Articles of Interest 4-20-08
199 Days until Election Day
MORNING UPDATE:
We finished up a long day at the Lapeer County Lincoln Day Dinner last night. Special thanks the District Chairman Randy St. Laurent and County Chair Karen Mersino for doing a great job! Congresswoman Candice Miller lead the event as the MC…boy, I wish we had more members of Congress like her in Washington!
The State Committee meeting ended yesterday afternoon with a united front heading out into the upcoming election, committed to electing John McCain as our next President and turning Michigan “red”.
We are excited about our Congressional candidates, Supreme Court Justice Cliff Taylor, regaining the House, county commissioner prospects and the various statewide board seats. For a list of our board candidates, please scroll down.
Special thanks to our statewide candidates Torion Bridges, Lisa Bouchard, Jasmine Ford, John LaFond, Carl Meyers and Richard Zeile who joined us Friday night at Pizza and Politics as well as our U.S. Senate candidate Jack Hoogendyk who addressed the state committee Saturday morning. What a great team!
THE REST OF THE STORY:
- Here is a listing of all the “announced” candidates for the nomination for various board seats in alpha order.
University of Michigan
Susan Brown
John LaFond
Carl Meyers
Michigan State University
Lisa Bouchard
Jasmine Ford
Doug Koester
Scott Romney (incumbent)
Wayne State University
Akindele Akinyemi
Torion Bridges
State Board of Education
Mike Reno
Richard Zeile
Saul Anuzis
STATE STORIES
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/BUSINESS06/804200667
New tax shocks business owners
Change costs them thousands more; some could leave state
BY JOHN GALLAGHER
April 20, 2008
Wayne Bronner, president of Michigan's iconic Bronner's Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, doesn't feel much Christmas spirit these days for the new Michigan Business Tax. Compared with what his company paid under Michigan's hated Single Business Tax, Bronner's will pay about 500% more now under the new Michigan Business Tax, a supposed improvement over the SBT that took effect Jan. 1. The increase includes a surcharge approved late last year so the state wouldn't go broke. The shock to businesses looking at their new tax liability could reopen the political debate over the state's business tax system and, even more broadly, Michigan's budget and fiscal policies as a whole. "We've always been more than willing to pay our fair share of taxes here," Bronner said. "But it seems like a disproportionate amount has hit industries like us."
http://www.mlive.com/news/citpat/index.ssf?/base/news-24/120859950729880.xml&coll=3
Fund lets undertaxed write checks to state
Kristin Longley
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Feeling extra generous toward the state of Michigan? A Grand Rapids-area lawmaker is proposing a law that would allow state residents to pay extra taxes if they feel they're not being taxed enough. Taxpayers would be able to write a check out to ``State of Michigan, General Fund'' and send it to the state's Treasury department, according to a news release from state Rep. Glenn Steil Jr., R-Cascade Township. ``The problem in Lansing isn't a revenue problem -- it's a spending problem,'' he said. ``If people want to support wasteful government spending, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?'' Steil said he has heard from ``big government interest groups'' and others who complain they are not paying enough taxes. ``If they want to pay more, this will let them,'' he said. ``I just don't want the rest of Michigan's taxpayers to be forced to support the reckless spending habits of Lansing through increased taxes.''
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/OPINION01/804200311/1007/OPINION
Proposed energy bills are unfair to customers
The Michigan House has adopted legislation that shifts too much of the risk of investing and managing an electrical utility to consumers. That's unfair.
Detroit News
Sunday, April 20, 2008
This state's utilities have chafed under Michigan's partial deregulation of the market for electricity. And they have a point. Current law creates a disincentive for the utilities to invest in new power plants because they have no way of predicting their customer base. Those plants will be sorely needed by Michigan in coming years, and changes are needed in regulation to encourage their construction. But this legislation goes too far. It limits competition for providing electric power, reduces the amount of oversight on electricity rates provided by the state Public Service Commission and allows utilities to impose rate increases on customers to finance new plants before they're completed. Pending legislation also requires power companies to produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2015. About 3 percent of power now comes from such sources.
