JustOneMinute

My Health Theory du Jour

Glenn links to an article and blog post about Vitamin D deficiency being linked to high blood pressure.

Last week the NY Times wrote about whether Vitamin D could improve athletic performance:

Vitamin D is an often overlooked element in athletic achievement, a “sleeper nutrient,” says John Anderson, a professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of North Carolina and one of the authors of a review article published online in May about Vitamin D and athletic performance. Vitamin D once was thought to be primarily involved in bone development. But a growing body of research suggests that it’s vital in multiple different bodily functions, including allowing body cells to utilize calcium (which is essential for cell metabolism), muscle fibers to develop and grow normally, and the immune system to function properly. “Almost every cell in the body has receptors” for Vitamin D, Anderson says. “It can up-regulate and down-regulate hundreds, maybe even thousands of genes,” Larson-Meyer says. “We’re only at the start of understanding how important it is.”

However, getting Vitamin D by way of sunshine is not so easy in these skin-cancer conscious days, and the normal diet is not so helpful either:

Meanwhile, dietary sources of Vitamin D are meager. Cod-liver oil provides a whopping dose. But a glass of fortified milk provides a fraction of what scientists now think we need per day. (A major study published online in the journal Pediatrics last month concluded that more than 60 percent of American children, or almost 51 million kids, have “insufficient” levels of Vitamin D and another 9 percent, or 7.6 million children, are clinically “deficient,” a serious condition. Cases of childhood rickets, a bone disease caused by lack of Vitamin D, have been rising in the U.S. in recent years.)

So, my guess - although we may be OK at establishing a minimal level of Vitamin D to avoid rickets we have no idea what the optimal level is.  However, I will tell you right now that although most of us are at risk for Vitamin D deficiency, an obvious high-risk group for Vitamin D deficiency is dark-skinned city dwellers in the North living on a poor person's diet [More below - see DEFICIENT}.  What are the health implications?  I don't know, but I would start with the list of childhood diseases whose incidence is rising - hypertension, diabetes and obesity spring to mind.

The next part of the guess - a major effort to promote Vitamin D could be as powerful as the campaign to get the lead out of paint, gasoline, and households.

I need to re-read this Scientific American article, which talks about Vitamin D and the immune system.  A bit on that is also here.

DEFICIENT:  From this article:

Although no minimum vitamin D level ideal for health has been established, there is a general consensus that people ought to have at least 30 nanograms per milliliter of blood — sometimes described as about 80 nanomoles per liter (SN: 10/16/04, p. 248). In this NHANES data set, only about 45 percent of the population had that minimum. So the researchers separated the NHANES participants into three groups: those with 30 or more ng/ml, those with gross deficiency (less than 10 ng/ml of vitamin D) and those in between.

..

Also disturbing, Ginde points out that the NHANES data he analyzed had been collected about 15 years ago, when almost twice as many people as today had vitamin D levels above 30 ng/ml.

So if 45% of us were above the minimal threshold 15 years ago, roughly 22% are above the threshold today.  I claim the impact of that is widely misunderestimated.

And let me throw this stray thought out - what if the most important part of the "Mediterranean diet" is the sunshine?

CONTINUING TO SCRATCH THE SURFACE:  Vitamin D is the "It" vitamin as of June 2009 (I am soo like, last quarter); 40% of Boston toddlers had "sub-optimal" levels in June 2008 (I'll bet "optimal" is sub-optimal, too; time will tell); As of June 2009, global deficiency is widespread.  And apparently some of my guesses have already been researched:

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2007) — Many otherwise healthy children and adolescents have low vitamin D levels, which may put them at risk for bone diseases such as rickets. African American children, children above age nine and with low dietary vitamin D intake were the most likely to have low levels of vitamin D in their blood, according to researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

A study in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition measured blood levels of vitamin D in 382 healthy children between six years and 21 years of age living in the northeastern U.S. Researchers assessed dietary and supplemental vitamin D intake, as well as body mass, and found that more than half of the children had low blood levels of vitamin D. Of the subjects, 55 percent of the children had inadequate vitamin D blood levels and 68 percent overall had low blood levels of the vitamin in the wintertime.

...In addition to musculoskeletal effects, vitamin D is important for immune function, and low blood levels of the vitamin may contribute to diseases such as hypertension, cancer, multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes. Decreased blood levels of vitamin D have also been linked to obesity.

Further study is needed to determine the appropriate blood levels of vitamin D in children, said Dr. Zemel, who added that a review of the current recommendations for vitamin D intake is needed.

Hmm - common sense triumphant!  Later I will air my theories about the earth - flat or round?!?

You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Play Football...

You don't have to be crazy to start playing football, because you will be eventually:

Dementia Risk Seen in Players in N.F.L. Study
By ALAN SCHWARZ

A study commissioned by the National Football League reports that Alzheimer’s disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league’s former players vastly more often than in the national population — including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49.

The N.F.L. has long denied the existence of reliable data about cognitive decline among its players. These numbers would become the league’s first public affirmation of any connection, though the league pointed to limitations of this study.

Troubling, but I will note this - the Alzheimer's rate for men aged 30 to 49 is roughly zero, so even if the NFL rate is 19 times that, it is still tiny.  Skipping down a bit I
see this:

Players ages 30 through 49 showed a rate of 1.9 percent, or 19 times that of the national average, 0.1 percent.

I love this quote for the designated NFL apologist:

An N.F.L. spokesman, Greg Aiello, said in an e-mail message that the study did not formally diagnose dementia, that it was subject to shortcomings of telephone surveys and that “there are thousands of retired players who do not have memory problems."

“Memory disorders affect many people who never played football or other sports,” Mr. Aiello said. “We are trying to understand it as it relates to our retired players.”

What they are trying to understand is their legal liability under the NFL pension and medical plans.

On Polanski - Obama Can't Be This Stupid, But Holder?

A new plot point - Team Polanski has hired a Washington power player and buddy of Attorney General Eric Holder:

LOS ANGELES — While a backlash emerged Tuesday among French politicians of all stripes about whether their government and others should have rushed to embrace the cause of the jailed film director Roman Polanski, his American legal team picked up an influential new member: the lawyer Reid Weingarten, a well-known Washington power player and close friend and associate of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

...The recruiting of Mr. Weingarten was a strong signal that Mr. Polanski’s legal team intends to push hard on the Washington end of the case. Mr. Polanski was arrested on his way to the Zurich Film Festival after Swiss authorities received a letter from the Department of Justice requesting that he be held for possible extradition to the United States.

Jim Geraghty wonders what "the Washington angle" could be.  The WSJ Law Blog has background on Weingarten.

And despite dancing around the allegations in their editorial, this Times story is much more graphic in describing Polanski's behavior:

Shortly after the crime, the victim — Samantha Geimer, who publicly identified herself years ago and has expressed forgiveness for Mr. Polanski — described in vivid detail how she had met Mr. Polanski, supposedly to be photographed for a fashion magazine spread. Ms. Geimer said he took her to a house he was borrowing from the actor Jack Nicholson, where he gave her Champagne and a Quaalude, photographed her naked in a hot tub, ignored her pleas to leave and raped her.

“Roman Polanski deliberately, in his mid-40s, set up a young 13-year-old actress to come to his home, drugged her, got her naked and raped her,” said Paul Petersen, president of A Minor Consideration, a foundation devoted to the protection of young performers. “The Hollywood community is protecting him. It makes me crazy.”

We now have a bit of an interesting dynamic - lots of Hollywood types who backed Obama may be shocked to discover that he is not with them on Polanski.  High profile contributors on one side, the Great Unwashed on the other - I assume Obama is smart and nuanced enough to figure out why this is a tough call, but I can't.  Maybe Bill Clinton can chime in?

If You've Lost The NY Times...

Even the NY Times editors join in support for the Polanski arrest, but they don't have quite the courage to go fully toe-to-toe with such moral leaders as Woody Allen and Whoopi Goldberg.  Notice how the Times elides Polanski's offense:

But hold on a moment. After being indicted in 1977, didn’t Mr. Polanski, now 76, confess to having sex with a 13-year-old girl after plying her with Quaaludes and Champagne?

 

When did he confess to that?  At the plea hearing Polanski pled guilty to Unlawful Sexual Intercourse, which is sex with a minor other than a spouse.  The more serious charges, including the drug-related charges, were dropped to spare the victim a ghastly trial.

Well.  If the Times is not limiting itself to the plea hearing in characterizing Mr. Polanski's confession, why describe the contact as "having sex"?  Per the victim's testimony he raped her, forcibly and repeatedly.  Yes, rape-rape, not "just" statutory rape. 

The Times tries again:

Yet where is the injustice in bringing to justice someone who pleads guilty to statutory rape and then goes on the lam, no matter how talented he may be?

In Europe, the prevailing mood — at least among those with access to the news media — seemed to be that Mr. Polanski has already “atoned for the sins of his young years,” as Jacek Bromski, the chief of the Polish Filmmakers Association, put it.

We disagree strongly, and we were glad to see other prominent Europeans beginning to point out that this case has nothing to do with Mr. Polanski’s work or his age. It is about an adult preying on a child. Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty to that crime and must account for it.

"Statutory rape"? "Preying on a child"?  Mr. Polanski was allowed to plead guilty to statutory rape rather than more serious charges in order to spare the victim a media circus and the prospect of being put on trial herself.  Yes, Polanski pleaded guilty to statutory rape, but if the Times is willing to include the alcohol and Qaaludes allegations, they may as well note that Polanski committed vaginal and anal rape of a drugged, drunk 13 year old who was saying "No, stop".  Allegedly.

