Olympia Snowe and ObamaCare

In case you missed my essay, from Pajamas Media last Sunday, "Will Olympia Snowe Bolt the GOP?"

Senator Snowe is increasingly out of step with today's GOP; and on healthcare reform, Democrats have targeted her as the crucial Republican moderate needed to get ObamaCare out of committee (and Snowe would likely help produce 60 votes in the full Senate).

In any case, I mention my Pajamas essay considering all the attention Snowe's getting from the White House, the media, and the hardline leftists blogs. The Washington Post has a report on today's developments, "Medicare Is Focus on Day 2 of Health-Care Negotiations." (Via Memeorandum.)

Although the day-long session was marked by a slow pace and partisan sniping, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) could take comfort in several signs about the bill's prospects.

Early indications suggested that two key swing senators -- Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) -- were inclined to back the bill. Additionally, Baucus, who has not always enjoyed broad support in his caucus, held the Democratic bloc together in the face of an energetic assault from GOP senators.

There's no discussion here of the public option, but according Mike Lux, at the Huffington Post, the White House is focusing on Snowe's proposal for a "trigger" provision that's being seen as a "public option killer" on the hard left:

Media reports and insider buzz make it increasingly clear that key people at the White House have become obsessed with Olympia Snowe on health care, and are willing to do pretty much whatever she demands in order to get her on board. The price is looking more and more like this incredibly bad trigger proposal she has been pushing, a trigger that quite literally is written to automatically never trigger a public option. You see, Senator Snowe is writing language into an amendment that is literally a Catch-22. The legislative language says that a public option will be set up in a state in which health care is not affordable to 95% of the state's residents, but it defines affordability as after the new tax credits that are written into the bill to make health care affordable. Not only would this be an incredibly weak public option (doing it in one state will mean it can't get the market power to compete with the big insurers), but it would be a public option that is written by its definition to never be triggered. This is a trigger specifically, intentionally designed to kill the public option.

More details at the radical HCAN, "The Snowe Trigger - A Catch-22 to Kill the Public Health Insurance Option."

But check this out: The discussion by Lux and HCAN reveals that for Democratic-leftists it's not about increasing market competition, access or affordability, but striking the first blow for socialized medicine. From HCAN:

Max Baucus's bill caps out-of-pocket costs for people buying insurance in the exchange at 12% of their income (if they purchase the silver plan in Baucus's four plan levels - bronze, silver, gold, and platinum). Therefore, after you add in government subsidies, you will always have access to a plan (or two, the bronze plan would presumably be cheaper than the silver plan) where costs will legally always have to be below 12%. The insurance industry can raise their rates as much as they want and government will make up the difference. The trigger, if passed, will never trigger. Not ever.

In other words, the Baucus plan would provide subsidies to those unable to afford insurance. But the leftists oppose it! The must have the public option! And all along these folks were talking about increased competition, blah, blah. By the looks at HCAN's passage, they could care less about competition - they just want to kill the insurance companies altoghether. That's really what it's all about! See, Mike Eden, "Obama Health Care Plan Is Backdoor To Nationalized Health Care."

As for Olympia Snowe, who knows? See Fox News, "Did Democrats Just Lose Snowe? In Committee – That’s Likely." And TPM, "Snowe Supports Move to Delay Finance Committee Bill."

And at Daily Kos, "Snowe's True Colors":

This is going to be the Republican approach, which was clear if you watched this morning's proceedings and saw their filibustering, led by Hatch. Snowe is just playing along and she is not participating in good faith. Negotiating with her on her public option trigger amendment as a way to get her on board, is foolish and naive. She might not be at the top of the invite list to lunch with her Republican colleagues, but she's with them on their delay game.

And if that's true, it's probably because Senator Snowe's being threatened by the GOP leadership with a primary challenge next year.

From more on that, see my comments at Pajamas, ""Will Olympia Snowe Bolt the GOP?"

Image Credit: Washington Post, "Live Blogging the Senate Finance Markup."

Added: From the Huffington Post, "White House Denies Pushing Trigger Option, Dem Groups Concur."

ACORN Sues Breitbart, Filmmakers Over Undercover Video

At the Washington Post, "ACORN Sues Conservative Filmmakers Over Baltimore Video" (via Memeorandum):

ACORN, the community organizing group embarrassed recently in a video sting, said Wednesday that it needs to regroup and determine if it has a major internal problem -- but it also struck back, filing suit against the filmmakers who made undercover videos and the Web site whose publication of them prompted a national outcry.

The secretly taped videos show ACORN housing counselors advising two young conservative activists, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, who were posing as a pimp and prostitute, on how to conceal their criminal business. The videos were taped in Baltimore, Washington, New York and California, and their airing in the past two weeks has sent the organization reeling.

Named in the suit, filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, were O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart.com LLC, who owns the Web site BigGovernment.com. The lawsuit asserts that neither O'Keefe nor Giles obtained consent from ACORN workers for videotaping them, as state law requires.

ACORN executive director Bertha Lewis told reporters in a conference call that ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, does not support criminal activity and believes the filmmakers should have obeyed Maryland laws.

Meanwhile, ACORN's founder says many of the accusations about the group are distortions meant to undermine President Obama and other Democrats.

In an exclusive interview with The Washington Post, founder Wade Rathke said conservative claims that ACORN is a "criminal enterprise" that misuses federal and donor funds for political ends -- a claim contained in a report by House Republicans -- are a "complete fabrication." He said exaggeration and conjecture about the group are being passed off daily on cable television and Web blogs as documented fact.

