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The Jihad Is Still Out There

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, October 06, 2010 8:54:04 PM
Times Square bomber Faizal Shahzad gave us all an earful yesterday at his sentencing. It should make your blood run cold, if you were listening. A lot of us weren't.
 
He railed on about some interesting things. Listen to him:
 
"If I am given a thousand lives, I will sacrifice them all for the sake of Allah fighting this cause, defending our lands, making the word of Allah supreme over any religion or system. We Muslims don't abide by human-made laws, because they are always corrupt."
 
"Furthermore, brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the flood that will follow me."
 
"The message is there is only one God, the Lord of the universe; Muhammed, who is the last messenger and prophet. The Holy Koran is the last revelation to mankind, which obligates by its gospel to embrace Islam and become Muslims and save yourselves from the total pain of the last day."
 
I ask you, does this sound like somebody who is open to negotiation, apologia or reasoning?  Like all the 9/11 bombers, he did not come to his radicalism by way of abject poverty. These people are educated, and come from relative affluence. They aren't going away.
 
I understand these are hard times. Unemployment, foreclosure and business downturns do a good job turning one's focus inward. Our President does not have any of these excuses. In fact, he has people paid on our dime to keep him informed, as it should be.
 
And where is he? He "has to have an exit strategy" because "I can't lose the Democratic Party". Excuse me? This is now a political problem?
 
One of the great tragedies of the twentieth century was that, when Saudi Arabia was leading a coalition that was about to deliver us the first OPEC oil embargo, President Nixon was spending his hours wondering how to handle his firing of Archibald Cox- a circumstance HE created. Like Nixon, Obama is staring down a terrorist problem that is not getting better, and he is focusing on it as an obstacle to re-election. Pakistan has allowed NATO's biggest supply route, the Khyber Pass, to become an obstacle course. What are we doing about it?
 
Obama wanted this war. Afghanistan was the "good" war. What the hell is he doing? I wish I could tell you..
 
The people fighting the jihad know exactly what they are doing. In any war, if one side is focused and the other one isn't, what happens next?


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The Tea Party Rules

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, October 04, 2010 10:01:41 PM
This year has been interesting, but it will end up looking like the milquetoast 1950's by the time we all live through next Summer.
 
The coming Republican rout is obvious to everyone. The writing is on the wall even in the West Wing, where some prominent players are moving on to other things and Obama is already trying his level best to signal that his governing style is going to be ameliorated. It won't be in the long run, because neither Obama nor all the "Rules For Radicals" hacks that surround him are about to compromise on the transformation they are all convinced they were born to bring about.
 
My own take right now is the GOP taking at least 45 House seats, and nine Senate seats. These are conservative estimates, based on present rolling poll averages. This will change as November approaches, and not in any way to Obama's liking.
 
Which all means that in one month, the most purely progressive government this country has ever seen will be cast aside, in favor of the most purely conservative government this country has ever seen.
 
The lame duck period will produce nothing. The overwhelming support of independents on Election Day for the newcomers will give political support to using whatever parliamentary procedure that can be conjured up to make Pelosi and Reid's last power days a working vacation. The ones to watch will be the White House and their penchant for Executive Orders when Congress can't muster votes for them.
 
Next year, the Republicans will take office with an agenda and a purpose, but they will be fought every step of the way. They are fighting a coalition of progressives, unions and government employees, most of whom have salaries and pensions on the line. They will be out for blood, and they will have the votes to block everything, especially in the Senate.
 
However, the Republicans all know they were sent there to reform the government from top to bottom. The people that sent them there don't give a rat's patootie which issue has a third rail history. The new majority will know that if they DON'T address these things, they will be thrown out on their butts in two years. They will not have a choice.
 
So, the immovable object will meet the unstoppable force. The Republicans may well run into a wall on most of this. In that case, 2012 will become a call for Tea Party reinforcements.
 
Many people in the media are musing about all this, but are making the mistake of using the past as prologue. 2008 and the housing bust was a game changer. George Bush and Karl Rove came into office as graduates of the 'I saw what they did to us when we shut down the government' school, and understood that many of their supporters, while not enamored of government, also did not have the retirement programs and pensions of the public sector, and maybe didn't mind government lurking about as a silent partner, in case they outlived their 401K's. The stock market roller coaster, the housing bust and the explosion of government spending turned a lot of those people, who now think that Washington D.C. has to be blown up and rebuilt.
 
The Republicans will try. They will have no choice. If they try to compromise, they'll be surrounded by pitchforks and open torches. 2011 will be a wild and crazy time to be alive. Enjoy the show.
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9/11: Now Just Another Part Of The Culture War

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 12:39:58 AM
Those who don't clearly fall on one side or the other in the great debate over the Ground Zero Mosque are wondering what all the blood pressure is about. In New York City itself, there is a good deal of this driven by the fact that there are so many there with friends or relatives who died that day. The farther you go from NYC, the lesser a factor that is.
 
