PROPHETS OR PARROTS?

Edward McShane Waits, A College Man's Religion and other Studies in Religion and Life (Ft. Worth, Texas: Stafford-Lowdon, 1929). Waits was president of Texas Christian University in a difficult time.

Our generation is like a despairing ship tossed upon an angry sea. Industry, politics, international relations, even religion unite to produce a panicky world. Our colleges are the storm centers, the citadels from which a conquering and prophetic leadership must come. take out of our brotherhood the men produced by our colleges and we would at once become a disappearing brotherhood.



You who have assembled here in this school of the prophets, you have chosen the task golden. It is to you that our oncoming generation must look for its prophetic leadership. Are you going to be prophets or parrots? It is going to be your task to look after the vastnesses, the immensities, the imponderables of our lives and keep us to our bigness. It is yours to tell us of the majesty we are and the majesty we shall be. To do this your soul must be kept in tune with the infinite. You must tarry upon the mountain like Moses until your soul is aflame with God. You must take up the harp of life, smite upon its chords with might, smite the chord of self and selfishness until they too pass in music out of sight.

Written in 1929--it almost sounds like 2009. I like his challenge to education--will we be prophets or parrots?

THE LEFT AND RACISM

The left using the race card.

VAN JONES

On his education:

I had a professor who encouraged me to apply to Harvard and Yale [for law school], which was almost unheard of for students coming from the kind of public schools that I was coming from in the rural South. I was accepted to both places, and decided to go to Yale because Yale didn't have any grades and was smaller than Harvard. I figured, once I enroll I'm guaranteed to graduate, so I can just go and be a radical hell raiser student, and they can't do anything about it. Which is pretty much what happened.

GLOBAL CURRENCY

The UN demand for a global currency indicates the economic weakness of America. If our economic power is challenged, America's international political leadership will soon be reevaluated and probably diminish. It looks like America's day in the sun is ending fast. The change may not happen immediately, but it will come unless there is a radical change in Washington's thinking. The dollar will join the English pound in the graveyard of world currencies.

In a radical report, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has said the system of currencies and capital rules which binds the world economy is not working properly, and was largely responsible for the financial and economic crises.

AMERICA, ANOTHER ARGENTINA

A nobel laureate economist believes Obama's policies will result in the US becoming another Argentina.

His policies even have the potential to consign the US to a similar fate as Argentina, which suffered a painful and humiliating slide from first to Third World status last century, the paper says.

There are "troubling similarities" between the US President's actions since taking office and those which in the 1930s sent the US and much of the world spiralling into the worst economic collapse in recorded history, says the new pamphlet, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

PALIN'S FAITH, A VIEW FROM THE LEFT

Max Blumenthal's attack on Palin. My understanding is that she left the Assembly of God church for a Bible church. Newsweek has another perspective.

OBAMA'S LEADERSHIP

The Harvard Business School weighs in on the topic.

REID BULLYING THE PRESS

I have been surprised at how often I have seen the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Harry Reid (D, Nev) make so many unwise comments. He doesn't have the class or political shrewdness of Lyndon Johnson who served as a great majority leader in my opinion--Johnson had his agenda but he worked with opposition members in his own party and with Republicans as well.

I was going to start collecting all of Reid's mistatements and untactful comments, but never undertook the challenge. Obama has been poorly served by both Reid and Pelosi in the House.

R&D IN THE US

My major concern with all that Obama and the Democrats have been trying to do to jump start the economy is that they are not solving the real problem. Money spent on bridges or "cash for clunkers" only has a short-term impact. Somehow businesses that create wealth and pay people good salaries have to be jump-started. In the past much of this occurred through the innovations developed in research universities and research labs of private companies. But no one seems to care to invest in the future by funding research that may create the next industry that will grow wealth. Since the Industrial Revolution innovations have kept America moving forward and raising out standard of living.

I don't know if anyone with influence in Washington is listening, but the September 7th issue of Business Week had one of the best critiques of what has gone wrong in America (and what needs to be fixed) with its leadership in research and innovation.

Points made in "How Science Can Create Millions of New Jobs:"

• America needs good jobs, soon. We need 6.7 million just to replace losses from the current recession, then another 10 million to spark demand over the next decade.
• Bell Labs had 30,000 employees as recently as 2001; today (owned by Alcatel-Lucent) it has 1,000.
• We have been outsourcing jobs for decades, but we have always bounced back with a new industry—a blockbuster industry.
• Of the roughly 130 million jobs in the U.S., only 20% (26 million) pay more than $60,000 a year. The other 80% pay an average of $33,000. That ratio is not a good foundation for a strong middle class and a prosperous society. Rather than a demand engine, it's a decay curve.

TAXED ON CASH FOR CLUNKERS

Some state governments are now taxing people on the $4,500 they received for their clunker!

THE LION OF THE SENATE?

Ted Kennedy was a pretty sordid guy in my opinion as this article written many years ago reinforces.

The Huffington Post: "Who knows, maybe she'd (Mary Jo Kopechne) feel it was worth it." What a question to be asking.

And he tried to undermine Reagan by cutting a deal with Andropov.

DISAPPEARANCE OF WORK ETHIC

An interesting, but lengthy, analysis by Steven Malanga on the declining work ethic among the younger generation. He traces it back to the 60's counter-culture revolution.

What would Tocqueville or Weber think of America today? In place of thrift, they would find a nation of debtors, staggering beneath loans obtained under false pretenses. In place of a steady, patient accumulation of wealth, they would find bankers and financiers with such a short-term perspective that they never pause to consider the consequences or risks of selling securities they don't understand. In place of a country where all a man asks of government is "not to be disturbed in his toil," as Tocqueville put it, they would find a nation of rent-seekers demanding government subsidies to purchase homes, start new ventures or bail out old ones.

They would find what Tocqueville described as the "fatal circle" of materialism – the cycle of acquisition and gratification that drives people back to ever more frenetic acquisition and that ultimately undermines prosperous democracies.

And they would understand why. After flourishing for three centuries in America, the Protestant ethic began to disintegrate, with key elements slowly disappearing from modern American society, vanishing from schools, business, popular culture, and leaving us with an economic system unmoored from the restraints of civic virtue.

Late in life, Adam Smith noted that government institutions can never tame and regulate a society whose citizens are not schooled in a common set of virtues. "What institution of government could tend so much to promote the happiness of mankind as the general prevalence of wisdom and virtue?" he wrote. "All government is but an imperfect remedy for the deficiency of these."