"It's balderdash on top of poppycock," said Rathke, who was forced out last year amid an embezzlement scandal involving his brother. "It is a tactic they are trying to aggressively use to attack Obama . . . to paint the president and anybody else they can as radicals."

Forced out by an embezzlment scandal? Hmm, must just be one of those strange things that are totally unrelated to accusations of corruption, fraud, underage human sex-trafficking ... you know, stuff that's a complete fabrication.

Also, at Breitbart, "ACORN Sues Hidden-Camera Filmmakers."

Screencap: Via Hot Air.

Steve Clemons, Fausta Wertz on CNN's Blogger Bunch!

I found the video at Steve Clemons' blog:

For a guy who's a hard-left gay-blogger, he comes off surprisingly mainstream here, and thus his presentation's actually quite devious. He notes, for example, in talking about Libya, that while Muammar Qaddafi at the U.N. is playing a kind of "court jester," Libya is in fact "a nuclear non-proliferation success story." This comment allows Clemons to contrast Libya's abandonment of nuclear ambition to that of proliferator Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. What Clemons omits, naturally, is that Libya's denuclearization is a Bush admininstration successs story (being a radical leftist, Clemons won't mention that). Clemons apparently loves selective comparative analysis across regimes. In 2007, Clemons compared Libya to Syria, and at that time implied Qaddafi's regime was a failure of U.S. policy, "Turning Syria: Lessons from Libya":

Hisham Matar has an interesting piece in today's New York Times, "Seeing What We Want to See in Qaddafi."

The writer suggests that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi continues to rule Libya as a tyrant, disappearing his critics, and cultivating a climate of fear -- particularly among those who might engage in public dissent.

But the writer also has real insight into what drove the Bush administration and Qaddafi to become partners:

Colonel Qaddafi deserves sole credit for Libya's foreign policy U-turn. He has never found it necessary to devote himself to a single political ideology; his only consistent policy has been to guard his personal political survival. The United States and Britain understand this, but have only exploited it for their own myopic objectives. . .

Interestingly, Clemons omits this passage from the Hishim Matar essay:

Now that the United States has incorporated the Libyan regime into its so-called war on terrorism, it is difficult to see what political pressure it can exert on the Libyan government to reform. Western governments have had the power to effect change in Libya only as long as the dictator’s government has hungered for the West’s acceptance. The short-sighted paranoia with which the war on terrorism has been managed has weakened any moral advantage the United States might once have had.

This is America-bashing, pure and simple, and it naturally goes against the prevailing consensus in the U.S. that the Bush adminstration's regime change in Iraq convinced the Colonel that his regime might be the next stop on the U.S. Army's tour of the Middle East.

In any case, be sure to watch the video above. Faust Wertz aquits herself admirable in denouncing the United Nations as an anti-American hotbed of brutal Third-World tyrants. See, "Obama at the UN."

Obama at U.N.: Worst Foreign Policy Ever

The full text is here, "REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY." Plus, check the New York Times, "Obama's Speech to the United Nations General Assembly." There's some rehashing of the global apology tour from earlier this year:

On my first day in office, I prohibited -- without exception or equivocation -- the use of torture by the United States of America. (Applause.) I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed, and we are doing the hard work of forging a framework to combat extremism within the rule of law. Every nation must know: America will live its values, and we will lead by example.

Yeah, and how's that going again? Not so great, eh?

See, "Obama Revives Controversial Guantanamo Rribunals," "Problem of Guantánamo Detainees Returns to Haunt Barack Obama," and "Guantanamo Military Tribunals Likely To Stay Open: Officials."

But hey, whats a bald-faced lie to the entire global community? They just love him! See, "The UN Loves Barack Obama Because He Is Weak."

And this section of the speech is contradictory:

Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect. Each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people and in its past traditions. And I admit that America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy. But that does not weaken our commitment; it only reinforces it. There are basic principles that are universal; there are certain truths which are self-evident -- and the United States of America will never waver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny.

Actually, democracy can be imposed from the outside, and it has been: Germany and Japan were totalitarian regimes at the time of World War II. They were defeated and occupied, and are now healthy democratic leaders of the free world.

Leftist love this president despite his failures and his lies. See Democracy Arsenal, "President Obama Addresses the UNGA"; Taylor Marsh, "Meanwhile at the U.N., Qadhafi Rambles On"; Mother Jones, "Obama Comes Through On Nukes." And related, Andrew Sullivan takes Michael Barone to task, "Michael Barone's Time Warp."

But see the Washington Times, "Worst Foreign Policy Ever":

Tomorrow, President Obama will chair a special nuclear-disarmament meeting by the United Nations Security Council. The White House bills this as a historic first, but it is typical of Mr. Obama's emphasis on style over substance. He will appear before the body with the weakest foreign-policy record of any new U.S. president in recent memory. An around-the-world tour of international hot spots shows that for all the president's lofty rhetoric, he can point to precious few accomplishments.

Read the whole thing at the link. (Via Memeorandum.) Also, at National Review, "Bolton: ‘A Post-American Speech By Our First Post-American President’."

No Credible Evidence? Democrats Want Fact-Finding Before ACORN Defunding

From the Washington Times, "GOP Lawyers Demand Investigation Into ACORN's Funding":

A powerful group of GOP lawyers is demanding that government officials open an investigation to determine if the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has used government funds for illegal purposes.

