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Mark Steyn posts on the Mass. race.
… However things turn out, the Dems have got a fright. I would be surprised if many candidates in November are quite the same spectacular combination of gaffe-prone stupidity and arrogance as Martha Coakley. But, granted that, I was surprised at how incompetent the Democrat machine was. On Sunday, the President veered between dull and really, really lousy. He did what he did with his Olympics pitch in Copenhagen – he took the extraordinary step of flying in to save the day, and then when he got there thought he could wing it. He, or at any rate his minders, should know by now that his rhetoric is seriously underperforming – “incoherent without his teleprompter and a bore with it“. Yet his staff allow him to stagger around as the last believer in his own magic. What sort of functioning pol would be so careless as to say “Everybody can own a truck”? He should talk to any New England dealership about that. As it happens, I bought a new truck last month and I’ve never seen the place so empty. …
Jennifer Rubin reports that in national security issues, the Obami may be waking up to reality.
Michael Isikoff reports:
“Top administration officials are getting nervous that they may not be able to proceed with one of their most controversial national-security moves: trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused 9/11 conspirators in federal court in New York City. Last November Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. portrayed the trial as a way to showcase the American justice system to the world — and to accelerate President Obama’s stalled plans to shut down the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay. But because of shifting political winds in Congress, the trial is now “potentially in jeopardy,” a senior official, who did not want to be named talking about a sensitive situation, tells Newsweek. The chief concern: that Republicans will renew attempts to strip funding for the trial and, in the aftermath of the bombing attempt aboard Northwest Flight 253, pick up enough support from moderate Democrats to prevail.”
It seems that Sen. Lindsay Graham and Rep. Frank Wolf will try to force votes in Congress to cut off funding for the trial. And one additional issue: the more than $200 million price tag for each year of the trial. The kicker: “If Holder’s plans are thwarted, though, one top administration official, who also didn’t want to be named talking about delicate issues, notes there is a Plan B — reviving the case against the alleged 9/11 conspirators before a military tribunal, just as the Bush administration tried to do.” …
…But alas, that proved to be politically untenable and logistically difficult. We had three domestic terror attacks. The president was hammered for his clueless reserve and the Keystone Kops response to the Christmas Day bombing. So now being “not Bush” doesn’t seem like such a good idea. It was born of arrogance and from a distorted view of the nature of our enemy. If Obama retreats on both this and Guantanamo, it will be a bitter pill for the Left and sweet vindication for those who kept us safe for seven and a half years after 9/11. But more important, it will be a step toward sanity in the administration’s national security policies. And should Obama and Holder feel the sting of humiliation if forced to abandon their plans to shutter Guantanamo and give KSM a propagandistic platform, the White House may find that a small price to pay to sync up its anti-terror policies with both reality and public opinion.
Peter Wehner on Obama’s fall from grace.
…But there is another, and I think quite important, explanation that was reinforced to me while reading John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book, Game Change, which is a fascinating (and very well-written) account of the 2008 presidential campaign.
One is reminded once again of how the core of Obama’s popularity was an appeal not to policy or to a governing agenda; instead it was an appeal to thematics and narrative. …Obama’s appeal was romantic and aesthetic, built on the rhetoric of hope and change, on his “freshness and sense of promise.” A cult of personality built up around Obama — not because of what he had achieved but because of what he seemed to embody. (”Maybe one day he’ll do something to merit all this attention,” Michelle Obama dryly told a reporter.)…
…That was what we were promised. What we got instead is a president who increased the divisions in our nation, the most partisan and polarizing figure in the history of polling, one who is dogmatic and has been as generous to special interests as any we have seen. The efforts to buy votes in pursuit of the Obama agenda has added sewage to the cesspool.
This would hurt any president under any circumstances; for Barack Obama, whose allure was based almost entirely on his ability to convince the public that he embodied a “new politics,” it has been doubly damaging. It was Hillary Clinton of all people who understood Obama best when she said during the campaign, “We have to make people understand that he’s not real.” …
Jennifer Rubin brings up some excellent points about Obama campaigning in Massachusetts.
