culture is moving now is toward more redistribution, toward more progressive taxation, exempting more people from paying anything, and loading more of the taxes onto the very top earners in our society.”

But it seems “kind” to take it away from wealthier people and give it to those who need it more.

“Actually, it’s not,” Brooks says. “The government does not create wealth. It uses wealth that’s been created by the private sector.” …

We have the second part of Jeff Jacoby’s discussion of recycling. He expels the myths of recycling.

…Most of the stuff we throw out — aluminum cans are an exception — is cheaper to replace from scratch than to recycle. “Cheaper’’ is another way of saying “requires fewer resources.’’ Green evangelists believe that recycling our trash is “good for the planet’’ — that it conserves resources and is more environmentally friendly. But recycling household waste consumes resources, too.

Extra trucks are required to pick up recyclables, and extra gas to fuel those trucks, and extra drivers to operate them. Collected recyclables have to be sorted, cleaned, and stored in facilities that consume still more fuel and manpower; then they have to be transported somewhere for post-consumer processing and manufacturing. Add up all the energy, time, emissions, supplies, water, space, and mental and physical labor involved, and mandatory recycling turns out to be largely unsustainable — an environmental burden, not a boon.

“Far from saving resources,’’ Benjamin writes, “curbside recycling typically wastes resources — resources that could be used productively elsewhere in society.’’

Popular impressions to the contrary notwithstanding, we are not running out of places to dispose of garbage. Not only is US landfill capacity at an all-time high, but all of the country’s rubbish for the next 100 years could comfortably fit into a landfill measuring 10 miles square. Benjamin puts that in perspective: “Ted Turner’s Flying D ranch outside Bozeman, Mont., could handle all of America’s trash for the next century — with 50,000 acres left over for his bison.’’…

After seeing the movie Top Gun, it is hard to believe where military aviation is heading. The Economist fills us in.

JET fighters may be sexy in a Tom Cruise-ish sort of way, but for guerilla warefare—in which the enemy rarely has an air force of his own with which to dogfight—they are often not the tool for the job. Pilotless drones can help fill the gap. Sometimes there is no substitute for having a pilot on the scene, however, so modern air forces are starting to turn to a technology from the yesteryear of flying: the turboprop. …

…Turboprops are also hard to shoot down. Air Tractor, another firm that makes cropdusters, branched out into warplanes last year. One reason was that a fleet of 16 unarmed versions of its aircraft had been used by America’s State Department to dust South American drug plantations with herbicide—an activity that tends to provoke a hostile response from the ground. Despite the planes’ having been hit by more than 200 rounds, though, neither an aircraft nor a pilot has been lost.

…Not surprisingly, then, many countries with small defence budgets are investing in turboprops. Places that now fly them, or are expected to do so, include Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco and Venezuela. And the United States. For the biggest military establishment in the world, too, recognises the value of this new old technology. The American air force plans to buy more than 100 turboprops and the navy is now evaluating the Super Tucano, made by Embraer, a Brazilian firm.

In aerial combat, then, low tech may be the new high tech….

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Anne Bayefsky, in the Corner, writes about Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s grotesque performance at the UN, and how appeasement is not working for the administration.

…Ahmadinejad, therefore, took the opportunity provided by the U.N. to slam the door once more in President Obama’s face. While he lectured about the “lust for capital and domination” and “the egotist and the greedy,” the American U.N. delegation sat stoically in their seats. They had instructions to tough it out until Ahmadinejad really got offensive — though what would count as sufficiently offensive was never publicly announced.

The tripwire turned out to be Ahamdinejad’s suggestion that 9/11 was an inside job. “The U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grip on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.” With that, the Obama representatives finally hauled themselves out of their seats and put engagement temporarily on hold.

But Ahmadinejad was only warming up. After all, this was the United Nations, a place where Iranians are comfortable throwing their weight around. Once more Ahmadinejad declared his opposition to the existence of the state of Israel, repeating his call for a “vote of the people of Palestine” that would democratically outnumber and therefore rid the region of Zionists. He repeated his grotesque anti-Semitism: “All values, even the freedom of expression, in Europe and in the United States are being sacrificed on the altar of Zionism.” …

Bob Woodward’s new book gives a look inside the White House that is generating much commentary. Roger Simon is up first, discussing how security concerns were trumped with political considerations.

… Politburo? I’ve heard tea party folks and others accuse Obama of being a socialist, but I’ve never heard any of them go nearly so far as his own national security adviser, who uses full-bore Bolshevik terminology for the staff. Maybe he’s right.  From what I’ve heard elsewhere, Biden is right about Holbroke, whose reputation as “the most egotistical bastard” is well known.

As for Obama, Woodward says he lectures his staff like a professor and gives them homework.  Good grief!  I can’t imagine anything more tedious.  I’d rather have ten years of non-stop root canal.