Well - the Times editors showed a bit of what no doubt passes for boldness in their circle; actually describing what Polanksi allegedly did would have been too much for them.

The Dash To Dumb (Ongoing...)

The morning is young but I'll bet this will be the silliest thing I read today, or maybe this year [and let's pull it back out of the memory hole rather than letting it slink away in shame].  The military effecting a civilized, bloodless coup because they don't like the current leadership?  The United States military?  They have spent over two hundred years not doing that, and they have far too much pride and honor to start now.

I'll worry about more plausible disasters, like the Yankees flying to the wrong city and forfeiting a playoff game.

AND ECHOING FROM A MOUNTAIN ON THE LEFT:  Via Matt Drudge, Gore Vidal sees the US drifting towards a military dictatorship, but the timing is not specified:

Today religious mania has infected the political bloodstream and America has become corrosively isolationist, he says. “Ask an American what they know about Sweden and they’d say ‘They live well but they’re all alcoholics’. In fact a Scandinavian system could have benefited us many times over.” Instead, America has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush.”

Just Make It Up

The Washington Post admits that it is guided by an "All The Quotes That Are Fit To Make Up" ethos. 

From Copenhagen To Kabul

Bill Kristol predicts that Obama will conclude his business in Copenhagen and then make a surprise trip to Afghanistan.

Interesting.  If the IOC awards the 2016 Olympics to Chicago Obama sort of steps on his own headline.  OTOH, if they don't award it to Chicago Obama will certainly want to change the subject.

Well, we are at war and Obama is about to make some sort of decision about sending more troops.  Kristol may be making a Bold Prediction or engaging in a bit of malicious bar-raising, but a trip to Afghanistan...

[BACK FOR MORE]... a trip to Afghanistan makes sense.  But what am I saying?!?  October 3 is Michelle and Barack's anniversary - are they really going to pass up a cutsie photo-op just so Barack can play at Commander-in-Chief?  Or are they going to show that even they are prepared to sacrifice for the troops?

This is a tough, Presidential level decision.

Now Even The French Are Bashing The French

The arrest of Roman Polanski reveals a chasm between France's glitterati and their Great Unwashed:

PARIS — After two days of widespread expressions of support for jailed filmmaker Roman Polanski, from European political leaders as well as leading cultural figures there and in the United States, the mood was shifting among French politicians Tuesday about whether the government should have rushed to rally around the Oscar-winning director.

Marc Laffineur, the vice-president of the French assembly and a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling center-right party, the UMP, took issue with the French culture and foreign minister’s remarks supporting Mr. Polanski, saying “the charge of raping a child 13 years old is not something trivial, whoever the suspect is.”

Within the Green party, Daniel Cohn-Bendit — a French deputy in the European parliament whose popularity is rising — also criticized Sarkozy administration officials for leaping too quickly to Mr. Polanski’s side despite the serious nature of his crime. On the extreme right, the father and daughter politicians Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen also attacked the ministers, saying they were supporting “a criminal pedophile in the name of the rights of the political-artistic class.”

And a bit later:

For two days, supporters in the demi-monde of movies and media circulated petitions and took to the airwaves in his defense. Among them was the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who suggested that perhaps the Swiss had more serious criminal matters to attend to than Mr. Polanski, who, he said, “perhaps had committed a youthful error.”

Marie-Louise Fort, a French lawmaker in the Assembly who has sponsored anti-incest legislation, said in an interview that she was shocked that Mr. Polanski was attracting support from the political and artistic elite. “I don’t believe that public opinion is spontaneously supporting Mr. Polanski at all,” she said. “I believe that there is a distinction between the mediagenic class of artists and ordinary citizens that have a vision that is more simple.”

The mood was even more hostile in blogs and e-mails to newspapers and news magazines. Of the 30,000 participants in an online poll by the French daily Le Figaro, more than 70 percent said Mr. Polanski, 76, should face justice. And in the magazine Le Point, more than 400 letter writers were almost universal in their disdain for Mr. Polanski.

That contempt was not only directed at Mr. Polanski, but at the French class of celebrities — nicknamed Les People — who are part of Mr. Polanski’s rarefied Parisian world. Letter writers to Le Point scorned Les People as the “crypto-intelligentsia of our country” who deliver “eloquent phrases that defy common sense.”

Apparently Woody Allen is still in Polanski's corner - the laugh-track wants what the laugh-track wants.

NOT JUST THE FRENCH:  The Huffers are bashing the HuffPo.  No nuance in LA, either.

Clothes Make The Man

When Obama goes to Copenhagen later this week to pitch Chicago to the International Olympic Committee, he will take the stage as a Marxist leading a team of closet Marxists.

WE DEEPLY REGRET:  That gives short shrift to Hart and Schaffner. 

This Wouldn't Be Happening If We Had A President

Richard Cohen wants someone to deliver some good and important news to Obama - the campaign is over (and he won!) so now it is time to act like a President, not a candidate.

Nicholas Sarkozy of France would second that emotion.

Well - if Obama is hazy on his status, we have to blame Supreme Court Supremo John Roberts.

First Lady Militant

Michelle Obama is going to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago as the 2016 Olympic host.  One wonders whether she could make the pitch with somewhat less violent imagery - let's see, "it's a battle", she will "take no prisoners", and the "gloves are off".

That's just great - she's obviously been listening to too much sports talk radio, but maybe we could send her to Kabul next.  And fingers crossed that the IOC delegates don't focus on this no prisoners, gloves off teen-beating story from Chicago.

NO, MAYBE THAT IS NOT SUCH A GREAT IDEA EITHER:  Is Rahm Emmanuel in Copenhagen?  He could tell the IOC mf'ers to vote for f'ing Chi-town or he would twist their f'ing &%@ up into their @#&%.  That might help make Michelle seem temperate by comparison.

OK, maybe not.

Don't Tug On Superman's Cape

The NY Times wonders why Roman Polanski is being busted after all these years.  The LA Times has the answer:

Roman Polanski’s attorneys may have helped provoke his arrest by complaining to an appellate court this summer that Los Angeles prosecutors had never made any real effort to arrest the filmmaker in his three decades as a fugitive, two sources familiar with the case told The Times.

The accusation that the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office was not serious about extraditing Polanski was a small part of two July court filings by the director’s attorneys. But it caught the attention of prosecutors and led to his capture in Switzerland on Saturday, the sources said.

Polanski, 76, was taken into custody at the airport in Zurich, where he was scheduled to headline the city’s film festival. Details of his appearance were widely available on the Internet. Variety also reported his planned attendance in August, the month after Polanski’s attorneys had filed two separate documents with the 2nd District of the state Court of Appeal asking for a dismissal of the 32-year-old child sex case against the filmmaker.

In both, the lawyers alleged that the district attorney’s office in effect benefited from Polanski’s absence, because as long as he remained a fugitive, officials could avoid answering allegations of prosecutorial and judicial wrongdoing in the original handling of the case.

“The district attorney’s office, in the 30 years since Mr. Polanski left the jurisdiction, has not once sought to have him extradited. If it had, there would have been a hearing regarding misconduct in this case,” wrote the attorneys, Chad Hummel, Douglas Dalton and Bart Dalton, in a July 7 filing.

Twenty days later, they filed a second document and raised the issue again in a footnote. “Combined with the fact that no effort has been made to extradite Mr. Polanski, the intent here is clear: invoke a physical absence which they caused and deliberately perpetuate in order to preserve the unconstitutional status quo and never address the misconduct head on,” the lawyers wrote.

Wow, that was brilliant legal work - file papers alleging the local DA wasn't taking the case seriously and is simply perpetuating a cover-up.  If these guys were billing by the brainwave Polanski wouldn't owe them a dime.

The LA Times also provides archival clips of the coverage back in 1977/78.  I especially admire their lead from Feb 1 1978 when Polanski fled:

Movie director Roman Polanski jumped bail and failed to show up for sentencing in Santa Monica today, fleeing to London rather than face the prospect of being jailed for a sexual escapade with a 13 year-old girl.

Time heals all wounds - back in March and April of 1977 the headlines used the word "rape", not "escapade".  By August 1977 it was a "sex case", and the word "rape" first appeared in the 13th paragraph.  Per his plea deal Polanski had pled guilty to "unlawful sexual intercourse", which does not change the facts but may have changed the reporting.

The other headlines that trail along with the Polanski coverage are intriguing, in a ghastly way - the Hells Angels executed a 25 year old Oregon woman and her twin 6 year olds - mom was a snitch, apparently.

And in 1978 self-proclaimed Arab terrorists injected with mercury Israeli-grown oranges exported to Europe.  Their target, they explained, was the Israeli export industry, not the five Dutch kids who got sick.  [More]

AND BACK IN FRANCE...  It's only rape a sexual escapade.  Here is a bit of Gerard Depardieu's tale from 1991.

Attention-Seeking Kid Shoots, Scores!

Some Needs-A-Life Facebook loser put up a poll puzzling over whether Obama should be killed and the left falls into a tizzy.

As performance art this poll is a miserable failure.  The NY Times led the way in assessing this sort of thing a few years back, when the British film which hinged o the assassination of George Bush was the rage at the Toronto Film Festival.  From the Times, with my emphasis:

[Director] Range hits such hot buttons as the Patriot Act like a slap-happy therapist, but fails to engage the hard questions, including whether murder, including presidential assassination, can ever be justifiable. The one antiwar activist who briefly expresses support for the death of Mr. Bush remains a lone wolf, an irrational voice amid an inarticulate babble.

