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In the Jerusalem Post, Daniel Gordis has a stellar article on what lies behind the Ground Zero mosque controversy.

…For Israelis do have something to teach Americans… It goes something like this: It’s fine to say that “America is not at war with Islam,” to point out that most Muslims are not terrorists and that many American Muslims are moderates. That’s true, as far as it goes.

But it only goes so far. Because America is at war and its enemies are Muslims. Politically correct hairsplitting runs the risk of Americans blinding themselves to that simple but critical fact. It makes no difference what percentage of the world’s Muslims wants to destroy America. There are enough of them that US air travel is now abominably unpleasant and, more importantly, enough of them that more strikes on America appear inevitable. …

…When my parents were teenagers, they watched as evil took hold of Europe. But then they saw America turn itself into an unprecedented, enormous military machine. For America’s leaders understood that if the Nazis won, the world as we knew it would be over…

But when my children were teenagers, a different evil took root across their eastern horizon. This time, though, the world has feigned impotence. Iran is at the nuclear threshold. Iraq was at best a “non-failure.” The battle against the Taliban and al-Qaida may take years, or decades, and may require many lives sacrificed if we are to win. But America has grown war-weary. Obama is already planning to bring the troops home; the word “terrorist” is increasingly off-limits in the US because it is considered “politically loaded.”…

…Its tendency to gentility is part of what has made America great. But an unwillingness to call an “enemy” an enemy could lead to America’s demise. For Islam’s radical leaders tell us clearly what they seek: a world united under Islam, with America’s sacred freedoms eradicated as a new “morality” replaces them. What is much less clear is whether Americans are willing to fight – to die and to kill – to protect those freedoms. …

In Der Spiegel, Thomas Straubhaar writes about traditional American values, and whether we will return to the principles that made America great.

…A firm belief in the individual’s ability, ideas, courage, will and a reliance on one’s own resources brought the US to the top. The American dream promised everyone the chance of upward mobility — literally from rags to riches, from minimum wage to millionaire. The individual’s pursuit of happiness was seen as the crucial foundation for the well-being of society, rather than the benevolent state which cares for its subjects — and certainly not the welfare state, which provides a social safety net for its citizens. …

…Both the behavior of the American government and the Federal Reserve makes one thing clear: They do not see the solution to the US’s economic woes in a return to traditional American virtues. Obama is not calling for the unleashing of market forces, as Ronald Reagan once did during an equally critical period in the early 1980s. On the contrary: Obama, driven by his own convictions and advised by economists who believe in government intervention, has taken a path that leads far away from those things that catapulted America to the top of the world in the past century.

The Obama administration’s current policies rely on more government rather than personal responsibility and self-determination. They are administering to the patient more, not less, of exactly those things that led to the crisis. …

…This raises a crucial question: Is the US economy perhaps suffering less from an economic downturn and more from a serious structural problem? It seems plausible that the American economy has lost its belief in American principles. People no longer have confidence in the self-healing forces of the private sector, and the reliance on self-help and self-regulation to solve problems no longer exists.

…The settlers of the New World rejected everything, which included throwing out anything with a semblance of state authority. They fled Europe to find freedom. The sole shared goal of the settlers was to obtain individual freedom and live independently, which included the freedom to say what they wanted, believe what they wanted and write what they wanted. The state was seen as a way to facilitate this goal. The state should not interfere in people’s lives, aside from securing freedom, peace and security. Economic prosperity was seen as the responsibility of the individual. …

Charles Krauthammer thinks the president needs to focus on the war effort as well as his domestic initiatives.

…Yet the observation is obvious: It is surely harder to prevail in a war that hinges on the allegiance of the locals when they hear the U.S. president talk of beginning a withdrawal that will ultimately leave them to the mercies of the Taliban.

How did Obama come to this decision? “Our Afghan policy was focused as much as anything on domestic politics,” an Obama adviser told the New York Times’ Peter Baker. “He would not risk losing the moderate to centrist Democrats in the middle of health insurance reform and he viewed that legislation as the make-or-break legislation for his administration.”

If this is true, then Obama’s military leadership can only be called scandalous. During the past week, 22 Americans were killed over a four-day period in Afghanistan. This is not a place about which decisions should be made in order to placate members of Congress, pass health care and thereby maintain a president’s political standing. This is a place about which a president should make decisions to best succeed in the military mission he himself has set out. …

In Forbes, John Tamny sets forth an excellent explanation of the additional costs taxpayers are forced to incur when federal workers receive higher salaries.

…If it’s true that government workers are more educated and in possession of greater skills, then it’s also true that a still-difficult economic situation has been made more difficult by virtue of some of our best and brightest offering their skills to the inefficient government sector over the private economy. Their gain is the recessed economy’s loss.

It should also be remembered the perverse incentives that exist among federal workers. Not able to advance based on profits, and doing more with less, workers in the government succeed the more the bureaucracy they work for grows, the more lawsuits they win against private actors, the more regulations they impose, and the more fines/fees they lift from the increasingly empty hands of the average American taxpayer.

Not only are we fleeced to cover the rising pay and gold-plated benefits of federal workers, we’re essentially paying them to make our lives more difficult. The more they’re able to do so, the more they advance. …

Michael Graham, in the Boston Herald, gives us a glimpse of how government is taking care of itself during the economic turmoil.

Hey President Obama, I found your “recovery!” It was hidden among the theater seats and swimming pools at Newton North High.

…Struggling taxpayers looking for prosperity just have to drive through Newton and check out the new 400,000 square-foot high school with its two theaters, two gymnasiums, its fully-functional television studio and an SOA or “simulated outdoor area.” Happy days are obviously here again when students are provided Kindle book readers and teachers use “interactive white boards” in wireless-tech classrooms. …

…Who cares if it cost more than $100,000 per pupil? We’re with the government and we’re livin’ large!

…And that’s the key. When you’re looking for recovery in an Obama economy, all the good news is in the government sector. In fact, if you just work near the government, Obamanomics is for you.

…The fact is, there is a recovery under way and no, we taxpaying private-sector workers were not left out. We get to pay for it.

Noel Sheppard points out Chris Matthews’ frustration with the teleprompted president, in Newsbusters.

…Near the end of a “Hardball” segment about the President’s prime time address to the nation Tuesday, the host said, “If he doesn’t get rid of that damn teleprompter…He’s just reading words now.”

Matthews continued, “It’s separating him from us.”

And continued, “You go to a meeting with him I’m told, businessmen are invited to meet him at the White House, he hauls out the damn teleprompter, and he reads it to them.”

“The teleprompter is a problem for this guy. I think it’s his menace”…

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Jeff Jacoby explains why Cash for Clunkers was a monumentally stupid piece of legislation.

…Why are used-car prices rocketing? Part of the answer is that demand is up: With unemployment high and the economy uncertain, some car buyers who might otherwise be looking for a new truck or SUV are instead shopping for a used vehicle as a way to save money.

But an even bigger part of the answer is that the supply of used cars is artificially low, because your Uncle Sam decided last year to destroy hundreds of thousands of perfectly good automobiles as part of its hare-brained Car Allowance Rebate System — or, as most of us called it, Cash for Clunkers. …

No great insight was needed to realize that Cash for Clunkers would work a hardship on people unable to afford a new car. “All this program did for them,’’ I wrote last August, “was guarantee that used cars will become more expensive. Poorer drivers will be penalized to subsidize new cars for wealthier drivers.’’ Alec Gutierrez, a senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, predicted that used-car prices would surge by up to 10 percent. “It’s going to drive prices up on some of the most affordable vehicles we have on the road,’’ he told USA Today. In short, Washington spent nearly $3 billion to raise the price of mobility for drivers on a budget. …

Michael Barone looks at how Obama’s policies have worked to help big business and big labor, at taxpayers’ expense.

…The Obama Democrats, faced with a grave economic crisis, responded with policies appropriate to the Big Unit America that was disappearing during the president’s childhood.

Their financial policy has been to freeze the big banks into place. Their industrial policy was to preserve as much as they could of General Motors and Chrysler for the benefit of the United Auto Workers. Their health care policy was designed to benefit Big Pharma and other big players. Their housing policy has been to try to maintain existing prices. Their macroeconomic economic policy was to increase the size and scope of existing government agencies to what looks to be the bursting point.

What we see is Big Government colluding with Big Business and trying to breathe life into Big Labor. …

Liberals have long railed against big business, and conservatives have focused on the sins of big government and big labor. Each has only a piece of the puzzle, explains Warren Meyer. He looks at European states as a template to how the powerful in government and business are protecting each others’ positions, and gives a striking list of examples that show their collusion.

…In this three-way arrangement, unionized workers in key industries get high wages, guaranteed employment, rich pension systems and government protection from competition from younger and foreign workers. In return, they promise labor peace (barring the occasional strike to demonstrate their power) and tremendous election-day muscle.

Favored businesses (and by these we are talking about the top 20 to 30 largest banks and corporations in a particular country) get protection from competition, both upstart domestic entrepreneurs as well as any foreign rivals. In return, they provide monetary and political support for politicians’ pet projects–from recycling to windmills–with the understanding that politicians will give them legislative back doors to recover the costs of these programs from customers or taxpayers.

In return for granting this largess to selected corporations and unions, government officials get to remain in power. Typically this arrangement appeals to parties on both the left and the right, such that the nominal ruling party may change but the core group in power remain the same. …

…Like Europe, the ultimate price for the growing corporate state will be paid by the American consumer (in the form of higher prices, reduced choice, and foregone innovation), and the American taxpayer, who is already facing an enormous bill from the direct subsidy of favored constituents. This corporate-government-labor coalition is ready to come together in the U.S. right now, and only the political energy of the rest of the American citizenry continues to resist it.

Robert Costa interviews Patrick Caddell, a former Carter pollster, on the upcoming elections. Caddell says the anti-government sentiment is startling.