Charles Hurt, writing of Obama’s lackluster and belated appearance in Massachusetts on behalf of the listing campaign of Martha Coakley, observes:
“Obama told the crowd here yesterday that he needed Coakley in Washington because she is “independent.” Really? Does anybody actually think that the reason Obama wants her in the Senate is that she would even dream of casting the deciding vote to kill the Democratic health-care bill? Absolutely not. The only reason Obama came here is because he needs somebody bought and paid for. By him.”
This concisely sums up the problem that threatens to engulf Obama and whatever is left of the remnants of his campaign organization. He is a candidate deprived of a campaign. He is a community organizer with no one to organize against those who hold the levers of power. He holds the levers of power but without the executive acumen to bring the country along and to craft a successful, broad-based agenda. If not out of his depth, he is out of his milieu. …
Roger Simon posts more on the Copenhagen summit of thieves.
I thought I was done writing about my trip to the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen last December, but just when you think you’re out, as Mario Puzo once put it, they pull you back in. And what did my pulling in in this instance was the CBS report on the amazingly lavish junket (well, not so amazingly really) of Nancy Pelosi & Co. to the Scandinavian capital. I learned therein that seventeen, count ‘em seventeen, Members (many with spouses and even children) went to the conference with their staffs, utilizing three military jets and booking 321 hotel nights at the posh Copenhagen Marriott. The carbon footprint of all that – assuming you believe in AGW, and most of them claim to – was immense. The amount of serious discussion that went on was practically nil.
And, yes, needless to say, there’s more, lots more, although LaPelosa has, also needless to say, resisted press inquiries about the details. She is now being bombarded, as she should be, by FOIA requests, so we will probably learn more anon. But the idea of all that absurd excess in the light of what is now going on in Haiti is particularly stomach-turning. …
…In a way, that’s what Copenhagen was about and why it was such a signal event. Everyone was playing a role. I doubt if a single person in the city changed their mind about anything, certainly not anything remotely to do with climate. It was just a game with no purposes other than spending money or trying to extort some – or posturing. …
There is housecleaning to be done at the Pentagon. Bill Bennett writes about the politically correct report from the Pentagon on the Fort Hood massacre.
…Here’s the report I’d write and I can do it on less than one page: An Islamic terrorist was raised in the United States and given a pass throughout his professional career in the United States military. His allegiance was not to his country but to his radical religion. He told his colleagues of this again and again. He didn’t set off signals, he set off sirens. And nothing was done. The military leadership didn’t take his words seriously, even as we were at war with people saying the exact same things he was saying. And the culture of the Army that coddled him was too well-represented by the Army chief of staff who, after the rampage, said “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”
It was this thinking that led to us keeping Major Hasan in the Army and that diminished force protection. It was this culture that allowed a terrorist into the Army. It was this political correctness that led to the deaths of 14 innocents. And if you want to prevent another tragedy like this, you must end this infection of the mindset. I call it a tragedy because it was preventable. That it was not prevented is a shame on our institutions and indicative of a preemptive cultural surrender that I never thought would affect the U.S. military but, sadly, dangerously, has.
But the solution to these problems remains elusive because the military will not even mention the problem. And that, as Winston Churchill once put it, is why we still have a “Gathering Storm” coming, and not a near-victory in this, the Global War Against Islamic Terrorism.
Tunku Varadarajan thinks that bankers should not receive huge bonuses this year.
…Banks are making money because they’re borrowing at ridiculously low rates from the public and central banks and then investing in higher-yielding government securities.
The banks receive deposits from savers (on which they pay negligible interest) and then leverage it several times by borrowing from other banks, or the central bank. LIBOR (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) as well as the Fed’s discount window are below 0.5 percent. This is the cost of money to banks. The loot is then invested in government bonds, which are yielding anywhere from 3.75 percent to 4.75 percent in the U.S. and Europe.