Oh, geez - the director ducked the tough questions about the possible desirability of whacking Bush and depicted the one pro-assassination character as irrational - how can a Times critic hope to endure?

Well - evidently the tough questions have easy answers now that the President is not Bush.  Of course, some of us thought even back in 2006 that this question was pretty easy - killing Presidents is wrong, so don't do it!  But we lack the nuance, insight, and global vision of a Times writer or any other typical lefty.

Karzai's The One

The WaPo tells us that NATO is planning to work with Karzai as the next President of Afghanistan, which ought to be a straw in the wind if and when Obama completes his second review of our AfPak strategy - presumably, if Karzai is good enough for NATO then we are abandoning the argument that his government is too corrupt to be our partner in a sustained counter-insurgency.

From the WaPo:

The United States and NATO countries fighting in Afghanistan have told President Hamid Karzai's government that they expect him to remain in office for another five-year term and will work with him on an expanded campaign to turn insurgent fighters against the Taliban and other militant groups.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other NATO foreign ministers, meeting Friday in New York with their Afghan counterpart, reached "consensus" that Karzai would probably "continue to be president," whether through a runoff or as the legitimate winner of more than 50 percent of votes cast in disputed Aug. 20 elections, an Obama administration official said.

What Karzai has called "reconciliation" with insurgents who agree to lay down their arms is emerging as a major factor in administration deliberations about a way forward in Afghanistan, officials said. Along with plans to increase the size of the Afghan security forces, the U.S. military is developing programs to offer monetary and other inducements to insurgents it thinks are only loosely tied to the Taliban and other militant groups.

"I think that success in Afghanistan looks a great deal like success in Iraq," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Sunday. The situation in Iraq began to improve after Sunni tribes turned against al-Qaeda insurgents and accepted a security alliance with U.S. forces.

Success in Iraq, however, also depended on a significant increase in U.S. troop deployments, a question that remains unanswered in Afghanistan. Gates said that he expects in "a matter of weeks" a White House decision on a revised strategy, and whether to supply U.S. commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal some or all of the additional troops he has requested.

"A matter of weeks"?  I think the off-elections will be done in five weeks,after which Obama may feel it is safe to enrage people by actually making a decision..

A Good Polanski Basher

Here we go, from Kate Harding at Salon.  Is anybody other than Anne Appelbaum of the WaPo actually defending Polanski?  Ms. Appelbaum's hubby is the Polish Foreign Minister pushing for his release, so one might judge that Ms. Appelbaum is flacking for her spouse.

In any case, it was Obama's See No Evil DoJ that approved the extradition request, and Polanski didn't even waterboard anyone.

Maybe We Could Target Verbal Pollution Next?

John Kerry is poised to introduce his version of cap-and-trade, but let's not call it that:

As the pair prepare for the next stage of climate maneuvering, Kerry made attempts to reframe the verbiage surrounding the bill and sell its concepts more broadly, insisting it is not a "cap and trade" proposal but a "pollution reduction" bill.

"I don't know what 'cap and trade' means. I don't think the average American does," Kerry told reporters. "This is not a cap-and-trade bill, it's a pollution reduction bill."

Kerry's word choice echoes President Obama's references to "greenhouse gas pollution" and "carbon pollution" in his Tuesday address to the United Nations. Top Obama administration science officials, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu and U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, have also adopted similar vocabulary in recent months (Climatewire, Sept. 23).

No one has the time for a full cataloging of Kerry's ignorance.  In any case, the average American may or may not know what "cap and trade" means but they know what BS smells like.

STILL WAITING FOR THE SOUNDBITE:  "It's not healthcare reform, it's death reduction".

Blame It On Rio

Obama will be off to Copenhagen to help make the case for Chicago as host of the 2016 Olympics.  Either the vote count looks very good or this is somewhat bold, since Obama might be publicly rebuffed when the winner is announced on Friday.

Per these two articles (and Ladbrokes) Chicago is the current favorite.  Rio de Janeiro is a solid second as a poor but colorful venue emerging nation venue in a good time zone for the North American audience; Tokyo has plenty of money for a high-tech games but is too close to 2008 Beijing; and Madrid is too close to 2012 London (not to mention Barcelona 1992).

Chain Of Command

Amanda Carpenter of the Washington Times appears irked that Obama has only spoken to his man in Afghanistan, Gen. McChrystal, one time since appointing him.

I don't know.  I recall from "The Gamble" that Bush was in frequent contact with Petraeus in Iraq, which surely strained the chain of command above Petraeus.  But Bush has been talking with different generals for years by then, whereas Obama is just getting started with a new team.

On the other hand, it will surely dawn on the White House that if Obama shakes up the chain of command and involves himself more directly with Afghanistan it can be spun as Kennedy-esque, and we know that for Dems that is always a good thing.

Too Biased Even To Describe The Bias

Every other Sunday NY Times Public Apologist Clark Hoyt delivers a comedy classic.  This weekend he regales us with a explanation of the Times non-coverage of the ACORN debacle (my emphasis):

It was an intriguing story: employees of a controversial outfit, long criticized by Republicans as corrupt, appearing to engage in outrageous, if not illegal, behavior. An Acorn worker in Baltimore was shown telling the “prostitute” that she could describe herself to tax authorities as an “independent artist” and claim 15-year-old prostitutes, supposedly illegal immigrants, as dependents.

But for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still. Its slow reflexes — closely following its slow response to a controversy that forced the resignation of Van Jones, a White House adviser — suggested that it has trouble dealing with stories arising from the polemical world of talk radio, cable television and partisan blogs. Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.

Mull over over the phrase I emphasized for a moment - see anything missing?

Let's see, does anyone think the Times does a poor job of covering stories that are getting wild attention from the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann?  That is not my experience - it's old times, but the Times went all-in with the most extreme charge in the Jeff Gannon/Valerie Plame flare-up, based on "research" from the Daily Kos that didn't make sense and didn't hold up.

That is a bit of a weak start for Hoyt - the perceived problem is not that the Times passes over all the partisan media, it is that the Times ignores the right-wing media.  Dare we mention John Edwards, Charles Freeman, and Eason Jordan?

Hoyt writes of Missing Cities:

The Times quoted a statement by Bertha Lewis, Acorn’s chief executive, saying that the two activists, James O’Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, spent months visiting Acorn offices in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia before getting the responses they wanted. But the article left out one city Lewis cited: New York [link]. Between the time of her statement and the publication of the article, a new video surfaced, featuring an Acorn worker in Brooklyn advising Giles to bury money from prostitution in a tin.

Some readers saw a deliberate effort by the paper to help Lewis out of a tight spot. Scott Shane, the reporter, said he had been unable to reach Lewis and felt that including New York among the cities she mentioned would have implied unfairly that she was lying, something for which he had no evidence. He said he thought it was unlikely that employees in New York would inform her of their misconduct before the video appeared. I think he should have included New York.

My goodness - why not just run the allegation about New York, then, with an explanation that the ACORN exec may have been misinformed.  Maybe Times readers are adults capable of making their own choice as to whether she was lying or in the dark?

The Times has spent too much time listening to Obama and Gibbs - now even they are deploring these distractions:

Dean Baquet, the Washington bureau chief, said, “We did not ignore the Acorn story, so I don’t think it’s fair for people to say we blew it off.” ...Baquet said people need to keep Acorn in perspective with other Washington stories: health care, two wars and the deep recession.

Right, and the Washington Bureau missed the Van Jones story because everyone was out on holiday.  With Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas still on the calendar I am confident the Times will miss a few more stories unfavorable to Team Obama.

Let's finish up Hoyt's swan dive into the tank:

Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”

Despite what the critics think, Abramson said the problem was not liberal bias.

Nooooo. 

I recommend Memorandum and the InstaPundit for these poor Times hothouse reporters.  Memeorandum is a news aggregator which kicks up a lot of stories from the left, so the Times reporters will feel right at home.

When Is A Strategy Review Not A Strategy Review?

The Times finds an Obama adviser to answer the riddle of why Obama's March strategy review for Afghanistan was not a strategy review:

His decision to send 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan early this year, which will bring the number of American troops there to 68,000 this fall, was made hurriedly within weeks of coming into office to stanch the tactical erosion on the ground and provide security during Afghan elections.

When I was a kid we called it a "do-over".  I had no idea we were being Presidential.

Frank Rich tries as different tack as he pretends that Obama is Kennedy (Oh nooooo!) and will keep us out of the quagmire of Vietnam:

Obama finds himself at that same lonely decision point now. Though he came to the presidency declaring Afghanistan a “war of necessity,” circumstances have since changed. While the Taliban thrives there, Al Qaeda’s ground zero is next-door in nuclear-armed Pakistan. Last month’s blatantly corrupt, and arguably stolen, Afghanistan election ended any pretense that Hamid Karzai is a credible counter to the Taliban or a legitimate partner for America in a counterinsurgency project of enormous risk and cost.

Al Qaeda migrated to Pakistan?  When, January 2009 - who knew?  C'mon, it has been obvious for years that Al Qaeda was not to be found in Afghanistan; I'll bet even Candidate Obama knew it, regardless of his posturing that Afghanistan was the central front in the war on terror.