And, they’re making those demands directly to House Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Rep. Jerrold Nalder, New York, who has said he would consider holding a hearing “if I ever hear any credible allegations” about the group. Now that a pair of activist filmmakers have exposed ACORN workers giving advice on how to obtain federal funds to run a brothel the Republican National Lawyers Association says the evidence is piled high enough to get that hearing. RNLA put a web video out Tuesday that replayed Mr. Nadler’s remarks.

“Prostitution. Sex trafficking. Fraud. Credible enough, Mr. Chairman?” the ad says.

Plus, at CNS News, "Hoyer Wants More Facts on ACORN Before Pulling Funding."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that Congress needs to gather more facts before it decides whether to cut off all federal funds for ACORN, the liberal nationwide network of community-based organizations.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Hoyer: “You voted a couple of days ago for an amendment which prohibited federal funding from going to ACORN. Are you committed to ensuring that a final bill which prohibits federal funding of ACORN passes this year and will you urge President Obama to sign that bill into law?”

Hoyer said: “As you probably heard [House Education and Labor Chairman] George Miller [D-Calif.] say on the floor, there was no money in that bill for ACORN. I think we’re going to be looking at what in fact are the facts here with respect to ACORN. Once we find out what the facts are then we’ll be in a better position to make a determination [on funding].”

And from Blasting Caps and Dynamite, "House Majority Leader Wants More Facts Before Defunding Acorn":

Is there anyone out there believes we taxpayers won't be funding ACORN? Why would Obama sign an amendment to remove federal funding from ACORN when he actually gained his seat behind the desk in the Oval Office because of ACORN? He owes them a humongous debt! Yes, he's great at throwing individuals under the bus, but an entire organization that he actually owes his presidency to? Highly doubtful. Besides, he's far too busy going on television shows and pissing off our allies to be signing anything. Poor man works so hard, you know.

Support for Afghanistan Fading, Poll Finds

From the Wall Street Journal, "Poll Reflects Afghan War Doubts":

Americans are pessimistic about the prospects of victory in Afghanistan; 59% say they are feeling less confident that the war will come to a successful conclusion. And 51% say they would oppose sending more troops to the conflict.

"No matter what we do, it's not going to be the right thing," said Rick Culotta, a 46-year-old Republican in Metairie, La., who responded to the poll.

I don't worry about these numbers as long as the administration does the right thing by sending more troops. As we saw in the later stage of the Iraq counter-insurgency campaign, after the U.S. changed strategy - and conditions on the ground improved - public opinion saw an uptick As I reported earlier (see, "Reconciliation and Resolve in Afghanistan"):

Success matters. As the U.S. beefs up its contingents in Afghanistan, and as it continues its work in "flipping the Taliban," public opinion will hold steady. The worst outcome will be for the Obama administration to cave to the antiwar defeatists and order a downturn in U.S. engagement.

(Interesting side note about this poll, as noted earlier: Independent against Obama outnumber those who support the administration.

Condoleezza Rice: New Face of the GOP?

The timing's a little off. Pushing Condoleezza Rice as the "new face of the GOP" might be a little more appropriate when all of this racial recrimination from the left dies down a bit. But if the Americans start to look for seasoned foreign policy leadership from the GOP in the years ahead, a Condoleeza Rice/Elizabeth Cheney ticket can't be beat. From Nina Easton's interview:

After praising President Obama and his team as "patriots who are going to try to do what's best for the country," she nevertheless warned about letting down our guard against another terrorist attack. "I am grateful -- I don't say proud, just 'grateful' -- that there wasn't another attack over the past eight years," she said. "But every day terrorists plot and plan to try to attack us. They only have to be right once. We have to be right 100% of the time. But I know, too, that can only happen because men and women in uniform are fighting on the front lines."

She offered sharp words for Democrats in Congress who want President Obama to begin making plans to pull out of Afghanistan, a war that is becoming increasingly unpopular with the American public.

"The last time we left Afghanistan, and we abandoned Pakistan," she said, "that territory became the very territory on which Al Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th. So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists.

"It's that simple," she declared, "if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan."

Rice acknowledged flaws in Afghanistan's recent elections but quickly inserted an addendum bolstered by her personal credentials: "Our democracy wasn't so perfect at the beginning either. My ancestors were three-fifths of a man. My father tried to vote in 1952. You couldn't guarantee voting rights for blacks in the South until 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. So don't tell me these people can't get it right because their democracies are struggling."

That said, Rice stressed the importance of setting "goals" in Afghanistan and bringing civilians in alongside troops -- as both administrations have done -- to pursue reconstruction and development in local communities. That strategy was late in coming to Iraq, she conceded.

On Iran, Rice tactfully questioned the Obama strategy of engaging the Tehran regime in direct talks about its nuclear program. "I don't have any problems with engaging bad guys. We did our share of it," she recalled. "The problem is that engagement is a tactic not a strategy. You have to ask yourself what the end is. When you go into the room with an adversary, you had better have sticks in your bag as well as carrots."

Obama officials, she warned, will be speaking to leaders not likely to survive the current internal political turmoil. "The Iranian regime is vulnerable right now," she declared, "I don't know whether it's a year from now or five years from now, but that regime is done. It has split the clerics...It has made [the brutal post-election crackdown] the formative political memory" of young people, who make up 70% of the population, she added.

See also, Flopping Aces, "Condi Rice Warns of Terrorist Attacks if We Abandon Afghanistan."

Michael Lind Smears Conservative Activists as 'Teabaggers'

I was looking to give Michael Lind's a fair shake in his essay today, "Intellectual Conservatism, RIP."