…On Monday, Gallup released a new weekly poll showing Republicans leading Democrats by an unprecedented ten-point margin, 51 to 41 percent, in congressional voting preferences — the largest gap in Gallup’s history of tracking the midterm generic ballot. “I have never seen numbers like this,” Caddell says, shaking his head. “Unless Republicans can find some way to screw it up, they will win big, even though nobody really likes them, either.”

Indeed, rather than a ringing endorsement of either major party, Caddell sees November as a broader referendum on the political class — the class, he says, to which Obama, and his political fate, are irrevocably tied.

…Caddell believes that 2010 will be a louder, more raucous moment than 1978 in American politics. “The discontent is much larger than the turnout at Glenn Beck rallies,” he says. “A sea of anger is churning — the tea parties are but the tip of the iceberg. People say they want to take their country back, and, to the Democrats’ chagrin, they’re very serious about it.” …

Jennifer Rubin comments on Robert Costa’s article.

In a fascinating interview with Robert Costa, Democratic pollster and analyst Pat Caddell zeroes in on the Democrats’ impending doom (”the general outcome is baked”) and on Obama’s failure to live up to expectations (”The killer in American politics is disappointment. When you are elected on expectations, and you fail to meet them, your decline steepens”). But his most cogent analysis focuses on Obama’s base. He writes:

“The people who own the party — George Soros, the Center for American Progress, the public-employee union bosses, rich folks flying private jets to “ideas festivals” in Aspen — they’re Obama’s base.”

Yowser. He omitted only the liberal media, but I suppose they too — along with young people, old people, Hispanics, working- and middle-class whites, and even 42 percent of Jews — have grown disillusioned as well. …

Jennifer Rubin and David Brooks liked Glenn Beck’s rally. (There’s a sentence you probably never thought you’d see.)

David Brooks couldn’t find a bad word to say about the Glenn Beck rally. Really. In his conversation with Gail Collins, she certainly tried to drag something negative out of him. But he liked what he saw:

I have to confess I really enjoyed it. I’m no Beck fan obviously, but the spirit was really warm, generous and uplifting. The only bit of unpleasantness I found emanated from some liberal gatecrashers behaving offensively, carrying anti-Beck banners and hoping to get in some televised fights. … There, at Saturday’s rally, were the most conservative people in the country, lauding Martin Luther King Jr. There they were, in the midst of their dismay, lavishly celebrating the basic institutions of American government. I have no problem with that.

…What seems to have flummoxed the left is that the Beck rally demonstrated that the populist anti-Obama faction in the country (some might use the mundane phrase “majority”) isn’t composed of wackos. They actually understand better than elites that the economic problems are in large part a function of a collapse in values. Obama likes to rail against Wall Street. Well, that’s a location. The ralliers want to talk about what went wrong with the people who populate business and government. They would say we have lost touch with essential values — thrift, persistence, responsibility, modesty, and, yes, faith in something beyond self and self-indulgence. As Brooks put it, “Every society has to engird capitalism in a restraining value system, or else it turns nihilistic and out of control.”

The chattering class should stop chattering long enough to listen to what citizens are saying. Not only is it quite reasonable; it is profound.

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David Goldman compares the lost decade of Japan with the economic mess here in our country.

…During Japan’s “lost decade” of the 1990s, everyone was working, everyone kept their homes, everyone maintained their lifestyle (minus some shopping trips to Paris), and life carried on more or less the same. America enters the second decade of the millennium with un- and underemployment around 20%.

Japan went through its great retirement wave in the 1990s, just as America must during the 2010s. But the Japanese for years had saved massively, and exported massively in order to do so. If a country’s population ages rapidly, the soon-to-retire cohort will shift from consumption into savings. Japan had insufficient young people to absorb the investment requirements of the 40- and 50-year-olds, and therefore had to invest overseas. Japan’s industrial genius made it the world’s premier exporter, and Japan was able to save successfully to fund the retirement wave–even though consumption remained weak and real estate prices fell and the stock market fell to a third of late 1980s peak.

How are Americans going to save? They can’t buy home mortgages; they could buy US Treasuries at 2.5% for a 10-year maturity; they can buy the junk bonds now flooding the market; or they can leave their money in cash at a fraction of a percent. As aging American shift from consumption to saving, they must do so by reducing domestic purchases. The Japanese could save by exporting and remain close to full employment. American’s savings requirement cannot be met in the same way, because Americans have forgotten how to export. There aren’t enough soybeans and corn to make much of a difference; with a few exceptions, America has lost its edge in capital goods as well as consumer goods, excepting commercial aircraft and a few other pockets of strength. …

James Glassman writing in Commentary on the failure of the liberal stimulus experiment.

… Perhaps a lack of stimulus spending would have made matters even worse. No one knows. You can’t do a controlled experiment. But you can understand the public reaction: We spent all this money, and got almost nothing.

Bastiat would have appreciated one of the obvious explanations for the impotence of the stimulus. In 1957, Milton Friedman argued that attempts to increase consumer demand through government spending are doomed. The reason, Friedman wrote, is that individuals make their decisions about consumption by looking at their likely income and wealth far into the future. (He called it the “permanent income hypothesis.”) If the government starts spending huge sums today, consumers foresee higher taxes and, by inference, presume that their lifetime incomes will drop because of the increased level of their tax burden.

If government spending is short-term or one-time-only, which is what the stimulus was supposed to be, then individuals might be expected to take a more benign view. But the 2009 stimulus did not take place in a vacuum. It was soon accompanied by other economic policies and proposals of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress: health-care reform extending public coverage to 30 million new people, cap-and-trade energy proposals featuring vastly higher taxes, and the imminent expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2010.

Because of these policies, the “unseen” became “seen” in a fashion devastating to the politicians supporting them. Americans judged that the party in power intends the radical expansion of the size of government in perpetuity. That expansion will have to be paid for. There is no reason to expect very much good from the future if you are the sort of person who generates income and creates jobs. Your “permanent income” is going to decline, and your gut response will be to husband your resources. …

… For the public, the worry extends beyond the debt itself to the very role of the federal government. According to Gallup, by a margin of 57 percent to 37 percent, Americans say there is “too much” rather than “not enough regulation of business by government.” Big business is unloved, but more and more, government is seen as clumsy, venal, and self-serving.

There is no denying that the narrative about how greedy financiers caused the economic crisis still has currency. But another narrative now looms larger. It is that the government’s attempts to fix the problem through spending have been ineffectual at best and, more likely, dangerous to our economic health.

When the financial meltdown occurred, it seemed almost certain that Americans would judge that the conservative economic experiment of 1981-2008 had failed. Instead, they seem to be leaning in the opposite direction—toward a conclusion that it was the liberal economic experiment of 2009-10 that has failed.

This conclusion is not being warmly embraced so much as reluctantly conceded. Things could change. Conservatives will face a challenge later this year over whether to extend tax cuts that, at least from a “seen” viewpoint, will further increase the debt. Still, when you consider that a repudiation of free-market capitalism and what President Sarkozy called a “return of the state” appeared almost certain when the crisis broke, we should be both humbled by and thankful for this strange and constructive turn of events.

In Forbes, Richard Epstein advocates scaling back government to allow the economy to grow.

…Our economic woes are so manifest that we have to look for an alternative strategy to getting out of the current hole. It will not do to take a fatalist attitude toward lackluster private demand. Something has to be done to revive it–now. Here is one agenda: reduce the level of economic uncertainty by getting government out of the stop and go business once and for all. What is needed are stable economic policies that work as well in good times and in bad ones, so as to remove the need to articulate and implement some nonexistent exit strategy.

There are only two ways to do this. The first is a set of permanent tax cuts on capital gains and high incomes, which will give our most productive individuals the incentive to invest and innovate that they so sorely lack today. The hostility of the Obama administration to these moves right now causes more harm than any public stimulus program can undo.

The second approach, on which Tyson and Krugman take a seeming vow of silence, is major deregulation to stimulate growth, while cutting wasteful government expenditures. No single regulatory program has the general pop of a sound fiscal or tax policy. But the cumulative effect of countless bad policies exerts a profound negative effect on both employment and growth. …

In the Economist blogs, W.W. in Iowa City, who we’ve heard from before, discusses different theories about the economic crisis, and then sums up the role that government played. What caused the credsis will be debated for decades, so we will keep highlighting items we believe add some clarity.

…I think it at least fair to say that it is very plausible that government policy played a central role in the crisis. If the combination of low interest rates, favourable tax treatment for residential capital gains, a web of heavily promoted initiatives to make it easier for lower and middle-income Americans to buy houses, regulations mandating the purchase of subprime loans, capital requirements goading banks into holding lots of “safe” assets do not “put government at the center of the crisis”, I can’t imagine what would. Which is not to say that the market did not fail. Indeed, it is impossible to specify what the market is in isolation from the rules that define the possibilities and terms of exchange. The market failed. And the market was what it was because government made it that way. …

The NRO staff post several of Charles Krauthammer’s remarks about the president. This one is accurate and bad news for the country:

…On whether ideology will keep Obama from changing his position on allowing the upper-income Bush tax cuts to expire:

“I’m not sure it’s entirely ideological. I think part of this is pure narcissism. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say I changed my mind or I was wrong. …”

Daniel Hannan comments on Greenland’s criticism of Greenpeace, in the Telegraph, UK, blogs.

…The prime minister of Greenland – a socialist, no less – has attacked Greenpeace for sabotaging an Arctic exploration rig. Kuupik Kleist is plainly not a politician given to circumlocution:

The cabinet regards Greenpeace’s action as very serious and an illegal attack on the country’s constitutional rights. It is worrying that Greenpeace, in their hunt for media exposure, violate security rules made to protect human lives and the environment.

