The GOP’s Need for Speed
by Hugh Hewitt

Mike Pence gets it.

In an interview with CNBC –picked up by The Hill– the House GOP’s number three gave the explicit assurance that a return to the majority for Republicans would mean an extension of the tax cuts.

“Well, we’re going to stay focused on Election Day. But I think before that, we’re going to continue to demand that this administration and this Congress make it clear that no American will see a tax increase in January of next year,” The Hill quotes Pence as saying on the business network.

“So the first thing that we will do is try to preserve the tax relief of 2001 and 2003 for all Americans — for all small businesses and family farmers. But we also want to look at the kind of across the board tax relief, the kind of tax relief that will encourage capital formation, to get this economy moving again,” he added.

This is a great start and more needs to come. In an interview with me on my Monday program –the transcript is here– Republican Leader and presumptive Speaker if the GOP regains the majority John Boehner demurred when I pressed him on the GOP’s need for speed. Boehner obviously recognizes that he cannot speak for a majority that doesn’t exist or for members who haven’t yet been elected or given him their votes as speaker.

An appropriate refusal to be presumptuous, however, has to yield to the suspicion in the country that all Beltway electeds are part of a club and that the club really doesn’t feel the country’s pain and fear. The standard legislative schedule cannot control when a new Congress returns to D.C. in 2011. The House especially, the “People’s Chamber,” cannot slip into the old calendar where budget resolutions emerge in April and appropriations bills in September at the earliest. Boehner has to rally his leadership and his troops in November and December and begin the new year with a raft of legislation that atckles the big stuff and proposes serious solutions. The country is ready for that. Not producing it, at least through a House where a majority exists, will be a huge and lasting error.

Pence’s comments to CNBC are a good sign that some inside the caucus know that there is an overriding “need for speed.” Once and future Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier on my program has also pledged immediate action to rescind the move to add 18,000 IRS agents, which is a good goal example of the specificity that the voters are demanding, but about one line on a two hundred line agenda that needs to be laid out.

Paul Ryan is a superstar because he has laid out a plan. The GOP will keep any new majority they gain only if they collectively embrace a plan that genuinely carves back the spending, extends the tax cuts and keeps the Department of Defense fully funded. Obamacare has to be defunded, and a reform of Social Security advanced asap. Republicans have historically waiting until a consensus emerges, but they cannot do so this time or they will waste their opportunity and squander their momentum.

Hopefully John Boehner has a transition team working in some quiet office building in northern Virginia, ready to ship a detailed schedule and very detailed proposals to the members of the caucus on November 3. Those plans will leak and the lame duck session will be awash in recriminations and denunciations, false charges and alarmism.

Fine. If the GOP gets the rarest of all things in politics, a second chance, they have to expect that plans for using it will bring many squeals of false pain and feigned outrage. The Democrats will demand meetings of the sort they did not hold and bipartisanship of the sort they refused on health care and the stimulus. The MSM will amplify every charge.

If we don’t hear Democratic/MSM outrage coming out of D.C. in November and December as Nancy Pelosi prepares to give over the gavel, the country will be in a very bad place indeed.

And the GOP will have fumbled away a once-in-a-generation opportunity to set the country back on a right course.

How Republicans Will Win the Senate
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

It gets tiresome hearing the conventional wisdom say that the Democrats will likely keep control of the Senate. Far from it.

To gain control, Republicans must win 10 new seats. An analysis of the latest polling data suggests that Republicans currently hold the lead in eight pick-up states: Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington state, Arkansas, Delaware, North Dakota and Indiana. In a ninth, Illinois, the candidates are tied, and in the 10th — Nevada — Harry Reid is ahead by only one point. And, for insurance, Barbara Boxer in California and Kirsten Gillibrand in New York are both below 50 percent of the vote. In Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal is only at 50 percent. That’s a potential pickup of 13 seats and a likely gain of at least 10 (enough for a majority).

Any incumbent who is running at less than 50 percent of the vote is in serious trouble. It means that a majority of the voters have decided not to vote for him or her. (Asked if you are likely to be married to the same person next year, a vote of “undecided” does not bode well for your marriage.)

So here are the numbers:

Aug. 27 polls

Nevada: Reid (D) 45, Sharon Angle (R) 44 (Mason Dixon)

With Reid this far under 50 percent, Angle is likely to win

Aug. 26 polls

Florida (currently Republican): Marco Rubio (R) 40, Charlie Crist (I) 30, Kendrick Meek (D) 21 (Rasmussen)

So much for Crist!

Pennsylvania: Pat Toomey 40 (R), Joe Sestak (D) 31 (Franklin-Marshall)

Aug. 25 polls

Colorado: Ken Buck (R) 49, Michael Bennet (D): 40 (Reuters)

California: Boxer (D) 49, Carly Fiorina (R) 44 (Rasmussen) Boxer has gained a bit, but still in trouble

Louisiana (currently Republican): David Vitter (R) 51m Charlie Melancon (D) 41 (PPP)

Wisconsin: Ron Johnson (R) 47, Russ Feingold (D) 46 (Rasmussen)

Illinois: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 45, Mark Kirk (R) 45 (Rasmussen)

Aug. 24 polls

Missouri (currently Republican): Roy Blunt 54, Robin Carnahan 41 (Rasmussen)

Aug. 21 polls

Washington state: Dino Rossi (R) 52, Patty Murray (D) 45 (SurveyUSA)

Aug. 20 polls

Arkansas: John Boozeman (R) 65, Blanche Lincoln (D) 27 (Rasmussen) This is not a typo!

The most likely results are that Republicans win the eight seats in which they now lead and also take Illinois and Nevada for a gain of 10 seats and control. They also have a good shot in California and possible upsets in New York and Connecticut.

The Mosque Controversy
by Thomas Sowell

The proposed mosque near where the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed, along with thousands of American lives, would be a 15-story middle finger to America.

It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious, so it is not surprising that the intelligentsia are out in force, decrying those who criticize this calculated insult.

What may surprise some people is that the American taxpayer is currently financing a trip to the Middle East by the imam who is pushing this project, so that he can raise the money to build it. The State Department is subsidizing his travel.

The big talking point is that this is an issue about “religious freedom” and that Muslims have a “right” to build a mosque where they choose. But those who oppose this project are not claiming that there is no legal right to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center.

If anybody did, it would be a matter for the courts to decide — and they would undoubtedly say that it is not illegal to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center attack.

The intelligentsia and others who are wrapping themselves in the Constitution are fighting a phony war against a straw man. Why create a false issue, except to evade the real issue?

Our betters are telling us that we need to be more “tolerant” and more “sensitive” to the feelings of Muslims. But if we are supposed to be sensitive to Muslims, why are Muslims not supposed to be sensitive to the feelings of millions of Americans, for whom 9/11 was the biggest national trauma since Pearl Harbor?

It would not be illegal for Japanese Americans to build a massive shinto shrine next to Pearl Harbor. But, in all these years, they have never sought to do it.

When Catholic authorities in Poland were planning to build an institution for nuns, years ago, and someone pointed out that it would be near the site of a concentration camp that carried out genocide, the Pope intervened to stop it.

He didn’t say that the Catholic Church had a legal right to build there, as it undoubtedly did. Instead, he respected the painful feelings of other people. And he certainly did not denounce those who called attention to the concentration camp.

There is no question that Muslims have a right to build a mosque where they chose to. The real question is why they chose that particular location, in a country that covers more than 3 million square miles.

If we all did everything that we have a legal right to do, we could not even survive as individuals, much less as a society. So the question is whether those who are planning a Ground Zero mosque want to be part of American society or just to see how much they can get away with in American society?

Can anyone in his right mind believe that this was intended to show solidarity with Americans, rather than solidarity with those who attacked America? Does anyone imagine that the Middle East nations, including Iran, from whom financial contributions will be solicited, want to promote reconciliation between Americans and Muslims?

That the President of the United States has joined the chorus of those calling the Ground Zero mosque a religious freedom issue tells us a lot about the moral dry rot that is undermining this country from within.

In this, as in other things, Barack Obama is not so much the cause of our decline but the culmination of it. He had many predecessors and many contemporaries who represent the same mindset and the same malaise.

There are people for whom moral preening has become a way of life. They are out in force denouncing critics of the Ground Zero mosque.

There are others for whom a citizen of the world affectation puts them one-up on those of us who are grateful to be Americans, and to enjoy a freedom that is all too rare in other countries around the world, even at this late date in human history.