BUSH, THE WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY

Doug Casey wrote a conservative critique of the Bush presidency. It will be interesting to see how Bush is treated by history--liberals ridicule him and conservatives feel he is a traitor to their values.

Casey's criticisms:

• No Child Left Behind. Forget about abolishing the Department of Education. Bush made the federal government a much more intrusive and costly part of local schools.

• Project Safe Neighborhoods. A draconian law that further guts the 2nd Amendment, like 20,000 other unconstitutional gun laws before it.

• Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. This the largest expansion of the welfare state since LBJ and will cost the already bankrupt Medicare system trillions more.

• Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Possibly the most expensive and restrictive change to the securities laws since the ’30s. A major reason why companies will either stay private or go public outside the US.

• Katrina. A total disaster of bureaucratic mismanagement, featuring martial law.

• Ownership Society. The immediate root of the current financial crisis lies in Bush’s encouragement of easy credit to everybody and inflating the housing market.

• Nationalizations and Bailouts. In response to the crisis he created, he nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and passed by far the largest bailouts in US history (until OBAMA!).

• Free-Speech Zones. Originally a device for keeping war protesters away when Bush appeared on camera, they’re now used to herd.

• The Patriot Act. This 132-page bill, presented for passage only 45 days after 9/11 (how is it possible to write something of that size and complexity in only 45 days?) basically allows the government to do whatever it wishes with its subjects. Warrantless searches. All kinds of communications monitoring. Greatly expanded asset forfeiture provisions.

• The War on Terror. The scope of the War on Drugs (which Bush also expanded) is exceeded only by the war on nobody in particular but on a tactic. It’s become a cause of mass hysteria and an excuse for the government doing anything.

• Invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush started two completely pointless, counterproductive, and immensely expensive wars, neither of which has any prospect of ending anytime soon.

• Dept. of Homeland Security. This is the largest and most dangerous of all agencies, now with its own gigantic campus in Washington, DC. It will never go away and centralizes the functions of a police state.

• Guantanamo. Hundreds of individuals, most of them (like the Uighurs recently in the news) guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, are incarcerated for years. A precedent is set for anyone who is accused of being an “enemy combatant” to be completely deprived of any rights at all.

• Abu Ghraib and Torture. After imprisoning scores of thousands of foreign nationals, Bush made it a US policy to use torture to extract information, based on a suspicion or nothing but a guard’s whim. This is certainly one of the most damaging things to the reputation of the US ever. It says to the world, “We stand for nothing.”

• The No-Fly List. His administration has placed the names of over a million people on this list, and it’s still growing at about 20,000 a month. I promise it will be used for other purposes in the future…

• The TSA. Somehow the Bush cabal found 50,000 middle-aged people who were willing to go through their fellow citizens’ dirty laundry and take themselves quite seriously. God forbid you’re not polite to them…

• Farm Subsidies. Farm subsidies are the antithesis of the free market. Rather than trying to abolish or cut them back, Bush signed a record $190 billion farm bill.

• Legislative Free Ride. And he vetoed less of what Congress did than any other president in history.

MSNBC DOCTORS FOOTAGE

It is hard to have a lot of faith in the mainstream media when you read things like this. Why not just report what is happening and let people make their own decisions.

HEALTH CARE AND DEATH PANELS

My only concern with the charge of the government instituting "death panels" as it deals with end-of-life care is that this is already happening. Doctors make those decisions in some cases (for better or worse). And as Froma Harrop points out, insurance companies do it more often than we think. If an insurance company denies treatment is this any different from a government bureaucracy doing it? Both are horrendous bureaucracies to work through if you have an appeal to make.

US, A BANANA REPUBLIC?

Warren Buffett is a bit concerned about the growing US debt.

“We don’t want our country to evolve into the banana-republic economy described by Keynes,” he says.

CONSERVATIVE RELIGIOUS WOMEN

An interesting column of the role of evangelical/conservative Christian women as a political force.

In all the commentary about the now former governor of Alaska, some of it comic, much of it trivial, a basic fact has been overlooked: Sarah Palin has come to represent a vital and vibrant constituency in the Republican Party -- religious women -- and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

The religious right came to be personified by male preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, but it was built by religiously motivated women who led the fights against sex education and the Equal Rights Amendment.

POLITICS AND HEALTHCARE

Ross Douthat had some excellent insights in his recent column on the health care controversy. Read the entire column if you can.

• It's the skepticism of the over-65 Americans that's dragging support for reform southward.
• Medicare is on the "chopping block"--this means the benefits the over-65 crowd has enjoyed will be cut to enact Obamacare.
• The Democrats are promising less, not more to a significant part of the population.
• Republicans need to stress that Obama wants to take away their health care.
• Republicans are beginning to support entitlements---a radical change! The Democrats are "sticking it to seniors with cuts to Medicare," Mitch McConnell declared. They want to "cannibalize" the program to pay for reform, John Cornyn complained. It's a "raid," Sam Brownback warned, that could result in the elderly losing "necessary care."
• Obviously, the Democratic plans wouldn't euthanize your grandmother. But they might limit the procedures that her Medicare will pay for. And conservative lawmakers are using this inconvenient truth to paint the Democrats as enemies of Grandma.
• Palin's "death panel" rhetoric has been criticized, yet Democrats have used similar rhetoric in the past to label Republicans as those who want to end social security, medicare, etc. Now this debate gives Republicans a chance for "pay back."

So as I see it Republicans can destroy the Democrat voting bloc of older citizens by stressing "death panels" and the fact the Obamacare is taking away programs that have helped older citizens for decades. But this means the Republican Party becomes the party of entitlements!

HEALTH CARE PARADOXES

Liberal ex-Democrat Senator and Majority leader, Tom Daschle, double-dips: he lobbys for the insurance agency and praises the"public option."

This is how Washington really works: Even a top liberal advocate for taking a strong stand against the insurance industry takes money behind the scenes from the insurance industry.

On Sunday, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who was once a nominee to be President Obama's Secretary of Health And Human Services, appeared on NBC's Meet The Press, playing the role of the liberal standard bearer, opposite Oklahoma conservative Sen. Tom Coburn. Daschle spoke out against insurers, praised the so-called "public option," and at one point framed the debate over health reform to host David Gregory this way: Well, David, I guess the, the basic question is, are we building this new system for the American people or for the insurance companies? I mean, that's really the key question. How will they be better served?

A PALIN VICTORY?