Interestingly, Lind offers decent background discussion to neoconservatism (most appropriate, following the death of Irving Kristol), but he loses me when he joins Janeane Garofalo in smearing conservative activists as "teabaggers":

In its origins, neoconservatism was a defense of New Deal/Great Society liberalism at home and abroad, both from the radical, countercultural left of the era and from its own design defects. The early neocons were Kennedy-Johnson liberals who believed that liberal reform should avoid naive utopianism and should be guided by pragmatism and empirical social science. The '70s neoconservatives were so focused on the utopianism of the '60s campus left, however, that most paid too little attention to a far greater threat to their beloved New Deal tradition, the utopianism of the libertarian right. Ultimately Milton Friedman and other free-market ideologues did far more damage to America than the carnival freaks of the counterculture.

But the early neoconservatives were right to defend mainstream liberalism against countercultural radicalism. Like today's right, the '60s and '70s left was emotional, expressivist and anti-intellectual. (One of its bibles was Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book!") Like today's right, the '70s left favored theatrical protest over discussion and debate. The prophets of the Age of Aquarius and the "population explosion" were every bit as apocalyptic as Glenn Beck. And just as today's right-wing radicals play at Boston Tea Parties, so Abbie Hoffman dressed up as Uncle Sam. The teabaggers are the Yippies of the right.

Read the whole thing, if you want.

In addition the Janeane Garofalo, I'm reminded of the post over at Voting Female, "Maxine Waters Calls All Tea Party Protesters Homosexuals in her Latest Attack on Free Speech: For Those Who Haven't Figured It Out Yet ...'Tea Bagger' is a 'Male Homosexual'." (That's the best discussion you'll find of what a "teabagger" really is.)

Michael Lind's not too far from Maxine Water's if he's going to attack concerned citizens as teabaggers. So much for conservative intellectualis, or at least Lind's version of it.

Are Independents Against Obama Racist 'Fringe Elements'?

Here's another smear on conservatives as racist, at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, " ‘Fringe element’ Could Easily Upend America’s Racial Progress" (via Memeorandum).

Okay. Right.

Actually, the ranks of the "fringe element" are expanding. See, Allahpundit, "NBC poll: For the First Time, More Independents Disapprove of Obama Than Approve":

An eight-point swing in just two months. This is not the centrist “pragmatist” they thought they knew.

For the first time, independent voters—who delivered Mr. Obama the White House and Democrats control of the Congress—disapprove of the job he is doing, 46% to the 41% who approve. In July, 49% of independents approved of the president, against 38% who disapproved.

New doubts about the president have coincided with new hopes for Republicans, who appeared flattened by the election nearly a year ago.

As the 2010 election cycle heats up, independent voters now favor Republican control of Congress by four percentage points.

“For a party walloped two cycles in a row with independents, I think those are very important stories,” said Bill McInturff, a partner at the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, who conducts the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll with Democratic pollster Peter Hart.

His approval rating’s flat at 51 percent overall. More anti-statist backlash from the crosstabs: For the first time since 1997, more people say government is doing too many things rather than not doing enough (49/45) and more are worried about the exploding deficit than the need to “boost” the economy with new spending (62/30, up from 58/35 in June) ....

Check the post for the graph. I wonder how long it will be until Obama shills start attacking independents as racist!!

See also, Political Pistachio, "Why The Left Calls The Right Racist."

Cartoon Credit: William Warren at Americans for Limited Government.

Mark Levin on Glenn Beck: 'Mindless', 'Incoherent' (AUDIO)

Not the most attactive YouTube, but it's worth a listen. Mark Levin's actually combining his own attack on John McCain with a condemnation of Glenn Beck's endorsement of "The One" over "The Maverick." Robert Stacy McCain's got a long but interesting analysis, plus more at Memeorandum:

See also, Right Wing Nut House, "IS GLENN BECK 'THE ENEMY'?"

Breitbart Scores Again: White House Responds to Charges of NEA Corruption

Roy Edroso's been consolidating his idiocy-creds this last couple of days with a pair of ridiculous posts on the NEA progressive conference call "non-scandal." As he notes yesterday:

Andrew Breitbart's follow-up to his child prostitution stings on ACORN -- the revelation that the Obama Administration talked to artists about its social programs -- is not shaking the earth, despite the inclusion of a Hitler dog whistle ("Riefenstahl-esque"). Patterico has even taken to explaining to readers that "it would be a mistake to dismiss this story as unimportant" ...

The notion that it is being used to promote a leftist agenda will strike most of their intended audience as dog bites man.

Ah, time to yank the head there, buddy. This just in from ABC News, "After 'Inappropriate' NEA Conference Call, White House Pushes New Guidelines":

An August 10, 2009 National Endowment for the Arts conference call in which artists were asked to help support President Obama's agenda -- a call that at least one good government group called "inappropriate" -- has prompted the White House to issue new guidelines to prevent such a call from ever happening again.

"The point of the call was to encourage voluntary participation in a national service initiative by the arts community," White House spokesman Bill Burton told ABC News. "To the extent there was any misunderstanding about what the NEA may do to support the national service initiative, we will correct it. We regret any comments on the call that may have been misunderstood or troubled other participants. We are fully committed to the NEA's historic mission, and we will take all steps necessary to ensure that there is no further cause for questions or concerns about that commitment."

Plus, from the Washington Times, "NEA Chairman Admits Mistake on August 10 Conference Call." Yeah, admission of mistakes along with some blanket denials. According to NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman:

The former NEA Director of Communications acted unilaterally and without the approval or authorization of then-Acting Chairman Patrice Walker Powell.