As to corruption in Afghanistan, well, the Admin spin will have to be that the ghastly Afghan election exceeded even our gloomy expectations.  But those expectations should have been pretty low, if this Biden story can be believed:

KABUL, Afghanistan — A foretaste of what would be in store for President Hamid Karzai after the election of a new American administration came last February, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator, sat down to a formal dinner at the palace during a visit here.

Between platters of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American senators questioned Mr. Karzai about corruption in his government, which, by many estimates, is among the worst in the world. Mr. Karzai assured Mr. Biden and the other senators that there was no corruption at all and that, in any case, it was not his fault.

The senators gaped in astonishment. After 45 minutes, Mr. Biden threw down his napkin and stood up.

“This dinner is over,” Mr. Biden announced, according to one of the people in the room at the time. And the three senators walked out, long before the appointed time.

Biden was a skeptic about the value of more troops in March, and was over-ruled; now he is about to be driving the bus.

MAKING THE TOUGH DECISION BY DOING THE POPULAR THING:  Rich goes on:

But the author of “Lessons in Disaster” does not believe that a change in course in Afghanistan would be a disaster for Obama’s young presidency. “His greatest qualities as president,” Goldstein says, “are his quality of mind and his quality of judgment — his dispassionate ability to analyze a situation. If he was able to do that here, he might more than survive a short-term hit from the military and right-wing pundits. He would establish his credibility as a president who will override his advisers when a strategy doesn’t make sense.”

His party will be thrilled to abandon Afghanistan; a majority of the country has serious doubts about whether we can succeed there.  It will scarcely tax Obama's oratorical skills to explain why we have to accept defeat (and blame Bush!).

Looking For The Git-Go On Gitmo

Looks like closing Guantanamo is even harder than getting the asbestos out of Altgeld Gardens.

The AP reports that the January deadline for closing Guantanamo will probably slip, to no one's surprise.  The WaPo had a long story about the new management team at the White House that will focus like a laser beam on this issue, now:

"Guantanamo was everyone's part-time job," said a senior official, one of several interviewed for this article who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Now, the official added, Rouse is coordinating them.

White House Counsel Greg Craig is the designated fall guy, but shouldn't be:

Virginia Democratic Rep.  James Moran, who led a one-man charge to counter GOP's Guantánamo campaign, said there were many Obama officials to blame in an interview with The Cable.

"Greg Craig was not the person responsible for the delay on the Guantanamo plan," said Moran. "He is a professional; he was given a lot to do, little backup, and apparently virtually no information on the background of the detainees and the kind of talking points that were needed."

...

Other key appropriators who were trying to fund the effort, such as defense subcommittee chairman Jack Murtha, D-PA, and Appropriations chairman David Obey, D-WI, couldn't and wouldn't fight the Republican machine without Obama's help.

"They talked to the White House and the White House wasn't willing to stand alongside them," said Moran. The thinking among Democrats was, "If we can't take advantage of Obama's credibility on this issue, we probably are not going win."

Now the administration is trying to press the reset button on Guantánamo, but Moran argued the damage is done and it is now nearly impossible to sell the idea of moving the prisoners to U.S. soil.

"This is their first major fuck up, and it's an enormous fuckup, because now that you've lost ground you're not going to be able to recover it," said Moran.

Obama At The UN - He Has A Dream

Obama scored a major coup at the UN, chairing a security Council meeting that declared by a 15-0 vote that nuclear weapons are a Bad Thing.  The Security Council achieved unanimity in their resolution by clever diplomatic maneuvering which sidestepped the divisive question of whether Obama's "dream" should be achieved through reliance on Magic Ponies or by means of the Care Bear Stare.

Nicholas Sarkozy, Ambassador from Earth, had other thoughts:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy took a tougher line, telling reporters that the international community had to hold Iran and North Korea accountable for ignoring U.N. demands to curb their nuclear programs, which the United States and other Security Council members believe are aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

“President Obama himself has said, ‘I dream of a world in which there would be no nuclear weapon,’ yet right in front of us two countries are doing exactly the opposite,” Sarkozy said.

“Iran since 2005 has flouted five Security Council resolutions – five,” the French president said. “What has it brought to the international community? Nothing at all. Just more enriched Uranium, more centrifuges…[and] a proposal to wipe a UN member state [Israel] off the map.”

As for North Korea, he said, “They pay no attention to what the international community has to say. How can we accept this?”

“If we have the courage to affirm and impose sanctions together against those who violate resolutions of the Security Council, we will be lending credibility to our commitment to a world with fewer nuclear weapons and ultimately no nuclear weapons,” Sarkozy concluded.

MY DEFICIT-REDUCING SUGGESTION DU JOUR:  Obama ought to auction off his senior thesis from Columbia on Soviet nuclear disarmament, with the proceeds going to pay down the national debt.  Big bidders will be Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the Comedy Channel.

Saturday Morning Open Thread

A Rod leads the way as the Yankees humiliate Jason Varitek and the Red Sox.  A Rod and Varitek are old buddies; Yankee fans especially admire Varitek's courage, starting a fight while keeping his catcher's mask on.  He's got nothing left now (well, except his two rings...)

Iran Back In The Nuclear Game

I am baffled by the report that Iran has disclosed a new covert facility designed to enrich uranium, as described in the Times.  US officials now claim we have been aware of this plant for years:

American officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to disclose the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the complex.

But back in Dec 2007 a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's intentions announced, to much commotion, that Iran had dropped its nuclear weapons program in 2003:

“For the purposes of this Estimate, by ‘nuclear weapons program’ we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.”

A. We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.

We were not simply saying in 2007 that Iran had suspended weapons design work; the summary quite clearly cites "covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work".

Yet now we are given assurance that we have been tracking this plant for years.  Does "years" extend back 20 months to January 2008 but no further?

Were we tracking the plant but unaware of its covert enrichment potential (so what were we tracking)?  Or, was the 2007 NIE a deliberate smokescreen?  Or, is the statement that we have known about this for years a smokescreen?

Baffling.

The Times continues to have fun covering the New Obama:

After months of talking about the need for engagement, Mr. Obama appears to have made a leap toward viewing tough new sanctions against Iran as an inevitability. He avoided Mr. Ahmadinejad at the United Nations this week, despite his having said repeatedly that he would seek dialogue with Iranian leaders. Instead, Mr. Obama spent much of his time in New York pressing the case, particularly to Russia and China, for sterner Security Council measures to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds; if Obama has finally figured out that Iran's leaders have dark intentions and cannot be trusted, well, welcome to reality (and he can leave the 'Kumbaya' songsheet by the door).

MORE:  Here is Walter Pincus of the WaPo writing in Dec 2007:

The estimate noted that Iran continues to enrich uranium for a civil nuclear energy program. But the intelligence experts said they did not consider this a weapons program because it is being done at openly declared facilities under international supervision.

If Iran were to proceed with a weapons effort, it would not be carried out at known facilities, the officials said, adding that they do not believe Iran is enriching uranium at an undeclared facility.

Well, even as of 2009 the newly declared facility is not, in fact, enriching anything - yet.  Back to the current Times:

The senior intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity at a briefing arranged by the White House immediately after the announcement in Pittsburgh, said that their concerns about the site grew as they learned of the installation of particular equipment there in recent months.

Their information suggested that the site could support some 3,000 centrifuges for enriching nuclear fuel, and their assessment was that this was too small to be useful for civilian nuclear power, but big enough to be used, once it became operational, for making enough bomb-grade material for about one weapon a year.

They said the plant could not have become operational before next year, and that there was no sign of nuclear materials yet at the site. They said that at some point earlier this year, the Iranians appeared to have learned that their activities had been discovered.

So they have known for years that Iran had a secret plant but its purpose only became clear in the last few months?

Turning Japanese, No We're Not Turning Japanese (He Doesn't Think So)

Comparing the Japanese and US health care systems makes little sense.

Brooks To White House - Man Up In Afghanistan

David Brooks urges the White House to commit to success in the central front against terror.

I quibble with his lead:

Always there is the illusion of the easy path. Always there is the illusion, which gripped Donald Rumsfeld and now grips many Democrats, that you can fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint, with cruise missiles, with special forces operations and unmanned drones.

I don't think that Biden and the people advocating the whack-a-mole approach consider it to be any sort of a counter-insurgency; they consider it an attempt to focus exclusively on Al Qaeda and drop the nation-building effort.  Here is Ralph Peters:

GEN. Stan McChrystal, an honorable soldier, has reported from Afghani stan: He wants more troops for a "classic" counterinsurgency strategy to secure the population, then win hearts and minds.

President Obama needs to make a decision: Either give the general the resources he believes he needs, or change the mission.

I'm for changing the mission. Concentrate on the continued destruction of al Qaeda and its allies. Nothing else matters in this mess.

...

What we really need is just a compact, lethal force of special operators, intelligence resources and air assets, along with sufficient conventional forces for protection and punitive raids. More troops just mean more blood and frustration.

Those who suggest pulling out completely and striking from offshore don't understand the fundamentals, either: We still need some boots on the ground, within grabbing distance of Pakistan's wild northwest, to strike fast to kill or capture elusive targets. And cruise missiles can't bring back prisoners, DNA samples or captured documents.

Our hunter-killer task forces should be deployed on a limited number of strategically positioned bases supported by air. Don't worry about the Afghan government -- Afghans don't.

Bill Roggio has experts who dismiss that approach.  But let's not criticize it as counter-insurgency on the cheap.