http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-28/1208578820275090.xml&coll=7
Insurance overhaul intensifies
Saturday, April 19, 2008
BY STEPHANIE ESTERS
KALAMAZOO -- A plan to overhaul how Michigan residents buy health insurance for themselves took another turn Wednesday, when a state senator made available a third proposal to try to sort out the state's system. The original proposal was brought by Blue Cross Blue Shield and introduced into the state House last fall. In October, the House approved the Blues' proposal -- called the Individual Insurance Market Reform -- and the four bills moved to the Senate's Health Policy Committee. A central feature of the Blues' plan is the creation of a high-risk pool for the difficult-to-insure, a pool the insurer proposes would be supported by all the state's insurers. A month ago, state Sen. Tom George, R-Texas Township, introduced a counter proposal to the Blues' plan that primarily did not endorse the Blues' high-risk pool plan, but allowed for a Blues' subsidiary to sell other types of insurance if it made a one-time payout to the state of $100 million.
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/BUSINESS06/804200579
Doctor shortage ahead
With many planning to retire, report says state will have 4,400-physician deficit by 2010
BY PATRICIA ANSTETT
April 20, 2008
Dr. Howard Dubin usually sends flowers to his patients when they are hospitalized. It prompts their roommates to ask: "Why does your doctor send you flowers and mine sends me bills?" he said. As much as he loves medicine, Dubin, 69, wants to retire. But in the two years he has been looking, he hasn't found anyone to take over his solo practice in northwest Detroit and Madison Heights. "My patients are important to me," said Dubin, a native Detroiter and internal medicine specialist. "I want someone who has the same interest, commitment and passion" to run the practice. All over Michigan, communities and neighborhoods are confronting similar problems, as the impact of a pending doctor shortage begins to roll through the state.
Detroit Public Schools enrollment drops 10 percent
4/19/2008, 9:15 a.m. EDT
The Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — Enrollment in the state's largest school district dropped by nearly 12,000 in the past year. The Detroit News reports Saturday that the 10 percent drop will cost the Detroit Public Schools about $90 million next year in state aid. The district will receive funding for 106,485 students based on state-audited enrollment numbers obtained by the newspaper. District spokesman Steve Wasko notes that the district lost fewer students in the 2007-08 school year — 11,908 — than the 12,325 it lost the year before.
Detroit mayor: "I am being punished by my God"
4/19/2008, 4:01 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who is facing charges stemming from a text-messaging sex scandal, says he is "being punished by my God." The Detroit News reports Kilpatrick addressed a mostly male crowd of several hundred people on Saturday at Fellowship Chapel Church in Detroit. Kilpatrick told the crowd: "I'm not being whupped by the devil, I am being punished by my God. I know that my disobedience put me in the situation I am in." His address was part of a Detroit Manpower Movement event aimed at getting more black men involved in mentoring programs, neighborhood patrols and other volunteer efforts. The mayor and his former chief of staff face perjury and other charges stemming from their testimony during a whistle-blowers' trial last summer.
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/BLOG25/80418062/1068/OPINION
More mayoral nonsense
Detroit Free Press
April 20, 2008
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick just can't stop with the absurdities. Friday at the Politics and Pancakes forum, hizzoner said he shouldn't resign because there's a "danger of unplugging" the charged momentum he has started for the city. In other words, he really IS bigger than the city and it's interests. And if he goes, so does Detroit's future. Recalcitrant arrogance has rarely seemed so brazen. Kilpatrick pointed out that if he steps down, City Council President Kenneth Cockrel would become mayor. Then after 90 days, there'd be an election during which someone could beat Cockrel. That person would have to stand for re-election again in November 2009, and could lose. "You could have four mayors in 15 months in a city and state that’s in the worst economic condition," Kilpatrick said. "But now, we’re on solid financial footing and we’re not facing receivership."
