Scott Spiegel

“This president is a real slow learner.” – Oscar Goodman, Mayor of Las Vegas

Speaking of gambling, President Obama has subpoenaed weary Democrats and disgusted Republicans to a Blair House summit tomorrow for a day-long policy-palooza to be broadcast on C-SPAN for Americans who didn’t get enough of the health care reform debate last year.  Obama has decided to wager what little respectability he has left on the hope that the American people will be charmed by his vision of health care reform, will develop amnesia, and will forget everything they hate about the bills passed by Congress last year.

The Associated Press announces that the new proposal released by the President “is important, but not as critical as the political skill Obama can apply to an impasse that seems close to hopeless in a pivotal congressional election year.”

Hmm…  Let’s tally up the campaigns Obama has fought and lost using his “political skill” over the past four months: securing the 2016 Olympics for Chicago, electing Creigh Deeds governor of Virginia, reelecting John Corzine governor of New Jersey, getting UN members to agree to a climate change accord in Copenhagen, and electing Martha Coakley Senator in Massachusetts.  And of course his year-long crusade to sell Congress’s health care plan to the public, which resulted in voters increasing their opposition to the plan in direct proportion to the number of syllables Obama emitted in his attempts to explain it.

Obama views the populace as a huddled mass of slow learners to whom he must explicate Congress’s monstrous health care legislation over and over until it penetrates their thick skulls.

In fact, it is Obama who is the slow learner.  Americans have learned about the bill, debated the bill, and rejected the bill; implicitly and explicitly, at townhall meetings and in polls and at the ballot box; over and over, for a year.

But Obama promises us he has a new proposal that incorporates the best of the House and Senate bills.  The White House posted Obama’s proposal online Monday morning to allow the public to see what bold, fresh ideas the President has to offer.

The verdict: Obama might as well have taken the Senate version of the health care bill and stuck Groucho Marx glasses, nose, and mustache on it.

Obama has been trying to entice Republican lawmakers to attend the summit by boasting that there are “Republican elements” in his proposal—by which he means that there are Democratic elements in it that a few liberal Republicans have been caught on tape saying might be tolerable, if dealt with in isolation, if massively reworked from their present form, and if included only in conjunction with real free-market reforms.

Even AP admits that Obama has nothing new to offer: “Realistically, he’s just hoping to win a big enough slice to silence the talk of a failing presidency.”

Obama’s one significant innovation is increasing the federal government’s power to regulate insurance premiums: “[H]ealth insurers must submit their proposed premium increases to the State authority or Secretary for review…  [I]f a rate increase is unreasonable and unjustified, health insurers must lower premiums, provide rebates, or take other actions to make premiums affordable.  A new Health Insurance Rate Authority will be created to provide needed oversight at the Federal level.”

So Obama proposes to improve on a massive, bloated bill that explodes government intervention in the private sector and is hated for that very reason by… adding more government intervention.  Sounds like a winner!

Even Democrats aren’t on board with the ideas in this proposal, at least to the degree that they were when the House and Senate passed their versions of the legislation last year.  Congressmen up for reelection this fall received the message sent by Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts loud and clear.  The only federal officials who still want to ram this thing through are Obama, Senators not up for reelection, Senators up for reelection who know they’re going to be lose, and Representatives from insanely liberal districts that will boot them if they don’t vote for the bill.

And even Democrats don’t really believe anything will come of Thursday’s meeting.  Every time the media asks Democratic Congressional leaders about their goals for the Blair House summit, they respond with the same bromides about how they believe Thursday’s meeting will help “provide affordable, accessible, quality health care to all Americans.”  How, specifically, will it do that?  Specifically?

If anything is to be passed, it will have to be through budget reconciliation—and many commentators say Democrats don’t even have enough votes for that anymore.

The Chicago Tribune recently called the House and Senate legislation “zombie” bills, noting that neither chamber likes the other’s version, the public hates both, and the only reason the bills are still floating around is that Congressional leaders are hinting that they will try to merge them through reconciliation.  The Tribune condemns reconciliation as “convoluted.  Confusing.  And unnecessary.  The Democrats need to reconcile themselves to what Americans are telling them about these health care bills: They’re too complicated and too expensive.”