No Time For Sergants

If an Admin official resigns in the forest but the LA Times doesn't cover it, does it make a sound?  It does if Patterico is listening.

Well, it is not as if Los Angeles has any interest in or connection to the arts community...

I Deplore This Climate Of Fear

With important elections just six weeks away the Feds have arrested an alleged terrorist planning bomb attacks in New York City, arrested a Jordanian man attempting to bomb a Dallas skyscraper, and announced that Iran has a secret facility for making nuclear fuel.  [Let's not overlook a bomber in Chicago and a terrorist cell in North Carolina.]

Obviously this is just Rovian gamesmanship intended to create a climate of fear, turn the public's attention to national security issues, and distract us from the real issues of health care reform and the economy.  Karl Rove is using the same tired playbook he used to keep Bush in power, and who knew Rove's powers were so great?  I feel a poll question coming on!

YES, BUT:  I would have become a lefty blogger years ago, but I could never pass the intelligence test. I kept writing "Bush sicks" or "Bush ducks".  And was Cheney Satan and Rove the Anti-Christ, or vice versa?  No, I'm stuck here... 

Obama Can't Move The Needle

The new NY Times/CBS News poll shows that Obama just can't convince the American people of two simple messages - his health reform won't include death panels and it won't cover illegal immigrants.

Here is question 52:

52. Do you think the changes to the health care system under consideration will or will not allow taxpayer dollars to be used to help illegal immigrants receive health insurance, or don't you know enough about the changes yet to say?

That should not be a trick question - Obama was quite specific on this in his nationally televised address, saying the following:

There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms -- the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You lie! (Boos.)

In light of Obama's clear statement and the hubbub that swirled around "You lie", the poll results are shocking:  30% think the proposed reforms will include aid to illegal immigrants; 22% think it will not; and 48% are still not sure.  Who are you going to believe, the President of the United States or some screaming nut?  Hold that thought.

The President was as emphatic but not any more convincing on the topic of death panels:

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but by prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Now, such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple. (Applause.)

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/09/obama-health-care-speech_n_281265.html

That "plain and simple" lie is only understood as such by 23% of respondents.  From the poll:

53. Do you think the changes to the health care system under consideration will or will not create government organizations that will make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly, or don't you know enough about the changes yet to say?

26% say the reforms will create such "government organizations", despite Obama's vigorous denial; 23% embrace Obama's message that this is a lie; and 51% remain puzzled.  I can't see Russia from my front steps but I can hear Sarah Palin laughing from Asia.

For a great communicator, Obama did not communicate these points too effectively.

Where Never Is Heard A Discouraging Word

The NY Times and CBS have a new poll out and neither Adam Nagourney nor the Times headline writers are sugar-coating it:

Public Wary of Obama on War and Health Care, Poll Finds
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and DALIA SUSSMAN

President Obama is confronting declining support for his handling of the war in Afghanistan and an electorate confused and anxious about the proposed health care overhaul as he prepares for pivotal battles over both issues, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

But take heart, Times readers!  Obama begins to rally in the second paragraph and his diminished credibility and inability to move the needle on death panels or coverage for illegal immigrants is only covered in the concluding paragraphs.  Here we go:

But Mr. Obama is going into the fall having retained considerable political strength. At 56 percent, his job approval rating is down from earlier in the year but still reasonably strong at this point compared with recent presidents. More Americans are starting to credit his stimulus package with having helped to revive the economy. And Mr. Obama retains a decided advantage with the American public over Republicans on key issues, starting with health care.

We know Nagourney, so we know not to trust his "more Americans are starting to credit his stimulus package" formulation - in fact, people who believe the stimulus has already started to help are up to 36%, from 25% in late July; folks who think the stimulus has yet to have an impact have fallen to 46% now from 57% in July.  That is a helpful trend but there is still a lot of skepticism out there.

Next, candor covered by spin:

The poll found that an intense campaign by Mr. Obama to rally support behind his health care plan — including an address to Congress, a schedule of campaign events across the country and an aggressive run of television interviews — appears to have done little to allay concerns about the proposal. Majorities of respondents said that they were confused about the health care argument and that Mr. Obama had not a good job in explaining what he was trying to accomplish

“The Obama administration seems to have a plan, but I’m not understanding the exact details,” Paul Corkery, 59, a Democrat from Somerset, N.J., said in a follow-up interview.

But the poll suggests that Mr. Obama is in a decidedly more commanding position than Republicans on this issue as Congressional negotiations move into their final stages. Most Americans trust Mr. Obama more than Republicans to make the right decisions on the issue; 76 percent said Republicans had not even laid out a clear health care plan.

Uh huh - 76% were hazy on the Republican plan; 59% say Barack's plan is foggy, too. Some bully pulpit.

And somehow a fundamental Democratic message has failed to capture the imagination of the American public: 47% of respondents believe that the federal government has a moral obligation to provide health insurance to all Americans; 48% think it does not.  (Hmm - since the federal government is the creation and servant of the American people, can it really have an independent moral obligation?  A better question would be, do the American people, acting through the federal government, have a moral obligation...).

And in the closing paragraphs, Nagourney wonders about Obama's lost credibility:

The fact that so many Americans say they do not know enough about the plan to offer an opinion– 46 percent – shows the risk of the White House’s strategy of not putting forward its own specific bill. And there is abundant evidence that critics of the bill made progress over the summer while the White House stayed largely silent: Nearly one in four respondents said they believed health care legislation would create organizations to decide when to stop providing medical care to the elderly – so called death panels – despite an all-out effort by Mr. Obama to debunk the claim, which is false. About the same percentage say that the bill would use taxpayer money to provide health care benefits to illegal immigrants.

The poll results are even grimmer than that - rather than saying that "nearly one in four" believe in death panels, we could observe that more respondents believe in death panels than not; similarly, more respondents believe the final plan will assist illegal immigrants than think it will not.  Most people are confused, so "Don't know" is the favored answer. 

Still - if people don't know that Obama's plan won't cover illegal immigrants despite Obama's flatly saying so in a national address (and the attendant whoop-do-woo about Wilson's "You lie"), where is his credibility?  (And since Democrats won't vote enforcement of the provisions barring aid to illegals, it seems fair to guess that they hope to see illegal immigrants collect aid as an "unexpected" consequence of reform.)

The numbers are as follows - question 52 asked about assistance for illegal immigrants.  30% think the final bill will provide assistance; 22% say it won't; the rest don't know.

Question 53 asked whether the proposed changes will or will not "create government organizations that will make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly".  26% say it will, 23% say it won't, and the rest don't know, despite weeks of Palin-bashing and a specific rebuttal of this charge by Obama in his speech. My guess?  We will have government panels putting out guidelines for cost-oriented best practices and care will be restricted.

Obama denies two controversial, well-publicized charges on national television and swings less than one quarter of the country.  That is some fine message machine.

Geez, Tell Us How You Really Feel

Rich Lowry excoriates Obama and his speech to the United Nations.

President Obama yesterday did his best impression of a high-school sophomore participating in his first Model UN meeting, retailing pious clichés he learned from his pony-tailed social studies teacher.

Even Woodrow Wilson might have blanched at the mushy-headed exhortations to world peace and collective action better suited to a college dorm-room bull session or a holiday-season Coca-Cola commercial.

It's All About Obama, he from whom all good things flow:

Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation's pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings, or so readily elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country?

Between America and the world, Obama adopts a happy medium. It is in this sense only that he is a centrist.

"For those who question the character and cause of my nation," Obama said, "I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." In other words, he's the redeemer of a nation sunk in war crimes (we condoned torture), high-handedness (we ignored the United Nations) and hypocrisy (we promoted democracy selectively) prior to the ascension of his blessed administration.

Here is a link to the speech.

Just to further vex Mr. Lowry let me toss in this link to another American President addressing the United Nations in 1982 at a special session devoted to disarmament:

Mr. Secretary-General, Mr. President, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen:

I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.

Dag Hammarskjold said 24 years ago this month, "We meet in a time of peace, which is no peace." His words are as true today as they were then. More than a hundred disputes have disturbed the peace among nations since World War II, and today the threat of nuclear disaster hangs over the lives of all our people. The Bible tells us there will be a time for peace, but so far this century mankind has failed to find it.

The United Nations is dedicated to world peace, and its charter clearly prohibits the international use of force. Yet the tide of belligerence continues to rise. The charter's influence has weakened even in the 4 years since the first special session on disarmament. We must not only condemn aggression; we must enforce the dictates of our charter and resume the struggle for peace.

The record of history is clear: Citizens of the United States resort to force reluctantly and only when they must. Our foreign policy, as President Eisenhower once said, "is not difficult to state. We are for peace first, last, and always for very simple reasons." We know that only in a peaceful atmosphere, a peace with justice, one in which we can be confident, can America prosper as we have known prosperity in the past, he said.

He said to those who challenge the truth of those words, let me point out, at the end of World War II, we were the only undamaged industrial power in the world. Our military supremacy was unquestioned. We had harnessed the atom and had the ability to unleash its destructive force anywhere in the world. In short, we could have achieved world domination, but that was contrary to the character of our people. Instead, we wrote a new chapter in the history of mankind.

We used our power and wealth to rebuild the war-ravaged economies of the world, both East and West, including those nations who had been our enemies. We took the initiative in creating such international institutions as this United Nations, where leaders of good will could come together to build bridges for peace and prosperity.