…Lefties have always liked the idea that they are speaking for those who would otherwise have no voice – which is, of course, a very creditable motive. The trouble is that, when the previously voiceless do find their tongues, they often say things that their erstwhile protectors find awkward. A hundred years ago, socialists presumed to speak for the proletariat. When the proletariat turned out to have some uncomfortably conservative views, they shifted their attention to the oppressed peasantry of the Third World. When these, too, turned out not to have the correct opinions, they moved on to more recherché communities: hunter-gatherers in rainforests and the like. …

In Newsbusters, Noel Sheppard highlights a surprising conversation on Hardball.

A truly astonishing thing happened on MSNBC Monday: three devout, liberal Obama supporters said the President is responsible for people thinking he’s a Muslim.

During the opening segment of “Hardball,” in a discussion about Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally and how the host and attendees view Obama’s faith, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman said, “Barack Obama probably should have joined a church here…some things in politics you have to do at least for the symbolism.” …

The Economist reports on exciting new technology in a surprising place.

BIG crowds, strong surf and powerful rip currents are only a few of the obstacles that lifeguards must overcome to keep swimmers safe. Strong winds can pull many bathers out to sea simultaneously, overwhelming the guards if there are only a few of them. And, since average swimming speed is about 3kph (2mph) even a single rescue mission can take more than half an hour.

A profession ripe, then, for automation. And that automation is now at hand. Hydronalix, a marine-robotics firm based, rather surprisingly, in landlocked Arizona, has come up with EMILY—the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard. This device, which is being tested at Zuma beach in Malibu, California, is a remote-controlled, 1.4-metre-long, 11kg buoy with a foam core covered by red canvas and surrounded by ropes. A human lifeguard can keep but a single person afloat. EMILY, by contrast, is buoyant enough to save five at a time. The ropes let swimmers cling to the device or climb on top of it until a lifeguard arrives on the scene. …

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Toby Harnden comments on the Ground Zero mosque controversy and interviews a Muslim man who is against the building location. Ahmed Sharif is an amazing example, though, for the positive attitude he has of America despite having been the victim of an anti-Muslim attack. 

It took a Manhattan taxi driver called Ahmed Sharif to speak out for America, which is being vilified as bigoted and Islamophobic because of the controversy generated by opposition to the so-called “Ground Zero mosque”.

The United States was his dream country, he enthused, and he loved New York City. “I feel like I belong here. This is the city actually [for] all colours, races, religion, everyone. We live here side by side peacefully.” …

…Ahmed Sharif, a victim of real anti-Muslim bigotry, stated that the attack on him was an aberration and that America is a land of tolerance and opportunity. What a shame that Obama, despite his much-vaunted gift with words, appears unable to speak about such things with similar eloquence.

Roger Simon responds with logic to the name-calling from the Left.

…With very minor exceptions, I have seen little irrational fear of Islam in our society. What I have seen is a lot of serious and justifiable dislike of the religion for its ideology — notably its heinous treatment of women and homosexuals and its opposition to the separation of church and state, all codified by its all-encompassing Sharia law that seeks to legislate all facets of existence while instituting a global caliphate.

Nevertheless, soi-disant liberals and progressives or whatever they want to call themselves accuse those who dislike Islam for those reasons of irrational fear.  …

… Today there are 1.5 billion adherents of Islam, 21% of the world’s population. Achieving a global caliphate is not entirely unlikely. Irrational fear or ideological battle?

Mark Helprin writes an eloquent explanation why the mosque should not be built near Ground Zero.

…Building close to Ground Zero disregards the passions, grief and preferences not only of most of the families of September 11th but, because we are all the families of September 11th, those of the American people as well, even if not the whole of the American people. If the project is to promote moderate Islam, why have its sponsors so relentlessly, without the slightest compromise, insisted upon such a sensitive and inflammatory setting? That is not moderate. It is aggressively militant.

Disregarding pleas to build it at a sufficient remove so as not to be linked to an abomination committed, widely praised, and throughout the world seldom condemned in the name of Islam, the militant proponents of the World Trade Center mosque are guilty of a poorly concealed provocation. They dare Americans to appear anti-Islamic and intolerant or just to roll over.

But the opposition to what they propose is no more anti-Islamic or intolerant than to protest a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor or Nanjing would be anti-Shinto or even anti-Japanese. How about a statue of Wagner at Auschwitz, a Russian war memorial in the Katyn Forest, or a monument to British and American air power at Dresden? The indecency of such things would be neither camouflaged nor burned away by the freedoms of expression and religion. And that is what the controversy is about, decency and indecency, not the freedom to worship, which no one denies. …

David Warren theorizes about some of the pressures that Islamist radicals are placing, directly and indirectly, on moderate Muslim communities.

…Reasonable Muslims and their children — trying to get on with their lives… — are the targets of a very sick propaganda, designed to persuade the psychologically unstable that Allah loves to kill infidels gratuitously. And over the world at large, Muslims are by far the most numerous victims of Islamist acts of carnage: quite literally tens of thousands killed and maimed in the time we’ve been counting since 9/11.

But when they look outside the community, they feel themselves being held responsible for a murderer’s creed. …

…Moreover, the very strategy of the Islamists is to isolate Muslim emigrant communities; to prevent their assimilation into the West and its (truly corrupted) values. In other words, to put every Muslim in a position where he is either with the Islamists, or against every aspect of his own identity. …

…The mosque insistence on distinctive Islamic dress contributes more to this separation, day by day, than isolated acts of terrorism.

Our media insistence on publicizing the more radical Islamic spokesmen, at the expense of the more reasonable, also contributes mightily to this by enhancing and promoting the radicals’ prestige. …

The president walked into this one. Peter Wehner comments with polling numbers on Obama’s response to the oil spill.

In his interview from New Orleans yesterday with NBC’s Brian Williams, commemorating the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Obama assured the world that his handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was not his administration’s Hurricane Katrina.

The president is right, if the people of Louisiana are to be believed. Mr. Obama’s handling of the BP oil spill is judged by them to be considerably worse than how Bush reacted to Katrina.

A Public Policy Polling survey reports this:

The oil spill in the Gulf may be mostly out of the headlines now but Louisiana voters aren’t getting any less mad at Barack Obama about his handling of it. Only 32% give Obama good marks for his actions in the aftermath of the spill, while 61% disapprove.

Louisianans are feeling more and more that George W. Bush’s leadership on Katrina was better than Obama’s on the spill. 54% think Bush did the superior job of helping the state through a crisis to 33% who pick Obama. …

Peter Wehner also blogs on the president’s good work spreading conservative ideas.

Here’s the latest from Gallup:

“Republicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP’s largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup’s history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress.”

What Barack Obama is doing for the fortunes of the GOP is nearly unmatched by anyone in modern political history.

Michael Barone looks at the anti-liberal mood in two places minimally affected by the recession.

…In Alaska, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was expected to be easily renominated over Fairbanks lawyer and political newcomer Joe Miller.
But the voters had other ideas.

In Alaska, Miller’s narrow lead of 1,668 votes may vanish as at least 7,600 absentee and mail ballots are counted.

…Whatever the final outcomes, there are lessons to be learned. One is that the current unpopularity of leftist parties in the Anglosphere (Republicans lead Democrats by a record margin in polls on voting for the U.S. House) are not just a reaction to bad economic times.

…Murkowski was hurt by her assertion in debate that the Constitution put no limits on Congress’s ability to make laws.  She won votes from Alaska insiders and Alaska Natives for supporting spending on local programs, but not as many as local pundits expected. …

In the WSJ, Kelly Evans reports on the reintroduction of the Austrian school of economics, and the man, Peter J. Boettke, who is leading the charge. Evans also pinpoints the challenge for these economists: how to scale back government intervention and allow the needed market corrections to occur.

Peter J. Boettke, shuffling around in a maroon velour track suit or faux-leather rubber shoes he calls “dress Crocs,” hardly seems like the type to lead a revolution.

But the 50-year-old professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia is emerging as the intellectual standard-bearer for the Austrian school of economics that opposes government intervention in markets and decries federal spending to prop up demand during times of crisis. Mr. Boettke, whose latest research explores people’s ability to self-regulate, also is minting a new generation of disciples who are spreading the Austrian approach throughout academia, where it had long been left for dead. …

…It wasn’t a lack of government oversight that led to the crisis, as some economists argue, but too much of it, Mr. Boettke says. …

…But as much as the Austrian diagnosis may resonate now, it doesn’t provide a playbook for what to do next, which could limit its current resurgence. …

In Forbes, Paul Johnson asks whether a college education is worth the investment.

…The quality of higher education received seems to bear no relation to the success or failure of most Presidents. The two greatest, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, had to learn the hard way. On the other hand, another distinguished President, Woodrow Wilson, first attracted notice as president of Princeton.

It is striking how much or how little great inventors and scientists learned at university. Thomas Edison never attended one, discovering his genius instead while working as a teenage telegraph operator. Charles Darwin went to Cambridge to study for the church but derived the greatest benefit to his career during long rambles with J.S. Henslow, a professor of botany. Darwin was known in his student days as “the man who walks with Henslow.” What Cambridge did give Darwin was the opportunity to reinforce his capacity to work hard and systematically and to expand the range of his enquiring mind.

Indeed, the study of universities and the great men and women who have attended them leads me to think that the best of these schools are characterized not so much by what they teach and how they teach it but by the extent they provide opportunities and encouragement for students to teach themselves. The best also help to instill certain intellectual virtues in young minds, including respect for the indispensable foundation of democracy, the rule of law; the need to back up opinions with clear arguments, empirical evidence and hard work; the varying importance of resolute conviction and friendly compromise, when appropriate; open-mindedness at all times; and the perpetual need for courage in the pursuit of truth. …

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Ed Morrissey kicks the day off with a rundown of Obama’s self-congratulatory address on the US forces reduction in Iraq.