Obama isn’t the only slow learner in Washington.

Recently the mainstream media was howling with derision over the fact that Sarah Palin had written a few words on the inside of her hand to remind herself of the key themes she wanted to address in her speech at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last week.

Admittedly, one would have expected subjects such as Energy, Tax Cuts, and Lift American Spirits to be top-of-mind for Palin, who has consistently and admirably embodied these stances throughout her career, including her 2008 vice-presidential run.

What the MSM did not explain was how Obama’s ubiquitous reliance on his TelePrompTer, including at a recent pep talk with sixth-graders in Falls Church, Virginia, somehow reflected a greater skill at extemporizing or a more masterful command of facts on his part.

The Associated Press chided Palin for relying on a memory aid after having mocked Obama’s use of his TelePrompTer.  It’s true: Palin did jot down a few notes to help her stay focused during her 40-minute Tea Party Convention keynote address, the second-most important speech of her career.  Was Obama’s five-minute chat with 11-year-olds at Graham Road Elementary School so important to his legacy that it required twin, six-foot-tall TelePrompTer monitors to help him get every word right?

Meanwhile, Joe “Gaffe-tastic” Biden has continued to demonstrate his propensity for committing more blunders in any given week than Palin has made in her entire life.  Appearing on Larry King last week, Biden stated that the Iraq War “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

This is the same Iraq War, you’ll recall: (a) that Obama voted against, (b) that Biden voted for but later turned against, and (c) whose troop surge Obama and Biden voted against and denounced throughout 2008, even after it had demonstrably worked.  In 2007, Biden condemned General David Petraeus as “dead flat wrong” for wanting to go through with the surge rather than immediately withdrawing our soldiers and partitioning Iraq into three ethnic regions.

It would be one thing if circumstances had improved dramatically in Iraq since Obama took office, and the administration had acted quickly to remove troops ahead of schedule, thus saving the U.S. time and money and improving relations with Iraqis.  But the drawdown of 90,000 troops currently taking place was spelled out in 2008, according to a George W. Bush-negotiated arrangement, the Status of Forces Agreement, and is unfolding exactly as written.  So Obama doesn’t even deserve credit for “ending” the war in Iraq.

Saying that Iraq could be one of the great successes of the Obama administration is like saying that the stagehand who pulled the curtain on the debut of Così Fan Tutte is responsible for one of the great successes of the Metropolitan Opera House.

Then there’s Biden’s nutty defense of the Justice Department’s decision to read Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights after just 50 minutes of questioning.  Biden noted that the Bush administration gave the same treatment to shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001.  Unfortunately, Biden is blissfully ignorant of the fact that the military commissions to detain Islamic terrorists had not even been set up by the time the shoe bomber had struck.  Reid attempted his attack three months after 9/11, whereas Abdulmutallab attempted his attack eight years and three months after 9/11.

Let’s not forget that Biden was one of the chief opponents of the Afghanistan surge Obama reluctantly ordered in late 2008.  Biden had argued behind the scenes for increasing drone attacks to pick off Al-Qaeda members, and against sending more troops to fight counterinsurgents.  Fortunately, Obama didn’t listen to Biden, and the surge is already demonstrating results, as in Tuesday’s apprehension of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the most significant Taliban capture in over eight years.

This has been the pattern for a year-and-a-half now: Palin makes true statements—that the Vice-President is the head of the Senate, that the health care bill would require panels of bureaucrats to ration care—that are denounced as “gaffes” and “lies,” while Biden regularly weaves twisted fantasies out of cotton candy and is heralded as the voice of wisdom and experience.

The clincher that the MSM held Palin to a higher standard than Biden throughout the 2008 presidential campaign is that they constantly compared her record to Obama’s, not Biden’s.  (“The Republicans’ #2 doesn’t have that much more executive and business experience than the Democrats’ #1!”)

It takes a serious degree of intellectual dishonesty for Democrats to claim we are safer with Biden as Vice President than we would have been with Palin.