I can't say I thought of this one. Palin has been roundly criticized by the left and the Democrats (including Obama) for her "death panel" reference to the Obama health care proposal plan. She obviously upped the rhetoric, because that term is not used. Having read that part of the bill, as I posted previously, the wording calls for a "shall" to end-of-life required counselling.

But the headline, "Palin Wins. If she's dim and Obama is brilliant, how did he lose the argument to her?" Well, Obama and the Democrats did lose if the Senate is going to change the language in the bill that applies to this section. The Democrats have been denying something that they are now going to have to change. Again, having read the language, I think it could have been phrased much better. But without Palin's rhetoric, would the language of the bill have been changed? And in changing the wording, it is admission that this bill has at least one problem (and probably more). Is what she did any different from the anti-Bush rhetoric and imaging of the past by his opponents?

I think this debate and the townhalls are good, because they get at least some people thinking. It is no different than other debates of the past. Some crazy things might be said that are incorrect, but over the breadth of the discussion, people are getting information and will make a far more intelligent decision than just sitting back and accepting legislation annointed by Congress and the mainstream media.

By the way, if the mainstream media had ignored Palin's wording and did not try to make her look ignorant, would anything have come of the quote?

A DEMOCRAT PROBLEM WITH HEALTH CARE

The media and the Democrats have been blaming the Republican Party and insurance companies for the negative reaction to the Obamacare plan. First, I don't think the Republican Party is capable of planning and then planting all of these angry people at townhall meetings. Second, you do not hear many protests from insurance groups or the medical lobby (as you did when Hillary was trying to push her plan through in the early 1990s), because they have been "bought" or "wooed" by various provisions in the plan.

There are the typical right-wing opponents (like pro-lifers), but the vast majority are angry, aging Democrats or Independents who voted for Obama. You see this especially in Florida and Arizona. The Democrats have a problem few people realize. I believe Barone has shown this in a recent column: Of the 21 top leadership members and chairmen, five come from districts carried by John McCain, but the average vote in the other 16 districts was 71 percent to 27 percent for Obama. If Obama and the Democrats lose the party moderates, it will become a minority party (still a significant party with a heavy leftist orientation).

The Democrats have a problem with their own constituency, but no one in the mainstream media seems to see this. Obama and Democrats could be ignoring this intra-party problem to their own detriment. Even if they ram this proposal through, what is going to happen a few years from now when these angry people face an insensitive health bureaucracy (aka the post office)? Today's anger could become tomorrow's rage.

HEALTH CARE, DEMOCRATS, AND PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES

The Huffington Post has published a secret memo which shows the White House and Democrats have cut a deal with the big pharmaceutical companies to get them to support the health bill. Change you can count on.

The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.

It says the White House agreed to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government's leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada -- and also agreed not to pursue Medicare rebates or shift some drugs from Medicare Part B to Medicare Part D, which would cost Big Pharma billions in reduced reimbursements.

In exchange, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to taxpayers and senior citizens over ten years. Or, as the memo says: "Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion."

OBAMACARE FACT CHECK

From the Heritage Foundation.

OBAMA HITLER POSTER

I have wondered how much of this misrepresentation goes on? Groups can plant people to make it appear that their opponents are racist, violent, etc. Does all of the hate-mail really come from people that hate a particular person?

HILLARY'S RESPONSE

Hillary had an unusual breakdown moment in a question and answer session on her recent African trip. It may have been due more to tiredness than anything else. Certainly her husband upstaged her and the State Department in the freeing of the two journalists from North Korea. But still, one would hope she could manifest more control and poise.

But I also wondered if some of her reaction was a result of cross-cultural insensitivity. She needs to realize her audience may struggle with English and may even have different ways of expressing themselves which does not mean they are trying to be disrespectful. A number of years ago I was so impressed with the US Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Commission. He was going to address a multi-national group of students in Vienna, including Africans. The conversations I overheard before the meeting were filled with anti-American rhetoric--the students were out to challenge this Bush representative of American imperialism. But, he handled their questions so considerately that after the session I saw students flocking to talk to him--there attitude had entirely changed.

Hillary needs to act like a diplomat.

CAN'T BELIEVE OBAMA SAID THIS

Yahoo! News:

He also disputed the notion that adding a government-run insurance plan into a menu of options from which people could pick would drive private insurers out of business, in effect making the system single-payer by default.

As long as they have a good product and the government plan has to sustain itself through premiums and other non-tax revenue, private insurers should be able to compete with the government plan, Obama said.

"They do it all the time," he said. "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. ... It's the Post Office that's always having problems."

PALIN QUOTE ON HEALTH CARE

I saw a Palin quote on several news website headlines, but did not read the stories. But the words were very emotional: "Obama's Health Bill Is Going to Kill My Baby." Anne Althouse has put the quote into the context of her statement and it appears that Palin is raising a legitimate issue. The end-of-life issue and the health care bill need to be debated, but a number of commentators or news sites don't want to debate it so they just stereotype Palin.

HEALTH CARE BILL

I have tried to compare the Obama/Congress health care plan with some of the criticisms. I do like the title of the Republican alternative: "The Empowering Patients First Act." I am not familiar with the Liberty Counsel, but it has a list of problems with the current bill in a pdf file (I have also received a number of critical emails with similar listings of the bill's failures). The AARP supports the bill and on its web site states that right-wing hysteria is behind these lists of problems. It is almost impossible for the average person to go through each part of the bill and deal with the criticisms in an intelligent manner. The bill is too long and the criticisms are lengthy.

I just had time to look at one criticism of the bill and that is the issue of whether end-of-life counselling is required on pages 424 and 425 of the Democrat bill. Critics say it is required, but the AARP and others say it is not. Critics say the elderly will be required to have this counseling every 5 years--the current bill says shall. I am not a lawyer or a grammarian, but to me shall has the idea of a duty so does this become a mandate? One legal writer states that shall has the same sense as must. Also when parts of the bill use the phrase "may include the order," I think this is troubling--when does "may" become a "will?" Congress needs a good grammarian to proof its bills.

Volokh also made some comments on August 7th about the problems in the bill.

SENATE ETHICS COMMITTEE

I can't believe the Senate Ethics Committee dropped its investigation of Senators Dodd and Conrad for ethics violations. The case against Dodd seemed pretty strong to me.

OBAMA,AUGUST 2009

Comments from the editorial in the August 1, 2009 Economist.