America has no territorial ambitions. We occupy no countries, and we have built no walls to lock our people in. Our commitment to self-determination, freedom, and peace is the very soul of America. That commitment is as strong today as it ever was.

The United States has fought four wars in my lifetime. In each, we struggled to defend freedom and democracy. We were never the aggressors. America's strength and, yes, her military power have been a force for peace, not conquest; for democracy, not despotism; for freedom, not tyranny. Watching, as I have, succeeding generations of American youth bleed their lives onto far-flung battlefields to protect our ideals and secure the rule of law, I have known how important it is to deter conflict. But since coming to the Presidency, the enormity of the responsibility of this office has made my commitment even deeper. I believe that responsibility is shared by all of us here today.

My goodness - if Regan had just been a bit more humble and apologetic about the US role in defeating the Nazis the Soviet Union might have collapsed in 1988.

Steal This Book!

Are you kidding me?  The new puff piece about Barack and Michelle by Christopher Anderson actually includes the news that Bill Ayers wrote or co-wrote Dreams of My Father?

Here are book reviews from Harper Collins, USA Today, and the Chi Trib.  Amazon claims I can search the book but they only offer the first eight pages and the index (Bill Ayers appears on p. 164-66 on 169-70.)

I am off to Barnes and Noble for some field research.

LATER: Through the looking glass - On the topic of the authorship of "Dreams", Chris Andersen actually quotes Jack Cashill, linked above, who has been driving the "Ayers as ghostwriter" story.  Andersen's version is that Obama compiled copious notes and musings, bundled them with some taped interviews with relatives, and dropped the mess in Ayer's lap for guidance on how to turn it into a book.  This was the summer of 1994, and the result was a book with a lot of Ayers' language and themes.

And how did Obama and Bill know each other?  Michelle knew Bernadine from their days at Sidley Austin, and Bill met Michelle when he was working on educational reform and she was in Daley's office.  Andersen has nothing on the possibility that Obama and Ayers met in 1988 when (per "Dreams") Obama was working with a city-wide coalition involved in education reform just before pushing off for Harvard; the coalition in which Obama's group worked was led by Bill Ayers.

IN OTHER NEWS:  Something for astrologers, nothing for birthers:  Andersen claims that Barack Sr. drove his wife to the hospital on the afternoon of Aug 4, 1961; she gave birth two hours later.  The couple had been living with her parents at the time.

THE WRIGHT STUFF:  Does anyone out there believe that Obama had not heard any of Jeremiah Wright's incendiary sermons?  Andersen does not, reporting that Obama was in the church and in the Amen Corner for some of them.

Gen. McChrystal To Times - It's All Good

Gen. McChrystal has a telephone interview with the Times in which he offers assurance that he is not threatening to resign and tells us that healthy debate is, well, healthy.  He does tap his foot a bit on timing:

WASHINGTON — The senior American commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday rejected any suggestion that his grim assessment of the war had driven a wedge between the military and the Obama administration, but he warned against taking too long to settle on a final strategy.

I hope "too long" is not less than six weeks; by extending this Kaussian logic a bit we can predict that Team Obama will push every controversial decision past the November off-elections.

The most frightening analysis of the McChrystal report I have read comes from George Packer, author of "The Assassin's Gate":

The only surprise is the impressiveness of McChrystal’s analysis. I was wrong in May when I questioned the appointment of a special-operations man to run this war. McChrystal’s report is written in plain English, it’s self-critical, and it shows more understanding of the nature of the fight in Afghanistan than most journalism and academic work. The U.S. military now believes that the Afghan government is just as much a threat to success as the Taliban. That’s a bold conclusion, one that our civilians have not been willing to reach, publicly at least. And the description of the different Taliban networks is as clarifying as it is disturbing.

So this is what the general whom Obama rushed into the field earlier this year has to tell his commander-in-chief: it will take time, it will take more resources, we will have to get smarter. Again, no surprise. The policy McChrystal is working within was set in March, by the President himself, and it called for a renewed counterinsurgency in Afghanistan in order to “dismantle,” “disrupt,” and “defeat” Al Qaeda. Obama’s strategy-review team didn’t want to go looking to get America deeper into the mess in Afghanistan—they looked at all the alternatives and decided that the narrower approaches wouldn’t work against an Al Qaeda network that’s so entrenched and interconnected with other groups in the region.

Sorry, that is not the scary bit - here we go:

In my piece I wrote about the fears within the Administration that escalation in Afghanistan could do to Obama what the same thing in Vietnam did to Johnson (just substitute health care and energy legislation for the Great Society). That’s the Vietnam analogy people in the Administration keep coming back to. I’ve long thought that Obama was more like J.F.K.: rational, coldly objective in the heat of events, unlikely to allow his advisers and his ego to destroy his Presidency by getting the country deeper into a war he never felt fully committed to. Obama has Kennedy’s confidence in his own judgment, which Johnson tragically lacked. Gordon Goldstein’s very good book “Lessons in Disaster,” about McGeorge Bundy—national security adviser to both J.F.K. and L.B.J.—pretty much proves that Kennedy, if he’d lived, would not have committed ground troops to Vietnam at the start of his second term. After the disaster at the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy stopped trusting his military advisers, and went on to overrule them during the Cuban missile crisis and, again and again, on Vietnam. Perhaps this is Obama’s J.F.K. moment. We’ll know in a few weeks. And if so, perhaps he would be right.

Groan - every prominent Democrat lies awake nights wondering how they could be more like Jack Kennedy.  Well, if Kennedy distrusted his generals and would not have escalated in Vietnam, by gum, Obama won't be trusting his generals or escalating in Afghanistan.

Packer admits to being a bit bothered by Obama's need for a six-month review of his decision in March:

The second thing is this: the alternatives were already rejected by Obama’s strategy review, and since then no one has made a persuasive case why they would work any better.

The strategy of battling Al Qaeda from fortified enclaves relying on drones is discussed (and disparaged) at Bill Roggio's Long War Journal.

SINCE YOU ASK:  Obama living out his personal Kennedy fantasy was the scariest thing I read today.  The scariest thing I read yesterday is that Joe Biden is driving the "Back Out Gracefully" side.  Put it together and we have Obama acting out his Kennedy fantasy by taking advice from Joe Biden.  Yike!  (And yes, Biden is probably living his personal Kennedy fantasy...)

Fortunately They Weren't Saluting The Flag...

Troubling video of NJ schoolkids being taught a hymn to Obama. Whatever possessed them?  I know we are all just grateful that they weren't praying, since that might have made some of the students uncomfortable.

Michelle Malkin provides lots of background; Burlington Township sounds like a nice enough town.

Well.  My free advice to aspiring songsters would be to try for something a bit more tasteful and restrained - I am sure our Dear Leader wold enjoy a remix along the lines of "Abraham, Martin and Barack".  Without the assassination angle, of course.

UPON FURTHER REFLECTION:  A proper paean to Obama would acknowledge his inspirational leadership through both economic distress and war, but it also needs to show that he is more than just an American, he is a man of the world.  Let's chuck Lincoln and Kennedy and go with "FDR, Gandhi, and Barack".  Or, since that doesn't scan so well, maybe "FDR, Gandhi, and BO".

Just brainstorming here.

Another May-September Break-Up

Yet another spring fling that faded with the falling leaves - Obama is adopting the Bush position on indefinite detention and won't vex Congress with a request for enabling legislation.

Why the change?  Uhh, because this is Obama we are talking about?  Could be!

But another reason for the punt may be that the Pelosi/Reid Administration doesn't want to exhaust whatever morale remains on their left flank.  After noting Obama's flip-flop, the Times engaged in a bit of Congress-bashing.  The flip::

[Obama] said he would “work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution.”

Officials said Wednesday that working with Congress did not mean the president would seek legislation, only that he would consult lawmakers.

My guess is the consultations went poorly - that after Pelosi and Reid vented about the frustrations of the left on health care and Afghanistan, these two "leaders" indicated that they wanted no part of any effort to legitimize the locking up of hardened terrorists.  After all, there is only so much a lefty can endure. 

And the bash:

Given the opposition in Congress to Mr. Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo, especially if it means transferring detainees to prisons on American soil, the prospect of writing legislation that would pass both houses appears daunting at best.

Sarah E. Mendelson, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who led a study about closing Guantánamo, said forgoing legislation was "overall a good step" because it prevented Congress from making things worse. "We don’t know if it closes the door definitively on efforts to institutionalize detention without charge," she added, "since the White House might seek to do this by itself."

I must say the expecting squawking from the left is muted - Glenn Greenwald explains that no law is better than the bad law Congress probably would have passed.  However, he delivers a nice "I Want My Hope And Change" rant here:

This leads to a more general point:  when it comes to uprooting ("changing") the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism and civil liberties -- the issue which generated as much opposition to the last presidency as anything else -- the Obama administration has proven rather conclusively that tiny and cosmetic adjustments are the most it is willing to do.  They love announcing new policies that cast the appearance of change but which have no effect whatsoever on presidential powers.  With great fanfare, they announced the closing of CIA black sites -- at a time when none was operating.  They trumpeted the President's order that no interrogation tactics outside of the Army Field Manual could be used -- at a time when approval for such tactics had been withdrawn.  They repudiated the most extreme elements of the Bush/Addington/Yoo "inherent power" theories -- while maintaining alternative justifications to enable the same exact policies to proceed exactly as is.  They flamboyantly touted the closing of Guantanamo -- while aggressively defending the right to abduct people from around the world and then imprison them with no due process at Bagram.  Their "changes" exist solely in theory -- which isn't to say that they are all irrelevant, but it is to say that they change nothing in practice:  i.e., in reality.