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080419/POLITICS01/804190422
Michigan Democrats pick delegates
Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau
Saturday, April 19, 2008
ROMULUS -- Sen. Barack Obama's supporters appeared to fall short of capturing all the 36 uncommitted delegates chosen Saturday during Democratic congressional district conventions across the state. In three Southeast Michigan districts, activists supported by Michiganders for Obama, the Illinois senator's ad hoc organization in the state, lost out to union-backed candidates, said Christina Montague, the group's state coordinator. Elsewhere across the state, the Obama group's appeared to fare well, she said. Party members gathered at the 15 conventions to choose 83 delegates and 15 alternates to the Democratic National Convention, despite the controversy over Michigan's Jan. 15 primary.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080419/METRO/804190419/1022/POLITICS
Anuzis: Michigan Republican Party finances not in trouble
Charlie Cain / Detroit News Lansing Bureau
Saturday, April 19, 2008
LANSING -- Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis insisted Saturday that despite some cash-flow issues, the party is on sound financial footing and will wrap up this year's election cycle with zero debt. "We filed our latest financial report on Friday which showed we had $252,949 on hand," Anuzis said. The party's finances were discussed behind closed doors among the 116 members of the GOP's State Central Committee, who met at a regularly scheduled meeting Saturday morning at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Lansing. A Friday Detroit News story outlined concerns by some party members over six loans the state GOP took out last year totaling nearly $240,000.
Dalai Lama kicks off weekend talks in Michigan
4/19/2008, 4:23 p.m. EDT
By JEFF KAROUB
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — The Dalai Lama on Saturday encouraged people gathered at the University of Michigan to preserve their own religious traditions while respecting others with differing beliefs. "As you know, I always believed since all different traditions have the same potential to bring inner peace, inner value ... it is important to keep one's own tradition," he told about 7,500 people at Crisler Arena at a two-hour morning Buddhist teaching session on "Engaging Wisdom and Compassion." It was the first of four weekend lectures — two on Saturday, and two planned for Sunday. The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said he learned about Islam, Christianity and Judaism through personal contact and he has a "genuine admiration and respect and appreciation for those traditions." During both the morning and afternoon sessions, a hush fell over those at the basketball arena as the Dalai Lama walked onto the main floor stage
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/BLOG2503/80418068/1068/OPINION
Shrink Detroit?
Stephen Henderson
April 20, 2008
In my column today, I argue that to survive, Detroit has got to get more compact, and more efficient. While we typically focus on the city's population loss in terms of raw numbers, my column looks at it in terms of density. Since 1970, the number of sparsely-populated census tracts has more than tripled. So what's the solution? I say we've got to start emptying out some huge areas of the city, and encouraging people to relocate into more densely populated neighborhoods. That makes the delivery of city services more efficient, and effective, and eases the strain of servicing 139 square miles of landscape that is just not that densely packed anymore. The question is whether it could ever be done - here, or anywhere else. Politicians hate confronting thorny issues of condemnation and relocation, and the costs could be quite high if the city were to truly attempt to re-purpose large swaths of land.
http://www.mlive.com/news/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/news-27/1208587249228420.xml&coll=2
City Council to discuss proposal for backyard hens
Permits could be granted to Ann Arbor residents
Ann Arbor News
Saturday, April 19, 2008
On Monday, Ann Arbor's elected officials will discuss City Council Member Steve Kunselman's proposal to allow backyard chickens. Keeping chickens in the city limits is illegal under current city ordinances. The 3rd Ward representative's proposal would allow up to four hens; no roosters. City residents would need a permit to keep poultry. They also would be subject to noise laws that can lead to a fine if there's noise that disturbs neighbors between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. The proposal would also prohibit chicken slaughter and create standards for the location of chicken coops. In addition, the proposal stipulates that nothing in the local ordinance would keep the city or a third party from bringing a nuisance action. The proposed change would not supersede any private deed or platt restrictions, City Attorney Stephen Postema said.
Watching wolves, moose — and the heat
4/19/2008, 7:45 a.m. EDT
By JOHN FLESHER
ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK, Mich. (AP) — Ignoring our observation plane circling above the frozen Lake Superior wilderness, the eight gray wolves seemed as harmless as your beloved pooch cavorting with its pals in the yard. Trotting along Siskiwit Bay, they playfully nipped and pawed each other, pausing occasionally to roll in the snow. But then the alpha male and female moved purposefully away from the shore. They passed through a clearing and plunged into thick woods, the others strung out behind. They had eaten little for three days. Now they needed to hunt. A mile northwest, a moose calf lumbered amid fragrant evergreen stands, nibbling sprigs of balsam fir. It was unaware that the pack, guided by a remarkably acute sense of smell, was closing in.