• And an impression is being formed in Washington of a presidency that is far too ready to hand over the direction of domestic policy to Congress; that is drifting either deliberately or lethargically leftwards; and that is more comfortable with lofty visions than details.
• On the campaign trail Mr. Obama showed an impressive ability to change gears. He needs to do so again this summer.
• He has been curiously ill-served by a press short of useful criticism, with liberal America prepared only to debate what sort of water he walks on best, while conservative radio hosts argue over when exactly he became a communist.
• A policy of ramming bills through Congress on a party-line basis might suit Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats' leftish leader in the House. But, from Mr. Obama's point of view, it is bad policy in two different ways. It is shifting the presidency to the left, annoying centrist voters who worry about the swelling government debt.
• What should Mr. Obama do? He must come down from his cloud and start leading.
• A real "post-partisan" president would be trying bully through this compromise [advocates McCain's position on ending tax deduction for health insurance], not talking dreamily about wanting health care for all at no cost to anybody but the rich.

OPERATION EMBARASS YOUR CONGRESSMAN

Some interesting questions to ask congressmen.

HEALTH CARE BILL

I started to skim through the Health Care Bill--now I understand why Congressman Conyers won't read it. I am sure its language is beyond 90% of all congressmen's reading comprehension capability. I think Congress should apply the same standards they passed regarded regarding truth in credit card rules--write in plain language. I wonder what policy-wonks wrote it?????

1,000 PAGE BILLS

First the stimulus bill and now the health care bill--congressmen aren't reading their own bills. At least Conyers (D, Michigan) is honest about it. But I have to agree with Steyn--this marks the death of legislative government and opens up the horrors of unseen consequences.

OBAMA AND AFRICA

The news accounts of Obama in Africa indicated he spoke directly and bluntly to the issues facing Africa and said that Africans needed to get their act together when it comes to governing their countries. The media highlighted this trip back to his "roots." (He has also spoken sharply to American African-American groups about their responsibilities). America and the West is not responsible for Zimbabwe and other failures according to Obama.

But the Economist noted that President Bush said essentially the same thing. And ex-President Bush has done as much for African problems as President Obama appears to be doing.

Development depends on good governance.” Said by a white Texan dynast in Ghana, an African country once ravaged by the slave trade, that unexceptionable insight might sound a shade patronising. Said by a son of Africa whose election to the world’s most powerful post thrilled the continent, it was taken at its respectable face value. “We must start from the simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans.” In other words, throwing aid at bad governments—and Barack Obama made plain that there were still far too many of them—will not work. The president’s candour was well received.

The article also pointed out that Obama's administration has continued the same Bush policies his campaign criticized in the 2008 election campaign.

In fact, though Mr Obama did not wish to dwell on security, his biggest headaches in Africa, as for Mr Bush, do still relate to armed conflict. His worst problem is Somalia, where his closest advisers upbraided Mr Bush for worsening matters by arming Somali warlords who claimed to be fighting militant Islam. More recently, however, Mr Obama won a waiver from the UN to send arms to Somalia’s beleaguered government, which is threatened by jihadists (“terrorists”, he bluntly called them) with links to al-Qaeda. He is unlikely to let his warships or aircraft bomb jihadist strongholds in Somalia for fear of enraging the civilian population. But equally he is plainly loth to let that failed state slide further into the domain of al-Qaeda.

The deeper truth is that Africa is not high on the American president’s agenda. His Ghana speech was sensible and stirring. But in the end his message was that African-American relations would see no grand change.

POLITICAL DIVERSITY IN THE ACADEMIA

Dan Lawton writes on the political diversity (really the lack of it) at the University of Oregon.

The University of Oregon, where I study journalism, invested millions annually in a diversity program that explicitly included “political affiliation” as a component. Yet of the 111 registered Oregon voters in the departments of journalism, law, political science, economics and sociology, there were only two registered Republicans.

I guess there are no libertarians.

GLOBAL WARMING & JUNK SCIENCE

I am troubled by all of this emphasis on global warming. I have to admit I am skeptical even though, according to a science colleague, all of the scientific evidence indicates that it is a fact. Those that oppose it are incompetent scientists or just ignorant right-wingers. I do believe that history shows that the world has gone through weather changes, but some of this seems to be normal cycles. Yet, science is not God and it is far from exact. Maybe my doubts come from all of the times I have seen "science" change--first it was the global cooling alarm bells that went off in the seventies or maybe it is the number of different theories over the years about the extinction of dinosaurs. Science's understanding seems to change, it is not absolute.

There was an interesting editorial in the July 19, 2009 Dallas Morning News on "Screen Out Junk Science." The problem deals with sending people to prison based on valid scientific tests a couple of decades ago, tests which now are discredited by more advanced DNA models. But it wasn't "junk science" a couple of decades ago; it was considered science. So who is to say the scientific theories of today will not be considered "junk science" in the future. Science seems to go through more theoretical changes than Christian theology.

PROBLEMS WITH US ECONOMY

From the July 27, 2009 Business Week:

1. P. 9. To me the following is an alarming statement and raises serious questions about the future of the U.S. and how the Obama administration is rebuilding the nation's economic infrastructure. The article first dealt with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.--which means we are not making anything to sell and create wealth. If an economy doesn't create anything of value, the future is dire. Then the article went on to say: More alarming, the U.S. is losing its ability to create big-impact products as research and development is increasingly tranferred to foreign lands that have become manufacturing leaders in, say, computers or telecom gear. Except for Apple's products, for instance, every U.S. brand of notebooks is now designed in Asia. If nothing is produced in the U.S., how can national wealth be created? I don't see how the U.S. can continue to exist on a service economy. Also research and development is critical for future jobs and wealth creation, yet it appears that U.S. companies are not doing this with American human and physical resources. In addition, the focus of the Obama administration's economic policy is not on creating future wealth. So neither the private sector or Washington are dealing with the long-range impact of the current economic crisis.
2. P. 42. Wenran Jiang, Professor of Political Science, University of Alberta: Why would we want to keep subsidizing irresponsible U.S. behavior that will inflate the dollar and hurts us? So what is China doing? China is purchasing real wealth in natural resources and companies and avoiding holding the U.S. dollar or treasuries whose value is dropping because of inflation. Obama wants to spend money and accumulate U.S. debt while the Chinese are building an economy on real wealth and not debt. Washington and the American people don't seem to realize the problems we are facing--we want to use credit-card solutions instead of rewarding innovation and wealth-creation.