They think the United States is somehow on trial, and needs to prove itself to others by bending over backwards. But bending over backwards does not win friends. It loses respect, including self-respect.

The Real “Radicals”
by William Wilson

There was a time in the not-too-distant past – 234 years ago to be precise – when the ideas articulated by the Tea Party movement would have rightly been considered “radical.”

Not just radical in their ideological composition, either, but radical in the more “irrational” sense – in that advancing these ideas was a good way to wind up dead. And that’s exactly what happened to more than 25,000 American Revolutionaries – patriots who gave their lives in order to provide the liberty we enjoy today (and which we now aspire to pass down to future generations).

From its founding documents to the blood that was shed on its battlefields, the American Revolution was by definition “radical.” According to Merriam-Webster, that means it was “marked by a considerable departure from the usual or traditional,” and “tending or disposed to (making) extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions.”

It was also quite clearly “advocating extreme measures” to bring about a new “state of political affairs.”

And the “radical” idea succeeded – not only in casting off the yoke of Eighteenth Century imperialist oppression, but in forging an entirely unique model of democratic governance. This new nation, “conceived in liberty” two-and-a-quarter centuries ago, followed the blueprint laid out by its Founding Fathers and within a few short generations became the richest, strongest, most freedom-loving nation the world has ever seen.

Meanwhile, nations which were built on counter-ideologies of collectivism, government control, censorship and command economic planning have failed spectacularly – at a tremendous human cost.

In recent decades, however, politicians of both parties in Washington D.C. have inexplicably abandoned America’s founding blueprint and embraced many of these failed ideologies. Thanks to this fundamental ideological shift, the primary source of America’s strength, wealth and freedom – its people – has been greatly diminished.

Now the final “radical” offensive – the one that threatens to bring down our democracy once and for all – is being implemented by Barack Obama and his socialist hordes. In the name of “Wall Street reform,” the federal government has taken over the financial industry (while conveniently ignoring its own starring role in the most recent economic collapse). In the name of “health care reform” it has socialized medicine and mandated that Americans either purchase insurance or pay huge fines to the government. In the name of “environmental protection” it has proposed the largest energy tax increase in American history. And in the name of “economic recovery” it has spent trillions of dollars to grow government while small businesses are going under by the thousands and families are struggling to make ends meet.

As a result of these policies, America’s debt and deficit are at record levels. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain unemployed with another major economic contraction looming – a “double-dip” recession that will only deepen when dozens of tax increases take effect in 2011.

While both Republican and Democratic politicians have led us here – sacrificing American freedom and prosperity on the altar of government’s insatiable appetite for more money and more power – there is something especially sinister about Obama’s machinations. Like master propagandists of old, Obama has not only veiled his anti-American agenda under the generically-comforting banners of “hope” and “change,” he has also sought to create a foil – a group of antagonists that he can label as the “real radicals.”

In fact, in Obama’s world these “real radicals” are the very people who are fighting to restore fiscal sanity, common sense principles, fundamental fairness and founding wisdom to our government.

“The White House has tried to link the Republican Party with the fledgling conservative-libertarian tea party coalition — and demonize the combination as too extreme for the country,” a recent Associated Press article noted.

Indeed, a full-court press has been initiated by the Obama administration with the goal of portraying the Tea Party as outside of the American “mainstream.” Several establishment Republicans desperate to hold onto their seats at the taxpayer-funded table have joined the chorus, too.

And perhaps Obama – for once – is correct. Not in an ideological sense, obviously, but perhaps our overreaching federal government and its legacy media apologists have successfully branded supporters of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as the real “kooks” in this country.

If that’s the case, then the definition of “radical” has truly come full circle – and the only difference between today’s Tea Partiers and those who gathered in Boston Harbor in 1773 is the source of their oppression.

Such a movement may seem “radical” to Obama and his media elites, but in truth it is not only entirely consistent with American values – it is the last, best hope for their survival.

The last refuge of a liberal

By Charles Krauthammer

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the “bitter” people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging “to guns or religion or” — this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

That’s a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

– Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

– Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

– Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

– Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s excuse for the Democrats’ failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president’s proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

Then came Arizona and S.B. 1070. It seems impossible for the left to believe that people of good will could hold that: (a) illegal immigration should be illegal, (b) the federal government should not hold border enforcement hostage to comprehensive reform, i.e., amnesty, (c) every country has the right to determine the composition of its immigrant population.

As for Proposition 8, is it so hard to see why people might believe that a single judge overturning the will of 7 million voters is an affront to democracy? And that seeing merit in retaining the structure of the most ancient and fundamental of all social institutions is something other than an alleged hatred of gays — particularly since the opposite-gender requirement has characterized virtually every society in all the millennia until just a few years ago?

And now the mosque near Ground Zero. The intelligentsia is near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of connection between Islam and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly with the Obama administration’s pretense that we are at war with nothing more than “violent extremists” of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief. Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct (an admitted redundancy) are declared Islamophobes, the ad hominem du jour.

It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms). Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” — blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims — a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly, “just downright mean”?

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

The Dangerous Dog Days of Summer
by Victor Davis Hanson

Historian Barbara Tuchman characterized the events leading up to World War I as the “Guns of August.”While there is no statistical evidence that wars break out any more often in late summer than in other seasons, the world was torn apart twice during the 20th century: in early August 1914, and then again on Sept. 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Maybe it is the effects of the heat, or the sense of urgency to do something before the cold of winter; but nonetheless, we’ve also seen a lot of late-summer violence the last few decades.

Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, leading to an American-led air campaign and ground war in early 1991 that demolished the Iraqi army. On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 radical Islamic terrorists took down the World Trade Center complex and hit the Pentagon — the worst foreign attacks on the continental United States since the British burned much of Washington, D.C., in 1814.

What can we learn from these dog-day cataclysms?

First, for all the rising prewar tensions, the general slaughter to follow was mostly unforeseen. Experts thought August 1914 would lead only to a war “over by Christmas” — not 500 miles of trenches from the North Sea to Switzerland, and 8 million combat dead by 1918. Even after Hitler invaded Poland in a lightning strike, no one dreamed that more than 50 million deaths would follow.

Second, these late-summer bloodbaths usually followed from the initial impression of aggressors that they would face few consequences. After the Munich Agreement, Hitler had no reason to believe that gobbling up Poland would lead to a world war rather than more of the same appeasement. Saddam Hussein had no idea that the United States would react to a far-away border dispute by mobilizing a global coalition against him, and by bombing large swaths of Baghdad. Likewise, few imagined that nine years after 9/11, American troops would still be fighting in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban — the former hosts of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda — from returning to power.

In short, grand professions of peaceful intent in the face of global tensions, or even noble indifference to dictatorial aggression, instead ensure that war follows.

Finally, in the ensuing wars the United States lost thousands of soldiers when it was not well prepared — and far fewer when it was. There was almost no American military in 1914 and little more when we declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungry in 1917.

America was once again woefully unarmed in 1939, when Germany started the European war, and not in much better shape when attacked by the Japanese in December 1941. As a result, in both of its victorious world wars the United States lost tens of thousands of troops.

A fully armed and mobilized volunteer American military forced Iraqi forces out of Kuwait with relatively few losses. And even in the long current slogs in Iraq and Afghanistan — for all the heartbreak of their terrible human costs — fewer American soldiers have died than in single past battles like the Meuse-Argonne or Iwo-Jima. In short, America never went to war regretting that it was overarmed and overprepared.

We should keep such bothersome late-summer history in mind this August. The world is once again heating up with the weather. Iran boasts of its new nuclear reactor — with more to come. A nuclear North Korean keeps threatening South Korea. Hezbollah and Syria are arming to teeth with new missiles. And an assurgent Turkey is seeking an updated version of its Ottoman imperial past. Meanwhile, the United States has unsuccessfully reached out to firebrand leaders such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Syria’s Bashar Assad, while drifting away from its Indian, Israeli and European allies.

More worrisome, in times of 1939-like recession and staggering deficits, the United States is understandably talking of massive cutbacks in its military. Nations never reduce defense expenditures because they want smaller militaries, but because in tough times the public shortsightedly thinks that money is better spent on social programs at home.

The combination of provocative rivals abroad, our president’s constant assurances that the United States has been at fault in the past and wants to reach out to enemies in the future, and probable defense reductions should remind us to tread carefully this late summer.