Yesterday, I wrote that Barack Obama had an opportunity to at least share a little credit for the close of combat operations in Iraq with George W. Bush, who wrote the plan for drawing down American troops in Iraq that Obama has followed to the letter, rather than go for Obama’s repeatedly promised all-out 16-month retreat plan from 2007. If his weekly address is any indication, the American electorate will have to wait for some other opportunity for its Chief Executive to show a little class. …

Total mentions of Bush: zero. Total mentions of victory: zero. Total mentions of “I” in speech: six…

Conrad Black, in the National Review, takes an interesting walk through America’s history to see where things went off track.

…The great U.S. economy, a stupefying engine of productivity and applied talent, became a mighty Ponzi scheme, as the whole nation, addicted to debt-paid instant gratification, spent the future on consumption and non-durable assets. Except for a few academic flakes, no one — business, government, academia, the financial press — saw what was coming. And so there is no obvious body of vindicated opinion to take over now; it is a terrible and vacuous crisis of leadership. And courage fled, arm-in-arm, with official judgment. The Congress and successive administrations ignored illegal immigration until border-state frictions made it an explosive issue, and have failed to address it seriously since. They ignored abortion, leaving it to the ill-qualified bench to determine when the unborn attain the rights of a person. They ignored income disparity, until the recession stared to shrink the disparity by reducing everyone’s net worth, and they ignore the debt bomb. Annual increases of $750 billion to $1.4 trillion in the money supply stretching forward a decade will destroy the currency and Weimarize America, and there is not a hint of an official preventive response. The Keynesian injection of spending has been shot, in a hare-brained stimulus package designed by cynical Democratic congressional-committee chairmen. The recession is still here, and most tax increases and spending reductions are hazardous to economic growth. No one leads and no one knows.

…What is needed is a colossal reorientation of the country away from consumption and toward investment, the cleaning out of the morass of the plea-bargain justice system and attendant vacuum cleaners of the legal and prison industries (and the gigantic fraud of the War on Drugs), drastic education reform, genuine health-care reform, a redefinition of U.S. national interests in the world to what is essential and defensible, and then restructured alliances to reflect shared interests. Until those issues are addressed, all talk of the American superpower is rubbish. Obama’s is the fourth consecutive failed administration, and each succeeding one will make the festering problems more dangerous and difficult. As the problem is misdirection, not internal degeneracy or imperial overreach, it is a decline that will end in recovery, not a fall. It is like a non-terminal illness: America awaits a correct diagnosis, a curative plan, and a competent professional to supervise the recovery. …

Jennifer Rubin comments on an article about Obama’s unease with military aspects of the presidency.

It is not that we didn’t know this before, but reading the New York Times – surely designed to be as favorable toward Obama as the reporter could possibly manage — one is left slack-jawed. Obama doesn’t like being commander in chief, isn’t good at it, and has relied [on] one tutor, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is leaving next year. The report should be read in full. But a few low-lights:

…Even as he draws down troops in Iraq, he has been abundantly willing to use force to advance national interests, tripling forces in Afghanistan, authorizing secret operations in Yemen and Somalia, and escalating drone strikes in Pakistan. But advisers said he did not see himself as a war president in the way his predecessor did. His speech on Tuesday is notable because he talks in public about the wars only sporadically, determined not to let them define his presidency.

A former adviser to the president, who like others insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the situation candidly, said that Mr. Obama’s relationship with the military was ‘troubled’ and that he ‘doesn’t have a handle on it.’ …

…This was a man not only unprepared to be president but disposed to shirk the most important aspect of the job. It is a measure of his hubris and stubbornness that he has refused to, as Feaver succinctly puts it, “embrace” the role, that is, to commit in word and deed his full attention and effort to leading the country in war. He doesn’t want to be a wartime president? Well, sorry — he is.

In Contentions, J.E. Dyer discusses a strategy that he sees the Obami employing.

Evelyn Gordon’s post from Thursday highlights a Team Obama method that increasingly comes across as precious, annoying, and insidious. I’m not sure there’s a single word to describe it, but it involves a sort of inversion by which the administration of policy conveniently supersedes the purpose and substance of policy. In some cases, obstacles are allowed to dictate outcomes as if the U.S. administration has no discretion over them. In other cases, bureaucratic arcana serve as dodges. And in others, like Obama’s approach to Iran, procedural checklists are wielded as surrogates for policy, generating a kind of lottery in which we all watch to see what fate the procedures will eventually confer on us. …

George Will writes that improving educational achievement for black children requires significant changes outside the classroom.

…Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about “The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped,” written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. …

…the ETS report says: “It is very hard to imagine progress resuming in reducing the education attainment and achievement gap without turning these family trends around — i.e., increasing marriage rates, and getting fathers back into the business of nurturing children.” And: “It is similarly difficult to envision direct policy levers” to effect that.

…Two decades have passed since Barton wrote “America’s Smallest School: The Family.” He has estimated that about 90 percent of the difference in schools’ proficiencies can be explained by five factors: the number of days students are absent from school, the number of hours students spend watching television, the number of pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading material in the students’ homes — and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home. Public policies can have little purchase on these five, and least of all on the fifth.

In the WSJ, Eric Felten writes about a Harvard professor in evolutionary psychology who thinks like a global warming scientist.

Harvard University announced last Friday that its Standing Committee on Professional Conduct had found Marc Hauser, one of the school’s most prominent scholars, guilty of multiple counts of “scientific misconduct.” The revelation came after a three-year inquiry into allegations that the professor had fudged data in his research on monkey cognition. Since the studies were funded, in part, by government grants, the university has sent the evidence to the Feds. …

…Evolutionary psychologists tell elaborate stories explaining modern life based on the conditions and circumstances of our prehistoric ancestors—even though we know very little about those factors. …

…Mr. Hauser had boldly declared that through his application of science, not only could morality be stripped of any religious hocus-pocus, but philosophy would have to step aside as well: “Inquiry into our moral nature will no longer be the proprietary province of the humanities and social sciences,” he wrote. …

…It’s important to note that the Hauser affair also represents the best in science. When lowly graduate students suspected their famous boss was cooking his data, they risked their careers and reputations to blow the whistle on him. They are the scientists to celebrate. …

The Economist has more on the Harvard problems, the associated charges and the consequences for science.

…So far, none of this constitutes conclusive evidence of fraud. Slapdash lab work is not the same as fabricating data and Harvard has kept mum about the precise nature of the charges, citing concerns about privacy. Many researchers, however, fear that this silence itself makes things worse—and not just for Dr Hauser and Harvard. The uncertainty about which of his results (for he has been a prolific researcher) are up to snuff means others in the field are finding it hard to decide what to rely on in their own work. And despite Dr Hauser’s professed sole responsibility, a sizeable number of his present and former wards may unfairly be tainted by association.

At the least, then, Dr Hauser stands accused of setting the study of animal cognition back many years. Trying to discern an animal’s thought processes on the basis of its behaviour is notoriously tricky and subjective at the best of times. Now, his critics fear, no one will take it seriously. As Greg Laden, one of Dr Hauser’s former colleagues, laments in a blog, “the hubris and selfishness of one person can do more in the form of damage than an entire productive career can do in the way of building of our collective credibility.” …

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The first five quarters following the 1981-2 recession averaged growth rates of 6.2%. The first four quarters following 2008-9 recession have averaged 3.0%  The fourth quarter out in the first period had growth of 8,1%. Friday we learned the fourth quarter this time had growth of 1.6%   The WSJ editors have the story.

To no one’s surprise except perhaps Vice President Joe Biden’s, second quarter economic growth was revised down yesterday to 1.6% from the prior estimate of 2.4%, which was down from first quarter growth of 3.7%, which was down from the 2009 fourth quarter’s 5%. Economic recoveries are supposed to go in the other direction….

… Now that the failure is becoming obvious, the liberal explanation is that things would have been worse without all of this government care and feeding. The same economists who recommended the stimulus are now producing studies, based on their Keynesian demand models, claiming that it “saved or created” millions of jobs, even as the overall economy has lost millions of jobs. The counterfactual is impossible to disprove, but the American people can see the reality with their own eyes. … 

In Euro Pacific Capital, Peter Schiff looks back at predictions about the economic recovery.

…The major mental block is that most economists believe that an economy grows as a result of spending. Any policy that encourages spending and discourages savings and investment is considered beneficial. Unfortunately, these policies, which only succeed in growing debt and government, act more as an economic sedative than a stimulant.

On the subject of the “recovery,” I’d like to highlight some of my past predictions, and those of my colleague Michael Pento. With the benefit of hindsight, you can see that although these thoughts were widely dismissed as chronic pessimism at the time of their publication, the current situation supports our conclusions. Although some of our predictions, like for higher bond yields, have yet to materialize. …

Selections from the writings of Michael Pento, Chief Economist at Euro Pacific Capital:

June 30, 2010

“The cause of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the Great Recession beginning in 2007, was one and the same: an overleveraged economy. Excessive debt levels are the direct result of the central bank providing artificially low interest rates and of superfluous lending on the part of commercial banks.

The easy money provided by banks eventually brings debt in the economy to an unsustainable level. At that point, the only real and viable solution is for the public and private sectors to undergo a protracted period of deleveraging. The ensuing depression is, in actuality, the healing process at work, which is marked by the selling of assets and the paying down of debt. Unfortunately, our politicians today are focused on fighting this natural healing process by promoting the accumulation of more debt.”

The Economist blogger “W.W.” from Iowa City comments on what caused the credsis.

… this is a story about how policies intended to reduce inequality had the unintended consequence of precipitating America’s worst economic slump since the Depression. It’s very important that we’re straight on what the story is, since different stories may have very different implications for policy. If the story is that the level of inequality itself—and not our ideas about or political reactions to it—indirectly caused the crisis, then we may think that narrowing the gap is a matter of urgent necessity. But if the story is that an ill-conceived political attempt to reduce inequality—and not the fact of inequality itself—led to apocalyptic economic devastation, then we may well conclude that it is better to refrain from equalising initiatives unless we are quite certain they will not backfire. …

We have another good editorial from the WSJ editors on Intel’s CEO, Paul Otellini, discussing the government policies and taxes that hurt the economy.