Boy, 13, helps rescue grandmother after oxygen tank fire
4/19/2008, 8:46 a.m. EDT
The Associated Press
UNADILLA TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A 13-year-old boy helped save his paternal grandmother after her oxygen tank caught fire. Dylan Dyer was home sick from school Tuesday when the fire broke out in Livingston County's Unadilla Township, about 50 miles west of Detroit. He called 911. After police arrived, Dylan helped him carry his 57-year-old grandmother Geraldine Dyer away from the house, which was engulfed in smoke. She was hospitalized Friday in Ann Arbor in fair condition with burns on an arm and leg. Dylan says: "I feel good because I got her out." The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus of Howell and The Detroit News report the fire destroyed his family's home.
NATIONAL STORIES
McCain Camp Planning to Widen the Battlefield
By MICHAEL COOPER
April 19, 2008
ARLINGTON, Va. — Senator John McCain’s political advisers said Friday that they believed his potential appeal to independents could make him competitive in up to two dozen tossup states, twice as many as Republicans seriously contested in the 2004 presidential race. The campaign is working to expand Mr. McCain’s electoral map by employing an unusual, decentralized structure in which it will dispatch 11 regional campaign managers across the country, assigning some to traditional closely fought states like Ohio and Florida, others to states they hope to pick up, like Minnesota, and a couple to some less common targets for Republicans, including New Jersey. The McCain campaign, which won the primaries on a shoestring budget, is staffing up now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9718.html
Obama's secret weapon: the media
By JOHN F. HARRIS & JIM VANDEHEI
4/18/08 7:05 PM EST
My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate. Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance? Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining. That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans — some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places — who are doing the whining. The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/OPINION01/804200302/1007/OPINION
Obama should talk to some engineers
Nolan Finley
Sunday, April 20, 2008
If you're a Washington politician or environmental know-it-all, or both, improving the efficiency of America's automotive fleet is as simple as waving a regulatory wand. Pass a mandate and -- poof! -- Detroit magically begins rolling gasoline misers off its assembly lines. During last week's Democratic presidential debate, Sen. Barack Obama continued his naïve scolding of automakers, urging them to embrace the challenge of reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gases. Too bad Michigan isn't on Obama's campaign map. Had the candidate stopped by Cobo Center in Detroit last week, he'd have witnessed an automotive industry furiously at work to meet the biggest engineering challenge in its history: pushing the average fuel economy of its vehicles to 35 miles per gallon in 12 years. I visited the Society of Automotive Engineers convention to talk to the folks who will have to put wheels beneath the arbitrary fuel economy numbers the regulators pulled from thin air.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/the_rules_change_for_obama.html
The Rules Change for Obama
By Michael Barone
April 19, 2008
Barack Obama seemed puzzled. Angrily puzzled. The apostle of hope seemed flummoxed by the audacity of the question. At the April 16 Philadelphia debate, George Stephanopoulos, longtime aide to Democratic politicians, was asking about his longtime association with Weather Underground bomber William Ayers. The Weather Underground attacked the Pentagon, the Capitol and other public buildings; Ayers was quoted in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001, as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough." It was at Ayers' house that Obama's state Senate candidacy was launched in 1995; Obama continued to serve on a nonprofit board with Ayers after the Times article appeared. Obamaites live-blogging the debate were outraged. The press is not supposed to ask such questions. They are supposed to invite the candidates to expatiate on how generous their health care plans are. Or to allow them to proclaim that "we are the change that we are seeking." Or to once again bash George W. Bush.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/OPINION03/804200305/1007/OPINION
If Obama quacks like an elitist ...