What is driving the debate is that it is a symbol for how the two ends of the American culture war view the war on terror. One side views it as a real and present problem, driven back from our soil by the efforts of our military overseas. The other side views it more as a criminal problem, driven in part by our cultural arrogance and something we may be overreacting to.
 
There was unity on this in the months after 9/11: our country spoke in full throat, looking to lash out against the people who were responsible. I remember a Sunday in late September, 2001, listening to a church Mass end in "God Bless America". Tears were flowing freely- it was a memorable moment. Three years later, many of them couldn't understand why we were fighting in the Middle East. Many of them invested time in lecturing me on how I hadn't "grown past the hate".
 
After 9/11, houses, businesses, cars and people sprouted flags like post-vacation lawn weeds. Then, three months later, I was told that in New York City, people were on the lookout for flag bling that was still a flag, but not quite so obvious, and I knew then that the unity would soon be at an end.
 
It doesn't matter that both sides regard the right to build a religious structure without the interference of government should be regarded as a near absolute. The people that are against it think it primarily as a sensitivity issue, which it's proponents cannot understand, or regard as a pittance compared to the freedom issue. They never will see eye to eye on that, but it doesn't matter.
 
It doesn't matter, because the primary issue is one of trust. The Mosque opponents do not trust the "moderate" Muslims on this, and the proponents do not seem to have a problem with them, or worse- have more of a problem with us. There is no getting around that. The Mosque may never get built, though, because the sensitivity issue in NYC holds the hearts of many who would otherwise be supporters.
 
Here's another side issue that lurks behind this whole thing. The Muslims, like some gangs here (notably the Salvadorian MS-13) have what the law enforcement community calls a violent brand. In other words, a large part of their influence is based upon their reputation for issuing violence or death threats and then acting on them. This is what has the Europeans in such a bind with their Muslim population.
 
Of course, this is old news to anyone following the career of Salmon Rushdie. The scuttlebutt here is of the FBI asking Mandy Norris to "go ghost" with their help, after she drew up the cutest kid style illustrations for a "Draw Mohammed Day" contest, and got the attendant death threats. The Florida Pastor who was planning to burn a Quran on 9/11 got more than his share of threats, too.
 
The point being, this stuff only works if you let it. I am not a fan of burning books, and certainly not religious tomes, but I was thinking, if the book burnings happened in a couple of dozen places at once here, how long would it take the relatively media savvy Muslim extremists to realize that the intimidation wasn't working here?
 
This is just mental amusement at this point, but it is a question we will eventually have to face. And, as long as we have politicos in power whose first inclination is to apologize for our behavior, it will never happen.
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The Tea Party Becomes The Third Party

Posted by Bill Crawford on Saturday, September 18, 2010 10:45:32 PM
This was a very, very interesting week. Even if I were disgusted by all of this (which about half of you reading probably are), I would have to be amazed at the furious turn of events.
 
Rubio was not supposed to come close to Crist in the Florida primary. Then when Crist decided to stay in as an Independent, he was going to siphon enough votes off to kill Rubio anyway. Rubio has a comfy lead in the polls now. Murkowski is going to do the same damned thing to Joe Miller in Alaska. Then there was Rick Lazio being sent packing in NY. And then, Delaware.
 
Christine O'Donnell was an unemployed amateur, they said. Her own party hated her there. Hell, when she won, Karl Rove was allegedly seen beating his forehead against a wall. Castle was supopsed to be a Republican lock, now we'll never get a majority.
 
And if we get a majority, and we have to fight them to stop this insanity, what is the point? The Republican establishment is STILL not getting the point.
 
Here it is, if you're still confused. The Tea Partiers are not rolling because they are a group of Republicans. Or conservatives. They are winning because they have stripped Obama of most of his Independent support over a few simple issues. Between the conservatives and the independents, they are tacitly giving a series of outsiders a chance to take power, using the Republican Party as a convenient vehicle. Why the GOP? Because the Democrats are completely beyond the pale to them.
 
If they take power and end up doing the same-ol, same-ol after a year, they will get tossed on their butts, too.
 
What do they want? Stop the spending. Bring spending levels back to at least 2007 (when the deficit was $160 billion). No cap & trade energy taxes. No tax hikes. No value added tax. Stop the spending. No more stimulus. No more TARP, no more bailouts. Stop the spending. No more earmarks. No more revolving door lobbyists. Defund Obamacare, before it kills us. Stop the spending.
 