Unfortunately, the past Guns of August teach us that war may be looking for those who are not looking for war.

The White House War on Jobs
by Michelle Malkin

The “Summer of Recovery” is looking more and more like the Beltway Chainsaw Massacre for America’s workers. As President Obama lolls on Martha’s Vineyard with his well-heeled Chicago pals, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 72 percent of people are very worried about joblessness and 67 percent are very concerned about massive government spending.

After a nearly $1 trillion fiscal stimulus and several multibillion-dollar corporate and union bailouts, unemployment remains stuck near 10 percent nationwide; jobless claims rose again last week. One shudders to think how many more jobs will be on the chopping block after the vacationing president finishes “recharging his batteries.”

The blame avoidance industry, of course, never takes a break. Capitol Hill Democrats blame George W. Bush. President Obama blames inaction by the, er, Democrat-controlled Congress. On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden derided GOP Leader John Boehner’s speech on the Obama job-killing machine as a return to the past. Biden sneered about the “good old days” when Republicans held the majority in Washington. But laid-off, unemployed and endangered Americans in the health care sector, the auto industry, and the oil, mining, gas, and fishing industries are no doubt wondering: What’s wrong with returning to the days when we had jobs and steady paychecks?

These are not the wealthy fat cats and Big Business titans Democrats love to demonize.

They’re employees of companies like Assurant Health, which announced last week that it would slash 130 jobs at its offices in Milwaukee and Plymouth, Minn., to prepare for costly Obamacare mandates.

They’re employees of medical device firms in Massachusetts, where officials say they’ll be forced to cut back on operational costs and jobs thanks to a little-noticed Obamacare tax on their products that goes into effect in 2013.

They’re employees of restaurants like White Castle and International House of Pancakes, whose executives say they will be forced into layoffs and premium hikes to cope with the federal law’s $3,000-per-employee penalty on companies whose workers pay more than 9.5 percent of household income in premiums for company-provided insurance.

They’re mom-and-pop enterprises across the country that must now deal with Obamacare’s onerous Section 9006 tax-filing mandate. It requires them to file 1099 forms with the IRS for every vendor from whom they purchase $600 or more in goods. Nebraska GOP Sen. Mike Johanns calls it one of many “job-crushing provisions” that will bury small business in paperwork and legal costs.

They’re the estimated 23,000 workers in the deepwater drilling industry whom the White House deliberately wrote off in pursuit of its junk science-based drilling moratorium.

They’re the estimated tens of thousands of workers employed by car dealers that were shut down by Obama’s auto czars at a time, as the TARP inspector general pointed out last month, “when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed primarily to preserve jobs… — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact.”

They’re employees of Utah oil and gas companies whose leases have been pulled without cause by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The Interior Department’s own Inspector General rejected Salazar’s explanation that the Bush administration had rushed the leases through. The Deseret News reports that “rescinding these leases has likely cost the state millions already. Officials in Uintah county estimate the county lost 3,000 jobs in 2009, and Duchesne lost 1,000 jobs.”

They’re employees of commercial and recreational fishing businesses in New England, who have organized a flotilla on Martha’s Vineyard on Thursday to protest the Obama administration’s restrictive environmental policies and stealth regulatory ocean grab.

The White House has invested mightily in creating a propaganda infrastructure to tout its “jobs saved or created.” Taxpayers need a full, transparent accounting of how many jobs Team Obama has destroyed. Call it Wreckovery.gov.

It’s the Economy, Dems
by Donald Lambro

The economy is tanking. Economists say it has slowed to a near comatose 1.5 percent growth rate, unemployment claims were at a nine-month high and jobs are scarce, yet President Obama is focusing on corporate campaign donations.

While the economy is the clear overriding issue in the midterm elections, threatening to topple Democrats from power in Congress, Obama was devoting his weekly radio address last Saturday to an issue far from the real concerns of workers, families and employers struggling to survive.

If anyone is looking for signs Obama is completely disconnected from the failing economy, his radio address blaming Republicans for blocking his legislation to place restrictions on corporate campaign donations delivered that in spades.

With polls showing Obama’s job approval rating slipping to 43 percent last week because of the economy, Democratic strategists grumble privately that the White House has a “tin ear.” Republicans said Obama’s focus on campaign politics instead of policies to get the economy growing again showed how much he wanted to change the subject in this year’s elections.

“Americans want us to focus on jobs, but by focusing on an election bill, Democrats are sending a clear message to the American people that their jobs aren’t as important as the jobs of embattled Democrat politicians,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in response to Obama’s remarks.

But the Obama administration remained in deep denial about the declining health of the U.S. economy, insisting that it was “moving in the right direction,” dubbing it the “Recovery Summer” and declaring that economic growth was “growing at a good clip.”

A few weeks ago, Vice President Joe Biden predicted the creation of between 250,000 to 500,000 jobs was just around the corner.

But as the summer draws to a close, and with the elections a little more than two months away, those jobs are nowhere to be seen. If anything, the economy’s health was worsening, and this administration didn’t seem to have a viable plan to pull the country out of its economic decline.

Among recent developments:

– Last week the government reported that more American workers had filed for jobless benefits than at anytime since last November. Unemployment-benefit claims rose by 12,000 to 500,000 for the third straight weekly increase — the first time claims had hit the half-million mark in nine months.

– While the official unemployment rate stood at 9.5 percent in July, the real jobless rate is much higher than that. Factor in the 1.2 million unemployed who have given up looking for work and have dropped out of the labor force, plus those who want full-time work but can only find part-time jobs, and the national unemployment rate is 16.5 percent.

– The housing industry has sunk into a deeper slump, with nearly half of homeowners who enrolled in Obama’s mortgage relief plan dropping out — raising fears that foreclosures may increase in the second half of the year.

– Other troubling signs point to growing economic desperation in the workforce. Longterm unemployed Americans are forced to apply earlier than they planned for Social Security benefits in an attempt to make ends meet. And a record number of workers are withdrawing funds from their 401(k) retirement accounts to pay their household bills and put food on the table.

Meantime, the Obama administration is planning to slam the U.S. economy with the largest tax increase in American history by letting President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 top income tax rate cuts expire at the end of this year.

Beleagured businesses, both large and small, have been saying all year that this will deeply hurt the economy, risk-taking investors and job creation, but the White House and Democratic leaders are stubbornly determined to go ahead with their big-spending tax-hike plan.

It isn’t just the business community saying higher taxes will weaken the economy: the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is saing it, too.

A CBO analysis released last week said permanently extending the Bush tax cuts would give the country a “considerable” economic boost over the next few years.

“Under that… scenario, economic growth would be stronger next year; unemployment would be lower next year,” said CBO director Douglas Elmendorf, who was appointed to his post by Democratic leaders in Congress.

Moreover, “under current law, both the waning of (Obama’s) fiscal stimulus and the scheduled increases in taxes will temporarily subtract from growth, especially in 2011,” CBO added.

Notably, a growing number of Democratic candidates are also urging Obama and their party to keep the lower tax rates in place, saying it would be the height of economic folly to raise income taxes on the people who create jobs at a time when the economy is in a steep decline.

Some of the don’t-raise-taxes Democrats are Senate candidates in critical battleground contests, including Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, Rep. Brad Ellsworth of Indiana and Rep. Charlie Melancon of Louisiana.

When Ronald Reagan cut tax rates across the board in the 1981-82 recession, the economy surged into a spectacular recovery, with quarterly rate increases of between 4 percent and 9.3 percent over the next several years.

There’s a message there somewhere for the stubborn Obama Democrats to consider.

Stimulus and Health Care Have Democrats on Defensive
by Michael Barone

Like many Democrats over the past 40 years, Barack Obama has hoped that his association with unpopular liberal positions on cultural issues would be outweighed by pushing economic policies intended to benefit the ordinary person.

In his campaign in 2008 and as president in 2009 and 2010, he has hoped that those he characterized to a rich San Francisco Bay area audience as bitterly clinging to guns and God would be won over by programs to stimulate the economy and provide guaranteed health insurance.

At least so far, it hasn’t worked, as witnessed by recent statements by some of the Democrats’ smartest thinkers.

The 2009 stimulus package is so unpopular that Democrats have banned the word from their campaign vocabulary. “I’m not supposed to call it stimulus,” Rep. Barney Frank told the “Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart. “The message experts in Washington have told us that we’re supposed to call it the recovery plan.”