American business leaders were remarkably quiescent during the Obama Administration’s first 18 months, but more are now speaking up as the threats to the economic recovery and long-term U.S. prosperity become more serious. The latest is Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who warned a technology forum this week that without a change in U.S. government policy “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here. And wealth will not accrue here. Ultimately, we will face an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth—much like we are witnessing today in Europe.”

The bulk of Mr. Otellini’s remarks was pitched broadly at long-term U.S. problems, many of which predate the current Administration. Like many other CEOs, he lamented the decline in U.S. education performance relative to emerging nations. And he focused in particular on the hostile U.S. tax climate that he said is undermining a “culture of investment” that has long been an American comparative advantage.

“Our combined state and federal corporate income tax rate”—about 38%—”is the second highest in the industrial world. It is precisely these high statutory corporate rates that punish the most dynamic and innovative firms and hinders their ability to compete globally,” Mr. Otellini said. “I can tell you that it costs $1 billion more to build, equip and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the U.S. Ninety percent of the cost difference is the result of tax and incentive policies. With such policies, are we surprised that companies are investing overseas?”…

In CNet, Declan McCullagh has more remarks from Paul Otellini and others on how our government makes it tough for businesses to grow.

…Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working.”

Since an unusually sharp downturn accelerated in late 2008, the Obama administration and its allies in the U.S. Congress have enacted trillions in deficit spending they say will create an economic stimulus but have not extended the Bush tax cuts and have pushed to levy extensive new health care and carbon regulations on businesses.

“They’re in a ‘Do’ loop right now trying to figure out what the answer is,” Otellini said.

As a result, he said, “every business in America has a list of more variables than I’ve ever seen in my career.” If variables like capital gains taxes and the R&D tax credit are resolved correctly, jobs will stay here, but if politicians make decisions “the wrong way, people will not invest in the United States. They’ll invest elsewhere.” …

David Goldman has two topics in this blog. He lists his top twenty reasons why the economy isn’t recovering, and he discusses the effects of demographics on various economies. Here are three of his reasons why a recovery is still far off:

…State and local pension funds are being called out on their $3 trillion deficit (actually higher if returns remain as dodgy as I think they will be).

…State and local tax increases will be required in huge volume, either directly, or indirectly through privatization of municipal services, which in turn will lead to layoffs of bloated staffs and price increases.

…The Obama administration will rescind the Bush tax cuts, adding a federal tax increase to the miseries already conspiring to take the economy down.

The Economist has a cheap way to lose weight.

CONSUME more water and you will become much healthier, goes an old wives’ tale. Drink a glass of water before meals and you will eat less, goes another. Such prescriptions seem sensible, but they have little rigorous science to back them up.

Until now, that is. A team led by Brenda Davy of Virginia Tech has run the first randomised controlled trial studying the link between water consumption and weight loss. A report on the 12-week trial, published earlier this year, suggested that drinking water before meals does lead to weight loss. At a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston this week, Dr Davy unveiled the results of a year-long follow-up study that confirms and expands that finding. …

…Why this works is obscure. But work it does. It’s cheap. It’s simple. And unlike so much dietary advice, it seems to be enjoyable too.

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We start off with an excellent article on the Middle East peace process by George Will.

…The biggest threat to peace might be the peace process — or, more precisely, the illusion that there is one. The mirage becomes the reason for maintaining its imaginary “momentum” by extorting concessions from Israel, the only party susceptible to U.S. pressure. Israel is, however, decreasingly susceptible. In one month, history will recycle when the partial 10-month moratorium on Israeli construction on the West Bank expires. Resumption of construction — even here, in the capital, which was not included in the moratorium — will be denounced by a fiction, “the international community,” as a threat to another fiction, “the peace process.”

This, even though no Israeli government of any political hue has ever endorsed a ban on construction in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, where about 40 percent of the capital’s Jewish population lives. Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon, who says “the War of Independence has not ended” 62 years after 1948, says of an extension of the moratorium: “The prime minister is opposed to it. He said that clearly. The decision was for 10 months. [On] Sept. 27, we are immediately going to return” to construction and “Jerusalem is outside the discussion.”

Predictably, Palestinian officials are demanding that the moratorium be extended as the price of their willingness to continue direct talks with Israel — which begin Sept. 2 — beyond Sept. 27. If this demand succeeds, history will remain cyclical: The “peace process” will be sustained by rewarding the Palestinian tactic of making the mere fact of negotiations contingent on Israeli concessions concerning matters that should be settled by negotiations.

And we have an encore presentation from Mark Steyn on the tragic change in Turkey.

…Ten years ago, Turkey’s behavior would have been unthinkable. Ankara was Israel’s best friend in a region where every other neighbor wishes, to one degree or another, the Jewish state’s destruction. Even when Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP was elected to power eight years ago, the experts assured us there was no need to worry. I remember sitting in a plush bar late one night with a former Turkish foreign minister, who told me, in between passing round the cigars and chugging back the Scotch, that, yes, the new crowd weren’t quite so convivial in the wee small hours but, other than that, they knew where their interests lay. Like many Turkish movers and shakers of his generation, my drinking companion loved the Israelis. “They’re tough hombres,” he said admiringly. “You have to be in this part of the world.” If you had suggested to him that in six years’ time the Turkish prime minister would be telling the Israeli president to his face that “I know well how you kill children on beaches,” he would have dismissed it as a fantasy concoction for some alternative universe. …

…As the think-tankers like to say: “Who lost Turkey?” In a nutshell: Kemal Ataturk. Since he founded post-Ottoman Turkey in his own image nearly nine decades ago, the population has increased from 14 million to over 70 million. But that five-fold increase is not evenly distributed. The short version of Turkish demographics in the 20th century is that Rumelian Turkey — i.e., western, European, secular, Kemalist Turkey — has been outbred by Anatolian Turkey — i.e., eastern, rural, traditionalist, Islamic Turkey. Ataturk and most of his supporters were from Rumelia, and they imposed the modern Turkish republic on a reluctant Anatolia, where Ataturk’s distinction between the state and Islam was never accepted. Now they don’t have to accept it. The swelling population has spilled out of its rural hinterland and into the once solidly Kemalist cities. …

…Some Western “experts” like to see this as merely a confident, economically buoyant Turkey’s “re-Ottomanization.” But the virulent anti-Semitism emanating from Erdogan’s fief is nothing to do with the old-time caliphate (where, unlike rebellious Arabs, the Jews were loyal or at least quiescent subjects), and all but undistinguishable from the globalized hyper-Islam successfully seeded around the world by Wahhabist money and so enthusiastically embraced by third-generation Euro-Muslims. Since 9/11, many of us have speculated about Muslim reform, in the Arab world and beyond. It’s hard to recall now but just a few years ago there was talk about whether General Musharraf would be Pakistan’s Ataturk. Instead, what we’re witnessing is the most prominent example of Muslim reform being de-reformed, before our very eyes, in nothing flat. …

Caroline Glick covers a lot of ground in her article on Iran’s nuclear development. We highlight only one part.

…Iran’s nuclear weapons program has spurred a regional nuclear arms race. Riedel imagines a bipolar nuclear Middle East, with Israel on the one side and Iran on the other. He fails to notice that already today Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan and Turkey have all initiated nuclear programs.

…A recent Zogby/University of Maryland poll of Arab public opinion taken for the Brookings Institute in US-allied Arab states Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the UAE shows that the Arab world is populated by jihadists.

As Herb London from the Hudson Institute pointed out in an analysis of the poll, nearly 70 percent of those polled said the leader they most admire is either a jihadist or a supporter of jihad.

The most popular leaders were Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Hizbullah chieftain Hassan Nasrallah, Syrian President Bashar Assad and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. …

In the Telegraph, UK, Nile Gardiner blogs about how Dems are acknowledging that the November elections are not looking good for progressives.

Influential Washington news site Politico has a major piece this morning revealing mounting fears among leading Democrats over worsening prospects for retaining control of the House of Representatives in this November’s mid-terms. …

…The defeatism on the Left strikingly highlighted in this piece is the culmination of a disastrous summer of discontent for the White House, where the president’s approval ratings have plummeted against a backdrop of relentlessly bad economic news, a virtual civil war within the ruling liberal elites, and the impressive rise of the anti-establishment Tea Party movement . As I’ve written previously, we’ve witnessed the most stunning and rapid political decline for a US president in recent American history. …

…The Obama agenda has in many ways been an extraordinary and unprecedented assault on the free enterprise system that made the United States the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. It has succeeded not only in making America weaker, poorer and gravely more indebted, but also in eroding the very principles of liberty and freedom upon which it is based. The backlash will be huge. This November, the sinking Obama presidency is heading for a political iceberg that will rock the foundations not only of Capitol Hill, but the White House as well.

Charles Krauthammer eloquently explains how liberals are the cause of their undoing.

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

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

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

David Brooks comments on what the government should be doing for the economy. Below are a few places in the article where he almost sounds conservative.

During the first half of this year, German and American political leaders engaged in an epic debate. American leaders argued that the economic crisis was so bad, governments should borrow billions to stimulate growth. German leaders argued that a little short-term stimulus was sensible, but anything more was near-sighted. What was needed was not more debt, but measures to balance budgets and restore confidence.

…The German economy … is growing at a sizzling (and obviously unsustainable) 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has come down to pre-crisis levels.

…Over the past few years, the Germans have built on their advantages. They effectively support basic research and worker training. They have also taken brave measures to minimize their disadvantages. As an editorial from the superb online think tank e21 reminds us, the Germans have recently reduced labor market regulation, increased wage flexibility and taken strong measures to balance budgets. …

Thomas Sowell recommends Sally Pipes’ new book, The Truth About Obamacare.