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Kathleen Parker
Barack Obama seemed to have survived the blasphemous rants of his preacher and remained relatively untarnished by the perceived dissatisfactions of his privileged wife. But he may be less lucky with remarks he made recently about embittered, small-town Americans, who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Those words now cling to Obama like Styrofoam packing peanuts. The more he tries to brush them away, the more they seem to burrow into the American psyche. Being effete comes naturally to Democrats these days, though compared to Obama, Hillary Clinton looks like a mud-bogger from East Texas. Especially when she's slamming down a shot of Crown Royal, as she did recently at Bronko's Restaurant in Crown Point, Ind.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/OPINION03/804200307/1007/OPINION
Snob-ama reflects a bipartisan problem
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Michelle Malkin
The odor of elitism is like onion breath: It's quick to acquire, hard to mask. Try as he might, Barack Obama cannot camouflage the political stink he exhaled when he dissed small-town Americans as "bitter" Neanderthals "clinging" to their guns, faith and belief in strict immigration enforcement. It wasn't the first time the effete Snob-ama revealed himself. In Philadelphia, he passed up the hometown cheesesteak -- gloppy, artery clogging and blue-collar (yum!) -- for a nibble of Spanish-imported, $100/pound ham. In Iowa, he moaned to voters about the price of arugula at Whole Foods market. (Fun fact: There aren't any Whole Foods markets in Iowa.) And at an Altoona bowling alley, he couldn't even score his age. Superficial but telling glimpses of a condescending core. Obama is reportedly flummoxed that his remarks have been interpreted as arrogant. After all, he was a "community organizer" who came from a single-parent home!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/politics/20donor.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Facing Obama Fund-Raising Juggernaut, Clinton Seeks New Sources of Cash
By MICHAEL LUO
April 20, 2008
Senator Barack Obama is swamping Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton with television advertising in their prolonged battle for the Democratic nomination, putting fresh pressure on Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising machine to find new sources of money to help her keep pace. But her big-dollar fund-raising apparatus that was once the envy of the political world is encountering obstacles as many of those in its regular networks of donors have reached the maximum on their personal contributions or grown tired of the relentless press for donations. The campaign is actively hunting for new wellsprings of cash, while tapped-out donors who want to give more are contemplating financing independent efforts on her behalf that are not bound by contribution limits. So far, however, the independent efforts have been halting at best.
For Clintons, a Time to Find Truest Friends
By MARK LEIBOVICH
April 20, 2008
WASHINGTON — Nancy Larson’s most difficult conversation was, by far, the one with Chelsea Clinton.“It was just heartbreaking,” said Mrs. Larson, a Democratic National Committee member from Minnesota and more to the point, a superdelegate who had initially pledged herself to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. This was last Saturday, after the former first daughter learned that Mrs. Larson would be shifting her allegiance to Senator Barack Obama.“She is a delightful young woman who loves her mother very much,” Mrs. Larson said. “She was really pushing me. She kept asking me why I was doing this. She just kept asking, ‘Why? Why?’ ” It is a question many in the Clinton camp are asking these days, sometimes in conversations far less civil than that one. After nearly two decades building relationships with a generation of Democrats, Mrs. Clinton has recently suffered a steady erosion of support for her presidential campaign from the party stalwarts who once formed the basis of her perceived juggernaut of “inevitability.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/18/AR2008041802702.html
Democrats' Damaging Brawl
By David S. Broder
Sunday, April 20, 2008; B07
As a rule, presidential elections are not won or lost by what happens in April. But last week, more and more Democratic officeholders and strategists were worrying out loud about the possibility that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are running themselves into trouble with their unending battle for the nomination. The negativity of the campaigning for Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary is spotlighting issues that can easily be exploited in the general election by Republican John McCain. And the increasingly personal tone of the Clinton-Obama exchanges is draining some of the enthusiasm from Democrats, who have believed for many months that 2008 would be their year for victory. Even so, according to this month's Post-ABC News poll, there is still no strong demand from grass-roots Democrats for the two senators to end their battle and turn to the challenge posed by McCain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/opinion/19herbert.html?ref=opinion
Road Map to Defeat
By BOB HERBERT
April 19, 2008
The Democrats are doing everything they can to blow this presidential election. This is a skill that comes naturally to the party. There is no such thing as a can’t-miss year for the Democrats. They are truly gifted at finding ways to lose. Jimmy Carter managed to win the White House in 1976 by looking pious and riding a wave of anti-Watergate revulsion. After four hapless years, he dutifully handed the keys back to the G.O.P. Bill Clinton tried hard to lose, with sex scandals and whatnot, during the 1992 campaign. But Ross Perot wouldn’t let him. Mr. Clinton won with a piddling 43 percent of the vote. For eight years, Mr. Clinton tried to throw the presidency away (with sex scandals and whatnot), but he was never able to succeed. That’s been it for the party for the past 40 years. The Democrats have become so psychologically battered by these many decades in the leadership wilderness that they consider the Clinton years, during which the president was impeached and they lost control of both houses of Congress, to have been a period of triumph.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/obama-america-guns-2021119-gun-world
Guns and God? Hell, yes
Obama attacks two of the things that elevate the U.S. above places like Europe
MARK STEYN
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Our lesson today comes from the songwriter Frank Loesser: "Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition." Or as Barack Obama and his San Francisco pals would put it: God and guns. Loesser got the phrase from Howell Forgy, a naval chaplain at Pearl Harbor, who walked the decks of the USS New Orleans under Japanese bombardment, exhorting his comrades. When the line came to Loesser's ears, he turned it into a big hit song of the Second World War: "Praise the Lord and swing into position Can't afford to sit around a-wishin'…" – which some folks sang as "Can't afford to be a politician." Indeed. Sen. Obama's remarks about poor dumb, bitter rural losers "clinging to" guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment of the political class. But we shouldn't let it go by merely deploring coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/015tmzpd.asp
Lame, But Still Game
President Bush is not about to just fade away.