“I’m puzzled by that,” Frank went on. “Most people would rather be stimulated than recover.” The problem is, the economy has neither been stimulated nor has it recovered.

As for the health care bill, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who has been pondering Democrats’ standing with working-class voters since his perceptive 1980s studies of Reagan Democrats in Macomb County, Mich., has pretty much thrown in the towel.

In a leaked report for Democratic insiders, Greenberg and fellow pollster Celinda Lake concede that “straightforward ‘policy’ defenses fail to be moving voters’ opinions about the law” and “many don’t believe health reform will help the economy.”

“Women in particular,” they add, “are concerned that (the) health law will mean less provider availability — scarcity an issue.” In other words, people have figured out that government rationing may mean less supply for a product for which there is great demand.

Greenberg and Lake recommend using personal stories to highlight the law’s benefits. But “don’t overpromise or ’spin’ what the law delivers” and don’t “say the law will reduce costs and deficit.”

Do say: “The law is not perfect, but it does good things and helps many people. Now we’ll work to improve it.” (emphasis theirs)

This amounts to an abandonment of the claims that the Obama Democrats have been making about the health care bill they jammed through five months ago. It’s an admission that they messed up when they had supermajorities and will do better when they have fewer votes. It’s a retreat from framing the issue as support versus oppose to revise versus repeal.

So much for the economic issues that were going to provide the underpinnings of what Greenberg’s associate James Carville predicted would be 40 years of Democratic Party dominance.

As for cultural clashes, Democrats can claim to have quieted down debates over abortion and other issues that, as Obama said in his 2004 convention speech, unduly divided Blue America and Red America. But others have taken their place, to the Democrats’ discomfort this legislative season. The Obama Justice Department stepped in and got an injunction against Arizona’s law authorizing law enforcement to ask people stopped for other reasons about their immigration status.

Never mind that other states do this routinely without getting sued. The real problem is that about two-thirds of Americans support the Arizona law. Why couldn’t the administration let it go into effect and see if it assisted the efforts they assure us they are making on border and employer enforcement?

Then there was Obama’s iftar celebration comments on the mosque proposed for a site two blocks from the World Trade Center ruins — comments that were taken as an endorsement, until the president proclaimed himself a day later as agnostic on whether it should be built there.

A large majority of Americans, according to a Fox News poll, believe the advocates have a right to place a mosque there, but even more believe they should not do so. Now we have been watching as Democrats from Harry Reid and Howard Dean on down scamper to say they agree with both these views, while Obama endorses only the first.

The Arizona law and the ground zero mosque issues are not likely to be dispositive issues in most congressional races this year. But they are additional baggage for the Obama Democrats who find themselves, as the economy languishes, on the defensive on the issues they thought would win over the bitter clingers.

Dismantling America
by Thomas Sowell

“We the people” are the familiar opening words of the Constitution of the United States– the framework for a self-governing people, free from the arbitrary edicts of rulers. It was the blueprint for America, and the success of America made that blueprint something that other nations sought to follow.

At the time when it was written, however, the Constitution was a radical departure from the autocratic governments of the 18th century. Since it was something so new and different, the reasons for the Constitution’s provisions were spelled out in “The Federalist,” a book written by three of the writers of the Constitution, as a sort of instruction guide to a new product.

The Constitution was not only a challenge to the despotic governments of its time, it has been a continuing challenge– to this day– to all those who think that ordinary people should be ruled by their betters, whether an elite of blood, or of books or of whatever else gives people a puffed-up sense of importance.

While the kings of old have faded into the mists of history, the principle of the divine rights of kings to impose whatever they wish on the masses lives on today in the rampaging presumptions of those who consider themselves anointed to impose their notions on others.

The Constitution of the United States is the biggest single obstacle to the carrying out of such rampaging presumptions, so it is not surprising that those with such presumptions have led the way in denigrating, undermining and evading the Constitution.

While various political leaders have, over the centuries, done things that violated either the spirit or the letter of the Constitution, few dared to openly say that the Constitution was wrong and that what they wanted was right.

It was the Progressives of a hundred years ago who began saying that the Constitution needed to be subordinated to whatever they chose to call “the needs of the times.” Nor were they content to say that the Constitution needed more Amendments, for that would have meant that the much disdained masses would have something to say about whether, or what kind, of Amendments were needed.

The agenda then, as now, has been for our betters to decide among themselves which Constitutional safeguards against arbitrary government power should be disregarded, in the name of meeting “the needs of the times”– as they choose to define those needs.

The first open attack on the Constitution by a President of the United States was made by our only president with a Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson. Virtually all the arguments as to why judges should not take the Constitution as meaning what its words plainly say, but “interpret” it to mean whatever it ought to mean, in order to meet “the needs of the times,” were made by Woodrow Wilson.

It is no coincidence that those who imagine themselves so much wiser and nobler than the rest of us should be in the forefront of those who seek to erode Constitutional restrictions on the arbitrary powers of government. How can our betters impose their superior wisdom and virtue on us, when the Constitution gets in the way at every turn, with all its provisions to safeguard a system based on a self-governing people?

To get their way, the elites must erode or dismantle the Constitution, bit by bit, in one way or another. What that means is that they must dismantle America. This has been going on piecemeal over the years but now we have an administration in Washington that circumvents the Constitution wholesale, with its laws passed so fast that the public cannot know what is in them, its appointment of “czars” wielding greater power than Cabinet members, without having to be exposed to pubic scrutiny by going through the confirmation process prescribed by the Constitution for Cabinet members.

Now there is leaked news of plans to change the immigration laws by administrative fiat, rather than Congressional legislation, presumably because Congress might be unduly influenced by those pesky voters– with their Constitutional rights– who have shown clearly that they do not want amnesty and open borders, despite however much our betters do. If the Obama administration gets away with this, and can add a few million illegals to the voting rolls in time for the 2012 elections, that can mean reelection, and with it a continuing and accelerating dismantling of America.

Guide to the Perplexed
by Caroline Glick

Israel’s leaders are reportedly concerning themselves with one question today. Are there any circumstances in which US President Barack Obama will order the US military to strike Iran’s nuclear installations before Iran develops a nuclear arsenal?

From Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu down the line, Israel’s leaders reportedly raise this question with just about everyone they come into contact with. If this is true, then the time has come to end our leaders’ suspense.

The answer is no.

To all intents and purposes, there are no circumstances in which Obama would order an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations to prevent Iran from developing and fielding nuclear weapons. Exceptions to this statement fall into two categories. Either they are so implausible that they are operationally irrelevant, or they are so contingent on other factors that they would doom any US attack to failure.

Evidence for this conclusion is found in every aspect of Obama’s foreign policy. But to prove it, it is sufficient to point out point three aspects of his policies.

First of all, Obama’s refuses to recognize that an Iranian nuclear arsenal constitutes a clear and present danger to US national security. Obama’s discussions of the perils of a nuclear Iran are limited to his acknowledgement that such an arsenal will provoke a regional nuclear arms race. This is certainly true. But then that arms race has already begun. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, the UAE, and Kuwait have all announced their intentions to build nuclear reactors. In some cases they have signed deals with foreign countries to build such facilities.

And yet, while a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is bad, it is far from the worst aspect of Iran’s nuclear program for America. America has two paramount strategic interests in the Middle East. First, the US requires the smooth flow of inexpensive petroleum products from the Persian Gulf to global oil markets. Second, the US requires the capacity to project its force in the region to defend its own territory from global jihadists.

Both of these interests are imperiled by the Iranian nuclear program. If the US is not willing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it will lose all credibility as a strategic ally to the Sunni Arab states in the area. For instance, from a Saudi perspective, a US that is unwilling to prevent the ayatollahs from fielding nuclear weapons is of no more use to the kingdom than Britain or China or France. It is just another oil consuming country. The same goes for the rest of the states in the Gulf and in the region.

The Arab loss of faith in US security guarantees will cause them to deny basing rights to US forces in their territories. It will also likely lead them to bow to Iranian will on oil price setting through supply cutbacks. In light of this, the Iranian nuclear program constitutes the greatest threat ever to US superpower status in the region and to the wellbeing of the US economy.

Then there is the direct threat that Iran’s nuclear program constitutes for US national security. This threat grows larger by the day as Iran’s web of strategic alliances in Latin America expands unchallenged by the US. Today Iran enjoys military alliances with Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil and Bolivia.