…Instead, the media spin is that various countries with government-run medical systems have life expectancies that are as long as ours, or longer. That is very clever as media spin, if you don’t bother to stop and think about it.

Author Sally Pipes did bother to stop and think about it in her book, “The Truth About ObamaCare.” She points out that medical care is just one of the factors in life expectancy.

She cites a study by Professors Ohsfeldt and Schneider at the University of Iowa, which shows that, if you leave out people who are victims of homicide or who die in automobile accidents, Americans live longer than people in any other Western country.

.. In the things that doctors can affect, such as the survival rates of cancer patients, the United States leads the world. …

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In a radical departure from our normal selection of writers who are committed to free minds and free markets, we go to the main stream media to see how this administration is doing in their eyes. We go to Time, Washington Post, Bloomberg News, The Hill, NY Times, The Street.com, and The Daily Beast. We’ll be back to good writers next week.

In Time, Mark Halperin criticizes the president and the Dems for playing politics with Social Security.

In a move as predictable as Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, Democrats are using Social Security scare tactics to gain ground before the November election. President Barack Obama is not only tolerating this classic old politics maneuver by his party — he is leading the charge.

…It is clear why Democrats are raising the specter of Republican efforts to alter Social Security. This tactic has worked in the past, as older voters — who typically turn out at the polls in higher percentages, especially in midterm years — tend to trust Democrats more than Republicans to protect the cherished retirement program. And given the weak economy, Obama’s mushy poll numbers and the lack of traction on the White House’s legislative achievements, it is no surprise that Democratic leaders would turn to the tried-and-true tactic. Also, with some prominent Republicans still calling for a fundamental change to the system by adding private accounts, the GOP has opened itself up to political attack.

But Obama is living in a parallel Vulcan universe if he thinks he and his strategists can spend the next two months using campaign appearances, advertising, robocalls and other voter communication to demonize Republicans on Social Security, and then turn around in January and try to make a deal on that same issue. …

Chris Cillizza contrasts the 1994 GOP takeover with the current national mood, in the WaPo.

Is it déjà vu all over again for Democrats?

Some neutral observers and senior strategists within the party have begun to believe that the national political environment is not only similar to what they saw in 1994 — when Democrats lost control of the House and Senate — but could in fact be worse by Election Day.

A quick look at the broadest atmospheric indicators designed to measure which way the national winds are blowing — the generic ballot and presidential approval — affirms the sense that the political environment looks every bit as gloomy for Democrats today as it did 16 years ago.

“President Obama’s job [approval] number is likely to be as bad or worse than [Bill] Clinton’s when November rolls around, the Democratic generic-ballot advantage of plus 12 to plus 15 in 2006 and 2008 is now completely gone, and conservatives are energized like 1994,” said Stu Rothenberg, an independent political analyst and editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, a well-read campaign tip sheet.

The generic ballot — would you vote for an unnamed Democrat or an unnamed Republican? — is either similar or worse for Democrats (depending on which poll you look at) than it was in 1994.

In an August 1994 Washington Post-ABC News poll, 49 percent of respondents said they would vote for the Democrat while 42 percent said they would back the Republican. Last month, 47 percent said they would support the Republican while 46 percent chose the Democrat.

The results were strikingly similar in several other national surveys….

In Bloomberg News, John Gittelsohn and Bob Willis look at the severity of the continuing housing crisis.

…“If foreclosures continue to mount and depress home prices, that could send the economy back into a recession,” said Celia Chen, an economist who tracks the industry for Moody’s Analytics Inc. “The housing market and the broader economy are closely intertwined.”

…With 14.6 million Americans out of work, homeowners are struggling to hold onto their properties. One in seven mortgages were delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter, the highest in records dating to 1979, according to the Washington- based Mortgage Bankers Association. Foreclosures probably will top 1 million this year, said RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based data company. …

…Shadow inventory, or the number of homes repossessed or in default that eventually will be offered for sale, stood at 7.3 million in the first quarter, according to Laurie Goodman, an analyst in New York at mortgage-bond broker Amherst Securities Group LP. As those properties hit the market, prices will come under pressure and buyers will wait for better deals.

“The only thing that’s going to fix the housing markets right now is a work-through of what excess supply is on the markets and improvement in unemployment,” Guy Lebas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop with Betty Liu.” “That process is a very, very long-term process.”

Silla Brush also reports on the continuing foreclosures, in The Hill.

Democrats are finding little success in their nearly two-year campaign to ease the nation’s housing woes. Since coming into office, President Obama has undertaken a series of policy initiatives intended to stabilize home prices, boost demand and reduce foreclosures. But a series of recent reports indicate those policies have not stopped the precipitous decline in housing, which began well before the official start of the recession in December 2007. The National Association of Realtors on Tuesday reported that existing home sales plunged 27.2 percent in July, hitting the lowest level in more than a decade. The decline exceeded even the worst estimates of analysts, many of whom predicted a sales drop of around 14 percent.

There could be more disappointing data on the way. The Mortgage Bankers Association will release a report on mortgage delinquencies Thursday that is expected to show the foreclosure crisis is still going strong. The continued problems in the housing market are bad news for Democrats, who are already struggling to convince the public their policies are moving the economy in the right direction. With the midterm elections less than three months away, voters say the state of the economy is their top concern, and most surveys show the public is souring on Obama’s handling of the issue. The Obama administration has repeatedly defended its housing polices, even while conceding that the market remains weak.

…Still, private forecasters warn it is possible home prices will start declining again, particularly because unemployment is one of the biggest causes of housing market troubles. The national unemployment rate has held steady at 9.5 percent the past two months, but there have been signs this month that the recovery of the job market is faltering. “It’s very possible we’re going to have another decline in the home price market,” said Anthony Sanders, a finance professor at George Mason University.  IHS Global Insight, a private economic firm, estimates that median sales prices for existing single-family homes will continue to decline through the first quarter of 2011. Such a decline would compound ongoing difficulties in the federal efforts to reduce foreclosures. …

Also from The Hill, we learn a senior economist, who advised the Dems on the stimulus package, sees increasing possibility of a double dip recession.

An economist who advised Democrats on the $787 billion stimulus has increased his prediction of the odds of the economy entering a double-dip recession. Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, pegged the chances of a second recession at one in three. Just a few weeks ago, he saw only a 20 percent chance of another economic slowdown. “I don’t think we’ll double-dip, but it will be a close call,” Zandi told reporters Tuesday at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. He cited weak consumer confidence, nervous businesses and investors, and plummeting home sales to explain the gloomier outlook. …

In the NY Times, Gretchen Morgenson discusses the effects of the Fed’s monetary policy.

…It is not lost on these consumers that their minuscule returns are a direct result of the Federal Reserve’s attempt to shore up troubled banks’ financial standing. Sharply cutting interest rates vastly increases banks’ profits by widening the spread between what they pay to depositors and what they receive from borrowers. As such, the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy is yet another government bailout for the very industry that drove the economy to the brink.

Todd E. Petzel, chief investment officer at Offit Capital Advisors, a private wealth management concern, characterizes the Fed’s interest rate policy as an invisible tax that costs savers and investors roughly $350 billion a year. This tax is stifling consumption, Mr. Petzel argues, and is pushing investors to reach for yields in riskier securities that they wouldn’t otherwise go near.

…“If we thought this zero-interest-rate policy was lowering people’s credit card bills it would be one thing but it doesn’t,” he said. Neither does it seem to be resulting in increased lending by the banks. “It’s a policy matter that people are not focusing on,” Mr. Petzel added. …

…Of course, the federal government is a huge beneficiary of low rates; if they were higher, our already ballooning deficits would be heftier still. …

In The Street.com, Jim Cramer doesn’t like what he’s seeing in the market.

The charts show no faith. Doesn’t matter the industry, health care, tech, banks or defense companies. They all look terrible. Just horrible. Not saying, therefore, that everything must go down. Am saying that it is really, really ugly almost everywhere you look. …

…I think that things are better than all of these charts say. But then again the S&P 500 is gripped with one of the ugliest head-and-shoulders patterns I have ever seen, one that won’t be saved by Salesforce(CRM), McDonald’s(MCD), Las Vegas Sands(LVS), Family Dollar (FDO) or F5 Networks(FFIV). A couple of food and beverage and tobacco stocks — Heinz(HNZ), Coors(TAP) and Altria(MO) won’t do the trick.

The charts look sick, sick indeed. I fear only until we get really oversold — looks like that is coming — will we see a cessation. Until then, bet on takeovers on individual stocks.

That seems to be the only tonic the charts show.

Summing up all of the above we hear from Dem pollster Doug Schoen at the Daily Beast. He has worked for Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ed Koch, and the recent FL senate campaign of Jeff Greene.

Not only has President Obama systematically put forward unpopular policies and programs that are not producing real, long-lasting results that reflect the wishes of the American people, he has not generated a sense of competence in the electorate.

Indeed, Obama’s judgment and instincts have been called into question by a series of bad decisions since he has become president. Put simply, rather than emphasizing results and outcomes, he has opted for rhetorical parsing and political gamesmanship every time. Voters have grown disillusioned with the administration’s reactive and seemingly hypocritical governing style, in which the notion of unity of command and a cohesive strategy have proved alien.

“The problem,” wrote Politico’s John Harris and Jim VandeHei this summer, “is that he and his West Wing turn out to be not especially good at politics or communications—in other words, largely ineffective at the very things on which their campaign reputation was built.”

Whenever the American people are looking for leadership from the president, Obama and his administration have systematically put forth conflicting and ambiguous messages. As Maureen Dowd recently noted in a recent column for The New York Times: “He’s with the banks, he’s against the banks. He’s leaving Afghanistan, he’s staying in Afghanistan. He strains at being a populist, but his head is in the clouds.” …

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Do your schools have dance studios and pizza ovens? We get a report on LA’s $578 million school. That’s right, LA has built a K-12 school for 4,200 students that cost $578,000,000. Maybe the president will want to send California some more bail-out cash.