He's not holding his breath waiting.

He's A Sweet Talkin' Guy (Ongoing...)

The embodiment of "Talk is cheap" takes aim at cheap talk.

UN Speeches - Open Thread

Did you enjoy the UN speeches?  I tuned out after I realized Kanye West was not in the audience.

Here is Obama.

McChrystal Had Better Know What He Is Doing

The WaPo discusses the ghastly short-term political implications of McChrystal's emphasis on protecting the Afghan population rather than our own forces:

Less Peril for Civilians, but More for Troops

As U.S. Toll in Afghanistan Rises, Lawmakers And Families Are Questioning New Restrictions

Concern is rising in Congress and among military families over a sharp increase in U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan at a time when senior military officials acknowledge that American service members are facing greater risks under a new strategy that emphasizes protecting Afghan civilians.

...McChrystal, in a major assessment disclosed by The Washington Post on Monday, castigated the U.S. military in Afghanistan for being "preoccupied with protection of our own forces." He wrote that U.S. and other military personnel must minimize their time in armored vehicles and walled bases and "share risk, at least equally, with the people." McChrystal also called for coalition troops to "radically increase" joint operations with Afghan forces. Both steps, he said, mean greater risk for coalition troops in the near term but could "ultimately save lives in the long run."

The problem is, the long run is a series of short runs, and sometimes you can't get there from here.

If we had strong public support for the effort in Afghanistan, or a President inclined to use his rhetorical gifts to rally some, a strategy that literally trades more deaths today for the prospect of fewer deaths down the road might be sustainable.  Bush managed a similar feat (and sans the rhetorical gifts) with the surge in Iraq, which projected a short term increase in deaths with the new mission of population protection coupled with new Rues of Engagement.  But as Obama would say with pride, he isn't George Bush.

GRACEFUL SEGUE:  Fred Kaplan, in his latest apologia for the Obama Administration, explains that success in Afghanistan requires both more troops and a legitimate Afghan government.  Well, sure, but did Team Obama only just now discover problems with the Afghan government that were not obvious last March, when Obama announced his last six-month plan?  My goodness, the Afghan election was riddled with fraud, and it will be cold this winter.

I would hate to think the Obama Administration relied on phony intelligence about the reliability and integrity of the Karzai government.  Perhaps if they had read the NY Times - this is from Feb 9, prior to Obama's presentation of a new strategy:

American officials at the Munich conference questioned the gap between Mr. Karzai’s presentation of reality and what they see as the facts on the ground. The pervasive corruption in the country is viewed as a central reason that the Afghan leader has fallen out of favor with the Obama administration. Mr. Karzai faces an election in August.

On Feb 8, the Times front-paged a story highlighting Joe Biden's problems with Karzai:

KABUL, Afghanistan — A foretaste of what would be in store for President Hamid Karzai after the election of a new American administration came last February, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator, sat down to a formal dinner at the palace during a visit here.

Between platters of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American senators questioned Mr. Karzai about corruption in his government, which, by many estimates, is among the worst in the world. Mr. Karzai assured Mr. Biden and the other senators that there was no corruption at all and that, in any case, it was not his fault.

The senators gaped in astonishment. After 45 minutes, Mr. Biden threw down his napkin and stood up.

“This dinner is over,” Mr. Biden announced, according to one of the people in the room at the time. And the three senators walked out, long before the appointed time.

Per current reporting Biden was a skeptic about sending more troops last March and still is.

I guess the Administration spin will have to be that Karzai is even worse than they thought, and Joe Biden is even smarter than they thought.  Does that inspire confidence in their judgment?  Hmm - maybe after they fine-tune their assessments of our friends they can reconsider their view of our enemies.

President Interdum Fidelis

Even the NY Times cannot fail to notice that Obama is wrestling with himself on Afghanistan:

WASHINGTON — President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.

The options under review are part of what administration officials described as a wholesale reconsideration of a strategy the president announced with fanfare just six months ago. Two new intelligence reports are being conducted to evaluate Afghanistan and Pakistan, one official said.

The sweeping reassessment has been prompted by deteriorating conditions on the ground, the messy and still unsettled outcome of the Afghan elections and a dire report by Mr. Obama’s new commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. Aides said the president wanted to examine whether the strategy he unveiled in March was still the best approach and whether it could work with the extra combat forces General McChrystal wants.

The Times continues the flip-flop theme:

Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said Mr. Biden had proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.

...

Mr. Obama rejected Mr. Biden’s approach in March, and it is not clear that it has more traction this time. But the fact that is on the table again speaks to the breadth of the administration’s review and the evolving views inside the White House of what has worked in the region and what has not. In recent days, officials have expressed satisfaction with the results of their cooperation with Pakistan in hunting down Qaeda figures in the unforgiving border lands.

A shift from a counterinsurgency strategy to a focus on counterterrorism would turn the administration’s current theory on its head. The strategy Mr. Obama adopted in March concluded that to defeat Al Qaeda, the United States needs to keep the Taliban from returning to power in Afghanistan and making it a safe haven once again for Osama bin Laden’s network. Mr. Biden’s position questions that assumption.

Let's include the stated reason for the review: Obama is shocked - shocked! - to learn that there is corruption in Karzai's government:

But the Afghan presidential elections, widely marred by allegations of fraud, undermined the administration’s confidence that it had a reliable partner in President Hamid Karzai. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden already had raised doubts about Mr. Karzai, which were only exacerbated by the fear that even if he emerges from a runoff election, he will have little credibility with his own people.

“A counterinsurgency strategy can only work if you have a credible and legitimate Afghan partner. That’s in doubt now,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who led the administration’s strategy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year. “Part of the reason you are seeing a hesitancy to jump deeper into the pool is that they are looking to see if they can make lemonade out of the lemons we got from the Afghan election.”

I'm glad they explained that, or cynics might have thought it was due to Obama's sagging poll numbers and a need to placate the left during the healthcare debacle.

The Times concludes:

Mr. Obama now has to reconcile past statements and policy with his current situation.

“The problem for President Obama is he has made the case in the past that we took our eye off the ball and we should have stayed in Afghanistan,” said former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. But now that he is in charge of the war, Mr. Cohen said, Mr. Obama is discovering “he doesn’t have much in the way of options” and time is of the essence.

The WaPo editors bemoaned Obama's inconstancy yesterday; today it is the Times.

AS THE CAFFEINE KICKS IN:  The title has been upgraded, I hope.

Something Obama Can Eventually Claim Credit For (Or Blow Smoke About)

In an attempt to get ahead of next decade's spin today, we pick up on this nugget from John Tierney,who was describing the research evaluating why the US life expectancy figures lag those of our industrialized counterparts:

This longevity gap, Dr. Preston says, is primarily due to the relatively high rates of sickness and death among middle-aged Americans, chiefly from heart disease and cancer. Many of those deaths have been attributed to the health care system, an especially convenient target for those who favor a European alternative.

But there are many more differences between Europe and the United States than just the health care system. Americans are more ethnically diverse. They eat different food. They are fatter. Perhaps most important, they used to be exceptionally heavy smokers. For four decades, until the mid-1980s, per-capita cigarette consumption was higher in the United States (particularly among women) than anywhere else in the developed world. Dr. Preston and other researchers have calculated that if deaths due to smoking were excluded, the United States would rise to the top half of the longevity rankings for developed countries.

Thank you for not smoking!  The long term implication is interesting:

“The U.S. has had one spectacular achievement in preventive medicine,” [Dr. Preston] says. “It has had the largest drop in cigarette consumption per adult of any developed country since 1985.” If Americans keep shunning cigarettes, the longevity gap could shrink no matter what happens with the health care system.

How about that?  So over the next decade or two the US health figures ought to rise relative to Europe almost regardless of what ObamaCare does or does not deliver.  But the Smoker in Chief will take credit for it!

Getting A Jump Ahead Of The Rhetorical Curve

Obama can't possibly have a troop "surge" in Afghanistan because all libs know that the surge was Bush's idea and it failed miserably.

However, do not underestimate the ingenuity of the US Army!  In the latest McChrystal memo we see call for a troop "jump":

Our campaign in Afghanistan has been historically under-resourced and remains so today. Almost every aspect of our collective effort and associated resourcing has lagged a growing insurgency - historically a recipe for failure in COIN. Success will require a discrete "jump" to gain the initiative, demonstrate progress in the short term, and secure long-term support.

McChrystal is gonna say jump and Obama is gonna say "How high?".  Or "Good-bye".

WELL THAT'S ANOTHER FINE MESS YOU'VE GOTTEN US INTO, STANLEY:  Patterico notes that for one anonymous White House staffer chatting with the WaPo it's not "General McChrystal, sir", it's "Stan".  Hey, maybe as in "The Man"?

None Dare Call It Nation Building

Didn't Obama announce a bold new strategy for Afghanistan last March?  Yes he did!  So why is he all waffley now?  Changing circumstances, changing polls, who knows?  [Leslie Gelb ponders this mystery even more deeply, as do the WaPo editors.]

Gen. McChrystal wants more troops to provide the capability for a real counterinsurgency strategy oriented towards protecting the Afghan population.  Is this so different a goal from last March?

Last March Obama's political objective seemed to be to spin his "new" approach as a step away from Bush's misison creep and extravagant nation-building.  Obama explained:

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal:  to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.