As former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton has argued, at least the Soviets were atheists. Atheists of course, are in no hurry to die, since death can bring no rewards in a world to come. Iran’s leaders are apocalyptic jihadists. Given Iran’s Latin American alliances and Iran’s own progress towards intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran makes the Cuban missile crisis look like a walk in the park.

In the face of this grave and gathering threat, Obama cancelled plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic. He has shunned the pro-American Honduran and Colombian governments in favor of Nicaragua and Venezuela. He has welcomed Brazil’s anti-American president to the White House. He cancelled the F-22.

THE FACT that Obama fails to recognize the danger an Iranian nuclear arsenal poses to the US does not in and of itself prove that Obama would not attack Iran’s nuclear installations. After all, the US has fought many wars and launched countless campaigns in its history against foes that posed no direct threat to the US. In most of these cases, the US has fought on behalf of its allies.

In the case of Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, because the Iranians have openly placed Israel first on their nuclear targeting list, US debate about Iran’s nuclear program has been anchored around the issue of Israel’s national security. Should the US attack Iran’s nuclear installations in order to defend Israel?

Given the distorted manner in which the debate has been framed, the answer to that question hinges on Obama’s view of Israel. Recent moves by Obama and his advisors make clear that Obama takes a dim view of Israel. He views Israel neither as a credible ally nor a credible democracy.

First there is the character of current US military assistance to Israel and to its neighbors. In recent months, the Obama administration has loudly announced its intentions to continue its joint work with Israel towards the development and deployment of defensive anti-missile shields. Two things about these programs are notable. First, they are joint initiatives. Just as Israel gains US financing, the US gains Israeli technology that it would otherwise lack.

Second, as Globes reported last week, the Obama has actually scaled back US funding for these programs. For instance, funding for the Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile program – intended to serve as Israel’s primary defensive system against Iranian ballistic missiles — was cut by $50 million.

The defensive character of all of these programs signals an absence of US support for maintaining Israel’s capacity to preemptively strike its enemies. When the Pentagon’s refusal to permit Israel to install its own avionics systems on the next generation F-35 warplanes is added to the mix, it is difficult to make the argument that the US supports Israel’s qualitative edge over its enemies in any tangible way.

An assessment that the US has abandoned its commitment to Israel’s qualitative edge is strengthened by the administration’s announcement this week of its plan to sell Saudi Arabia scores of F-15 and F-16 fighter jets for an estimated $30 billion. While the US has pledged to remove systems from the Saudi aircraft that pose direct threats to Israel, once those jets arrive in the kingdom, the Saudis will be able to do whatever they want with them. If one adds to this equation the reduced regional stature of the US in an Iranian nuclear age, it is clear that these guarantees have little meaning.

Obama’s moves to reduce Israel’s offensive capacity and slow its acquisition of defensive systems goes hand in hand with his rejection of Israel’s right to self-defense and dismissive attitude towards Israel’s rule of law. These positions have been starkly demonstrated in his administration’s treatment of Israel in the wake of the IDF’s takeover of the Turkish-Hamas Mavi Marmara terror ship on May 31.

In the face of that blatant display of Turkish aggression against Israel as it maintained its lawful maritime blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza’s coastline, Obama sided with Turkey and Hamas against Israel. Obama demanded that Israel investigate its handling of the incident. Moreover, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that Israel was incapable of credibly investigating itself and so required Israel to add non-Israeli members to its investigative committee.

Yet even Israel’s acceptance of this US humiliation was insufficient for Obama. His UN envoy Susan Rice then demanded that Israel accept a UN investigative panel that is charged with checking to see if the Israeli committee has done its job. And if the UN panel rejects the Israeli commission’s findings, it is empowered to begin its own investigation.

As to the UN, as former Obama and Clinton administration officials Ray Takeyh and Steven Simon explained in an article in the Washington Post last week, Obama’s national security strategy effectively revolves around subordinating US national security policy to the UN Security Council. In the remote scenario that Obama decided to use force against Iran, his subservience to the UN would rule out any possibility of a surprise attack.

Although in theory the US military’s capacity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities is much greater than Israel’s, given its practical inability to launch a surprise attack, in practice it may be much smaller.

ALL OF these factors constitute overwhelming evidence that there are no conceivable circumstances under which Obama would order a US strike on Iran’s nuclear installations to forestall Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. And this reality should lead Israel’s leaders to three separate conclusions.

First, and most urgently, Israel must attack Iran’s nuclear installations. Iran’s nuclear ambitions must be set back at least until 2017, the latest date at which a new — and hopefully more rational — US administration will certainly be in office.

Second, given the fact that the US will not take action against Iran’s nuclear installations, there is no reason for Israel to capitulate to US pressure on lesser issues. The Obama administration has nothing to offer Israel on this most important threat and so Israel should not do anything to strengthen its position. Among other things, this conclusion has clear implications for Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, Israel’s future responses to Lebanese aggression, as well as for Israel’s continued cooperation with the UN probes of the Turkish-Hamas terror ship.

Finally, Obama’s behavior is a clear indication that Israel was wrong to allow itself to become militarily dependent on US military platforms. Former defense minister Moshe Arens wrote recently that Israel should strongly consider abandoning plans to purchase the F-35 and restore the scrapped Lavi jetfighter to active development. Arens suggested that in doing so, Israel may find willing collaborators in the Indians, the French and even the Russians.

No, the US has not become Israel’s enemy – although the Obama administration has certainly struck an adversarial chord. Polling data suggests that most Americans disagree with Obama’s treatment of Israel and recognize that Iran is a threat to the US.

But polls aside, the answer to Israel’s desperate queries is that it is up to us. If the Obama administration teaches us anything, it teaches us that we must rely first and foremost on ourselves.

Tolerance and the Ground Zero Mosque
by Joseph C. Phillips

I am fascinated that the same people who have been able to find a Constitutional right to government control of education, healthcare, and the energy industry are unable to divine from that same document any rational basis for the government to prevent a mosque from being built on Ground Zero.

Of course, the issue is not whether the American Society for Muslim Advancement has a constitutional right to build a 13-story, mosque, and community center within 600 feet of Ground Zero. There are a number of things citizens have a right to do—things that the constitutional protection of speech protects—that people of good conscience choose not to do and that others might view as offensive or insulting.

It is important to point out that there have been no pronouncements from opponents of the mosque that the American Society for Muslim Advancement does not have a right to build the mosque wherever they wish. Opponents have simply asked that the building not be built in that location. What remains unclear and unanswered is why the supporters of this mosque are choosing to move forward in spite of its offense and emotional injury to others.

Spokesman and chief fundraiser for the mosque, imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, maintains that the project is about “promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture.” The complex “will provide a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a center of learning, art, and culture; and most importantly, a center guided by Islamic values in their truest form—compassion, generosity, and respect for all.”

Tolerance, compassion, and a respect for the feelings of others might lead the builders of the mosque to issue a statement, saying something along the lines of: “While we strongly disagree with the sentiments of those opposed to the location of this center, we understand and are sympathetic to the deep emotions fueling those sentiments. Moreover, we are respectful of those feelings and, so, in the name of love, we are going to move our mosque a few blocks up the street. It is our sincere hope that this gesture will be the beginning of a healing process that will put us all on the path to a victory of our common humanity over the ideals that fueled the horrible events of 9/11/01. We are dedicated to making this center a beacon of hope, learning, and compassion not only for the city of New York, but for the entire nation.”

Alas, there have been no statements approaching that kind of generous tone. Instead, what opponents have heard are accusations of bigotry and ignorance, lectures on American values, and a conviction that the medicine of this insult is good for America no matter how bitter it tastes.

So much for tolerance, compassion, and community cohesion.

What could possibly account for the disconnect between the elites and the seventy percent of Americans who oppose the building of the mosque at Ground Zero?

There is a small segment of the left that simply hates America. There is no other way to describe it. These hard-core leftists do not respect America’s traditions or institutions, so they are comrades-in-arms with any force that seeks to undermine or insult those institutions and they rush to stand in opposition to anything that smacks of patriotism or national pride.

A much larger segment of the political left has chosen to wrap its patriotism in the brown-paper wrap of multi-culturalism. For these soft leftists, America’s great strength is its diversity, (as opposed to the founding belief in certain objective truths to which all men must be bound). For them, American values must be malleable enough to fit into the larger context of world citizenry. Thus, everything is American! And yet, in truth, nothing is American because America is so many different things and all of them of equal value, none more sacred than any of the others!