TODAY'S LIBERALS

Mark Tapscott's article "Where did all the liberals go?" hit home with me. For some time I have been thinking about how different liberals are today from those I had instructing me in the 60s and 70s. 20th century liberals believed in the use of government and Keynesian economics, but at the same time they realized the dangers of big government and stressed the importance of personal rights for all. When I look at recent liberal/progressive web sites, I see an angry, vindictive streak to them that contradicts the more gentle and broad-minded liberalism of the last century. Today's liberals are acting more like the angry and irrational radical right of the past.

GLOBAL WARMING QUESTIONED

From Nature Geoscience.

The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

LIBERAL RACISM?

Interesting video--Senator Barbara Boxer (D, California) challenged by a black man as a racist in questioning over global warming.

OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE PROPOSAL

I am very skeptical about the health care proposals floating around in Washington. I don't like what we face today, but I haven't seen good alternatives. Politico has a good summary of the problems with current Democrat proposals.

One concern is that Obama economic proposals haven't worked that well. How do we know these proposals will work? After the vice president admitted the administration had misread the economy, the president said administration officials, instead, had incomplete information — but yet they would not have done anything different in the too-slow stimulus. We need to prevent a recurrence of the stimulus mistake on health care.

I see these as the main points:

1. Health costs would be higher with these proposals.
2. Higher premiums means workers will have less take home pay--that means less money on spent on other consumer goods.
3. Would employers want to run two systems? Wouldn't they just dump everyone into the government program and save money and overhead?
4. Government costs would go up. Government can't live on borrowed money forever so taxes would have to go up.
5. Are there really enough wealthy people to raise taxes on for the program to work? It strikes me that wealthy people always find loopholes.
6. Would some terminally ill people or those with ongoing problems continue to be treated?
7. Relatives in Scotland and friends in Canada have indicated to me that they are unhappy with their government health programs.

And then I read about Vice President Biden's speech on health care: We have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt.

JUSTICE GINSBURG AND EUGENICS

I have been concerned about Justice Ginsburg's quote referring to the Roe v. Wade decision that there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. Today I read my first follow-up comment on the quote in a column by Jonah Goldberg. This viewpoint is of interest to me since I have had liberal, pro-abortion friends make a similar comment about getting rid of welfare costs by having "poor" people abort their babies.

Goldberg takes us back to Margaret Sanger, the inspiration of Planned Parenthood, and notes her willingness to use eugenics to limit some population groups. However, I thought this aspect of the pro-abortion movement had died with Margaret Sanger, but Goldberg points out:

In 1992, Ron Weddington, co-counsel in the Roe v. Wade case, wrote a letter to President-elect Bill Clinton, imploring him to rush RU-486 – a.k.a. "the abortion pill" – to market as quickly as possible.

"(Y)ou can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country," Weddington insisted. All the president had to do was make abortion cheap and easy for the populations we don't want. "It's what we all know is true, but we only whisper it. ... Think of all the poverty, crime and misery ... and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario. We lost a lot of ground during the Reagan-Bush religious orgy. We don't have a lot of time left."

Weddington offered a clue about who, in particular, he had in mind: "For every Jesse Jackson who has fought his way out of the poverty of a large family, there are millions mired in poverty, drugs and crime."

I am wondering how prevalent this idea is? Is it an unspoken goal that is in the thinking of pro-abortion eugenicists, but hasn't been pushed because they realize it would discredit the pro-abortion movement? Having read the German advocates of eugenics leading up to Hitler and then seeing how Hitler implemented these ideas, the consequences of population control policies is so terrible that no words can describe the horror of it.

From the Washington TImes on recent research about 30 week fetuses. (NARAL has not responded)

They weigh less than 3 pounds, usually, and are perhaps 15 inches long. But they can remember. The unborn have memories, according to medical researchers who used sound and vibration stimulation, combined with sonography, to reveal that the human fetus displays short-term memory from at least 30 weeks gestation - or about two months before they are born.

OBAMA'S ECONOMIC POLICIES

I have never been a supporter of Obama's economic policies, because they never seemed to get to the root of the problem. Somehow wealth-creation has to be stimulated which will create jobs as businesses develop and expand to meet the needs of our country and the world. People need to have meaningful jobs creating wealth and also providing a tax-base. Instead he has just thrown money out there as a stimulus. It may stimulate for the short-term, but unless productive capacity and innovation is taking place, it will only have a short-term impact. For example, extending unemployment relief may be good in the short-term helping a person transition, but it really doesn't get people back to work.

I have not seen the main-stream media really raise any serious questions about the theories behind his stimulus. The August issue of Money does have a columnist talking about how Obama is using "spackle" to deal with the economy (painters will understand the analogy).

On July 14th I read a column by Bob Hebert in the Dallas Morning News that begins to address the problems in a more serious way (Hebert is a NYT, African-American, Obama supporter). While I don't agree with everything he says, I do like his principle that the administration is not dealing with fundamental economic problems.

Vice President Joe Biden told us last week that the Obama administration "misread how bad the economy was" in the immediate aftermath of the inauguration.

Puh-leeze. President Barack Obama and Biden won the election because the economy was cratering so badly there were fears we might be entering another depression. No one understood that better than the two of them. Obama tried to clean up the vice president's remarks by saying his team hadn't misread what was happening, but rather "we had incomplete information."

That doesn't hold water, either. The president boasts the second coming of the best and the brightest working for him down there in Washington (think of Larry Summers as the latter-day Robert McNamara), and they're crunching numbers every which way they can. They've got more than enough data. They're not coming up with the right answers because they're missing the same thing that McNamara and his fellow technocrats were missing back in the 1960s: the human equation.

The reference to McNamara and the "best and the brightest" who got us into Vietnam is quiet troubling. How do we know that the Obama economic team isn't made up of a bunch of McNamaras who tell us they have the answer, but as the years pass, the country finds that the "best and the brightest" on Obama's team have created even more problems?

REPUBLICAN TRUST GROWING

These Rasmussen results are amazing in my opinion (I don't see Republican leadership on issues as particularly insightful). I can't help, but wonder if something was wrong with the polling or else the mainstream media isn't reporting this change in the American mood.

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on eight out of 10 key electoral issues, including, for the second straight month, the top issue of the economy. They've also narrowed the gap on the remaining two issues, the traditionally Democratic strong suits of health care and education.

Many Americans must be beginning to realize that many of Obama administration programs aren't working. If the administration is already talking about a second stimulus package, it is an indication that something went wrong with the first stimulus package.