This interest margin may not sound like much, but when applied to the trillions of dollars that make up various banks’ balance sheets, it produces profits in tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars. For a well-leveraged bank, this is a safe “carry” trade as long as the value of government securities does not collapse. In fact, a bank would have to be incredibly inept not to make money in these circumstances. Awarding bankers bonuses is tantamount to paying them for not being certified cretins. …
…Such action would also have shown up as specious the argument that “if we do not pay, the talent will go away.” If tax measures were implemented globally, where would the talent go? Some of it, perhaps, to hedge funds. That would be an appropriate, even elegant, solution, because the kinds of risks some of the bankers were taking are best suited for hedge funds. As for the rest of the bankers… they should just stay put and expect to get paid when they start adding value, not merely leeching from public policy.
Robert Samuelson gives an explanation for why investment bankers earn so well.
…The explanation for Wall Street’s high pay lies elsewhere. Most of us are paid based on what we produce or, more realistically, what our employers produce. By contrast, Wall Street compensation levels are tied to the nation’s overall wealth. Investment banks, hedge funds, private equity firms and many other financial institutions trade stocks, bonds and other securities for their own profit. They also advise mutual funds, pension funds, endowments and wealthy individuals on how to invest and trade.
There’s a big difference between annual production and national wealth. In 2007, the last year before the crisis, annual production (gross domestic product) equaled almost $14 trillion. In the same year, household wealth was $77 trillion (5.5 times production); that covered the value of homes, vehicles, stocks, bonds and the like. Eliminating nonfinancial assets (mainly homes) cut wealth to about $50 trillion (3.5 times). Deducting household debts from financial wealth pushed net worth to $35 trillion (2.5 times income).
People who are trying to protect or expand existing wealth are playing for much higher money stakes than even hard-working and highly skilled producers. That’s the main reason they’re paid more. Similar percentage changes in production and wealth translate into much larger gains or losses in wealth — up to five times as much based on the crude math above. Many lawyers enjoy the same envious position of being paid on the basis of wealth enhancement or protection. They’re involved in high-stakes mergers and acquisitions, estate planning, divorces and tax planning. On average, partners in the top 25 law firms earned from $1.3 million to $4 million in 2008, reports The American Lawyer magazine. …
If what you’ve heard about Obamacare makes you sick, get ready. WSJ editors tell us how Dems are buying off their union friends.
Democrats seem impervious to embarrassment as they buy votes for ObamaCare, but their latest move makes even Nebraska’s Ben Nelson look cheap: The 87% of Americans who don’t belong to a union will now foot the bill for a $60 billion giveaway to those who do.
The Senate bill was financed in part by a 40% excise tax on high-cost insurance coverage. The White House backs this “Cadillac tax” as one of the few remaining cost-control tokens. But Big Labor abhors the tax because union benefits tend to be far more generous than average, and labor leaders and House Democrats have been throwing a political tantrum for weeks.
So emerging from their backrooms, Democrats have agreed to extend a special exemption from the Cadillac tax to any health plan that is part of a collective-bargaining agreement, plus state and local workers, many of whom are unionized. Everyone else with a higher-end plan will start to be taxed in 2013, but union members will get a free pass until 2018.
Ponder that one for a moment. Two workers who are identical in every respect—wages, job, health plan—will be treated differently by the tax system, based solely on union membership. …
Ed Morrissey blogs about a headline that makes a farce of claims by Obamacare fans and green fascists.
Like my friend Bruce McQuain at QandO, I’m wondering whether Michael Moore will add this to a later edition of the Sicko DVD. Twenty-six patients in a Cuban mental hospital died from hypothermia during an unusually cold winter in Havana…
…My goodness, it’s a good thing that Michael Moore decided to lecture Americans on the superiority of the Cuban health-care system in his feature-length diatribe, isn’t it? Otherwise, we wouldn’t be demanding a government takeover of our own health-care system to achieve parity with Fidel’s paradise.
I live in Minnesota, where it gets considerably colder than Havana for about six months out of the year. Our hospitals manage to keep patients warm, clean, and safe. When was the last time anyone heard of patients dying in an American hospital of hypothermia caused by their stay in the facility? According to my recollection, that would be, uh … never. Where were the staff at this Cuban paragon of medical care? When it got cold, no one apparently thought to close windows, or give out more sheets and blankets, or bring in more heaters … for hours. …
…Addendum: It’s also worth pointing out that a mass of people dying of hypothermia in the tropics doesn’t exactly bolster the claims of global-warming activists. …