Hey, way to pass the buck, Rocco!

And Roy, dude, that's some hella "dog bites man" story!

Plus, in late-breaking non-scandal news, "Serve.gov Scrubs ACORN Listings from Its Site."

(Via Memorandum.)

MoveOn's Dishonest Public Option Spoof

Via Kathy Shaidle, here's Michelle Malkin with, "Hollywood & MoveOn.Org’s Insurance Industry-Bashing Video":

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

What bugs me about this video is how blatantly dishonest it is.

It reminds me of Jane Hamsher's bogus claim that "75 percent" favor the public option. Hamsher was citing a finding from June that Americans favor choice of either a private or government plan. It's bogus, naturally. See YidWithLid, "Rasmussen: America to Congress --> NO PUBLIC HEALTHCARE OPTION."

See also, New York Daily News, "Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Among Celebrities, Speaking Out in Spoof PSA to Protect Insurance Companies."

NEA Cover-Up? Obama's In-House Propaganda Shop (AUDIO)

Last night, Sean Hannity broadcast audio-clips from the White House-NEA-progressive conference call:

Plus, there's lots of new material at Big Government: See, Publius, "BREAKING: White House Officials to Make Sure ‘Inappropriate’ NEA Conference Call ‘Never Happens Again’."

Also, Matthew Vadum, "NEA Conference Call: Who is Buffy Wicks?"

And, at the Jawa Report, "If the White House Isn't Employing the World's Largest PR Firm to Use the NEA to Astroturf their Agenda ..." (via Memorandum).

Obama Fiddles on Afghanistan

The main story's at the Wall Street Journal, "Pentagon Delays Troop Call." See also, Leslie Gelb, "Obama's Befuddling Afghan Policy: Why is the President Hesitating On More Troops to Fight His 'War of Necessity'?"

Victor Davis Hanson offers some strategic analysis on why things are going the way they are, "Two-Front Wars — Theirs and Ours." And Bill Roggio reports on General Stanley McChrystal's threat to resign if the administration doesn't send more troops: "McChrystal to Resign If Not Given Resources for Afghanistan."

I don't have too much to add, except to say I'm not surprised. I was pleasantly surprised earlier this year when the administration pledged an additional 20 thousand troops to the deployment. I even gladly said at the time that I supported the administration (strange for someone like me who knows that Obama's an inveterate liar). But with Obama's wavering now, he's completing the ideological circle that has formed his radical platform. It's kind of a bait and switch concession to the antiwar activists, and no doubt many of them were just waiting for Obama to come around to their side in any case.

Dr. Sanity has the title piece this morning, "PLENTY OF TIME FOR OBAMA & CO. TO SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY":

Is President Postmodern about to take his eyes off the ball in Afghanistan? His indecision and waffling on the subject makes it seem like he is getting cold feet. Not to mention the absolute horror of a Democrat doing something that goes against the polls. Remember--because it's easy to forget--that Afghanistan was always the Democrats "good war"--i.e., a way they could pretend to be strong and tough on national defense... you know, without actually having to be strong or tough.

See also, PoliGazette, "Liberals’ New Obsession: Afghanistan." Plus, check Thunder Run for real stories from soldiers and families in the fight, "From the Front: 09/21/2009."

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

Searching for Bobby Fischer's Brilliance

I'm not sure if parents of chess prodigies are among my readers, but I'm pleased to share this piece: Bobby Fischer's story is an unparalleled tale of Cold War competition and personal eccentricity. Today's Los Angeles Times featured one of those articles that used to make it exciting to pick up the newspaper in the morning. It turns out that there's been a long mystery on Bobby Fischer's paternity. Times reporter Peter Nicholas admits his interest went well beyond the chess mania following Fischer's 1972 victory in Iceland:

I read everything I could find about him, replayed his most famous games and talked with friends of his who frequented the Marshall Chess Club in New York, scene of some of his triumphs.

In time, my interest shifted from Fischer's chess to a much murkier aspect of his life: the identity of his father.

Paul Nemenyi (National Archives and Records Administration) - Paul Nemenyi's petition for U.S. naturalization, including a 1940 photo.

**********

The full story is here, "Chasing the King of Chess":

Bobby's life story, like his behavior, was bizarre and complicated. At the height of his powers, he abandoned the game and went into seclusion, surfacing periodically to spout paranoid, anti-Semitic screeds and to denounce the United States. He died last year at 64 in Iceland, the only country that would have him.

It seemed to me that if I was to get a better grasp of this elusive figure, I needed to know more about his origins.

Bobby was born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn by a single mother, Regina Fischer. She told people his father was a German biophysicist named Gerhardt Fischer. The couple divorced when Bobby was a toddler. That's about all that was known.

The dearth of details about Gerhardt and his role in Bobby's life whetted my curiosity. What was he like? Did he share his son's intellectual gifts? What kind of relationship did they have?

My wife, fellow journalist Clea Benson, came to share my interest, and before long it morphed into something of an obsession.

We became part of a subculture in which Fischer fanatics dissect his old games like sacred scrolls, pay tens of thousands of dollars for his old notebooks and argue ceaselessly about whether later champions could have held their own against him.

In search of Fischer arcana, we've been to the Chess Hall of Fame in Miami, whose dominant architectural feature is an oversize rook. We've pored over records at the New York Public Library. We've hired Hungarian translators and sifted through 70-year-old letters stored at the National Archives in Maryland.