OBAMA'S TSARS

I don't like Wikipedia, but the list shows the number of tsars being appointed grows every day. I am not sure it is accurate--I think it may have missed one or two. We are becoming more Russian than Russia. Maybe it will make Putin and Medvedev identify with Washington more. But if one considers what the tsars did for Russia, the Obama administration would surely have picked another term. But I guess most Americans don't know anything about Russian history anyway.

CAN BARRACK OBAMA SAVE US FROM HELL?

Headline from the Telegraph (UK). Obama is going to prevent global environmental catastrophe. I am not sure the editors see the theological implications.

DISCRIMINATION OF CHRISTIANS

Dr. Francis S. Collins is having trouble being appointed to direct the National Institue of Health, because he is a Christian according to Martin Peretz in the New Republic (hardly a bastion of the religious right):

He is a practicing and believing Christian. It's odd--isn't it?--that this fact should make a scientific designee unfit or unsuited for a job. Soon we will hear the same about judicial nominees. The establishment mounted a sustained campaign in the Senate (and outside) against President Wilson's nomination of Louis D. Brandies to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the candidate was Jewish, although some of his critics tended to be euphemistic rather than direct about their objections. Not so those who are against Collins.

He did pay his taxes.

Collins contrasts with the appointment of John Holdren as the "Science Tsar."

From FrontPage.Com: Collins wrote Ecoscience with Paul and Anne Ehrlich in 1977 and stated among other things a neo-Malthusian view and "If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" (pp. 837-838).

THE FUTURE OF SARAH PALIN

I have mixed feelings about Sarah Palin--there are many issues I agree with her on, but I am troubled by some of her decisions. I like much of what Peggy Noonan wrote in a recent WSJ article. I know Noonan has been critical of Palin in the past and the article is certainly not favorable. I believe Sarah Palin has shown her liberal enemies at their moral worst as they have engaged in personal attacks (even on her children). I believe some of the attraction to her on the right is because of the anger they see her creating among the liberal establishment.

However, I just think Palin was over her head when she faced difficult national political issues. Coming from Alaska, I just don't think she realized what the media and contemporary political culture was like. I never sensed that she was well-read or engaged in a lot of policy debates before being named as the Republican Vice President candidate. Obama's experience was almost as weak, but he could express himself much better as a result of years in Illinois and Chicago politics (he seems to have done very little in his two years in the Senate, but at least he knew what the debates and issues were).

If I were Sarah Palin and wanted a political future, I would have gone back to Alaska and read, read, and read some more. . .and perhaps spend a weekend or two here and there in dialogue with leading conservatives and moderates (I am not sure liberals would talk to her). I would serve as Governor of Alaska, introducing innovations like Bobby Jindal in Louisiana and not be so preoccupied about the future. Maybe I would run for the US Senate if I had thoughts about 2016 (2012 is a bit too close to 2008).

The media and liberal establishment will never like Sarah Palin, but she needs to prove two things: 1) She can govern something for more than two years and 2) when she hits the talk shows she has intelligent, well-thought out responses.

Noonan concludes with: The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.

I agree that the future will require far better leaders than I am observing in Washington now.

GLOBAL WARMING

Just got back from a conference and some were discussing prominent non-American politicians who were critical of climate change data. This article by the WSJ caught my eye.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

MEDIA COVERAGE OF OBAMA & BUSH

I would like the media to ask tough questions of every politician. I am not sure Bush had it as bad as Obama when he entered office, but things weren't as rosy as the Clinton "go-go" 1990s. I do remember Democrats blaming Bush for a 2000 recession. I am sure some Republican will be doing an economic analysis comparing how Bush turned the economy around with what has happened under Obama. But I can't say Bush's deficits have been helpful.

OBAMA JOBS STIMULUS

There are an increasing number of articles indicating that the Obama administration's job stimulus numbers are pure illusions, but the mainstream media has not evaluated his numbers (as they did in the previous Bush administration). Forbes has a good article on this phenomenon--there is no way to know if a job has been saved or created. Recently the administration and news outlets were praising the drop in unemployment numbers, but as I recall during the Bush administration, these numbers would always be qualified with a statement such as "the numbers don't include those who have given up looking." So we have all these numbers floating around, but the bottom-line is that no one can say for sure if things are better or worse.

Dems say things are better, but Rush and Hannity are pointing out the problems. But the truth, for both supporters and opponents of the stimulus legislation, is that the exact effect of the stimulus and the precise number of jobs created or saved can never be known.

A WSJ article compares how the media dealt with Bush employment figures compared to its coverage of the Obama administration numbers.

From the American Heritage Foundation.

OBAMA REFERENCES TO JESUS CHRIST

Obama refers to Jesus Christ more than George W. Bush did.

Obama’s invocation of the Christian Messiah is more overt than Americans heard in the public rhetoric of Bush in his time in the White House — even though Bush’s victories were powered in part by evangelical voters.“

I don’t recall a single example of Bush as president ever saying, ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ,’” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Christian group Family Research Council. “This is different.”

JEWISH VIEWS OF OBAMA

Some Jews are very concerned about Obama's Cairo speech and his attitude toward Israel and Jews.

President Obama's Cairo speech was nothing short of an earthquake — a distortion of history, an insult to the Jewish people, and an abandonment of very real human-rights victims in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It is not surprising that Arabs and Muslims in a position to speak were enthusiastic. It is more surprising that American commentators are praising the speech for its political craftiness, rather than decrying its treachery of historic proportions.

With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself. Consider the following indicators: (Read here)

BAPTIST WATERBOARDING

Well, this is interesting. . .baptism is a form of waterboarding.

OBAMA AND THE MUSLIM WORLD

Since the election it has been interesting to watch how Obama has treated his Islamic roots. During the election critics who used his middle name, "Hussein," were treated as racists. Yet at the inauguration he used his full name. Recently in Turkey he said that America was not a Christian nation. Now he is calling America "one of the largest countries in the Muslim world" according to a columnist in the Telegraph.

Petrified of the potential political fallout of being branded a Muslim, Candidate Obama - a practicing Christian - never used the name "Hussein" and its use was frowned upon as a forbidden code for the nutty accusation that he was some kind of Islamic Manchurian candidate.
No more. To say Barack Hussein Obama - BHO for short - now appears to be the height of political correctness.

As ABC's Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller astutely outline here, the Obama administration is embracing the new president's inner Muslim, as it were, with deputy national security adviser that Obama had "experienced Islam on three continents...growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans [are] a key part of Illinois and Chicago".

