A fascinating account of Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno’s role in advocating the surge. Someone will have to do a postmortem on why it is that the joint chiefs are, to be blunt, wrong so much of the time. More often than not they are resistant to change and lack strategic imagination. Smart decisions seem to happen in spite of them, not because of them.
Not as popular as he used to be: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index for Sunday shows that 36% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing as President. Twenty-five percent (25%) Strongly Disapprove to give Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +11. . . One week ago today, 44% Strongly Approved and 23% Strongly Disapproved to give Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +21.” His overall popularity is now 59%, the first time its been below 60%.
But Hamas’s polling trend is even worse.
Sen. Arlen Specter pens a pathetically weak and defensive self-justification for his support of the stimulus plan. Without it there will be no money for Title I schools! Really? None. And through no other mechanism, mind you. And they just have to do something! (Why not something better?) I find it hard to believe he won’t see a primary challenger at this rate.
Robert Stacy McCain argues the Senate stimulus plan, like the House one which preceded it, is “nothing but Keynesian theory in postmodern drag, elegantly costumed by the Orator-in-Chief with a lot of glittering generalities about ‘modernizing our health care system…21st century classrooms…and end[ing] the tyranny of oil in our time.'” Yeah, but the Senate moderates are cheap dates, so they fell for it.
But now we hear: “The Obama administration’s economic stimulus plan could end up wasting billions of dollars by attempting to spend money faster than an overburdened government acquisition system can manage and oversee it, according to documents and interviews with contracting specialists.” Gosh, who knew? (Shouldn’t those flinty-eyed Maine senators be concerned about that sort of thing?)
If Meet The Press is ever going to be watchable David Gregory has got to stop saying “right.” (Princess Caroline taught us, you know, those verbal tics are a killer, right?) Yes, intelligent follow-up questions would help too — like when a guest asserts the surge “failed politically” or “Iran is the biggest beneficiary” of the war, which are statements at odds with much of the available evidence. Is this really what NBC wanted? (The viewers are unimpressed as well, right?)
The Commander of the U.S.S. Cole is not pleased with President Obama.
Less Time? Maybe it and OpinonWeek can just publish annually and save us all the bother of frisking them the other eleven months of the year.
Wasn’t Obama’s election supposed to change the way the world regarded us and open an entire new era in international diplomacy? Europe didn’t get the memo: “Biden did not return to Washington with any intriguing public promises of new help in Afghanistan from European leaders, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, or on stopping Iran’s nuclear program from Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov.” But just wait until Obama unleashes his “star power” in the Muslim world — that’ll do the trick.
Biden says “I never say anything wrong.” Let’s hope this was self-deprecating humor and not evidence that he is entirely divorced from reality.
With the Iranian satellite launch, Obama’s rhetoric from the campaign on missile defense will be tested. “Friend and foe alike are trying to take the measure of Mr. Obama, and to test him. Mr. Obama made the nurturing of U.S. alliances a major campaign theme, and, along with trade, the missile defense pact with Europe is the first test of whether he meant it.”
The CBO predicts the recession will be over by the end of 2009 — without the stimulus plan. And the added debt will slow our rate of growth in the long term. So why are we doing this again?