In 2002, I even made a pilgrimage to Reykjavik to see the chess board where Fischer and Spassky squared off 30 years before.

That same year, I resolved to get more serious about my research on Gerhardt. Enough amateur sleuthing. Now I would use my reportorial skills to gather every available fact about the man.

Read the whole thing, here.

The Case for ACORN as a Criminal Enterprise

Dana Loesch provides a fabulous analysis of White House's implication in the NEA communist funding scandal: "Conference Call Transcript Implicates Fed Art Agency in Government Co-Opt of Arts Community." (Via Memeorandum.)

But the ACORN scandal's far from resolved. See also, Peter Roff, "The Case for ACORN as a Criminal Enterprise." Here's the key passage:

This latest round of problems for ACORN may be the best documented, but they are not the first nor, for that matter, are they the most serious. A report issued last summer by the Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to Sunday's Washington Times, "presented evidence that ACORN had engaged in criminal misconduct."

Among the findings, the report said, ACORN:

• Engaged in tax evasion, obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting a cover-up of nearly $1 million embezzled by Dale Rathke, brother of group founder Wade Rathke;

• Committed investment fraud, depriving the public of the right to "honest services," and engaging in a racketeering enterprise affecting interstate commerce;

• Conspired to defraud the United States by using taxpayer dollars for partisan political activities;

• Submitted false filings to the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Department of Labor; and,

• Violated the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act.

Any one of these is a serious allegation. Taken together, they give ACORN most every appearance of being some sort of massive criminal enterprise worthy of a federal investigation of the sort made under the terms of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act—or RICO. In fact the group and its affiliates are currently the target of more than a dozen lawsuits related to voter fraud in the 2008 election alone.

As a result of the increased public scrutiny of its actions, the Obama administration has "severed it ties" with ACORN, at least as far as allowing it to participate in the 2010 Census. The U.S. House and Senate are both voting as fast as they can to cut off federal funding of the group and more than one coalition has been created to ask state legislatures and governors to do likewise. ACORN's response began as a militant defiance of the criticism, likening it to the use of "Willie Horton" in the 1988 presidential campaign.

Except that talking about Mr. Horton, a convicted murderer sentenced to life in a Massachusetts prison without the possibility of parole who walked away from the last of nearly a dozen unsupervised furloughs he had received to commit additional crimes in Maryland, was not a political dirty trick as certain liberals and Democrats continue to insist; he was proof positive that former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis held views about incarceration, crime and punishment that were well outside the mainstream of American thinking. Likewise, the folks at ACORN who think they can mount a racially-tinged, aggressive offense to deflect attention from what is on those tapes are likely to be disappointed.

Glenn Beck: 'John McCain Would Have Been Worse than Barack Obama'

Katie Couric's got an interview with Glenn Beck (via Memeorandum).

I've been inspired by Beck all year, as readers might have noticed. I don't, however, consider Beck a "conservative." He's libertarian, and while I've yet to hear Beck speak much on foreign policy this year, I'd be quick to disagree with him if he started to sound like Ron Paul or the idiot "paleocons."

I mention this especially with reference to Peter Wehner's essay, "Glenn Beck: Harmful to the Conservative Movement":

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Beck. In the past I assumed he was a typical figure in the pundit and cable-media world. Only recently have I watched portions of his television program, as well as interviews with him, and heard parts of his radio program. And what I’ve seen should worry the conservative movement ....

I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now—and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn’t the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism. At a time when we should aim for intellectual depth, for tough-minded and reasoned arguments, for good cheer and calm purpose, rather than erratic behavior, he is not the kind of figure conservatives should embrace or cheer on.

I omitted some of the passages at the center of Wehner's post, so check that for more substance.

Outside of the hot neocons (VDH, the Kagans, Charles Krauthammer), Peter Wehner's probably my favorite online commentator. This particular essay is bothersome, however. He's coming off like David Frum here, and that's about as bad a put-down one can get these days. Folks need to talk Glenn Beck for what he is: an entertainer and a lightning rod for popular discontent, and he's not hurting conservative by mobilizing the small-government lumpen-electorate (they'll turn out for the GOP). Not only that, right now it's all about the tea parties, the town halls, and resisting the socialist abomination that is the Barack Obama White House. Who's been doing a more thorough job in taking on the ACORN-Democratic-Obama complex? I mean, c'mon give it up for Fox News, where Beck is at the forefront of the conservative/libertarian resistance. Yeah, he's a little far-fetched sometimes, but hardly as bad as the Van Jones-ACORN-NEA edifice that's just now tumbling under its own contradictions. Karl Marx, six-feet under at Highgate, has to be rolling over at that one.

(P.S.: As bad as John McCain was for many conservatives during the campaign, I can guarantee you he wouldn't have been near as bad as Obama - and remember, we'd have Sarah Palin in the vice-president's mansion right now!)

(P.S.S.: Edited.)

'ACORN High School for Social Justice' -- WTF!!

I'm seriously freaking on this one, from Gateway Pundit, "ACORN Community High School: Where Your Child Can Learn Social Change Techniques to Solve Real Life Problems."

Yep, it's true. Following the links we're taken to: "ACORN High School for Social Justice."

And then, a quick Google search turns up this quote, "4 year graduation rate: 41.9%." And "0% white students" attend the school. And according to Inside Schools:

JANUARY 2008 UPDATE: Joseph Parker, principal at the time of Insideschools' visit, resigned in late December after sustained protest from parents, and ACORN, the community group that helped create the school ... they alleged that under Parker's leadership, gang violence went unchecked, students failed to graduate ...

