Quote of the Day

Janet Hook, who writes politics for the Los Angeles Times, talking about the current extreme unpopularity of Congress:

They are doing a lot of big things, but a lot of people do not like what they are doing. Others do not know what they are doing. And hardly anyone likes the way they are doing it.

"Hardly anyone," Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi must bear much of the responsibility for this situation.

Morris: Obama Incompetent

Dick Morris, writing for The Hill, does a sweeping analysis of all the failed presidents we've had in recent years, and he does it in one paragraph:

Some presidents have failed because of their stubbornness (Johnson and Bush-43). Others because of their character flaws (Clinton and Nixon). Still others because of their insensitivity to domestic problems (Bush-41). But now we have a president who is failing because he is incompetent. It is Jimmy Carter all over again.

It is amazing we have survived that many failed presidents. I can't fault his analysis, however. Here at COTTonLINE we've been comparing Obama to Carter for some months.

Opposite Outcome

I have seen literally dozens of articles bemoaning the Israeli attack on the so-called "Gaza aid flotilla" and a smaller number supporting it. Oddly, some articles expressed surprise that this attack would take place. Really, how could one expect any other response?

Israel lives in a tough neighborhood and does what is necessary to survive: defends itself. You survive in a tough neighborhood by being the toughest dude there, or by joining a tough gang.

For decades Israel's "gang" was the U.S., currently the world's only superpower. Now the U.S. is acting like maybe Israel isn't a member of the gang any more.

Expect Israel to start acting very tough toward its neighbors. The attack on the flotilla is an example. An attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be another such example.

Ironically, by distancing itself from Israel, the U.S. has increased the likelihood of Israeli aggression vis-a-vis their neighbors. I expect this is exactly the outcome the current administration in the U.S. hoped to avoid.

Politics Junkies Alert

Here is an article for the true politics wonk, written by David Catanese in Politico. He looks at possible game changers that could happen between now and the November elections.

I think he leaves out a few I would have added, like the euro collapsing or war on the Korean peninsula, but the ones he does list are good. Still, three months ago who would have imagined a runaway undersea oil gusher?

This column isn't for the political dilettante.

Quote of the Day

Paul Ingrassia, writing for The Wall Street Journal, is mostly talking about the bailout of the auto companies, GM and Chrysler, but then has this trenchant observation about our nation:

America bailed out General Motors, but who will bail out America?

Uh...nobody. Then what happens?

Canada Health Costs Too Much

This Reuters article in Yahoo News reports that Canada is finding their "health care for everybody" model is too expensive to maintain. The U.K. has long since found their National Health Service too expensive.

Health care costs do not seem to be subject to moderation or regulation. Instead, they increase at above-inflation rates year after year in every developed country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has recently passed legislation taking it in the direction of Canada and the U.K. Do you see something wrong with this picture? I sure do.

Dr. K Talks Oil Leaks

Dr. Charles Krauthammer, writing for The Washington Post, makes a great deal of sense about the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the forces which brought it about and the political fallout. For example, he says:

Obama is no more responsible for the damage caused by this than Bush was for the damage caused by Katrina. But that's the nature of American politics and its presidential cult of personality: We expect our presidents to play Superman.

Particularly when the president sets himself up as the guy who can solve all problems.

Read and Be Proud

On the eve of Memorial Day, 2010, a link at RealClearPolitics took me to this column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, by a talented fellow with the unlikely name of Vin Suprynowicz. His title: "The battle that changed everything."

Suprynowicz briefly summarizes the carrier battle of Midway Island in June of 1942. It was the pivotal battle in the Pacific in World War II, and a story the likes of which has only happened a few times in all of human history.

Read it and be thankful for all the brave young Americans who have gone off to war to protect our freedoms. I'll be surprised if you can finish the column without choking up.

Dowd: President Spock Illogical

New York Times Snarkmeister-in-Chief Maureen Dowd has turned on the formerly beloved President Obama. See what she said:

President Spock’s behavior is illogical. Once more, he has willfully and inexplicably resisted fulfilling a signal part of his job: being a prism in moments of fear and pride, reflecting what Americans feel so they know he gets it.

That is right-on snark. The rest of the article continues to beat up on Obama too. Ann Coulter could have written this column (and probably wishes she had done so).

Slate On Target

The online magazine Slate is left-wing and, as such, for readers of COTTonLINE normally not worth reading. Here is an article from Slate by Jacob Weisberg that is relatively on-target.

Weisberg describes recent Republicanism as being more Western than Southern, and I suspect he has that right, pun not intended. This is a liberal looking at modern Republican happenings and making considerable sense.

If you can ignore the final paragraph, the article is worth your time.

Skepticism in South Korea

It turns out about a quarter of South Koreans are skeptical of the findings of an international panel that their warship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo. On the other hand, 76% are not. There are two things going on that can influence this skeptical view.

First, South Korea now has a conservative government after having a more liberal one for several years. Those individuals who supported the liberal government and its openings to the North are likely to see the conservative one as untrustworthy, just as happens here in the U.S. Polls show the young and better educated are more likely to be skeptical, I suspect they are also the more likely to be liberal.

Second, there is a fairly strong human tendency to decide that what we want to be true is in fact true. We see this among liberals in the U.S. and I suppose it is likely to be true among liberals in South Korea. They want relations between North and South Korea to be getting better, so they refuse to accept evidence that moves in the contrary direction, even when it is based in fact.