The Times played along:

All of the president’s advisers agreed that the primary goal in the region should be narrow — taking aim at Al Qaeda, as opposed to the vast attempt at nation-building the Bush administration had sought in Iraq. The question was how to get there.

And here is National Security Advisor Gen. Jones explaining the new focus the next day:

QUESTION: Anne Davies from The Sydney Morning Herald. As you know, the Australian army is in Uruzgan province. Would you like to see Australia play a bigger role when the Dutch withdraw – drawdown from that area? And what other contributions could a country like Australia make to this effort?

GEN JONES: Well, I think that first of all, all contributions are very, very much appreciated. And we have long since recognized, I think, the incredible courage that our men and women in uniform and civilians have played throughout Afghanistan.

Commanders – and I was one, but commanders always have a strong desire to ask for what they think they need. Obviously, that’s – it would be irresponsible not to. And then – but we haven’t always been able to provide that for one reason or the other. But I would think that -- in this particular case, that while military contributions are always welcome, that this new focus on capacity building, on trainers for the Afghan army, on trainers for the “gendarmerie” (ph.) type of capacity in Afghanistan; these are the things that need to be done. We need a more robust Afghan army and police so that the Afghans can take over the countryside and provide that permanent security blanket that will preclude the terrorists from coming back.

We need more engineers. We need more irrigation projects. We need more teachers. We need more schools. We need more hospitals. And it needs to be prioritized in a way that – within the international community. When you think of all of the organizations that are there – the EU, NATO, the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, and you think of all of the NGOs that are there and all of the countries that are trying to do wonderful things; if we achieve that coordination under the leadership of the United Nations with the support of the Secretary General and his representative in Kabul, a very fine and distinguished diplomat, Ambassador Kai Eide of Norway -- if we can get that same cohesion and organization in the civilian side as we have on the military side, then I think you’ll see some dramatic shifts in the progress that we can make in Afghanistan. And that’s really the goal, is to do on the civilian side, identify the requirements and organize ourselves internationally in such a way to provide those things in a prioritized way so that we can make a difference.

That's total focus on disrupting Al Qaeda, all right.

Last March Obama wanted to pretend he was doing something different from Bush; fine, whatever.  But now he seems to want a do-over on the "Don't call it nation-building while we rebuild the nation" plan he put out last spring.

When Is A Tax Not A Tax?

A tax is not a tax if it would conflict with Obama's promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000.  Matt Yglesias offers the lukest of luke-warm defenses of this proposition while making an interesting point:

That said, the kernel of a good point lurking in these question is that realistically the practical alternative to higher taxes is often more regulation. And in particular one major consequence of the extreme aversion to taxation embedded in the American political culture is that it creates large incentives for politicians to try to do things through regulatory mandates rather than taxes. One of the major sources of the political appeal of cap and trade is that it’s not a tax. Conversely, one of the major elements of the campaign against cap and trade is to try to insist that it should be called “cap and tax.”

As to cap and trade proposals on carbon, the same objectives can be achieved by way of an administratively simpler carbon tax.  Briefly, with cap and trade the regulating authority sets an allowable quantity and lets the market determine the price; with a tax, the authority sets the price and lets the market determine the quantity.

But Obama can't pursue the carbon tax because of his campaign promise.  And he has to waterboard the English language to pretend that even though the government is forcing people's dollars into other people's pockets, it's not a tax.

Two Fronts, Two Sides

Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting perspective on the Afghanistan war - the US was fighting on two fronts, Iraq and Afganistan, but so was Al Qaeda; maybe our success in Iraq forced Al Qaeda to refocus on Afghanistan.

Some support for this can be found in the declassified version of the McChrystal assessment, which includes this description of the insurgents groups:

Insurgent Groups

Most insurgent fighters are Afghans. They are directed by a small number of Afghan senior leaders based in Pakistan that work through an alternative political infrastructure in Afghanistan. They are aided by foreign fighters, elements of some intelligence agencies, and international funding, resources, and training. Foreign fighters provide materiel, expertise, and ideological commitment.

...The major insurgent groups in order of their threat to the mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (05T), the Haqqani Network (HQN), and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG).

...All three insurgent groups require resources - mainly money and manpower. The O5T derives funding from the narcotics trade and external donors. HQN similarly draws resources principally from Pakistan, Gulf Arab networks, and from its close association with al Qaeda and other Pakistan-based insurgent groups. HiG seeks control of mineral wealth and smuggling routes in the east.

I would take from that while the Taliban are very Afghan-centric, the HQN might well be benefitting from men and money re-directed away from Iraq.  The HiG leader has also worked with Bin Laden in the past.

The Enigma Is Mutual

Mickey Kaus makes an excellent point about the paranoia generated by Obama:

It's Not That He's Black.  It's That He's An Enigma!

The more I think about it, the more the townhall anti-Obama anger isn't explained completely by the issues (sorry, Frank ). There's also something about Obama himself-. But that something (or the main something) isn't his race. It's that he's a relative newcomer, as Presidents go--an unknown quantity, an enigma, with a short track record and patches of that record left fuzzy. That means opponents can fill in the blanks with ominous possibilities. It makes paranoia more rational, if you will.

To which I would add, the enigma is mutual.  It's not just that Obama is a mystery to the Great Unwashed (and even some of the well scrubbed).  It's that it is perfectly obvious to all and sundry that the rest of us are an enigma to this guy born in Hawaii, raised in Indonesia, educated at Columbia and Harvard and employed as a street organizer in a hybrid rich-yuppie/poor black Chicago neighborhood.

To take an example torn from today's headlines - plenty of Americans attend church regularly, involve themselves in church fundraisers and activities, coach little league, do volunteer work in their local schools, and are clinging bitterly to the notion that they are active, important, contributing members of their community.  Belive it or not, they are not waiting for Obama's reboot of 1000 Points Of Light to guide them into a lifetime of national service.

People who don't know where Obama is coming from and are quite sure Obama doesn't know where they are coming from might decide that shouting is a sensible tactic if they worry that they are not being heard.  It's the American way - if talking to a foreigner who doesn't understand you, just talk louder.

The Big Goverment Open Thread

I may miss the Next Big Thing, which Breitbart of Big Government has promised for noon ET.

BACK LIVE:  It is a tape of the controversial NEA call of Aug 10. With ACORN Breitbart had good follow-up tapes. I think he will need more here for this to take off.

The Irrefutable Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat offers an interesting appraisal of the Bush Presidency which includes this inarguable observation:

This is not a blueprint that future presidents will want to follow.

Let's Make Banking Boring Again

I could find myself in broad agreement with Paul Krugman's argument that Obama ought to go after banker's compensation.  Here is my official editorial opinion from last February:

In the longer run, restricting compensation may be a good way to force banks back to their traditional businesses of taking deposits and making loans; executives who want to run a hedge fund and be paid accordingly can quit and go do so, without implicit government support or FDIC insurance.

The current Plan A for bank reform seems to be to hire brilliant regulators and write a million new rules to assure that banks don't take excessive risks.  Of course, since banks live to hire arbitrageurs who exploit rule quirks, and since regulators tend to become captured, this approach will only make sense to a committed statist (so Obama is on board!).

My Plan B is to put laughably low caps on bank compensation, coupled with a vigorous exhortation to bank execs that if they want hedge fund pay they should quit and join a hedge fund.  If banking had civil service type pay it would attract civil service type managers, who would focus on avoiding mistakes that could cost them their sinecure rather than doing the Big Deals that could get them a summer home in the Hamptons.

Once could even imagine a world in which banks lend to small businesses, hedge funds and private equity groups, which then engage in wild risk-taking.  There are viable, popular, profitable minor league ball clubs all over America - there is no reason our banks can't be pushed into a similar role as the minor leagues of finance.

Krugman does become a-historical here:

All I can think is that this was another example of something we’ve seen before: Mr. Obama’s visceral reluctance to engage in anything that resembles populist rhetoric. And that’s something he needs to get over.

Book Deal Barry tried the populist route last winter during the debacle over AIG bonuses, when bankers were terrorists.  Perhaps he has exhausted his phoniness on that topic.  However, Krugman is absolutely correct that this argument from Obama is daft:

I was startled last week when Mr. Obama, in an interview with Bloomberg News [link], questioned the case for limiting financial-sector pay: “Why is it,” he asked, “that we’re going to cap executive compensation for Wall Street bankers but not Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or N.F.L. football players?”

We can cross that bridge when Tom Brady gets TARP money.

Urban Camo Is This Season's Black

Some folks are deploring Michelle's fashion choices but I'm sure she thought Urban Camo was totally appropriate for a Medal of Honor ceremony.

The Traditional "How 'Bout Them Giants And Jets" Open Thread

The Giants beat the loathed Cowboys at Dallas; the Jets beat the highly respected Tom Brady of the feared Patriots (somebody call 9/11!  The Jets last home vic over the Pats ws 9/11/2000).

Back in the real sport, the Yanks lost again while the now invincible Red Sox continue to roll.  Looking ahead a bit, the Yanks look good to lose three times to the Angels while the Red Sox obviously will sweep four against the Royals (sorry, the hapless Royals).  Thus when the loathed, feared and respected Sox roll into Yankee Stadium for three games starting next Friday the Yankee lead will be down to a mere 1 1/2 games.  At which point the natural order will be restored and Truth (not to mention the heirs of Ruth) will prevail.

But enough about the greatness of the New York teams.  Let's open thread it.