The over-riding motivator, however, is guilt. Leftist—both hard and soft—are still seeking to atone for the sins of our nation’s past. They are hesitant to stand in defense of Western civilization and American ideals and culture lest they be seen as defending whiteness, and by extension, to be standing in opposition to non-whiteness. It is only through national humility and apologetic, cultural indulgence that we can absolve ourselves of the nation’s original sin and win the hearts of our enemies.

Most Americans, however, seem to understand that we are engaged in a battle for the soul of America. No amount of genuflection toward our enemies will make us safer. And each accommodation we make in the name of political correctness brings us one step closer to ruin. It is both fascinating and infuriating that the mosque’s supporters do not understand this simple truth. Or perhaps they do understand it, but simply choose to ignore it.

911 words about Obama’s Mosque
by Kevin McCollough

It was something he certainly didn’t have to do. But he did it anyway. President Obama stepped into the fray of the single most divisive issue pertaining to terrorism, healing of hurt, religious disagreement, civil liberties, political fracturing, racism, and national security all in one step.

How’s that for bringing us all together?

Why a sitting President feels compelled to sit down to a formal Muslim dinner in the first place begs the issue of necessity. After all, why not send them a nice little video-taped greeting like you did the Boy Scouts of America? I mean it’s not like it was the 100th Anniversary of Iftar.

No, instead President Obama felt compelled, not just attend, but to host the little soiree and then make formal comments addressing the gathering.

Something along the lines of:

“But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.”

Question, Mr. President, “Do you feel that all Muslims have a right to exercise their religion?”

How about the nearly 2 million of them world-wide that buy into the exact same brand of Islam that the killers of 9/11 practiced? Do you feel that they have the right to practice that brand of Islam in the United States? How about on the sacred ground of Ground Zero?

Even the “moderate” practitioners of that faith seem to be having some real trouble coming to clarity on not encouraging their fellow Islamists to be so very insensitive.

To date all of two prominent moderate Muslims have had the courage, and endured the death threats, to suggest the Mosque be built somewhere else.

But you Mr. President, we expected better of you, and Mr. Bloomberg, and Mr. Paterson for that matter. We expected those of you who work for “We The People” to have some sort of understanding of propriety, decency, and honor. At the very least we did, and still do expect you to at least demonstrate some modicum of competence: like pushing the pause button until we know who is funding the Mosque, and where the money originates from.

Also checking into the known links between the front man for the effort and terrorist groups wouldn’t hurt either.

What we especially don’t need and wish you wouldn’t waste our time on is empty, meaningless, public statements. Are you genuinely so bored in office that you’ve run out of things to comment on? “How ’bout I give you a topic?”

“Extension of the Bush tax cuts for small businesses so that we can finally start doing something about the unemployment in the nation… discuss…”

The truth is the Obama Mosque in New York City is in large measure being favored and given preferential treatment to other communities of faith. How else can you explain why a small Greek Orthodox church congregation in the same neighborhood–which existed prior to 9.11–still doesn’t have clearance or permission to reestablish it’s presence in lower Manhattan?

Americans aren’t unreasonable Mr. President. If we could be really sure, because some investigative body did its job thoroughly, that the kind of Islam being taught in this particular Mosque wouldn’t be the same kind of Islam that is taught in radical Mosques all over the world, then we’d find it somewhat easier to be soothed by your forked tongue.

The problem here is, no one’s even claiming to have a desire to look into it.

In Islam there is a long standing practice of building a Mosque, a temple, a shrine to Allah’s glory upon conquered lands. I know that you and the rest of the “professional left” find it inconceivable that Muslims would dare to think that about America. But you’ve given them no reason to think otherwise.

You let your Attorney General spit in the face of 9.11 families by attempting to bring the animals currently housed in Gitmo back to my precious city to make some grand gesture. But the Jihadists didn’t see it that way. They laughed at you for your foolishness.

In fact since you’ve been in office you’ve repeatedly apologized to the Islamic world for America’s action of liberation to fifty million muslims, you wholly redirected our space program to the unique purpose of making them feel good about how smart Muslims used to be, and on issue after issue you’ve sided with the views of the terrorists, even appointing several of the former defenders of the Gitmo detainees to your Department of Justice.

But this last week, even though no one was asking you to, you stepped into the most painful issue related to the hallowed grounds of 9.11 to date.

You chose sides, even when nobody cared if you did.

But now it’s in your file. We will discuss during your performance review in November and over the next two years.

And now you own it!

The Obama Mosque of Lower Manhattan… Hmm…

It does have a ring to it.

The Left’s Special Interest Human Shields
by Michelle Malkin

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserves a swift rap on the knuckles for hiding underneath the desk of the American schoolteacher. In a cynical ploy to evade accountability for the Democrats’ continued fiscal recklessness, Pelosi accused opponents of the $26 billion public employee union bailout bill of “demeaning” teachers — and nurses, police officers and firefighters. Pelosi took great offense at Republican leaders who called out the Big Labor special interests pushing the emergency summer rescue. But if they walk, talk, spend and lobby like special interests, let’s call them what they are.

I have nothing against public school teachers. My mother was one. My children are taught by some of the best in the nation. And over the years, I’ve reported on valiant battles between rank-and-file educators in government schools and their fat, bloated union leaders who’ve transformed their professional organizations into wholly owned Democratic subsidiaries. My opposition to the so-called “Edujobs” bill (more accurately: the BigGovJobs bill) stems not from meanness, but from compassion for millions of dues-paying school employees being used as special interest human shields.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based Labor Union Report, the National Education Association in 2009 “raked in a whopping $355,334,165 in ‘dues and agency fees’ from (mostly) teachers around the country.” It spent close to $11 million more than it took in — $50 million of which union leaders poured into “political activities and lobbying” for exclusively left-wing and Democratic partisan causes and candidates.

Its primary mission? No, not educational excellence. Not “the children.” Political self-preservation. The “Edujobs” bill will essentially redistribute tax dollars to teachers unions to the tune of $36 million for the National Education Association and $14 million for the American Federation of Teachers, according to the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press. School officials said they have no idea what strings would be attached to the money, whether state legislatures would approve the cash as part of special supplemental budgets, how long the money would last, and how they would pay for stop-gap measures while waiting for the taxpayer funds to flow.

As for the “emergency” invoked by Pelosi at the behest of Big Labor, as Republican critics point out, states and the feds still have more than $30 billion in unspent stimulus funds sitting in government coffers. And school districts are already in the midst of rehiring school workers laid off earlier this year — absent the latest “Edujobs” initiative.

Last July, the National Education Association’s retiring top lawyer, Bob Chanin, speaking at the NEA’s annual meeting in July, made the union’s true interests transparent:

“Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.

“And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees. …

“This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.”

Left-wing radical Saul Alinsky taught his education acolytes well. Teacher organizers, he counseled, must commit to a “singleness of purpose.” No, not serving children’s needs, but serving the “ability to build a power base.” If that isn’t the dictionary definition of “special interest,” what is?

Race-Card Payment Coming Due
by Jonah Goldberg

“The race card is maxed out.”

That was the punch line for a recent hilarious exchange on “The Daily Show” in which Larry Wilmore, the faux news program’s “senior black correspondent,” reported that the race card is not only over its credit limit but is in fact “void during a black presidency.” This discovery came in the wake of Maxine Waters’ allegation that her political problems stem from a racially biased congressional ethics investigation.

Wilmore said he should have seen this coming, given that “the Congressional Black Caucus has been overusing the race card for years.” Like when it circled the wagons around Rep. William Jefferson. The CBC in effect argued it’d be no big deal if a white congressman had been videotaped receiving a $100,000 bribe and if the FBI then found most of it in his freezer. Singling out a black congressman for this sort of thing, Wilmore jokes, amounts to punishing Jefferson for “Legislating While Black.”

Of course, Wilmore (a great comic talent) is joking, but not everyone is laughing. Waters, the representative for South Central Los Angeles since 1991, is one of America’s premier racial hucksters. A notoriously nasty piece of work, she sided with the murderous rioters in what she called the post-Rodney King verdict “rebellion” and danced the electric slide with the Crips and the Bloods. (Who says she’s not bipartisan?) So it’s hardly surprising that she’d lump all of her problems on Whitey.