Even LeMonde has weighed in on this. Les Etats-Unis sont "l'un des plus grands pays musulmans de la planète", a souligné mardi 2 juin sur Canal+ le président américain, Barack Obama, qui doit prononcer jeudi au Caire un important discours de réconciliation en direction du monde musulman (voir l'interview de Barack Obama sur Canal+ ici).

MEDIA FAWNING OVER OBAMA

Robert Samuelson, hardly a right-winger, has pointed out how subservient the media has been with Obama.

The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment; but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.

A Pew study indicates: The study examined 1,261 stores by The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the "NewsHour" on PBS. Favorable stories (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent) , while the rest were "neutral" or "mixed." Obama's treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the presidencies of Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent).

James Lewis also has commented on this phenomena. The White House press corps is now completely supine, utterly shameless in its groveling cowardice. Stalin himself couldn't have wished for a more slobbering press corps. Rather than mailing them nice little Lipton tea bags, millions of sane Americans might consider sending air sickness bags to our Reigning Media.

I have noticed that the British Economist has raised far more critical questions about Obama's decisions than Time, Newsweek, CNN, and the Sunday talk shows have.

WATERBOARDING

A journalist experiences it.

SOTOMAYOR

Ann Althouse: Yet it was not an unguarded spontaneous outburst. It was a carefully written speech delivered to a particular audience. Sotomayor was saying the things that would be well-received by her audience. . . . — because I've been immersed for a quarter century in the kind of law school environment that she addressed. Here, we sympathetically smile and nod at such things. We nurture racial analysis. We create a school of thought and hire people to write about Critical Race Theory. What Sotomayor said was actually a weak, feel-good version of the kind of racial talk that is widespread in the legal academy.

OBAMA MAN

I don't think I will hear this on David Letterman.

SOTOMAYOR NOMINATION

I think these are good questions to ask Sotomayor (or other nominees for that matter).

1. Do you believe that judges should use "empathy" to decide cases?

2. Do you believe that interpretations of the Constitution should evolve to keep up with the times?

3. Should Supreme Court justices be bound by precedent?

What is the court's role when interpreting ambiguous laws?

CHRYSLER DEALER CLOSINGS

I hope this isn't true. The Chrysler dealers that were closed had owners who either gave money to Republicans or to Obama's opponents in the Democrat primary.

LIBERAL QUESTIONS OBAMA'S ECONOMIC POLICIES

From Mickey Kaus:

I don't want to sound like Veronique de Rugy here, but who will pay the price if when this half-baked "restructuring" fails? In normal "capitalism at work," those who would pay the price will be those who made the deal and put up their money--the capitalists. (Query: Would Scott Sperling invest his firm's money in this dubious proposition?) If When Obama's plan fails, the monetary loss will fall not on Obama, but on the taxpayers. It will likely be made up somehow by the taxpayers (via higher tax assessments or inflation). That's not "capitalism at work." It's something else at work. But I'd be all for it, if I thought it really would work. It won't, and it will be Obama's fault. (He'd certainly get credit if it succeeded.)

What will happen if GM and Chrysler still go bankrupt after all of this money has been poured into them? Obama has saved Chrysler and the UAW, but pension plans which invested in Chrysler bonds are having problems because bondholders were sacrificed in the restructuring--how is this helping the economy? Somehow wealth and jobs have to be created--I don't see spending billions on downsizing GM and Chrysler doing it.

MURTHA AIRPORT

From ABC News. Not a confidence builder about how government money is being spent.

MORE DEMS BLAME JEWS FOR FINANCIAL CRISIS

Democrats are more likely to blame Jews for the financial crisis than Republicans.

A survey conducted by the Boston Review in its May/June issue shows that nearly 25% of American non-Jews blame “the Jews” a moderate amount or more for the financial crisis.

They found that Democrats were significantly more prone to blaming Jews than Republicans: while 32% of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, compared to only 18.4% of Republicans.

NEW 20 PESO BILL

Just in from Mexico.

OBAMA APPOINTEE IN TROUBLE WITH CANADA

Canadians sure don't like Napolitano's comments about 9/11 terrorists coming from Canada and giving credence to a crazy rumor.

Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job? She appears to be about as knowledgeable about border issues as a late-night radio call-in yahoo.

In an interview broadcast Monday on the CBC, Ms. Napolitano attempted to justify her call for stricter border security on the premise that "suspected or known terrorists" have entered the U. S. across the Canadian border, including the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack.

ANOTHER CORRUPT APPOINTEE

I have never seen an administration name so many appointees with tax or financial scandals in their past (or present). Now the "car czar" is being investigated over his role in a public pension scandal.

As state and federal authorities examine Mr. Rattner’s dealings with the New York State retirement fund, questions are emerging about his efforts to gain business from several other public funds, including ones in New Mexico and New York City. His private investment firm, the Quadrangle Group, is moving to calm anxious pension managers, who have entrusted the firm with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. Rattner, who is leading the Obama administration’s efforts to revamp the auto industry, has left his small but prominent firm in a bind. Because he was integral to Quadrangle, investors can try to withhold additional money that they have pledged to the firm now that he has left.

DEMOCRATS ON HEALTH CARE

According to Mickey Kaus, a liberal Democrat, some Dems want to solve the medical crisis by cutting back on who gets treatments.

ISRAEL SELLS RUSSIA DRONES

I don't understand why Israel is selling drones to Russia. Russia could sell them to Iran or Syria in spite of agreeing not to sell them. Maybe they are obsolete or maybe Israel has them "bugged" with secret signalling devices!

NEW DEAL = 2008

This cartoon from the New Deal era strikes me as an interesting comparison to Obama's election in 2008. Conservative fears haven't changed much.

NADA URBANKOVA

I was looking for some good "communist" era pop music and discovered my favorite Czech singer of the 1970s, Nada Urbankova! What memories!

Vilem pece housky.

Blondak s cervenou bougatkou.

Zavidim.

OBAMA GAFFS

It has been interesting to watch how generous the press has been with Obama's early diplomatic failures, especially on his latest European trip. Letterman and Leno seemed to have ignored items which they would have skewered Bush for. I assume someone is chronicling these gaffs, but I could not the latest one pass by.

“There’s a lot of -- I don’t know what the term is in Austrian -- wheeling and dealing, and people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics,” he said in response to an Austrian reporter’s question.

Austrians speak German, Mr. President--not Austrian.

AN OPTIMIST

I found an optimist! He gives six reasons why the U.S. is not in decline.