If you are on the stump this Fall, and you go along with this, we don't care if you aren't a politician. You don't have to be polished. Your background does not have to be pristine. We are on a precipice, and there isn't time to field a slate of well scrubbed candidates. We'll take what we can get. That is why the hoots about O'Donnel's flaws are falling on deaf ears. I know she isn't perfect. She's better than what has been holding that office for the last thirty years.  Bill Buckley said it best: "I'd rather be governed by 535 people chosen randomly from the phone book".
 
What happens after they get elected, and there is a new majority? Maybe nothing. The opposition is certainly not going to roll over and play dead. But the ranks of the people who fight this will be further decimated in 2012. This is NOT about winning a majority. This is about governing.
 
It's not going to be pretty, and it won't be fun. But they have to try.
 
The things they will attempt have been regarded as the third rail for a long time. But the housing bust, and all the actions of this government that followed were a game changer. They will be supported by people politely holding off the pitchforks, waiting to see what happens. And they will be opposed by a growling, furious, howling mob, many of them with their own "skin in the game"- namely, public jobs, salaries and pensions.
 
2011 will be a howler of a year. Fasten your seat belts, as Betty Davis once said, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
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The State Of Labor

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, September 06, 2010 9:03:51 PM
Labor Day is here, and the White House is doing their level best to play the movement like a violin. My short question is, why bother? The union membership, especially in the public sector, is already scared witless of a Republican majority and will be more than helpful in the next two months with their vote and their money. Why does Obama have to all but announce that they think they can't expand from that, like he did two short years ago?
 
Labor is up against it, and stronger than ever, depending on which side of the canyon you look. In the private sector, union membership is down from a peak of about a third of all workers in 1955 to less than 13% today. In the public sector, membership is 37% and climbing, and the raw numbers are bigger than the private sector for the first time (7.9 mil vs. 7.4 mil).
 
It won't surprise many that I don't hold much for unions. I think that they create an atmosphere that makes it difficult to deal with the unproductive. I think it tends to overprice their workers to the point of market inviability- this is what caused the manufacturing sector to automate in the 1970's. Machine investment was cheaper than continuing to pay the salaries negotiated.
 
In the great American expansion of 1945-73, the pie expanded fast enough to afford all this, but that all died after the first OPEC embargo. Not in the public sector, though. Salaries continue to expand at a rate unknown to the private sector, and it is being noticed by enough people to be a major political issue. The total compensation of the average federal worker is now twice the private sector average.
 
There were obvious and compelling reasons for the origins of unions in the twentieth century. Hell, if I were a contemporary of Sam Gompers, I might be writing as a friend of Labor here. I also understand that in the public sector, measuring performance without the black and white background of profit and loss makes it inordinately difficult sometimes, and there are consequences for that.
 
But there are some governing problems coming, many of them having to do with how we spend money in the public sector and what to do about it. The union answer all too often is to pose raising taxes with "the government needs that money", and in these times, that is a hell of a tin-ear approach to a public debate.
 
The cry right now is that Labor is suffering along with the rest of us, sacrifices have already been made and you need our services. I'd like to see you take that to a flight attendant or airline pilot and make that fly, after all they have been through.
 
Wake up and smell the private sector, folks. If you can't or won't, you deserve what s coming in November, and the two years that follow. You can't walk around with talking point blinders on like that and hope to see otherwise.
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The Dems Dig A "Firewall"

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, September 06, 2010 8:12:26 PM
And now we are on Plan Q. It all makes sense, when you think about where they are. I'll dig into to that later. The first question has to be, why the hell are we here, anyway? What was Plan A?
 
The original Stimulus Bill was meant to follow after all the alacrity of the TARP money being passed out. $787 billion was passed to be sent off to "shovel ready" projects. It was all so immediate, so clear. One problem that ensued was that it didn't take much reading to realize that the bulk of the money was meant to be spent in 2010, not 2009. And not early in the year, but the summer. You know, before the midterm elections. How did they ever think they could be that cynical and not have it be noticed?
 
Another thing that became obvious was that a remarkable number of funds and grant money was aimed at state, county and municipal government entities- who jumped at it because the recession was wreaking havoc on tax revenue and they couldn't print money like the feds. So the stimulus was much more likely to help you if you were a public worker. How did they ever think they could be that cynical and not have it be noticed?
 
Looking at all that, I don't have any wonderment that the ensuing effect on the economy and unemployment was negligible. Big problem.
 
Then there was Plan B. The Dem leadership beat on their newer members with a rubber hose to vote for health care, promising them that when it was finally passed, after four generations of hard work, the public would realize what they had done and fall in line before the elections out of gratitude. Hell, the people would realize that there were no more pre-existing conditions and fall all over themselves thanking you. Problem being, the more that was revealed about the plan and what happened to make it pass, the less popular it got. THAT wasn't supposed to happen.
 