In Aesop’s Fables, the scorpion must sting the frog because that is what scorpions do. In real life, Waters must blame her problems on, well, you know who.

Waters is alleged to have offered special help for OneUnited, a minority-owned bank where her husband served on the board until April 2008. Her husband owned roughly $350,000 worth of OneUnited stock. If it didn’t get bailed out by the Treasury Department, the bank would have gone under. Waters told Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, about the potential conflict of interest, and Frank — not everyone’s idea of a scrupulous ethicist to begin with — told her she should stay clear of it. She ignored his advice and allegedly helped secure OneUnited $12 million in TARP money, saving the value of her husband’s bank shares. Waters says it’s all a misunderstanding since she was barely involved. She merely outsourced most of the work to her chief of staff, aka her grandson.

She insists she won’t be anyone’s “sacrificial lamb” and points to the fact that eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been subject to ethics investigations — which she and many in the CBC suggest is no coincidence.

And they’re right.

But the culprit here isn’t racism, it’s the corruption that is almost inevitable when any politician — black or white — is given a job for life. Charlie Rangel, the 80-year-old deposed chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, is also in ethical hot water for a list of reasons too lengthy to recount here (but they include failure to pay taxes on unreported income — awkward, given that he was, until recently, in charge of writing the tax laws). Rangel, one of Washington’s most charming characters, ran his office like a pasha — because he could.

Indeed, that’s long been the problem with the CBC: its scandalous lack of accountability. Because of racial gerrymandering (cynically abetted by the GOP in the 1980s), black representatives have been insulated even more than other incumbents from democratic competition. Worse, the older generation of CBCers in particular actually believe this claptrap about being the “conscience of the Congress” (the Caucus motto). This has put the CBC to the left not just of the average voter but the average black voter. Less than 10 percent of the CBC voted to ban partial-birth abortion in 2003, even though a majority of blacks support the ban. A majority of blacks oppose racial quotas and support school choice, but the CBC claims to speak for them when taking the opposite positions.

Caucus members pulled this off by invoking racial solidarity and Tammany Hall tactics in their districts, while maxing out the race card with the media and their non-black colleagues in Congress. And that’s what Waters and Rangel are doing now, the former explicitly, the latter implicitly. Both are demanding an immediate trial, before the November elections, which would hammer even more nails into the Democratic coffin. In effect, they’re saying, “Let us off the hook or we’ll take you all down with us in a racial spectacle.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are laughing. Even the ones who don’t watch “The Daily Show.”

Bean-Counters and Baloney
by Thomas Sowell

The bean-counters have struck again– this time in the sports pages. Two New York Times sport writers have discovered that baseball coaches from minority groups are found more often coaching at first base than at third base. Moreover, third-base coaches become managers more often than first-base coaches.

This may seem to be just another passing piece of silliness. But it is part of a more general bean-counting mentality that turns statistical differences into grievances. The time is long overdue to throw this race card out of the deck and start seeing it for the gross fallacy that it is.

At the heart of such statistics is the implicit assumption that different races, sexes and other subdivisions of the human species would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations and income brackets if there was not something strange or sinister going on.

Although this notion has been repeated by all sorts of people, from local loudmouths on the street to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States, there is not one speck of evidence behind it and a mountain of evidence against it.

Ask the bean-counters where in this wide world have different groups been proportionally represented. They can’t tell you. In other words, something that nobody can demonstrate is taken as a norm, and any deviation from that norm is somebody’s fault!

Anyone who has watched football over the years has probably seen at least a hundred black players score touchdowns– and not one black player kick the extra point. Is this because of some twisted racist who doesn’t mind black players scoring touchdowns but hates to see them kicking the extra points?

At our leading engineering schools– M.I.T., CalTech, etc.– whites are under-represented and Asians over-represented. Is this anti-white racism or pro-Asian racism? Or are different groups just different?

As for baseball, I have long noticed that there are more blacks playing centerfield than third-base. Since the same people hire centerfielders and third-basemen, it is hard to argue that racism explains the difference.

No one says it is racism that explains why blacks are over-represented and whites under-represented in basketball. Bean-counters only make a fuss when there is a disparity that fits their vision or their agenda.

Years ago, a study was made of the ethnic make-up of military forces in countries around the world. Nowhere was the ethnic make-up of the military the same as the ethnic make-up of the population, or even close to the same.

Nearly half the pilots in the Malaysia’s air force were from the Chinese minority, rather than the Malay majority. In Nigeria, most of the officers were from the southern tribes and most of the enlisted men were from the northern tribes. Similar disparities have been common among various groups in many places.

In countries around the world, all sorts of groups differ from each other in all sorts of ways, from rates of alcoholism to infant mortality, education and virtually everything that can be measured, as well as in some things that cannot be quantified. If black and white Americans were the same, they would be the only two groups on this planet who are the same.

One of the things that got us started on heavy-handed government regulation of the housing market were statistics showing that blacks were turned down for mortgage loans more often than whites. The bean-counters in the media went ballistic. It had to be racism, to hear them tell it.

What they didn’t tell you was that whites were turned down more often than Asians. What they also didn’t tell you was that black-owned banks also turned down blacks more often than whites. Nor did they tell you that credit scores differed from group to group. Instead, the media, the politicians and the regulators grabbed some statistics and ran with them.

The bean-counters are everywhere, pushing the idea that differences show injustices committed by society. As long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it– and the polarization they create will sell this country down the river.

November Congressional Elections Could Be Replay of 1966 Midterms
by Michael Barone

Everybody, even White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, agrees that Republicans are going to pick up seats in the House and Senate elections this year. The disagreement is about how many.

Some compare 2010 to 1994, when Republicans picked up 52 House seats and won majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. That was a reaction to the big government programs of the first two years of the Clinton administration.

Others compare this year to 1982, when Democrats picked up 26 House seats and recaptured effective control of the House two years after Ronald Reagan was elected president. That was a recession year, with unemployment even higher than now.

Let me put another off-year election on the table for comparison: 1966. Like 1994, this wasn’t a year of hard economic times. But it was a year when a Democratic president’s war in Asia was starting to cause unease and some opposition within his own party, as is happening now.

And it was a year of recoil against the big government programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The 89th Congress with two-to-one Democratic majorities had passed Medicare, federal aid to education, antipoverty and other landmark legislation.

Democrats only failed, as they have in this Congress, to pass organized labor’s No. 1 priority: then repealing section 14(b), which allowed state right-to-work laws, now the card check bill to effectively eliminate the secret ballot in unionization elections.

In 1966, Republicans gained a net 47 seats in the House. That left Democrats with a 246-187 majority but without effective control. That’s because 95 of those Democrats were from the South (defined as the 11 Confederate states plus West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma), and almost all voted conservative on most issues.

Republicans actually won the popular vote for the House in the North (defined as the other 36 states) by a 51 percent to 48 percent majority. They have only done so since in three elections — in 1968 (a virtual carbon copy of 1966 in House races), in their breakthrough year of 1994 and in the post-9/11 year of 2002.

Current polling data suggests that Republicans have a chance of doing so once again in 2010. The realclearpolitics.com’s average of recent generic ballot polls — which party’s candidate for the House would you vote for? — shows Republicans ahead by a historically unprecedented margin of 46 percent to 40 percent.

If those numbers hold, and if they turn out to underpredict Republican performance in the popular vote, as they have in the past, that could mean that Republicans would win a popular vote plurality or majority in the North. Those are two significant ifs, but they’re possible.

There is not much doubt about which party will lead in the South. Back in 1966, the South elected only 29 Republican House members (including future President George H.W. Bush) to 95 Democrats. Democrats led in the popular vote there by a 63 percent to 36 percent margin.

In 1992, as Bush was getting thumped in the presidential election, Republicans won a higher percentage of the House popular vote in the South than the North for the first time since Reconstruction. In 1994, they carried the popular vote in the South by 55 percent to 43 percent. They have carried it ever since, even in 2008, when Barack Obama brought out unprecedented numbers of black voters in the South.

Republicans currently hold an 82-to-63 edge in Southern House seats, with eight Democratic-held seats rated likely or leaning Republican by realclearpolitics.com and another 11 Democratic-held Southern seats rated as toss-ups. And 15 more are in play, rated as likely or leaning Democratic.

So Republicans could easily gain 20 seats in the South. But they could gain even more in the North if current numbers hold up.