Fred Barnes
04/28/2008, Volume 013, Issue 31
On the eve of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to Washington last week, a British pollster suggested Brown's meetings with presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain would be more important than his talks with President Bush. The president is "irrelevant," the pollster said, echoing what has become a view widely held in Washington. With only nine months left in his presidency and low approval ratings, Bush lacks political power. He's a lame duck. In fact, he's not that lame. This is a common misperception about Bush (and a pet peeve of mine). In Washington, the political community and the press tend to dismiss presidents in their final year as powerless. They made this mistake in Bill Clinton's case, and they're making it again now. Bush lacks popularity, but he has plenty of power. And he's committed to using it.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f9944ce3-fc34-4112-8f1a-34e7e6a7b7c9
Popular Will
Conservatives perfect working-class p.c.
Jonathan Chait
Post Date Friday, April 18, 2008
Barack Obama's comments about the white working class have thrown the political campaign into a particularly comic spasm of pretense and hypocrisy, but I was planning to let it go, I really was, until George F. Will decided to leap to the defense of the proletariat. Yes, that George F. Will. The fabulously wealthy, bow tie-wearing, pretentious reference-mongering, Anglophilic fop who grew up in a university town as a professor's son, earned two advanced degrees, has a designated table at a French restaurant in Georgetown, and, had he dwelt for any extended time among the working class, would be lucky to escape without his underwear being yanked up over his ears. Will devoted his column to expressing his displeasure at Obama's "condescension" toward the working class. Obama's offense, as we all know, was to call white working-class voters "bitter" over their economic misfortune during the last few decades, and thus prone to "cling to" guns and religion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/18/AR2008041802900.html
Colombia's Case
The intellectual poverty of a free-trade deal's opponents
Washington Post
Saturday, April 19, 2008; A14
HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says the Bush administration's free-trade agreement with Colombia may not be dead, even though she has postponed a vote on it indefinitely. If the White House doesn't "jam it down the throat of Congress," she said, she might negotiate. Ms. Pelosi wants an "economic agenda that gives some sense of security to American workers and businesses . . . that somebody is looking out for them" -- though she was vague as to what that entails. Nor did she specify how anyone could "jam" through a measure on which the administration has already briefed Congress many, many times. Still, in the hope that Ms. Pelosi might in fact schedule a vote, it may be worth examining once more the arguments against this tariff-slashing deal.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cnn20apr20,0,2778839.story
Thousands in Hollywood protest remarks from CNN's Jack Cafferty
Chinese Americans line Sunset Boulevard outside CNN offices to call for dismissal of Jack Cafferty over his comments about goods from China.
