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October 17, 2009
Exclusive: Oval Office Watch – Saturday, October 17
Obama Support Fairly Steady, But Disapproval Jumps Read report HERE.
The Baucus Bill Is a Tax Bill - Middle-class families would get hit with a double-digit increase in their marginal tax rate. SEE HERE.
No Friend to Peace
Lisa Daftari, FrontPageMag.com
The Nobel Committee’s decision last week to award its famous peace prize to President Barack Obama came as a surprise to his opponents and proponents alike. But perhaps no one was more surprised by the selection than the Iranian people, many of whom feel they were betrayed by the American president at a pivotal moment for their country.
In the wake of the disputed Iranian presidential election this June, Iranians waited patiently to see the Obama administration throw its support behind the dynamic opposition demonstrators who defied intimidation and brutal harassment by the regime to gather in the streets of Iran. The support never came. Now, Obama, having declined to take sides between the totalitarian government and its democratic opposition, has been given an international award intended to honor those who have made significant contributions to the cause of peace.
The poignancy of the June uprisings cannot be overemphasized. After 30 years of hesitating to utter a word about politics to friends, neighbors, and even family members who could turn out to be government informants, Iranians were finally united in their fight for freedom. Yet, they looked across the ocean, and found no friend on the other side. Naturally, Iranians feel let down. What they wanted from the American government was moral support, a declaration of solidarity with the people of Iran. What they got was silence. Read article.
Barack Alone: Obama is more isolated internationally than his surprise Nobel might lead one to believe.
John Rosenthal, Pajamas Media.com
Back in the day, the mainstream news media used to revel in the political misfortunes of the European leaders that had supported George W. Bush and “his” Iraq war. The depiction of their downfalls constituted a veritable morality play. Think José María Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi, and Tony Blair. Never mind that both Aznar and Blair left office of their own volition, Blair after leading his Labor Party to victory in the 2005 British elections. As for Aznar, keeping a longstanding promise, he declined to seek a third term even though all the polls showed that his Popular Party would cruise to victory in the March 2004 Spanish elections.
Never mind that the PP would then go down to a surprise defeat only after a terrorist attack killed nearly 200 people in Madrid just days before the vote, thus putting Spaniards on notice that support for America would be paid for in their blood. Never mind the facts. The grand narrative of the European masses rising up against the “deeply unpopular” Iraq war dictated that the (supposed) difficulties of the Bush allies had to be the story.
If Aznar, Berlusconi, and Blair were the villains in this narrative — traitors to the law-abiding, peace-loving European cause — the heroes also came in three: German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the dynamic French duo of President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. Oddly enough, however, when these leading lights of the Franco-German “axis of peace” themselves went down to defeat or bowed out without a fight as their electoral prospects dimmed, this was not a story.
Notwithstanding the Nobel committee’s condescending pat on the back for their disciple, Obama’s European role models are all gone. He is on his own now and should his pursuit of “peaceful dialogue” give rise to a nuclear Iran and threats of greater and more terrible wars, this will be his responsibility. Read article.
What If . . .
David Kahane, NRO.com
Every comedy starts with a couple of guys tossing out a series of increasingly ridiculous "What if?" questions, until they get to the most idiotic reductio ad absurdum imaginable. So here goes:
What if a guy nobody's ever heard of, from Hawaii no less, with a Muslim African father and a Muslim Indonesian stepfather and a mom from Kansas named Stanley inexplicably glides from Punahou to a short sheep-dip at Occidental to the Frankfurt School's favorite Ivy League haunt, Columbia, to Harvard Law? What if he's such an arrogant, aloof suckup of no particular ability or accomplishment that his fellow students openly ridicule him with the invention of the "Obamamometer," which measures epic brown-nosing on a scale from one to ten? What if he's blissfully unaware of his own deficiencies, and instead comes to believe that he's earned everything that's come his way — or ever will?
And what if this guy — let's give him a patently implausible, comically grandiose name like "Barack Hussein Obama II" — moves to . . . New Jersey? Arkansas? No, I've got it — Chicago, Ill. — falls in with . . . wait for it . . . former domestic-terrorist fugitives, adopts a racist pastor to burnish his hitherto-nonexistent "Christian" credentials, and becomes, say, a state senator? Even better: a U.S. senator! And what if he gets a guy named . . . Jake Lingle, yes, that's it! — to use his Chicago Tribune connections to destroy not one but two opponents, both over divorce records! And what if this obscure senator, after less than two years in Washington and with a grand total of one speech to his credit, decides to run for president on a platform of "fundamental change?" Read article.
Here Comes Iran's Nuke
Paul Greenberg. JWR.com
The headline on the front page made it sound like big news: UN nuclear chief sets Iran inspection. So? Another year, another inspection by the sleepiest watchdog on the planet, the United Nations' own Maxwell Smart -- the one and only Mohammed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Agency and Office of General Permissiveness.
Director ElBaradei has just been to Teheran making nice with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where the two held hands for a ceremonial photograph and agreed that the UN's inspectors would soon visit Iran's latest no-longer-secret nuclear processing plant.
This one is dug into a mountain outside the holy city of Qom. It is to be inspected with all due, blind formality Sunday, October 25th. That's only a couple of weeks away, but it still gives the Iranians more than enough time to clear away any evidence of nuclear weaponization at the site. So the UN's mole-eyed inspectors will find their usual nothing.
Since the United States now has joined Europe in endorsing the mullahs' right to develop nuclear power for ever so peaceful purposes, does it really matter whether this site or the next oh-so-secret installation has started producing nuclear weapons yet?
The switch from nuclear power to nuclear weapons is less a scientific than a political decision for the Iranians at this point. And it can be made -- and carried out -- quickly.