Plan C was to cook the employment numbers with the Census workers. Reports came in from all over the country that they were being hired, trained, laid off and rehired again. The White House telegraphed that the numbersthis spring were going to be encouraging, but by the time they came out, the bulls**t behind them had already come to light.
 
Through it all, all of this year, the polling numbers got worse- for the White House and the Democrats. I've gone on at length here why, the biggest reason being all the things they spent time and energy on while unemployment persisted at historically high rates. By summer,the polling was becoming obviously disastrous. The swing voters that swept them all into office in 2006-08 were all gone.
 
They are past the denial stage now, and are planning to use their present money advantage to find a couple of dozen salvageable swing districts across the country and pour money into them to maintain their precious majority in the House. There are two reasons why it won't work: one, by October, the money will have sniffed out a Republican tidal wave and will try and get their chips down before election- by the week before Election Day, there will be no more Democrat money advantage. Two, money is important, but when you are not being supported by anything besides your core base, chipping away new voters gets prohibitively expensive. Your best chance this late in the game is to find compromising pictures of your opponent and passing them out- a game that the Dems will do their level best to play this October.
 
And here is Obama in Wisconsin on Labor Day, asking for another $50 billion for "shovel ready" infrastructure jobs. Back to Plan A, I guess.
 
I feel for them sometimes. I saw the great GOP immigration schism in 2006 firsthand, and how it served to roll out a red carpet to Democrat majority. I warned them that it was happening, and none of them could see a path to adjustment. If I were a Democrat now, I would feel like Cassandra, howling into the wilderness about impending disaster and having nobody listen.
 
They deserve every bit of it. My encounters with Obama people in 2008 showed me that they were some of the most arrogant, uninsightful and historically ignorant that I ever met. They deserve every bit of what is coming to them.
 
 
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Sarah Palin, The True Maverick

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 8:27:02 PM
Even her detractors grudgingly admit Ms. Palin has a talent. In the last Presidential campaign, she was an advance man's dream: don't bother hawking any seats, just find the biggest arena available and announce when she will be there.
 
And she wasn't a drag on the ticket. Au contraire, John picked up a few close states and stayed competitive in a few others because she was there. His fund raising was in a doldrum until the day after she showed up. McCain lost when the economy went south in September.
 
Anyway, Sarah is some sort of lone wolf adventurer. She lives by her rules. She wants to support the candidates she chooses? Who's to stop her? She wants to continue promoting her book and work as a Fox News consultant? You don't like it? Too bad.
 
Her game is not geared to building a string of winners, either. In fact, her pet candidates are less than even money at this point. She seems to hanker towards people who are nowhere to be seen and drag them into real competition. Then, it's up to them to do something with it. This I've never seen before.
 
This morning was different. The Alaska GOP Senatorial primary was yesterday. The prohibitive favorite was Lisa Murkowski, Senatorial appointee of and daughter of Frank Mulkowski, the Governor who Sarah took down in the bitter GOP Governor primary in 2006.
 
Sarah stayed in until the end on this one, bringing newcomer Joe Miller from nowhere to a probable 5000 vote victory yesterday. That is probably the biggest upset of the year so far. It was the one I least expected.
 
Was it personal for her? Maybe. The Palins and the Murkowskis have not been on speaking terms for a while. The point is, she showed what she could do when she drove for the finish and threw all her chips in. People in both parties have already noticed this.
 
Sarah still has her serious problems. Her negatives are horrendous. For every flyover country type who has a picture in their garage of her dressed in camis and brandishing an M-16, there is an urbanite who thinks the Tina Fey caricature is actually real. They are convvinced Sarah is a combination of George W. Bush's dumb and Newt Gingrich's arrogant. They would all consider quitting their jobs for thrree months to campaign against her, if she ran for President. That is a hard nut to crack.
 
She will run, eventually. When she is older, more nuanced, more willing to take direction from a savvy campaign manager and less likely to fall prey to the soft sexism that still exists here in many that a babe can't also be a leader.
 
In the meantime, she will be a hell of a kingmaker. The debate still ongoing in the GOP between the tea party types and everybody else will be won by the tea partiers- because she will be the wind at their backs. Whether they can govern with their new majority next year is up to them, but if they can, she will be the single biggest force that makes that happen. And there will be debts to pay for that.
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More On The Massacre

Posted by Bill Crawford on Tuesday, August 24, 2010 5:52:47 PM
In 2004, I predicted the Presidential election results within two percent in June. It wasn't because I am especially prescient (I certainly mangled my early predictions four years later), but I recognized some phenomena. The two great values coalitions that we see around us all the time had hardened after 2002, and the number of undecideds in the polling at that point was unusally low. Also, the great X-factor of motivated turnout that often does not become obvious until the last minute was clear to me. The Kerry Democrats had all but announced it to the world that they were going all-out, and Karl Rove's microtargeting efforts to counter were no secret to the GOP. The only surprise left was when the Democrats found out that their turnout efforts were bested. This is the big reason why the Kerry campaign ate dinner on Election Day thinking Bush would concede when the polls closed on the West coast- they had no idea the Republicans could be as good on the street as they were.
 