The Inside Schools website is kinda sketchy, but it links to this New York Sun article, "Parents Press for ACORN Principal's Ouster." The piece includes this beauty of a fact:

Morale is so low, the report says, that at last year's graduation the valedictorian, Sharifa Noble, stood up and declared: "ACORN has let me down." The remark prompted a chorus of boos aimed at the principal, Joseph Parker.

Here's the long blurb from the school's website. This is the case for home schooling - I'd never send my children there:

ACORN High School for Social Justice is “A Star that Shines in Brooklyn”. In addition, our school is distinctive because it is:

• One of three community initiated NYC public schools affiliated with the powerful Acorn Organization.
• A Landmark building with turn of the 20^th century neoclassic Architecture which was once a Lowe’s theater where Jackie Gleason (a renowned entertainer) performed.
• The first NYC DOE school to have an Executive Principal.
• The first NYC DOE school to pilot an Icareers Academy.
• Selected as one of a few New York City public schools to become an AVID school. The Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) program is a rigorous college awareness and preparation program for students who will be the first in their families to attend college.
• Success in attracting and keeping teachers from the NYC Teaching Fellows.
• We also include an additional course in Social Justice, a course on the Civil Rights Movement (Sojourner Project), and double periods of English and Mathematics at the 9th and 10th grade levels.
• International Teachers Programs. We now also have a partnership with Columbia University as a site for Peace Corp Fellows to complete their teaching internships.
• Support for the development of our teachers through a unique PD model. All teachers meet for common planning daily. Their assistant principal of supervision attends the common planning sessions at least twice weekly. The school’s schedule was modified to include two preparation periods per day for each teacher instead of one per day which is the norm in most NYC public schools.
• September 2008 will be the launch of state of the art Film/Media and music recording studios that will be centers of premier art programs including a Television Show in collaboration with Entertainers4Education Alliance.
• An emerging honors program including honor level classes, Advanced Placement courses and College Now. We are working on an Associate Degree program as well.
• Unique utilization of technology to deliver instruction and to assess academic performance. All teacehers will be provided with school laptops for use in lesson planning and delivery and they all have access to LCD projectors and smart boards. A writing lab is planned for school year 2008-2009.
• Annual College Tour to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). We will be initiating Ivy League and baby Ivy League college tours as well. 98 students participated in this year’s tour.
• Implementation of an excellent library program that will bring community members, actors, singers, and leaders into the building to speak with students and to participate in events such as Black History Month, Hispanic History Month, Poetry Month and Women’s History Month.
• A diverse after school program, in collaboration with our Community Based Organization, Acorn, comprised of academics, sports, the arts, and community service experiences for our students.
• A school’s website including WebPages for all teachers to promote greater communication with students and parents.
• Administration of the Acuity periodic assessments in English and Mathematics.
• Students will have access to the world of work through partnerships with law firms and corporations through participation in our Legal Careers Academy or Icareers Academy.
• A number of sports teams including a winning PSAL Boys Varsity Basketball Team, going as far as the PSAL Division B championship this school year. Our students participate in other PSAL varsity sports as well as intramurals.
• Strong student government with a council in each cohort. The council is comprised of elected officials and other student leaders from the cohort who act as peer mentors for other members of their cohort.
• The Asset Program, a community based organization, is supporting this endeavor. Students are given opportunities to participate in all aspects of the school including working here as members of the Ladies and Gentleman Club.
• Great results with the use of School Island. School Island is a web based program that allows teachers to post assignments on line for students to complete.

What is 'Extremist Rhetoric'?

Melissa Clouthier put up an interesting post this morning at Right Wing News: "Violence Serves The Left." But it wasn't the discussion of political violence that caught my attention (although Melissa's right to note the total hypocrisy in leftist slurs of tea-partiers as "violent" mobs). No, I really liked this section asking, "What is 'extremist rhetoric'":

What I wonder is this: What is “extremist rhetoric”? Ironically, almost anything Glenn Beck says is viewed as “extremist rhetoric”. In fact, anyone who disagrees with neo-liberal orthodoxy is considered an extremist.

Carrie Prejean? Extremist gay hater.

Glenn Beck? Extremist Obama hater.

Rush Limbaugh? Extremist race baiting hater.

Mark Steyn? Extremist Muslim hater.

Ann Coulter? Extremist self and women-hating hater.

Michelle Malkin? Extremist illegal alien hater.

Glenn Reynolds? Extremist Tea-Party loving hater.

When center-left Obama-voting Democrats like Ann Althouse are accused of hating, really who isn’t a hater?

I’m sick of the p.c. rhetoric police. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, and all the whacked out lefty pundits can say anything. The word is a tool and a sword. They wield it with impunity and want the conservatives to stay muzzled.

So, somewhere between psychotic, crazy loud-mouth libs and meek muzzled, passive, submissive conservatives there’s a balance. Incite violence? No. Stir to positive action, yes.

Yes, violence serves the Left. So does a silent majority. They’ve had it both ways for too long.

So true.

Check Melissa Clouthier's blog as well. Tonight's feature, "Breitbart: NEA Conference Call, Your Tax Dollars, And Artistic Coercion."

Republicans and the Social Media Revolution

Back in February, interestingly, I thought Meghan McCain had a good point when she argued that "Republicans don't get the Internet."

Not any more.