See this article in Bloomberg for details. I view South Korea's skeptics as being much like our "truthers" and "birthers" or folks who think the CIA, KGB or Mafia killed President Kennedy. That is, they are people who see conspiracies everywhere. Of course, on rare occasions the conspiracy nuts are right.

Affordable Family Formation

Go see this essay by Steve Sailer in his blog VDARE.com about Affordable Family Formation. He identifies four demographic factors that seem to determine voting behavior: the dirt gap, the mortgage gap, the marriage gap, and the baby gap. His statistics are persuasive and fascinating.

As you might guess, states with more developable dirt, lower home prices leading to more affordable mortgages, more married people, and more babies are more likely to vote Republican. Conversely, states with limited developable land leading to higher home prices leading to less affordable mortgages, tend to have fewer people married and fewer children, and they vote Democratic.

He uses these findings to argue that Republicans should attempt to cut off illegal immigration as it causes places where the illegals settle to become more Democratic. Go see his reasoning, it is interesting.

The Recent Solar Minimum

This article in Scientific American summarizes some of the findings presented at the most recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The topic was the solar minimum, the time when sun spot and other solar activity is at a low ebb.

Everyone agrees the most recent solar minimum was the lowest on record. I particularly like the article's conclusion, given by Frank Hill, of the National Solar Observatory:

My main impression of all this is I'm gratified to see that we all agree that this is an interesting minimum. What's not so gratifying is we have no clue why any of these effects are happening.

"No clue" suggests that we be more than a little cautious about solar-influenced climatic predictions such as "global warming" here on Earth.

E Pluribus Unum

See this speech by Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) on YouTube about the subject of illegal immigration, the AZ law concerning it, the inappropriate remarks by President Felipe Calderon of Mexico to the Congress about that law, and the inappropriate response of Congressional Democrats to that speech.

McClintock's quote of Teddy Roosevelt's views of immigration is particularly appropriate. Multiculturalism is not what we are about. It is a great, short speech.

Noonan: Obama is Detached

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan has some trenchant things to say about Obama's performance in light of the BP oil spill. She writes:

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. (snip) He has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

Do you suppose it is because the cultures and people which shaped Obama as he grew up share little with mainstream U.S. values?

The Sestak Dilemma

The normally left-leaning Los Angeles Times editorializes about the alleged White House job offer to Congressman Joe Sestak. The Times believes it needs to be investigated.

It is their reading of federal law that to offer a job to someone to get them to do, or not do, something political is a felony. So, either Dem senatorial candidate Sestak is lying or some Team Obama functionary is a felon.

If it is ever investigated, it will turn out it was all an unfortunate misunderstanding. That is, unless Obama decides it is expedient to throw yet another associate under the bus.

Meanwhile ABC News reports that all 7 Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked Attorney General Holder to appoint a special Prosecutor to look into the Sestak job-offer matter. Anybody wanna bet he ignores them?

Barone: GOP Could Win Congress

Michael Barone, writing for The Washington Examiner, has evidence that 2010 could be an election year like 1994. That year the Republicans took control of both houses of the Congress. His premise:

Usually House incumbents don’t trail challengers in polls at any point in the campaign, because they almost always start off better known. For an incumbent to trail in a poll is a sign of serious danger.

What Barone finds is a number of GOP challengers who, at this point, lead Dem incumbents in the polls. If that sounds like good news, go see his column.

No Longer Rich Enough to Be Stupid

Mark Steyn has written a great column for Macleans, the Canadian equivalent of Time, hence the antique spelling of such words as "favour." There are too many great thoughts to cite here, but I will give you a sample:

Many Western nations are, in any objective sense, insolvent. (For example) the EU’s decision to toss a trillion dollars into the great sucking maw of Greece’s public-sector kleptocracy. It no longer matters whether you’re intellectually in favour of European-style social democracy: simply as a practical matter, it’s unaffordable.

I love lines like "great sucking maw of Greece's public-sector kleptocracy." Steyn gives another example:

In one-sixth of British households, not a single family member works. They are not so much without employment as without need of it.

Who needs to work when someone else will support you? He explains the mechanism documented by B. F. Skinner, among others:

It’s one of the basic rules of life: if you reward bad behaviour, you get more of it.

Go read the article, there is much more to enjoy.

Peters: Treason at the NYT

Our old friend Ralph Peters, who writes for The New York Post, has seen the recent article in The New York Times. This article reports on a memo signed by Gen. David Petraeus authorizing black or clandestine operations in the Middle East. You can read the Times article here. You can read Peters' reaction here.

Peters is mad at the Times for publishing the classified material, and furious at the person who leaked the document to advance domestic partisan goals. He points out that making the document public will cause many innocent people to be killed or tortured, as paranoid regimes imagine them to be a part of these operations.

Peters believes the document was leaked by Team Obama to make it appear that he is doing something about Iran and its nukes. I wonder if it wasn't leaked by pacifists in order to make the operations it specifies so difficult to do as to be infeasible. Whatever, leaking it was an act of treason that, as Peters points out, will never be punished.

When I see this sort of thing happening, I wonder if our nation deserves to survive. We engage in so many self-destructive actions like this one, actions which make us a candidate for the Darwin Award.

CA Worse Than Greece?

See this article in The Daily Caller authored by Gary Shapiro, President and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association. He writes about the current problems facing California, which are manifold, and the ways in which its situation resembles that of Greece.

So much of consumer electronics is (or was) based in California that you can understand his interest. If you care about the Golden State, it is a worthwhile, albeit pessimistic, article.