So Rahm, run for the hills.  The time is ripe — Jesse Jackson Jr. has apparently self-immolated and you are as good as mayor. I don’t know what Axelrod will do.  He can probably go back to his cheesy political public relations firm.  That’s what he does anyway — and he could be paid better for it.

Meanwhile, regarding Herr Professor Obama, there’s only one president in our lifetime I could see having behaved the same way.  You all know it, but I’ll say it — Jimmy Carter.

Next, Peter Wehner criticizes the president’s priorities.

The Washington Post’s story on Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, Obama’s Wars, includes these passages:

‘ Obama rejected the military’s request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. “I’m not doing 10 years,” he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. “I’m not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars.” …’

So we finally found the one institution where Barack Obama is frugal and interested in cost-savings: the military during time of war.

…There are two problems for Obama. The first centers on Article II, Section II, of the Constitution, which states, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States.” The president’s primary responsibility, as envisioned by the Founders, is to serve as commander in chief, not as the tax collector for the welfare state. “Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention,” John Jay wrote in Federalist No. 3, “is that of providing for their safety seems to be first.”

…Quite apart from being reckless, Obama is reinforcing almost every bad impression of his party: keen on raising taxes, spending record amounts on domestic programs, centralizing power, and expanding the size and reach of the federal government. When it comes to war, though, Obama is conflicted and uncertain, in search of an exit ramp more than victory, and even willing to subordinate security needs to partisan concerns (most especially by insisting on an arbitrary drawdown date of July 2011 in order to please his political advisers). …

Nile Gardiner thinks that the Obami are going to be very unhappy with the perception of Obama’s military judgment.

How damaging will Bob Woodward’s new book Obama’s Wars be to the White House? Very. Released next Monday, the veteran Washington Post journalist’s scathing take on the Obama administration’s handling of the war in Afghanistan could not come at a worse time ahead of the November mid-terms, and will attract a huge amount of media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic. It will add to a growing perception of a deeply flawed and divided presidency that is failing to show real leadership both at home and on the world stage.

…Judging by these previews, the big picture which emerges from Woodward’s book is of a president fundamentally at odds with his military advisers, barely concerned with defeating the Taliban, obsessed with finding an early exit strategy, and driven heavily by party political considerations and his drive for re-election in 2012. To describe it as damning would be an understatement.

…The United States, Great Britain and the NATO alliance simply cannot afford to retreat from Afghanistan, with huge implications for American and international security. US and British soldiers are laying down their lives for the cause of victory over the enemy, not for an exit strategy. Unfortunately it is not a message Barack Obama appears to be heeding, while his presidency slides further towards the political abyss.

It’s hard to believe that the Obami think this reflects well on the president. Jennifer Rubin has critical comments for Obama’s unwillingness to review the Afghanistan situation and reconsider his military advisors’ assessments in the future.

…The disregard for his responsibilities — the equivalent of putting his fingers in his ears and humming — is stunning. It also stands in sharp contrast with his predecessor, who insisted on a review of flawed policy and ultimately the implementation of a winning one:

‘ The president is quoted as telling Mullen, Petraeus and Gates: “In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, ‘We’re doing fine, Mr. President, but we’d be better if we just do more.’ We’re not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] … unless we’re talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011.” ‘

Imagine FDR telling General Eisenhower, “I don’t want to hear things aren’t going well in Italy.” It’s inconceivable that Obama’s supposed role model, Abraham Lincoln, would have said, “No more news about McClellan’s shortcomings.” …
…Obama’s peevishness and determination to avoid facts that conflict with his ideological disposition are chilling. His apparent disinclination to pursue victory should frighten both allies and foes. Has he matured since the events detailed in the book? We have no evidence of that. I think it’s time to stop pretending that Obama is “growing” in the job and that he understands the responsibilities of a wartime president. …

In the Enterprise Blog, Marc Thiessen focuses on the trillion dollar comment.

“I’m not spending a trillion dollars,” President Obama declares forthrightly on the front page of today’s Washington Post—words few imagined would ever pass the lips of perhaps the biggest spender ever to occupy the Oval Office.

What sparked Obama’s sudden embrace of fiscal restraint? The only matter Obama and the Democrats seem to think is a waste of taxpayer dollars—defending the country from terrorism.

…So we see Obama spending without restraint in virtually every sphere of domestic life, but suddenly discovering fiscal discipline when it comes to defense and national security. The Woodward book promises to be a fascinating insight into the behind-the-scenes thinking of a president who sees his responsibilities as commander in chief as an expensive distraction from his real agenda.

We have more from Jennifer Rubin. She highlights an inquiry into the Rolling Stone article that got General McChrystal fired.

Stanley McChrystal didn’t do what he was accused of doing. The New York Times reports:

“An Army inquiry into a Rolling Stone magazine article about Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has found that it was not the general or senior officers on his staff who made the most egregious comments that led to his abrupt dismissal as the top Afghan commander in June, according to Army and Pentagon officials.