With Americans witnessing the dramatic impact of Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, which along with Fox News has been the main outlet breaking the ACORN prostitution scandal, we're really seeing the power of conservative online politics hitting home. The Washington Times featured an item yesterday describing Breitbart as a "conservative rebel with a cause." And because the leftist press is irked at their comeuppance at the hands of a couple of brilliant young conservatives, they're now sliming James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles like only true dirtbags know how.

That's why I find this piece at the Los Angeles Examiner puzzling, "GOP Fails to Recognize Power of the Internet." The author, Jim Kouri, argues that "Say what you will about the left-wing bloggers and left-leaning Internet web sites, they are a power to be reckoned with, according to a growing number of conservatives." Yet Kouri provides no quotes from conservatives to support the statement.

No matter.

This is something I've been thinking about this last couple of weeks amid the Big Government ACORN rollout. I recall earlier arguments that the party out of power will be most adept at deploying new social media for political action. Daily Kos, once the granddaddy of radical left wing blogs, is now a shadow of its former self. Daily Kos' traffic numbers in 2009 are down substantially. Jon Henke wrote a dramatic post in April comparing Kos' numbers to Michelle Malkin's Hot Air (a difference of 15 million visitors in Hot Air's favor over the March-April timeline). As Henke added then, "I suspect we'll be rediscovering something we had previously learned in the 90's and 00's: the Internet is good for insurgencies and opposition."

This is a good social science topic, by the way. Facebook and Twitter have been driving conservative mobilization all year, and while much of the activism is explicitly non-partisan (protesters are mad at both parties more often than not), events will clearly benefit the GOP when next year's elections roll around. Conservatives not wanting to waste a vote will rally to the Republican banner in the years ahead. And if the GOP doesn't learn the lessons of 2008, when small-government conservatives got pushed aside by the nomination of John McCain, the party may as well sit on the sidelines of power for a couple of more cycles.

An interesting related essay: "The Obama Roadblock: Why He's Sagging Online" (via Memeorandum).

Obama on Letterman: 'I Was Actually Black Before the Election'

I have no plans to watch it, but folks might get a kick out of the video:

Also, at USA Today, "Obama to Dave: 'I Was Actually Black Before the Election'."

White House Sponsors Communist Arts Collective

From Patrick Courrielche at Big Government, "EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda":

Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement

**********

The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable.

But some have claimed that the invite and passages, pulled from the conference call that inspired the article, were taken out of context. Context is what I intend to establish here.

On August 10th, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a conference call with a handpicked arts group. This arts group played a key role in Obama’s arts effort during his election campaign, as declared by the organizers of the call, and many on the call played a role in the now famous Obama Hope poster.

Much of the talk on the conference call was a build up to what the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was specifically asking of this group. In the following segment, Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, clearly identifies this arts group as a pro-Obama collective and warns them of some “specific asks” that will be delivered later in the meeting.

The rest is here. Buffy Wicks, pictured above, is quoted thus: "I’m actually in the White House and working towards furthering this agenda, this very aggressive agenda." The full audio and transcript of the NEA conference call is here. The call is organized and moderated by Michael Skolnik. He identifies himself as a filmmaker and political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons in New York.

Here's a snippet of interest from the transcript:

This is Mike Skolnik. I am based in New York. I am a film maker for the past ten years but currently serve as the political director for Russell Simmons. I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about a month ago in a conversation that was had. We had the idea that I would help bring together the independent artists community around the country. So as we hear everyone's names and locations and companies, this is extremely humbling to be in all your presence on the telephone. It's a remarkable group that is on this phone. I thank you for your time ....

I want to start off by saying a few things ... I heard somebody from Shepard Fairey's team introduce themselves, and I think Shepard and the Hope poster obviously is a great example, but it's clear as an independent art community as artists and thinkers and tastemakers and marketers and visionaries on this call, the role that we played during the campaign for the president and also during his first some odd days of his presidency and the president has a clear arts agenda and has been very supportive of using art and supporting art in creative ways to talk about some of the issues that we face here in our country and also to engage people. And I think all of us who are on this phone call were selected for a reason, and you are the ones that lead by example in your communities. You are the thought leaders.

You are the ones that, if you create a piece of art or promote a piece of art or create a campaign for a company, and tell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be in to; and what's cool and what's not cool. And so I'm hoping that through this group and the goal of all this and the goal of this phone call, is through this group that we can create a stronger community amongst ourselves to get involved in things that we're passionate about as we did during the campaign but continue to get involved in those things, to support some of the president's initiatives, but also to do things that we are passionate about and to push the president and push his administration.

And the first thing that I thought we could all come together on and begin this collective of artists around the country was United We Serve or is United We Serve, and United We Serve is the president's call to the country to get engaged in meaningful community service, and I wanted to give you all the opportunity to hear more about the United We Serve from the folks who are running it as well as hear from the National Endowment for the Arts and Yosi Sergant, who many of us know has been a true champion during the campaign of the arts and as what he's doing over at the National Endowment for the Arts, and how we can all work together to promote and to engage our country in service as well as use art in doing so ....

The passages cited roughly overlap with those that Courrielche has highlighted with yellow and red at the draft.

This report constitutes a crushing idictment of the administration's corrupt propaganda progam. Especially interesting is the mention of Shepard Fairey, the famous communist-propagandist who struck gold with his iconic image of Obama "Hope" during the campaign. Below is Fairey's drawing of communist Angela Davis, who is retired from UC Santa Cruz as a professor in the history of consciousness. The Obama administration's NEA is engaged in the glorification of radical iconography; and we know now that taxpayer funding is supporting the production of this kind of communist-inspired art.

See also, the New York Times, "The Revolution Will Be Illustrated."