LOS ANGELES – Next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968.

With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation’s most expensive public school ever. …

…Los Angeles is not alone, however, in building big. Some of the most expensive schools are found in low-performing districts — New York City has a $235 million campus; New Brunswick, N.J., opened a $185 million high school in January.

Nationwide, dozens of schools have surpassed $100 million with amenities including atriums, orchestra-pit auditoriums, food courts, even bamboo nooks. The extravagance has led some to wonder where the line should be drawn and whether more money should be spent on teachers. …

The $578 million school is quite an example of what is wrong with public school system priorities. A report on the school from ABC News.

…The facility boasts a state-of-the-art swimming pool, fine art murals, an ornate auditorium suitable for hosting the Oscars, and a faculty dining room that the superintendent says is “better than most restaurants.”

All those amenities add up to an enormous price tag, which works out to about $250,000 per pupil. That $578 million cost is more expensive than the Bird’s Nest stadium built for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, which cost $500 million. It’s also significantly more expensive than the $400 million home of the Denver Broncos, Invesco Field at Mile High.

Critics say the school is a luxury that the Los Angeles Unified School District cannot afford. The district has a $640 million budget shortfall, and over the past two years, 3,000 teachers have been laid off. The district has even proposed shortening the school year by six days to save money.

The money troubles come on top of the district’s serious academic shortfalls. With a dropout rate upwards of 35 percent, LA Unified is one of the lowest-performing school districts in America. …

There is some hope, though. Virginia shows how to make some tough decisions. The WSJ editors comment on another Republican governor who didn’t raise taxes and still balanced his state’s budget.

Here’s something you don’t see often these days: a government running a budget surplus. Governor Robert McDonnell announced last week that Virginia closed fiscal 2010 some $400 million in the black. That’s a radically improved financial picture from a year ago when the state faced a $4.2 billion two-year budget hole.

The usual suspects—the big business lobbies, the Washington Post—thought a major tax increase was needed. So did the previous Governor, Democrat Tim Kaine, who proposed a $2 billion tax hike before he left town, on top of two major Virginia tax increases in the previous eight years.

Mr. McDonnell has proved otherwise. The newly elected Republican put a freeze on hiring and took the knife even to such politically sensitive programs as school aid, police and Medicaid to cut hundreds of millions of dollars. Total state spending has been reset more or less to 2007 levels. If Congress were to do that, the federal deficit could fall by more than $900 billion, or two-thirds. …

In the Corner, Veronique de Rugy alerts us to an article by Tad DeHaven about higher pay for government workers; pay that comes from taxes on productive citizens and sectors of the economy.

In the debate over the difference in pay between private and federal employees, the Cato Institute’s Tad DeHaven makes some very good points that I hadn’t heard before:

…In the private sector, an employee’s compensation is a reflection of his or her value in the market. For instance, one may not like that LeBron James makes millions of dollars playing basketball, but that’s what the market for professional basketball players says his production is worth. It’s no different for a considerably lower-paid employee in the restaurant industry.

What’s a federal employee worth? How does one measure a government employee’s production? Government isn’t subject to market disciplines. It can’t go out of business. It has no competitor. It doesn’t need to earn a profit or even break even. It doesn’t receive its revenue from voluntary transactions – its revenues are obtained via taxation, which is paid by individuals under compulsion and force. …

…Federal and private employees are apples and oranges because the former is dependent on the latter for its existence. …

Ed Morrissey has excellent commentary on the lack of real-world experience in the administration as the reason for its abject failure.

Wonder how Recovery Summer turned into Wreckovery Bummer?  How an administration ginned up its entire economic strategy into one stimulus bill and has done nothing since, even as the economy disintegrated?  Marty Robins advises his readers to check the CVs of the people in charge in Washington to understand just how incompetence has triumphed — and not just Barack Obama’s:

If Washington seems out of ideas on how to get the private-sector jobs machine running again, there’s a pretty straightforward reason — the people in government have virtually no experience in business. …

…This increasing disconnect between the government and the business world is a big, if unrecognized, problem, if for no other reason than that it deprives government officials of the knowledge and experience that successful business leaders can bring to solving difficult problems.

…Obama stuck with ideological allies heavy on academics and with no real-world experience, reflecting his own profile rather than complementing it as an experienced executive would have known to do.  Obamanomics is the result.  It’s a classic command-economy approach that works on every university campus where it’s discussed — and in no real-world setting where it’s ever been tried. …

Robert Samuelson discusses government policies that led to the housing bubble and what changes could be made to those policies and to the government-sponsored enterprises that administrate them.

…In an ideal world, we would discard failed policies. We would trim or end the mortgage-interest tax deduction. We would curtail the GSEs’ loans and guarantees (the promise to repay mortgages that default). The consequences need not be dire. The homeownership rate, already down to 67 percent from its 2004-06 peak of 69 percent, would probably stabilize in the mid-60s. People would save more for down payments. Mortgage rates might rise a bit.

The irony is that, in failure, the GSEs have become more important than ever. Private lenders, which once regarded a mortgage secured by a home as a highly safe investment, now see it as highly risky. Few new mortgages are made without government guarantees. The GSEs continue to operate and, along with other government agencies, guaranteed about 95 percent of new mortgages made in 2009, reports Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry newsletter. Since 1990, the government guarantee share had fluctuated between 30 and 50 percent.

This means that sudden withdrawals of support might deepen housing’s depression. Economists Phillip Swagel of Georgetown University and Donald Marron of the Tax Policy Center, among others, have made sensible proposals to scale back Fannie and Freddie. But done too quickly, they could backfire. …

Peter Schiff gives us a great lesson in economics that liberal politicians don’t understand. He explains why government policies that encourage spending do not help the recovery.

In a CNBC debate last week, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich presented a set of contradictory beliefs that unfortunately reflect the conventional wisdom of modern economists. …

…Reich called for lowering taxes on working Americans and raising taxes on the rich. He argued that middle-income Americans are more likely to spend additional dollars while the rich are more likely to save and invest. As a “demand-side” economist, Reich made clear that spending is superior to savings and investing as a catalyst for growth.

To put it simply: Reich believes that the cart pushes the horse. In his worldview, businesses produce goods and services simply because consumers spend. Therefore, anything that increases spending fuels growth. Unfortunately, he fails to see what should be strikingly obvious: capital formation must precede production, which then allows for consumption.

In a complex society like ours, those relationships are hard to see. However, if we break it down to a simpler level, it becomes more obvious (as I try to accomplish in my new book: How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes). For example, let’s take a look at a simple barter-based economy consisting of only three people: a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker. …

Kudos to the Washington Examiner editors! The editors are challenging Republicans to come up with a plan to reign in government.

…Those Bush years too often displayed little difference between Republicans and Democrats in Washington. Much of the vast expansion of the federal government by Democrats was previewed by the Bush-led Republicans. Obamacare’s overreach? Don’t forget the Republicans’ entitlement-expanding and budget-busting Medicare Part D. In fact, Republicans were off the reservation long before Bush ever entered office. The 1994 Republican revolution marked the first time in more than 40 years that Republicans held a congressional majority. They won while pledging specific policy goals in their Contract with America, including term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and welfare reform. Some significant progress was made but in a few years the revolution was all but abandoned. The Cato Institute’s Ed Crane recently noted that the “combined budgets of the 95 major programs that the Contract with America promised to eliminate … increased by 13 percent.”

Today, most Americans are ready as never before to shrink government and stop the spending madness. This presents the GOP with an opportunity it didn’t have in 1994: an electorate exhausted by Washington politicians and their doubletalk. But the GOP so far seems unwilling to lay out specifics about how it plans to respond to what Americans are saying if they restore the party to majority status in the House and perhaps the Senate. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., boasts of the Republican “YouCut” Web site that solicits ideas from voters, but that effort barely rises above window dressing. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has proposed a “Roadmap to Economic Recovery” as a serious program for entitlement reform, yet the party leadership has not embraced it. Similarly, the Heritage Foundation has compiled 128 policy recommendations across 23 major policy areas for shrinking government and making it work better. The Examiner will be offering a number of ideas on this page in coming days as well. Republican leaders risk squandering a historic opportunity by ignoring such recommendations. The voters are waiting.

In Volokh Conspiracy, David Kopel says, stop giving Obama grief for golf.

In this polarized period of American politics, many people on the Right have been taking cheap shots at President Obama because he plays golf so much.

…Of American Presidents since World War II, the one President who is now almost universally regarded as highly successful and constructive, by persons of all political persuasions, is President Dwight D. Eisenhower. While serving eight years as President of the United States, Eisenhower may have played over eight hundred rounds of golf. In other words, about twice a week. …

…However, President Eisenhower demonstrated beyond any doubt that there is no inherent contradiction between being a good President and being an avid golfer. Indeed, golf helps clear the mind, and hardly any sport is better at fostering humility in participants.  So unless President Obama’s critics are willing to state that President Eisenhower golfed too much, they should stop carping about President Obama’s golfing.

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We have had Ladies’ Days in the past; days when all our selections were penned by the stronger sex. Today, we have gone a step further with a Jennifer Rubin Day. She was on vacation for awhile, and has returned full force. The humor section does have one item from Scott Adams, the proprietor of Dilbert. Scott tells us what is in store for those who wish to build “green.”

Excellent cartoons today, and yesterday also.

Jennifer Rubin says that the Obami jumped the gun when they reported that the Middle East peace talks are resuming.