But the review, commissioned after an embarrassing and disruptive episode, does not wholly resolve who was responsible for the inflammatory quotations, most of which were anonymous.”

…It is yet one more indication that the White House decision-making process bounces between the slipshod (e.g., Shirley Sherrod, Stanley McChrystal) and the snail-like agonizing that characterized the Afghanistan strategy sessions. As to the latter, if Bob Woodward’s book is remotely accurate, the reason it took so long was that a recalcitrant president resisted the advice of his military advisers and was interested not in a war strategy but in a political one. Credit is due primarily to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who hung in there to get the best result obtainable from a president whose concerns were primarily political.

Rubin comments on one of the most distressing aspects of Obama’s Afghanistan policy, which David Ignatius brings up.

David Ignatius uses a peculiar adjective to describe Obama’s portrayal in Bob Woodward’s new book: “poignant.” An odd word choice, considering Ignatius’s otherwise apt description:

By Woodward’s account, Obama was looking for an exit from Afghanistan even as he sent 30,000 more U.S. combat troops there.
That’s an untenable position. If the president doubted his strategy, he shouldn’t have sent the troops. If he believes his war plan stands a chance of stabilizing Afghanistan so that he can transfer responsibility to the Afghans starting next July, then he must rally the public so that it understands and supports what he’s doing.

Woodward shows us an Obama who is halfway to war, doubting his strategy even as he asks young men and women to die for it. That’s the one thing a president must not do: Sacrifice lives for a policy he doesn’t think can succeed.

Poignant or shameful? Poignant or irresponsible? Poignant is George Bush, an increasingly reviled figure in the White House making a decision for the sake of the country and the Free World that he knew would politically harm him and his party.

In the National Journals’ Against the Grain Blog, Josh Kraushaar reports on the elections in Ohio and the anti-incumbent mood there.

There’s no shortage of political tumult in the Buckeye State this year, where the Democratic-held governorship and at least six Democratic-held House seats are in jeopardy. But what makes it particularly notable is that the state represents several key demographic groups whose changing perspectives will give serious insight into President Obama’s broader political standing for 2012.

The voters Obama is losing — white-collar managers in Columbus, blue-collar union workers in Youngstown, pro-life independents around Cincinnati — are exactly the types he needs to win re-election in 2012, and they’re backing away from his party in droves. Obama tallied a whopping 60 percent disapproval rating in Quinnipiac’s latest Ohio poll, with nearly two-thirds of voters disapproving of his economic performance.

…Working-class Democrats are abandoning the party to support Republicans with both Wall Street and Washington ties. The business-friendly base around Columbus, which swung towards Obama in 2008, now gives both Portman and Kasich substantial leads. A sizable share (42 percent) of Kasich backers in the Quinnipiac poll said they were casting their vote specifically against Strickland, who was once one of the most popular chief executives in the country. …

Stuart Taylor looks at the chances for litigation, backed by twenty states, to strike down provisions of Obamacare.

…However the case turns out, any ruling by the justices on the constitutionality of the health-care law would be the most important pronouncement on the relative powers of the federal and state governments in many decades.

The most fundamental question is whether Congress’s undoubtedly broad power to regulate activities affecting interstate commerce is so sweeping as to empower the government to require people who are engaged in no relevant activity at all other than living in the United States to buy health insurance. …

The lawsuits also challenge as an invasion of state sovereignty the new law’s provisions requiring states, already strapped for cash, to spend billions of dollars expanding their Medicaid programs unless they withdraw entirely, a step widely seen as unthinkable. …

At the same time, leading centrist-to-conservative legal experts, including UCLA Law School’s Eugene Volokh, doubt that the justices would or should strike down such a hugely important enactment with so vast an impact on interstate commerce. ..

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The justices have not struck down a major piece of legislation, let alone a president’s signature initiative, as beyond Congress’s power to regulate commerce in some 75 years. …

Tony Blankley reviews the sore-loser RINOs who think they are more important than taking our country back.

…In a different season, such petulance might have strategic significance. But not in 2010. These various “moderates” and party operatives will be swept away by the coming storm – next and last to be seen as post-storm debris hanging undecorously next to old tires and broken awnings. As a party, broadly, the GOP will embrace its new voters and its old principles and thereby profit from the energized grass-roots activists whose efforts surely would flow to a third party next time if thwarted by the Republican establishment this time.

Despite their years of expertise, some Beltway insiders of all varieties – press, pundits, politicians and strategists – some friends of mine – only dimly understand the Tea Party phenomenon. Spontaneous in its formation and wide-ranging in its composition, the Tea Party upwelling is the first genuine grass-roots movement in American politics in decades.

John Fund comments on the moderates who won’t let go.

… Moderates may posture that their refusal to acknowledge the will of primary voters is based on high principle. But it appears to be more and more rooted in a desire to retain office at all costs, while ignoring a clear decision by the Republican primary electorate that the power grabs of Obama Democrats demand the election of GOP officials with stiffer spines to oppose them.