By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
3:52 PM PDT, April 19, 2008
Thousands of Chinese Americans protested outside CNN's offices in Hollywood this morning, calling for the dismissal of commentator Jack Cafferty, whose recent remarks about Chinese goods and the Beijing government inflamed a community already angry about international condemnations directed at the host country of the upcoming Olympics. The protesters lined Sunset Boulevard from Cahuenga Boulevard to Wilcox Avenue chanting "Fire Cafferty" and singing patriotic Chinese songs. "We understand free speech," said Lake Wang, 39, of Thousand Oaks. "But what if Cafferty said this about other racial groups? I think he would be fired. I think he's jealous of China." The anger mirrors the growing sense of nationalism that is taking hold around the world as the Olympics come to China. Much of that anger has been directed at foreign media, which some accuse of painting an unfairly negative image of China.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=293411344350742
Time Bomb
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Friday, April 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT
We never cease to be amazed by the inability of the left to feel shame and its lack of reverence for America and those who defend its freedoms, including the right to be stupid. The cover of the April 21 issue of Time, taking the famous Joe Rosenthal photo of Marines planting our flag on the blood-soaked island of Iwo Jima and replacing our flag with a tree, qualifies for obscenity of the year. It echoes the greenie theme first advanced by Al Gore in his book "Earth In The Balance" that the internal combustion engine is the greatest threat in the history of mankind. Gore and Bill Clinton have both said that global warming is ultimately a greater threat than terrorism. That, admitted Time managing editor Richard Stengel, was the thinking behind the cover story. "One of the things we do in this story," he said last week on MSNBC, "is we say there needs to be an effort along the lines of preparing for World War II to combat global warming and climate change."
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTUyMDljMDMwZmI1MzEyMzljMjljNjliNWFiNjZiMGQ=
Family Value
Divorce, illegitimacy have high costs.
By David Freddoso
April 18, 2008, 6:00 a.m.
In 1970, the U.S. Census reported that more than 85 percent of American children were being raised in two-parent families. By 1998, that number had declined to 68 percent, where it still hovers today. Such an enormous change comes with great costs — not just the deep, intangible kind, but real dollars-and-cents costs as well. It goes without saying that the loss of family stability has taken a terrible toll on the nation’s social health and left millions with broken hearts. But family fragmentation is the second leading cause of poverty in the United States, after lack of full-time work. A study released this week by the Institute for American Values attempts, for the first time, to measure one part of the economic cost of family fragmentation — specifically, the cost to government. By its estimate, it turns out to be greater than the annual cost of the Iraq war.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080419/D90561000.html
On 3rd anniversary as pope, Benedict encourages young people
Apr 19, 5:10 PM (ET)
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
NEW YORK (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI focused on the future of his American church Saturday as he marked the third anniversary of his election as pontiff, rallying young people, priests and seminarians and assuring them of his support as they dealt with the damage from the clergy sex abuse scandal. On a highly personal day, he spoke of his own "spiritual poverty" and said he hoped to be a worthy successor to St. Peter, considered the first pope. Benedict began the day with a Mass at St. Patrick's cathedral, the landmark Roman Catholic church on Fifth Avenue. The building was packed with cardinals ands bishops, priests and nuns, who cheered him to mark the day he succeeded Pope John Paul II on April 19, 2005. The German-born pope lamented that what he called "the joy of faith" was often choked by cynicism, greed and violence. Yet he drew an analogy to show how faith can overcome distractions and trials.
http://wcbstv.com/papalvisit/pope.benedict.xvi.2.704077.html
Pope Benedict XVI Prepares For Ground Zero Visit
Dave Carlin
Apr 20, 2008 8:09
NEW YORK (CBS) ― On Sunday, the final day of his trip, Pope Benedict XVI will visit Ground Zero to honor those who died on 9/11. Family members of several victims will join the pope for the private service at 9:30 a.m. Praying at and blessing the sacred ground at the World Trade Center site is being called the 'emotional high point' of the pontiff's visit to the United Sates. Papal flags and new white canopies mark the spot where the pope will enter Ground Zero to stand in solidarity with the family members of 9/11 victims, survivors of the attack and first responders. Jean Palombo plans to attend the service Sunday, her husband, firefighter Frank Palombo was killed on 9/11. "They never found anything from his body so that's his resting place and the pope is going there to bless his resting place and that's incredible," said Palombo. The pope will be joined by 23 people for the private service: 15 relatives of 9/11 victims, four survivors, and four First Responders.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/benedict_and_bush.html
Benedict and Bush
By Rich Lowry