Weighing in on the controversy surrounding the Senate Majority Leader’s racially insensitive remarks about candidate Barack Obama, Kanye West declared at a recent benefit for Haitian earthquake victims, “Harry Reid doesn’t care about dark-skinned black people with Negro dialects!”

Oh, wait—sorry, he didn’t.  According to Harry Reid’s electability criteria for black Democratic candidates—“light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one”—I notice that the following are all A-grade presidential material: Hillary “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired” Clinton, Rod “I’m Blacker than Barack Obama” Blagojevich, and Bill “Our First Black President” Clinton.

On the taboo list are Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Marion Barry.

Also forbidden because of their complexion are many dark-skinned black Republicans, such as Clarence Thomas, J. C. Watts, and Alan Keyes.

Democrats’ response to Reid’s outrageous remarks, which were revealed in John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s new book “Game Change,” was to get angry at… Trent Lott.

Last week my column “Liberal Syntax: A Noun, a Verb, and a Bush Smear” offered a rule that characterizes liberals’ defense of their mishandling of national security and the economy.  For more general purposes, such as their defense of Reid’s remarks, I propose replacing “Bush” with “Republican.”

Since they brought up Lott’s comment, let’s drag it out into the light again and hold it up next to Reid’s sentiments.  Lott: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him.  We’re proud of it.  And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”

For starters, compared to Lott’s words, Reid’s comments were explicit and vulgar and revealed a race-obsessed mindset.  They bring to mind, not Lott’s tribute to a fellow Southerner and half-century veteran of the Senate who was practically on his deathbed, but rather Joe Biden’s condescending statement that Obama “is articulate and bright and clean” and Bill Clinton’s dismissive remark to Ted Kennedy about Obama that “a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”  In contrast, Lott’s comment, which echoed a remark he had made in 1980 comparing Reagan and Thurmond’s small-government, fiscally responsible views, requires several questionable levels of inference before you can jump to the conclusion that Lott was endorsing a segregationist Republican platform in 2002.

Reid’s motivation for his comments about Obama was to use race to cynically calculate, for political purposes, the electability by the Democratic base of token black candidates under consideration.  Similarly, other Democrats regularly exploit blacks to get their votes, as in Hillary “Nobody Told Me That The Road Would Be Easy” Clinton’s feverish recitation of spirituals (in a Negro dialect) in black churches.  Lott’s motivation was to find something nice to say about the life work of a senator on the occasion of his retirement and 100th birthday.

This is how it always works: a Republican says something that is milder or no worse than something a Democrat says—but, due to a combination of Republicans’ sense of honor (or lack of fortitude, depending on your perspective) and Democrats’ vicious persistence, the Republican is out, and the Democrat is in.  Democrats never come to the Republican’s defense, but Republicans frequently come to the Democrat’s defense—as many have with Reid—in an attempt to be fair, a favor that is never returned.  That’s the pattern—Democrats have no honor, Republicans aren’t vicious, so Democrats get to stay and Republicans have to go.  This is then seen as evidence by the media—and biased historians with no sense of context—that the Republican was guilty after all and the Democrat did nothing wrong.

Anyway, the larger issue is not whether Reid is a racist.  The issue is whether Democratic leaders have historically manipulated African Americans for political gain, offering them freebies and using their “dialect” and pretending to stand for their interests, while privately looking down on them as a dependent, infantile interest group to be pandered to.

As succinctly affirmed by Allen West, black Republican candidate for the House in 2010 from Florida, “Reid’s comments [are] indicative of the true sentiment elitist liberals have toward black Americans.  The history of the Democrat party is one of slavery, secession, segregation, and now socialism, born from the Johnson Great Society programs that have castigated blacks as victims…  I would rather be called ‘an Uncle Tom and a sellout’ than lose my self-esteem and be considered an inferior by liberals…  I am not just some articulate, clean, well spoken Negro…  [I] shall never submit to the collective progressive ideal of inferiority.”

When conservatives correctly pointed out that one disastrous terrorist attack and another potentially catastrophic but thwarted attack both happened during President Obama’s first term in office, because his agencies overlooked the perpetrators’ jihadist intentions or failed to act on relevant intelligence, liberals responded with an argument that was discredited nearly a decade ago: “But 9/11 happened on George Bush’s watch!”