Well, here we are again. Obama entered the 2008 campaign hoping to create a political transformation, a la Roosevelt in 1933 or Reagan in 1980. Well, they may well do exactly that- but not the way they hoped.
 
Scott Rasmussen has some interesting thoughts on the latest edge of the value clash between the American Hatfields and the McCoys. He says there is an ongoing battle between the political class (or elite) and the mainstream public. The bulk of both parties tend to hold sway with the mainstream, but the people who run the parties tend heavily toward the political class.
 
In the GOP, there is a battle going on between what he calls the K Street (business as usual) Republicans and the tea-party people. The way things are going this summer, it looks like the latter will hold more political jobs than the former, but that remains to be seen.
 
Obama and the Democrats have a huge problem: both sides identify them all with the political elite and big government and even if they wanted to recast their image, they could not do it in two months. This will be their biggest problem at the polls in November.
 
Also, a significant chunk of polling in the last few months has shown a decrease in the number of undecideds. The public is already making up their mind (which is what happened in 2004). Unfortunately for the Democrats, this is not a Presidential election, where the actions, gaffes and announced positions of one person can change fortunes in a week. Anybody who does not understand the power of that should review what happened to John McCain's polling and fund raising the week after he chose Sarah Palin.
 
Further, the "Summer of Recovery" is turning into a graveyard punch line. We've had a few months of bad reports now. Weekly jobless claims, retail sales, international trade and monthly employement reports have all been disappointments. And this week, the numbers on housing starts. This Friday, the 2nd quarter eco growth will be revised down to 1-1.5%. This is not necessarily the start of a double dip recession, but an open debate over that possibility is not something you want happening when you are trying to get re-elected.
 
Yes, the Republicans still have it in their power to screw things up for themselves. But the majority party is not going to change a thing. They all think they are on the right path. They have been waiting their whole lives for this chance, and they are simply doing what they have been arguing at cocktail parties for decades. Who are we to correct them?
 
That also remains to be seen. The interesting part of all this is that what may happen this Fall is that the Progressive movement in the purest state it's ever been seen here will be kicked to the curb, and the Conservative movement in the purest state ever seen here will be bench tested. What happens next will be up to the tea-party types.
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The Coming Electoral Massacre

Posted by Bill Crawford on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 8:41:35 PM
The political situation is quite crazy at the moment. It will get crazier.
 
The Democrats left town this Summer in an adrenaline hurry, fed in July by the Charlie Cook Report that predicted for the first time that the odds were better than even that the Republicans would take back the House this year. Cook at present is holding a bare GOP takover as a baseline, or a best case Democrat scenario.
 
The polling: This is more protracted than any time I've ever seen, including my forensic analysis of the '94 election (my intro to real world polling). It isn't bad enough that almost all of Obama's swing votes from the 2008 coalition he built are stripped away. The internals on these polls are horrific, and getting worse for the Democrats every week. The right track/ wrong track polling, the generic party polling is leaning more towards the Republicans now than it was in October of '94.
 
The conservative backlash: The Tea Party people have had their fill of being called provincial and racist. They all feel like they are living out the first ten chapters of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". They are scared witless at the debt we are running up. The conservative movement that was split in '06 between immigration reform and 'secure the border first' have moved almost entirely into the latter camp. These people are riled as hell, and will turn out like they did in 2004 with little or no prompting this year.
 
The economy: Is going nowhere. Businesses in this country are sitting on more than a $trillion in cash, and they will continue to. They have sat through health care, EPA and Congressional threats over cap & trade and are now awaiting to see what happens in November, then in the lame duck Congressional session following, and then what happens to the Bush tax cuts. Until they see some sort of predictability, they ain't hiring. They will continue to take the employees they already have and work them to death. Unemployment will only get better if more people 55-59 years old give up looking for work and sign up for partial Social Security.
 
Editor's note: the White House is proposing now that this dormant cash be used to "shore up pension funds". Just when you think the white noise insanity is peaking, somebody always speaks up and teaches you another lesson.
 
Obama the suddenly tone deaf politico: Health care was unpopular, but could have been sold better. What added to it's stigma was the impression that it was so important to the political class that they all ignored the unemployment rate all this time. Then he took a 70-30 issue like the Arizona immigration law and turned his Justice Department on them. He sued the State of Arizona. And while the dust on that was settling, Obama takes the NYC mosque issue and makes it national. Nobody asked him to step on that one.
 