April 19, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI came to America, his aides say, mainly to address the United Nations. If journalists expected Benedict to take swipes at President Bush's foreign policy there, they could only be disappointed. In keeping with the Catholic Church's fondness for the United Nations, Benedict said yesterday that the world organization's founding principles "express the just aspirations of the human spirit, and constitute the ideals which should underpin international relations." In the closest he came to implicit criticisms of Bush, he noted his disappointment that the world's multilateral consensus is "still subordinated to the decisions of a few," and called for "giving attention and encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or desire for reconciliation." Barack Obama had to be nodding in agreement, but this was hardly a jeremiad against Bush's alleged unilateralism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/opinion/20baily.html?ref=opinion
Don’t Blame the War for the Economy
By MARTIN NEIL BAILY
April 20, 2008
THE war in Iraq and the poor state of the economy will probably be the deciding factors in November’s presidential election. Many voters view them as cause and effect. In fact, they are two very different messes. The economic case for linking the two is that war has reduced the global supply of oil and pushed its price over $100 a barrel, draining consumers’ pocketbooks and adding to inflation. Flush with cash, this argument goes, the oil-producing countries have driven down global interest rates and encouraged over-borrowing in the United States. Meanwhile, Washington has borrowed money to pay for the war, adding to the budget deficit and leaving it with few options to stimulate the economy. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates too low, and for too long, as a way of trying to encourage growth. I am no fan of the war in Iraq, but it simply has not been a major contributor to the financial crisis and the impending recession.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/OPINION03/804200306/1007/OPINION
How to deal with nukes gone wild
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Charles Krauthammer
The era of nonproliferation is over. During the first half-century of the nuclear age, safety lay in restricting the weaponry to major powers and keeping it out of the hands of rogue states. This strategy was inevitably going to break down. The inevitable has arrived. The six-party talks on North Korea have failed miserably. They did not prevent Pyongyang from testing a nuclear weapon and entering the club. North Korea has broken yet again its agreement to reveal all its nuclear facilities. The other test case was Iran. The EU-3 negotiations (Britain, France and Germany) went nowhere. Each U.N. Security Council resolution enacting what passed for sanctions was more useless than the last. Uranium enrichment continues. When Iran's latest announcement that it was tripling its number of centrifuges to 9,000 elicited no discernible response from the Bush administration, the game was over.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080419173211.a888whda&show_article=1
Carter holds second meeting with Hamas chief
AFP
April 19, 2008
Former US president Jimmy Carter and Khaled Meshaal, exiled chief of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, held more talks in Syria on Saturday focused on a possible truce between Israel and Gaza militants and the release of an Israeli soldier, Hamas said. The two men held a lengthy meeting on Friday, strongly opposed by Washington and Israel who view Hamas as a terrorist organisation despite its victory in Palestinian elections in 2006. Carter, on a Middle East trip to promote peace efforts amid continuing bloodshed, suggested to the Damascus-based Meshaal that the Palestinian movement should make some goodwill gestures towards Israel. The 2002 Nobel Peace prizewinner proposed a truce between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, "an exchange of prisoners, which would include Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the lifting of the Israeli blockade of the strip, and a solution to the Rafah terminal," Hamas official Mohammad Nazzal told AFP. Nazzal said Hamas would respond to Carter "soon".
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-satloff19apr19,0,7779348.story
The false hope of embracing Hamas
The group's intransigence about Israel argues instead for its further isolation.
By Robert Satloff
April 19, 2008
Jimmy Carter's embrace of the radical Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas -- he actually hugged a senior Hamas official this week -- means that Ramsey Clark may finally get a run for his money as America's most embarrassing ex-somebody. But no one should take the former president's freelance diplomacy lightly. Far more sober foreign policy experts than Carter have urged an end to Hamas' isolation. Carter's outreach to Hamas -- on Friday he also met Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshaal -- could represent just the first ripple of a tidal wave of dangerous and desperate initiatives designed to "save" the Middle East peace process. Most advocates of engagement with Hamas fall into two camps. The first sees engagement as a way to strengthen Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and thereby advance Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/18/AR2008041802715.html
An Olympic Force for Change
By Sue Meng
Sunday, April 20, 2008; B07
A rash of protests disrupted the Olympic torch relays in San Francisco, Paris and London. Hu Jia, a Chinese activist, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison this month for "inciting subversion" of Communist Party rule. The central government continues to crack down on unrest in Tibet. What was to be a triumphant medal count for China is quickly becoming a tally of its human rights abuses. It looks as if the Olympics are doing little to change China, and China is doing a lot to change the Olympics. But the Chinese government is one thing; 1.3 billion Chinese people are another. It is important not to conflate China with the Chinese government. The Olympics have stirred an enormous outpouring of nationalism within China and among Chinese abroad.