In 2008, Democrats won the popular vote in the North by 57 percent to 40 percent — roughly comparable to their lead way back in 1964, the year of Lyndon Johnson’s landslide.

If the popular vote in the North should turn out to go narrowly Republican, as it did in 1966, it could be disaster for Democrats. They lost a net 38 seats in the North that year, when they held just about as many seats Northern seats as now. Not a happy scenario for Democrats. But not out of the realm of possibility.

House Democrats Head for a Thumping at the Polls
by Michael Barone

Democratic spin doctors have set out how their side is going to hold onto a majority in the House. They’ll capture four at-risk Republican seats, hold half of the next 30 or so Democratic at-risk seats, and avoid significant losses on target seats lower on the list.

That’s one plausible scenario. The shift of opinion away from Democrats so evident in the polls could turn out to be illusory. The widely held assumption that Republicans will turn out in greater numbers than Democrats could prove wrong.

Democratic candidates do indeed have a money advantage in many close races, and their campaign committee has more cash than its Republican counterpart.

All that said, this Democratic spin sounds a lot like the Republican spin back in the 2006 cycle. If the numbers don’t change too much from 2004, Republicans said then, we can hold on. If the numbers don’t change too much from 2008, Democrats think now, they can hold on.

But the Republicans, as George W. Bush said, took “a thumping” in 2006. And most signs suggest Democrats will take a thumping this year, too.

To see why, take a look at the generic ballot question: Which party’s candidate will you vote for in elections to the House? The current realclearpolitics.com average shows Republicans ahead by 45 percent to 41 percent. Ten of this month’s 15 opinion polls asking the question had Republicans ahead; Democrats led in four (twice by 1 percent), and one poll showed a tie.

Keep in mind that the generic ballot question historically has tended to under-predict Republican performance in off-year elections. Gallup has been asking the question since 1950 and has shown Republicans leading only in two cycles, 1994 and 2002, and then by less than the 7 and 5 points by which they won the popular vote for the House in those years.

So the Republicans’ current lead in the generic ballot question suggests they may be on the brink of doing better than in any election since 1946, when they won a 245-188 margin in the House — larger than any they’ve held ever since.

Another metric is daunting for Democrats. Polls in House races almost always show incumbents ahead of challengers, because incumbent members of Congress are usually much better known than their opponents. An incumbent running below 50 percent is considered potentially in trouble; an incumbent running behind a challenger is considered in deep doo-doo.

In 1994, I wrote an article in U.S. News & World Report arguing that there was a serious chance that Republicans could capture the 40 seats that they needed then, as now, for a majority in the House. It was the first mainstream media piece suggesting that, and it appeared on the newsstands on July 11.

I cited as evidence five polls showing incumbent Democratic congressmen trailing Republican challengers. None of those Democrats had scandal problems; all five lost in November.

Today, a lot more Democratic incumbents seem to be trailing Republican challengers in polls. Jim Geraghty of National Review Online has compiled a list of 13 Democratic incumbents trailing in polls released over the last seven weeks.

They’re from all over the country: one each from Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota; two from Virginia; three from Pennsylvania. Most if not all of these incumbents are personally attractive, hardworking and ethically unsullied.

Some of these poll numbers are mind-boggling. Tom Perriello, a 727-vote winner in Virginia 5 in 2008, has been running two weeks of humorous ads showing what a hard worker he is. A poll shows him trailing Republican state Sen. Robert Hurt 58 percent to 35 percent.

In industrial Ohio 13, which Barack Obama carried 57 to 42, a poll shows incumbent Betty Sutton trailing free-spending Republican Tom Ganley 44 percent to 31 percent.

As Geraghty notes, we haven’t seen polls released by many other Democrats on Republican target lists. Most are conducting polls; many have reason to release favorable results if they’re available. This looks like a case where the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

Two years ago, Barack Obama was elected president with a historic 53 percent of the vote — more than any other Democrat in history except Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

These metrics — the generic ballot results and polls in individual districts — suggest that House Democrats are headed toward historic losses. Quite a swing in 18 months.

Obama’s Poll Numbers Down, Imaginary Racism Up
by Ann Coulter

The Democrats are depressed about their collapsing poll numbers, so it’s time to start calling conservatives “racist.”

As we now know from the Journolist list-serv, where hundreds of liberal journalists chat with one another, and which was leaked to Daily Caller this week, journalists cry “racism” whenever they need to distract from bad news for Obama. (Ironically, this story did not make headlines.)

When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal broke during the 2008 campaign, the first response of Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent was to demand that they start randomly picking conservatives — “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Ackerman, frequent guest on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” continued on Journolist:

“What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.”

This is what “racism” has come to in America. Democrats are in trouble, so they say “let’s call conservatives racists.” We always knew it, but the Journolist postings gave us the smoking gun.

This explains why we’ve heard so much about Tea Partiers being “racists” lately.

But despite a frantic search, the media have been unable to produce any actual evidence of racism at the Tea Parties. Even the trace elements are either frauds or utterly trivial.

For example, there was blind terror last week over a Tea Party billboard in northern Iowa that showed a picture of Adolf Hitler, Obama and Vladimir Lenin under the headings: “National Socialism,” “Democratic Socialism” and “Marxist Socialism.”

Overheated? Perhaps. Racist? No. Unless liberals are about to break the news that Lenin and Hitler were black, what we have here, gentlemen, is not racism.

I’m not even sure why liberals are so testy: As an aficionado of liberal talk radio, I’ve heard both Ed Schultz and Randi Rhodes repeatedly say socialism is terrific. (Given their ratings, this is understandable.)

Most sickeningly, the mainstream media continue to spread the despicable lie that someone called civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis the “N-word” 15 times during the anti-ObamaCare rally in Washington. Fifteen times!

That turned out to be another lie. About a week after the protest, Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who could produce a video of Lewis being called the N-word even once — forget 15 times. (That’s the most we can afford. Hey, who do we look like over here, George Soros?)

Plus, the winner might have his video appear on the new hit TV show, “America’s Most Racist Home Videos.”

With hundreds of news cameras, cell phone cameras and camcorders capturing every nook and cranny of the Capitol Hill protest — and news media hungry for an ugly, racist act — it defies possibility that someone called Lewis the N-word once, much less 15 times, without one single camera capturing the incident. And yet, to this day the reward remains unclaimed.

Democrats did their best to provoke an ugly confrontation by marching a (shockingly undiverse) group of black Democrats right through the middle of the anti-ObamaCare protest. But they didn’t get one, so the media just lied and asserted Lewis was called the N-word. (If they wanted to hear the N-word so badly, they should have sent the congressional delegation to a Jay-Z concert.)

Indeed, news anchor after news anchor has indignantly claimed to have footage of the incident, teasing viewers by saying, “We’ll get that right up” or claiming personally to have seen the video -– and then you watch the whole program without ever seeing footage of anyone calling Lewis the N-word.

Dateline: April 18, 2010, CNN’s Don Lemon: “We have the tape here at CNN. I saw it on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’” And yet, Lemon never got around to showing viewers that tape. IF YOU HAVE THE TAPE, DON, CLAIM YOUR $100,000 REWARD!

And now this week, with the NAACP accusing the Tea Partiers of harboring racists, and conservatives demanding proof, the George Soros-backed Center for American Progress ran a 45-second video allegedly showing racism at the Tea Parties.

One of the videos shows an obvious liberal plant announcing, “I’m a proud racist!” Apparently this was their best shot, because they had to work this video into the montage twice, amid utterly innocuous posters, for example, saying, “God bless Glenn Beck.” So I guess they didn’t have anything better.

Here’s the part Soros’ people didn’t show you: In the fuller video shown on the Glenn Beck show, the Tea Partiers surrounded the (liberal plant) racist, jeering at him, telling him he’s not one of them and to go home. In a spectacularly evil fraud, all that was edited out.

Just hours later on MSNBC, Chris Matthews was loudly proclaiming that he would believe the Tea Partiers weren’t racist when he sees “just one of those Tea Party people pull down one of those racist signs at the next Tea Party rally. I’m going to just wait. Reach over, grab the sign and tear it out of the guy’s hands. Then I will believe you.”

Well, here it was. The (liberal plant) racist was driven from the Tea Party by the Tea Partiers. But you won’t see that. Like USDA official Shirley Sherrod’s apparently racist comments excerpted this week from what was, in fact, a commendable speech about racial reconciliation, the alleged Tea Party racism was, literally, “taken out of context.”