This last part is pouring kerosene on the bonfire the Democrats are trying to put out. Many Democrats who won in swing districts in 2006 got a second term in the Obama windstorm two years later. Now they are twisting in hell, trying to explain all the votes the leadership busted them to make last year. This is a hole that only a huge money advantage can dig you out of.
 
The major point being, the phenomenona I see making the polling worse every week are not being corrected. Obama won't shut up. Joe Biden won't shut up. Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters want to have public House Ethics trials a month before Election Day. Chuck Schumer is complaining that the voters are "sour". It can't be that their ideas are unpopular, there must be something wrong with the voters- right?
 
I don't know, folks. That's not in my lexicon of winning friends and influencing people.
 
What it comes down to is that, if this crap continues unabated- if Obama does not get his head out of his butt and start talking less like a Law Professor and more like the man on message from two years ago, this could end up with a net gain of 60+ seats in the House and 12-14 in the Senate. Not since Barry Goldwater valiantly carried his base off the lemming cliff in '64 have we seen such a beating.
 
Well, they earned it.
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Obama's Political Insensitivity

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, August 16, 2010 7:07:19 PM
Obama isn't alone in this disaster. Maxine Waters is fighting for her life in the Hosue Ethics Committee by claiming all of it's investigations are against Black Congressmen at a time when "The Daily Show" runs skits about the race card being "maxed out". And Charlie Rangel, instead of "retiring with dignity" as the party leadership is begging him to do, is not only looking forward to an open Ethics trial a month before Election Day, he tops it off by holding an opulent birthday party for all his party supporters and invites the cameras in.
 
So, Obama decides to replay his career as a Constitutional Law Professor and sticks his two cents into the whole Mosque near Ground Zero debate, when nobody was asking him to. He could have just shut up, and nobody would have been the wiser.
 
No, he had to make it a national issue. Saying what? Nothing really new. I am a limited government conservative, and a libertarian. Telling me that building that Mosque is within their rights is not something I would argue with. That isn't the point. It's about the insensitivity of building it where they want to. Hell, 70% of NYC residents think it is out of line.
 
After the firestorm hit him, Obama backpedaled a bit and said that he was specifically not comenting on the "wisdom" of building it there. My question is, why didn't he add that to his original remarks?
 
I have an idea. I think it is possible that he isn't that politically dense. I think he made this statement at a Ramadan dinner because he still thinks he can talk to these people, and solve the Middle East intranisgence through a diplomatic dance.
 
If that is the case, it is very important to him, because he is sticking to his guns on this, even after he is learning that stepping into the debate like this is making the Democrat election battles a steeper climb this year.
 
If this is the case, for all our sakes, I hope it works. I think hell will freeze over first, and I think optimism like that, in the face of what we are facing is as dangerous as it is ignorant. If I am right, at least there is something there that he is willing to go down in flames with, and you have to admire that.
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The Atomic Bomb

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, August 08, 2010 10:12:38 PM
We have finally sent an Ambassador to the the annual memorial service at Hiroshima. Some sort of non-apology apology, I guess. Many of the countries in the region around Japan are still uneasy about Japan and this subject. Partially because Japan over the years has developed a stronger sence of abject victimhood over the whole thing, and partially because they all have memories of what the Empire did to them all in the fifteen years that preceded us dropping the big ones on them.
 
As time goes by, it becomes harder to see the moment. The moment in the Summer of 1945 was a frenetic one.
 
The war in Europe was over, and the intended target of the A-Bomb (Hitler and Germany) was gonzo. We had already lost 450,000 men in combat. Since we had broken most of their codes, we knew enough from Japan's communication traffic that the military was coming closer every day to actually being the government- meaning no surrender in sight.
 
The upcoming invasion of the Japanese Home Islands in November 1945, followed by the push on to the Tokyo Plain in 1946 (Operation Coronet) was predicted to waste up to a million Americans, and double that for the defenders. That is twice what we had lost in the entire war up to that point.
 
Harry Truman was told that he had two weapons for use, and they would kill up to a quarter million between them (which turned out to be accurate). We were already killing more than that in Tokyo with incendiary bombs.
 
Forensic history tells us that many influential military players in Japan were guessing that, after Hiroshima, we had no more weapons (the process of nuclear fission was not a big secret) and they thought they could recover. Even after Nagasaki three days later, there was a huge debate about what to do next. The Emporer knew that he was the only one who could make everybody involved back down, and he did so a week later.
 