…Well there is certainly less here than even the initial Obama spin would have had us believe. It seems to be that only an initial dinner is set. (”The United States will put its imprimatur on the talks in an orchestrated series of meetings that begin with a White House dinner Sept. 1 hosted by Mr. Obama.”) Beyond that? “Within the negotiations we’ve obviously had a lot of preparatory discussions with the parties on how to structure them,and we’ll need to finalize those, so we’re not in a position now to really talk about that.” Good grief. This has all the makings of a rushed announcement to try to put a horrid week for the White House behind them.” …

…An even more candid statement came from Senate candidate Pat Toomey, who said he was hopeful but also “wary”:

“Too often such talks produce little substance, and devolve into casting unfair blame at Israel for its legitimate efforts to guard its own security, while ignoring the unending violence that is openly encouraged by Palestinian leaders. That is especially the case with negotiations that involve the United Nations, the Russians, and the Europeans. I encourage President Obama to work against that tendency, and to set the tone in these talks by stressing the very real national security concerns Israel is dealing with. …”

Rubin contrasts WaPo’s op-eds on the prez.

You have to give the Washington Post credit — their editors certainly offer a contrast on their op-ed pages. Today, needless to say, you have a Michael Gerson and Eugene Robinson. The difference is stark, and revealing.

From Gerson you have a measured analysis, which takes into account the series of events that have transformed Obama from a cult-like figure into a struggling and rather radioactive one. …

…Then there is Eugene Robinson, who understandably must be at his wit’s end, as the politician in whom he and so many others on the left invested so much effort and so much of their own credibility to promote is now stumbling. His thesis is as bizarre as it is unsupported: “President Obama Is on a Winning Streak,” is the title of his column. …

…What is missing in Robinson’s take — the economy, the poll news, the complete Mosque debacle — makes Gerson’s point. The gap between aspirations and results is now so wide that the only way to bridge it is to fudge the facts and leave out much of what has transpired over the last year. Robinson and Gerson come from opposing political perspectives. But the most noticeable difference is the degree to which they attend to the facts and are able to draw therefrom persuasive conclusions. In that department, there is no comparison.

The Shadow Obami continue to grow in number. It started with the Shadow Cabinet and widened into recess appointments. Obama is determined to give power to radicals with questionable backgrounds, without proper examination by the legislative branch. Rubin tells us about the latest.  We wonder if it is time for Congress to start independent investigations into the people who have not gone through the traditional appointment process.

Obama is using the recess appointment again. Recall that is how he got the SEIU’s lawyer on to the National Labor Relations Board and how he got Donald Berwick past the Senate’s scrutiny. (”‘Senate confirmation of presidential appointees is an essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves as a check on executive power and protects Montanans and all Americans by ensuring that crucial questions are asked of the nominee — and answered,’ [Max] Baucus said in a statement.”)

Now he’s at is again, this time to get an ambassador to El Salvador through. What was her problem? Josh Rogin explains that Mari Carmen Aponte is going to be pushed through “despite lingering GOP concerns about her long-ago relationship with a Cuban operative.” …

…This is yet another instance of both Obama’s preference for appointing questionable characters and his need (which likely will intensify with time) to resort to strong-arm tactics. (After all, none of the Democrats in the Senate really wanted to vote for this woman, did they?) This does not seem to be the sort of president who’s going to tack to the center and learn the art of compromise after November. But we’ll see.

In discussing an unpleasant remark by an Obama fan, Rubin has an inspiring quote from George H.W. Bush.

…But that did get me thinking about George H.W. Bush. And, because I live in the Internet age, I found this speech, which Bush 41 delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals. It is a beautiful statement on religion and faith in public life that is worth reading in full. A sample:

“As I said many times before, prayer always has been important in our lives. And without it, I really am convinced, more and more convinced, that no man or no woman who has the privilege of serving in the Presidency could carry out their duties without prayer. I think of Lincoln’s famous remark, “I’ve been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” The intercessionary prayers that so many Americans make on behalf of the President of the United States, in this instance on behalf of me and also of my family, they inspire us, and they give us strength. And I just wanted you to know that, and Barbara and I are very, very grateful to you. …”

And Rubin comments on the mosque mess that Obama waded into.

…In reality, Obama is stymied when he can’t charm his opposition or shame them into accepting his position.

…If one is really going to advance our interests or mediate successfully between parties with conflicting interests and values, it won’t do to simply stamp your foot and simply insist everyone show empathy toward and defer to the Muslims’ point of view (or that of one segment of Muslims). It’s not going to win over the 68 percent of Americans. It’s not going to bring peace to the Middle East. It’s not going to make Obama an effective or popular president.

Of course I don’t believe Obama is a Muslim. But his excessive deference to Muslim states abroad and now to the American Muslim community has set many Americans’ teeth on edge and fueled conspiratorialists’ suspicions. There’s not much he should or can do about the latter. But the American people, not to mention our allies, sense that there is something very much amiss in all the genuflecting. That, in part, is why the mosque controversy has been so devastating for Obama.

One Obama advisor is likely going to make the mosque mess even worse. Jennifer Rubin points out the statement.

…What is clear is that Axelrod and Jarrett, arguably the most powerful of Obama’s team, also possess the worst instincts:

“…And Axelrod, a canny tactician with a keen sensitivity to political danger, didn’t dissuade his boss from jumping in, citing his own parents’ experiences with religious persecution as Jews in Europe.”

…his disgusting  invocation of the Nazi analogy — make no mistake, the American people get the role of the Nazis in this one, and the Muslims are awarded the status of potential Holocaust victims – suggests his undiluted leftism has rendered him tone deaf and a severe liability for a president who needs his worst instinct to be curbed, not accentuated. …

Rubin adds some interesting political information to the mosque mess from a Democratic source that she interviewed.

…But wasn’t this an act of bravery and courage, as the left punditocracy has trumpeted? Not for those trying to win elections, the operative explained:

“By getting involved in this issue — which was on a glide path to work out fine at the local level — the president and his team have put every Democrat running for Congress in the crosshairs of an issue that is 70-30 the wrong way. “Mr. Candidate, do you agree with your president?” This is just the latest insult these guys have hurled at Congress. And what do you get? Does your 30% base like you more? I can’t remember a White House with so much contempt for its own party. And why? Because they love the sound of their own voice. …”

Rubin gives us some good news about the possible demise of Obamacare.

It was supposed to save them from electoral ruin. It was “historic.” It was going to be the final opportunity to address the issue. It was ObamaCare and now the Democrats, on the brink of an electoral wipe-out, are begging the electorate not to throw them out because they rammed it through. Their pitch? We’ll change ObamaCare. Yes, it has come to this.

Ben Smith reports:

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health-care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.”…

…If the bill is as bad as everyone now concedes it is and it won’t do what was promised (what the Democrats promised), what exactly is the rationale for re-electing the Democrats, who can no longer make a credible argument that it is a good bill, let alone an historic one?

It does give hope, however, that “repeal and reform,” the Republican mantra on ObamaCare, might have bipartisan support after the November election.

Rubin shares the reason for the Dems sudden change of heart about Obamacare.

Charlie Cook, one of the more cautious and respected pollsters and political analysts, is now saying the Democrats will lose the House. Gerald Seib reports…

…To be precise, Republicans need to win 39 Democratic seats to get control of the House, and Mr. Cook’s current estimate is that they are in line for a 35- to 45-seat gain. “But frankly, I think we’re being very conservative with that,” he added. “The odds of it being higher than that range are a lot better than lower.”

As Seib notes, maybe the Democrats finally will gin up their base. Perhaps, he offers, “Democrats might figure out how to do a better job convincing the nation of the wisdom of their policies.” Is that likely? No. And as we’ve seen this week with another round of awful jobs numbers and the Ground Zero debacle, things could very well get even worse.

The desperation of the Democrats is just revving up, comments Rubin.

The Democrats are now in full retreat. Less 75 days before the midterm elections, the Republicans have a historic lead in congressional generic polling. The president’s approval rating is sinking. It is now every man for himself, as the Democrats scramble to be the ones on the electoral lifeboat that will survive the electoral wave. The smarter and more vulnerable Democrats distance themselves from Obama on the Ground Zero mosque. A few savvy Senate Democrats back extension of the Bush tax cuts. And now they’re even promising to “improve” ObamaCare.

But wait. As to the latter, why not do it before the election? Hey, there is time. They claim that they’re not out of touch. They say the bill could use some work. So how about it, fellows? Oh, yes, I guess they don’t really mean it. This would be another gambit, a fraudulent inducement really, to convince voters to spare them the ax. We’ll put immigration reform at the top of the agenda. We’ll pass a budget. We’ll fix ObamaCare. Desperation rivals dishonesty as the central feature of their campaign strategy. …

Rubin comments on the effects of the drilling moratorium, including one sentence that should cut straight to the hearts of Obama supporters.

The Obama team, we are told, can’t figure out how to stem unemployment. But actually, it seems they simply place job creation and preservation below other priorities. This report explains:

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region’s economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects.

The Obama administration, the least transparent in history, however, has been actively misleading the court: ”The administration has said in court filings that the economic effect of suspended drilling wasn’t as severe as the industry asserted.” The administration turns out to have less credibility than Big Oil. …

Scott Adams shares helpful tips for building green.

…When I started researching the field of green building, as part of the planning for our own home, I learned that, in many cases, you can’t get there from here. Allow me to share some of the things we learned. It’s California-centric, but I think you can generalize from my experience.

As a rule, the greener the home, the uglier it will be. I went into the process thinking that green homes were ugly because hippies have bad taste. That turns out to be nothing but a coincidence. The problem is deeper. For example, the greenest sort of roof in a warm climate would be white to reflect the sun. If you want a beautiful home, a white roof won’t get you there. Sure, you could put a lovely garden on your roof, because you heard someone did that. But don’t try telling me a garden roof wouldn’t be a maintenance nightmare. And where do you find the expert who knows how to do that sort of thing?

Second, the greenest sort of home would have few windows because windows bleed heat. In particular, if your lot has a view to the west, forget putting windows on that side because your family members will heat up like ants under a magnifying glass. Try telling your architect that you don’t want a lot of windows on the view side. He’ll quit. ..