Does anybody -- besides Director ElBaradei, of course, and our own see-no-evil State Department -- believe that Iran's little fuehrer isn't bent on producing a nuke of his own, and that his rocket scientists aren't working feverishly on a way to deliver it? Read article.
Wealth Redistribution on Steroids
David Limbaugh.com
Is there no problem Obama and his mesmerized Democrats think cannot be solved with money -- other people's money? Just when you think you've heard it all, more news stories about this bunch surface to shock you.
The Sunday Times reports that the administration is considering a novel approach to the war in Afghanistan: outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms.
So much for a "war of necessity," which was just an opportunistic sound bite for Obama to demonize Bush while cynically pretending to be hawkish enough in the war on terror to appeal to Middle America. No, for Obama, Afghanistan must just be another "street" to organize, another constituency to schmooze in his permanent -- now global -- campaign.
Even when the Bush administration employed strategies to win over Sunnis, it was coupled with a redoubling of our military effort and a marked alteration in our strategy to "hold" territory once we had taken it. This idea that you can reduce this war to an auction, divorced from the required steps needed to strengthen the security there, is insane.
That's not merely my independent assessment. One general close to Gen. Stanley McChrystal told the Times he was taken aback by the administration's attitude. "It surprised a lot of us -- we thought the policy decision was made to come down on the counter-insurgency course of action." The general said the notion that "we can just cut deals with the Taliban without having to do anything" is a "crazy" idea. Read article.
Why Obama Should Decline the 'Prize'
Kevin McCullough, Townhall.com
If President Obama wishes to be seen as a serious world leader, he should decline the Nobel Peace Prize. Doing so would be, in fact, the most honorable thing for him to do.
A very simple expression of gratitude for being considered would be appropriate. And a courageous footnote of honesty, by simply stating that because he had been in office for only twelve days at the time of the nomination, he had done nothing to deserve it, and that he would not feel at ease accepting the prize, would be refreshing.
It would be a bold, courageous, and indeed masterful move. It would underscore the humility he claims to seek for America to have on the world stage, and it would tell his critics that he is not as entirely one dimensional as their mountains of evidence have begun to suggest. It would be one significant way to take a step towards a serious approach to leadership that, to speak quite frankly, America can ill afford to wait for a moment longer. Read article.
Unbecoming Weakness
Jennifer Rubin, Commentary Magazine.com
Robert Kaplan thinks it’s time for the president to stop the dithering and quickly extinguish the impression that Obama is a “weak war leader.” Part of the problem, Kaplan thinks, is a breakdown in the White House decision-making process: “There’s more than a passing similarity between the White House’s hiccups on health care and its confusion on Afghanistan. In each case, the executive branch went forward on an issue without being fully staffed out, or in agreement on the specifics.” (And then there is Guantanamo.)
Kaplan argues that the damage has already been done, simply by the display of agonizing and indecision. He argues that the Afghans and others around the world (e.g., Iran, India, our allies) now see a president who can neither endure the consequences of his own policy nor stand up to the mildest unease in his own political ranks. In that sense, Kaplan is right. If a Nancy Pelosi interview or a meeting with Carl Levin is enough to unnerve the president (not to mention a session with his political prognosticators), what will he do if there are antiwar rallies or resolutions in Congress, not to mention some lost congressional seats over a tough war?
He has, unlike his predecessor, already tipped his hand to our adversaries. They already know that, unlike George W. Bush, this is a president with his ear to the ground and his direction focused firmly on his domestic agenda. Apply some pressure, they must now calculate, and it will pay off handsomely. Obama has, in a sense, made himself an easy mark by publicly hushing his general and elevating domestic political consultants to the role of war policymakers. It is a far cry from the Bush administration, in which the Republican political consultants had their heads in their hands and the commander in chief had his generals’ backs. Read article.
Those Selfish Ba$$tards
Bruce Bialosky, Townhall.com
In my role as a weekly columnist, I spend an immense amount of time reading about topics of the day and doing research. Reading 25 to 30 columns in a single day is not an unusual occurrence. I have my favorites like Krauthammer and Sowell. Two other favorites, Dennis Prager and Larry Elder, are also personal friends. Then there is Ben Shapiro who I have known since his days at UCLA.
I also read a tremendous number of opinion columns written by liberals. The Huffington Post can be very enlightening as well as the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. I am often fascinated how some of these pieces get published. One recent column by Bob Herbert who writes for the New York Times was so strikingly bad that I had to interrupt my wife and read it to her because it was so banal. You would have thought the column appeared in a high school newspaper, except the principal would have edited out the name-calling as inappropriate.
Occasionally, there is a column that tickles my public policy bone so much that I have to mouth off about it. E.J. Dionne, Jr., wrote this particular column in the Washington Post on Thursday, September 24, 2009. Mr. Dionne can be quite entertaining at times with his perception of how our society should be organized, but his commentary on how charity heads were reacting to proposed tax law changes sparkled in new and untold ways.
After the defeat of their attempt to insert a public option into the Senate Finance Committee health care bill, Senators Jay Rockefeller and John Kerry moved to reduce the tax deduction for charitable contributions for what Mr. Dionne calls the “well-to-do.” As a means to help pay for the cost of this new health care plan, these extremely well-to-do senators want to stick it to the successful in our society once again. There are so many things wrong with this concept it could take a small book to define. First, Rockefeller and Kerry are actually very well-to-do. They have never actually worked; unless you include Kerry’s short term in the military and that was forty years ago.
There are so many things wrong with this concept it could take a small book to define. First, Rockefeller and Kerry are actually very well-to-do. They have never actually worked; unless you include Kerry’s short term in the military and that was forty years ago. Read article.
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