With the luxury of peace, and the passage of years, many here debate the use and necessity of using the two bombs in warfare. I went through that years ago, as every thinking person should. It didn't take long for me to realize that the calculus was clear. The atomic bomb saved more Japanese lives than Americans. War is hell. Fighting it wrong is greater hell.
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A Few Quick Observations

Posted by Bill Crawford on Saturday, July 31, 2010 6:52:05 PM
First off: Shirley Sherrod, beleaguered NAACP speech victim, sues Andy Breitbart for running an edited video of her. The first thing is, if that goes anywhere, Michael Moore had better get a dream team together- he does more chopping than anyone in the business. And his edits do not create a new message by simple omission, they seek to create an entirely new message of Moore's choice. Anyone who doubts this should check out Heston's NRA speech in "Bowling For Columbine" and compare it to the actual transcript.
 
Anyway, Ms. Sherrod has obviously decided that Tom Vilsack at Agriculture, or the White House, who was intimated by any number of people, were not culpable in calling her three times, telling her to pull her car off the road and not getting back in until she resigned. No, this was obviously done by Breitbart, who must have had pictures of Vilsack in his magic bag. This is sort of like getting hit by a drunk driver and deciding that the car manufacturer is the problem. This is also troubling in that the White House shows such a thin skin towards thier critics in general, and Fox News and Glenn Beck in particular. If you want anything done in the White House, you should never let them know what your buttons are.
 
Thing two: Maxine Waters is joining Charle Rangel in the list of people their own party can no longer avoid ethics trials with. This, I guess, is Pelosi "draining the swanp", as discussed in 2006. Nancy, get with the program. Do it the way Harry Reid does it: if you have a Senator who buys a home and property at outrageous rates, brokered by a felon, or gets his Wife's salary tripled in a year by getting grants for her hospital, get him the hell out by getting him to run for President and move the problems to another branch of government.
 
Thing three: has anyone else noticed that Obama's Cabinet members (and other West Wing employees) are referred to by this President as "my"? As in "my Secretary of State", not "THE Secretary". I've gone on here before on Obama's narcissism, so none of this surprises me. I guess it's just a matter of time before he starts referring to himself in the third person.
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The Race Question Never Goes Away

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, July 26, 2010 10:19:33 PM
We all seem to be looking for the "teachable moment" on this, and we never seem to find it. The left uses it as a sledgehammer, the right uses it as a policy scare tactic, and the two sides never seem to meet.
 
In North Carolina, Wake County and it's new School Board keep having the issue shoveled at them, as if parents tiring of having their children used as diversity experiments was akin to wanting to raise segregation anew.
 
John Edwards had it partially right: there are, indeed, "two Americas". But the two are separated by values more than anything else.
 
If I were a Black person, and I grew up with single parent families, graduation rates, crime rates and unemployment well off the national norms, I can't say with any certainty that I wouldn't reach adulthood wondering if life's deck were stacked against me.
 
What is happening is tragedy, and both sides have solutions, based on their values. I grew up colorblind, as many of my generation did, but this tragedy doesn't allow the issue to pass. My problem is, when I do raise the issue, all too often, I am told I am racist, and the discussion ends, You see, I have no way of proving my state of mind, so there is no use talking.
 
That is the part of the national discussion that turns the subject into the equivalent of spending the afternoon getting my teeth drilled. So, where do we go from there? Look at Wake County: get out the vote, get your politicians in place, ignore the protesters the best you can, and drive forward with your policy changes.
 
None of which helps foster constructive discussion. I have it easy there, I don't think there is much possibility of any constructive discussion, because of the gap in values. So many out there hope for more, and get thrown off the cliff with regularity.
 
I am an analyst first, and I like to think I have the center of the problem pinned: it all starts with so few families out there with Fathers present. Single parent families not only bring more poverty, but they create all sorts of problems with misguided youth- especially with young males. If your solution is to throw money at the problem, there isn't enough money out there (the Great Society should have taught us all that), and it doesn't do a thing to fill the development issues stemming from missing Fathers.
 
You want to talk? Let's start there. The problem is, the Black community takes this as a form of value indictment, and then constructive discussion ends again.
 
The pity is, I don't think this will get anywhere close to solved in our lifetime.
 
Part of the Obama mystique in 2008 was that he presented himself as post-partisan on race. The notion that was passed around was that he was basically saying: hey, one of the worst issues we have in front of us is race, and I've got that covered. Imagine what I can do with everything else? It was a romantic thought for the electorate, and when stubborn mules like myself asked how he could do all that when he hung out in a church for two decades pastored by a Black Nationalist, I was accused of throwing buckets of cold water on everybody.
 
So, here we are. I am still color blind. Those who agree with me on my core vaules take that as a given. Those who disagree all too often think it is an impossibility. Where do you want to go from here?
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Does Anybody Out There Have A Plan?