CLIMATE CHANGE

More doubts about its validity.

CONCERNS ABOUT THE DIRECTION OF AMERICA

George Will sees a growing evidence of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress to promoting a "toxic" agenda, which infringes on civil liberties and sends bailout money to auto plants in Sweden.

TOP TEN POLITICAL ONE LINERS!

Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon win with two!

THE NEED FOR A CEO BAILOUT

Poor CEO.

THE STATE OF THE US TREASURY

This is my concern.

BAILING OUT GM

It is hard for me to see the bailout of GM as good for the nation and even maybe GM. Fortune makes some good points. The company just wants federal money to get smaller--as the article points out the company needs to get "better."

Joseph B. White's take on the bailout. Will we end up with cars like the East German Trabant! describes some of the systemic problems in the company.

THE COLLAPSE OF EVANGELICALISM

According to this writer, the evangelical movement will be dead within 10 years. I agree with a lot of his analysis about the weakness of evangelical churches and Christians, but church history seems to show the resilience of the church. Revival seems to come at unexpected moments.

Mark Galli at Christianity Today responds.

ISLAM, A RELIGION OF PEACE?

An ex-terrorist's view: There is a certain schizophrenia among many Muslims who seem to believe that it is acceptable to teach hatred and violence in the name of their religion, while at the same time expecting the world to respect Islam as "a religion of peace, love and harmony."

While many religious texts preach violence, the interpretation, modern usage and implementation of these teachings make all the difference. For example, the stoning of women exists in both the Old Testament and in the Islamic tradition, or "Sunna" -- the recorded deeds and manners of the prophet Muhammad. The difference, though, is that leading Jewish scholars agreed to discontinue these practices centuries ago while Muslim scholars have yet to do so. Hence we do not see the stoning of women practiced or promoted in Israel, the "Jewish" state, but we see it practiced and promoted in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the "Islamic" states!

BUFFETT CRITICISM OF OBAMA

This looks like a pretty sharp attack by an Obama supporter, Warren Buffett, on Obama's early presidential decisions. I didn't sense it was this strong from the few comments I saw in some news sources.

RELIGIOUS GROUPS LOSING GROUND

An interesting study indicating the religious changes in America. Baptists are declining in influence and numbers in the South and the Roman Catholics are doing the same in the Northeast. 15% of all Americans claim "no religion" -- up from 8% since 1990.

STATE DEPARTMENT

I can't believe that the Russian experts in the State Department can't get a Russian word right!

Hillary seems to be making even more mistakes. "I have never understood multiparty democracy." I never expected have such a poor understanding of Europe.

PALIN, THE CENTRIST

Evidence that she is not part of the religious right--she appointed a member of Planned Parenthood to the Alaska Supreme Court. But it appears to be a complicated issue.

Now, before you write off Palin completely there are some extenuating circumstances. You should know the way the process in Alaska goes. A liberal board (made up of leftist trial lawyer types) nominates two people and the Governor has to pick one. And from what I understand, neither option was great but of the two, it would appear that Palin may have picked the more liberal of the two, at least according to Alaska Family Council's Jim Minnery. Minnery wrote Palin in support of the other candidate, Judge Eric Smith saying Smith was “more conservative” and that Christen would be “another activist on the Court.”

THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICA

A Russian prophet! Russians seem to be given to these kind of apocalyptic visions from time to time.

If you're inclined to believe Igor Panarin, and the Kremlin wouldn't mind if you did, then President Barack Obama will order martial law this year, the U.S. will split into six rump-states before 2011, and Russia and China will become the backbones of a new world order.

ANOTHER OBAMA SUPPORTER QUESTIONS HIS SUPPORT

Jim Cramer of CNBC.

"Until they realize that their agenda is destroying the life savings of millions of Americans, then all I can give you is caution... I'm not saying Mr. President go stare at the Bloomberg quote machine and come to your senses. I just want some sign that Obama realizes the market is totally falling apart and that his agenda has a big hand in that happening. I don't know about you but I felt it everywhere I went this weekend... A young kid took me aside. He said I was right when I said we've elected a Leninist... I felt the total lack of control we all feel right now, the, "It's out of my hands but where's the authority?" The, "Hey it's amateur hour at our darkest moment."

DEPRESSION COMING

Found this through the Dallas Morning News -- Obama Wall Street supporters are becoming disenchanted with his policies.

The Dow closed today at its lowest mark in 12 years, and now it's becoming clear even to Obama supporters on Wall Street that his reckless agenda will make a bad situation worse.

But for all of that they can’t believe what they are witnessing: an economic agenda that is contradictory at best, and possibly reckless in its extreme. Policies that will certainly make a very bad situation even worse, and when things do get better, they will certainly not be better enough to compensate for the pain we are experiencing.

People compare it to FDR’s New Deal, but it’s only fair to point out that Herbert Hoover’s taxes on the rich and restrictive trade policy, which preceded the New Deal, were hardly free-market-oriented. And when Roosevelt tried many of these same measures, coupled with a massive expansion of government that crowded out business investments large and small, the economy got worse, not better. The stock market’s various declines that occurred throughout the 1930s and well into the 1940s reflected the disconnect between Roosevelt’s economic policies and the economy’s health. A quick check of the Dow Jones Industrial Average shows a series of fits and starts and no recovery until well after World War II.

Things must be bad when even the liberal economist, Paul Krugman, is depressed.

WHAT OBAMA IS READING

The Post-American World. I would like to see what else he is reading. I wouldn't judge him on just one book. But I can't help but wonder what CNN or Chris Matthews would have done if Bush were seen reading this book?

TAXPAYERS

"Taxpayers are chumps." A summary of all of the Obama appointees who have not paid their income taxes. Ron Kirk is the latest one. When will this stop? Can't he find Democrats who pay their taxes?

OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE PLANS

“Even if we’re busting the budget, we’ve got to solve some of these problems,” said a member of his inner circle. “I’d rather live with a debt than have people go without health care.”

But will massive debt end up destroying the health care system (and the country)? From Politico.com.

RUSSIA PUBLICLY REJECTS AN OBAMA OVERTURE

It is obvious Medvedev (and Putin) has no respect for Obama. Obama's initiative to compromise on US missiles in Eastern Europe for Russian help in Iran went down in flames. This doesn't look good for American power and influence. It's one thing to take the blow privately, but Russia made it a public rebuke.

This is seen as a sign of weakness. But Obama thinks he can make deals with Putin.