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, July 25, 2010 7:52:45 PM
In 1994, Newt Gingrich and the close ring aroud him that would eventually become his GOPAC stable had a national plan for local elections. They were looking to turn Tip O'Neill's "all politics is local" saying on it's ear. In mid-October of that year, one of Newt's advisors reeled off a list of poll numbers in almost all of the contested CD's and told him he was going to pick up over 50 seats and should prepare to be Speaker of the House.
 
In 2006, Rahm Emanuel and his DCCC came up with a national plan for augmenting their herculean fund raising efforts with a series of Dem candidates for swing districts whose positions on many issues were indistingishable from their Republican opponents.  By late October, they pretty much knew they were going to end up with a 25 seat majority.
 
This year, nobody seems to have a plan. Nobody. The Republicans are still looking for a way to unify their efforts to take advantage of the disastrous situation their opponents are in.  The Democrats are in a bad way. They are not only reeling and punch drunk, the White House and Congress seem to both be hoping for a solution from the other side of the hill.
 
The Republican's fallback position is that their opponents have dug such a hole for themselves that polling is telling them that retaking the House is a good bet, and the Senate looks more competitive every week, This is folly, but there is no better answer out there...yet.
 
The Democrats are in hell. They got elected in such numbers in 2008 that their base, frustrated as anything after years of struggle, decided (correctly) that they never would have a better shot at passing the big items on their agenda.
 
And then last year happened. Health care, probably their most ambitious agenda item, took up the whole year, tore up many of the swing Congressmen the DCCC took the time to recruit, alienated them with Seniors and swing voters and almost didn't pass, save for the efforts of some openly craven last minute deals.
 
The alienation turned out to be deeper than first thought. There were those who thought the health care bill was a mistake, there were more that were annoyed that all that time and effort went into it while the unemployment rate was stuck on double what it was in 2007.
 
The White House is centered right now on a series of moves to whip up the enthusiasm in their base- this is at the heart of their open opposition to Arizona's immigration law, and their dropping of the Justice Department investigation of voter intimidation in Philadelphia in 2008. This was never meant to be a stand alone strategy. Obama's people are smart enough to know that the last national example of just whipping up the base was the magnificent showing of Barry Goldwater in 1964.
 
There is a movement afoot in the Democrat party to raise the stakes in the negative campaign game, and this will be a dismal enough year where that will probably come to pass. They are smart enough to know that opposition research doesn't work on it's own, either.
 
So there is where it becomes obvious. They don't know what else to do. Neither does Congress, or the DCCC, but they are doubly annoyed at the White House. First, they can't fathom how smart Rahm was four years ago, and now he is playing the village idiot. Second, they feel that the White House may be hedging it's bets, knowing full well that if the Republicans take back the Hill, Obama will be the only player left taking credit for what has been voted on already, and will be able to run to the center against them in 2012, hoping for the same sort of game plan that got Clinton his second term in 1996.
 
This is all piled on to the thinking in Congress that Obama pushed them to suffer unpopular votes on health care, financial reform and stimulus funding, and left them hanging out to dry to face town hall meetings and the worst campaigns of their careers.
 
The end result of all this is that Obama, already getting a rep in his own party as a man looking out for himself first, will be someone with no friends in Congress at all next year. Then what?
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Don't Argue With A Lawyer

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, July 19, 2010 9:05:08 PM
Here's a ripe one from the great health care debate: Obama said many times that "if you like your Doctor, you can keep them". It was never supposed to be an inhibitor of consumer choice. Now, in an effort to stay in business in the face of mandated services (most notably insuring dependent children to age 26 and pre-existing conditions), many insurance companies are looking to follow pieces of the old HMO playbook and give you a Doctor menu to choose from. I guess you can only "keep" the ones they want you to.
 
Here's another one: the health insurance purchase mandate "is not a new tax". Oh? When the government decrees that I am to purchase something and uses the IRS for enforcement, what exactly is it? I got raked over the coals on this one by quite a few people. Well, the government is being sued over the Constitutionality of said mandate, and in counter argument, they have distilled it down to the concept that is is, indeed, Constitutional because it is a tax, and therefore falls under the Commerce Clause.
 
I won't even go into the two-faced implications of what this bodes to all the arguments that were dumped on us during last year's holiday season about how all of this "would not add one dime to the deficit". In fact, the claim was that, over it's first ten years, it would actually pay the deficit down.
 
This is moral relativism at work again, folks. Say what you need to say, and if you have to contradict yourself tomorrow, who gives a crap? You've got to look at the big picture, right?
 
Obama is an ambulance chaser. What is the old saying? If you have the truth, beat on the truth. If you only have a case, beat on the law. If you have neither, beat on the table. I'm getting tinnitus from all the table stomping.
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