Obama supporters mocked Rudy Giuliani’s recent claim to George Stephanopolous, “We had no domestic attacks under Bush,” stubbornly avoiding Giuliani’s obvious implication that he was speaking post-9/11.  Until last week, Democrats loved to excoriate Giuliani for making endless references to the terrorist attack that occurred while he was mayor of New York; now they claim he forgets it happened.  Which is it?

Conservatives’ point is that Obama has forgotten the lessons of 9/11, which Bush did not have available to him until, surprisingly—9/11.  The Ft. Hood and Flight 253 attacks happened in the first year of Obama’s administration, and 9/11 happened in the first year of Bush’s administration, but Obama had the example of 9/11 to learn from, and Bush did not.  (Even if you count the thwarted attack by the shoe bomber in December 2001, that bomber tried to strike just months after 9/11, when fully revamped security procedures were not running as smoothly as they are now; also, the bomber used the novel, unprecedented technique of wearing the bomb on his person so that it would not be detected by luggage screeners.)

Obama not only had the example of 9/11, he had seven years in which to witness and debate and vote on the implementation of the policies his predecessor devised that kept the country safe in the years after 9/11.  Obama denounced and campaigned against these tactics every chance he got.  He hasn’t revoked all of the Bush policies—upon assuming the Presidency, he must have received access to hair-raising intelligence that made him realize the suicidal folly of reversing Bush on everything—but he has slackened up enough, rhetorically and policy-wise, that our security standards have slipped and our enemies have become emboldened.

It is not enough to say that Obama has forgotten the lessons of 9/11.  He has actively rejected them.  He has argued that doing the opposite of what Bush did will keep us safer.  We are seeing how well the Obama Doctrine is working out in his first 11 months in office.

Another error in the “Bush-was-bad-so-Obama’s-off-the-hook” argument is that Bush did not do anything to actively facilitate the occurrence of 9/11.  In contrast, the Ft. Hood shootings were aided by the politically correct refusal of the U.S. Army—under Commander-in-Chief Obama—to recognize murderous jihadist sentiments expressed by Major Nidal Hasan openly and repeatedly while in medical school and residency, and the promotion Hasan received despite his poor performance reviews.  The Flight 253 near-attack was made possible by the Obama administration’s failure to act on numerous warnings available to it, such as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father having called the U.S. Embassy to report him, Abdulmutallab’s not having a passport or luggage, and his having bought a one-way ticket with cash.

But there’s an even more damning flaw to the contention that Bush should have been able to prevent 9/11, and is therefore as bad as or worse than Obama on national security.  Namely: just what would Bush opponents have preferred that he do in his first eight months in office to prevent terrorist acts, when they now scream bloody murder at the slightest suggestion of profiling at airports, call Bush Big Brother for trying to monitor terrorist communications, and express their clear disapproval of any war Bush started abroad to target Al-Qaeda?  Are liberals implying that they would have been fine with Bush doing all of these things in a pre-9/11 world?  They’re not even fine with The One doing these things in a post-9/11 world.

The left have been digging up examples of localized attacks carried out by truly isolated (not Abdulmutallab-style “isolated”) loonies—such as Bruce Ivins’ anthrax-laced letters to news broadcasters in September 2001, Hesham Hadayet’s shooting of two Israelis at LAX in July 2002, the Beltway sniper attacks in October 2002—as proof that Bush didn’t keep us safe.  Ignore for the moment that when each of these incidents happened, the same people criticized Bush for using these events to “hype” the threat of terrorism to justify extra security measures.  Instead ask: what level of government intervention into our lives would have been necessary to prevent every one of these attacks?  And how likely is it that liberals would have supported Bush’s carrying out such interventions at the time?

The surest sign that Obama’s presidency is going to turn out to like Bill Clinton’s is that he is already becoming a drag on the Democratic ticket, a state of affairs Clinton took a full six years to realize.

Obama followed around Democratic candidates Jon Corzine of New Jersey and Creigh Deeds of Virginia like a puppy for months during their gubernatorial campaigns.  The President made two visits to Virginia to stump for Deeds and three to New Jersey to rally for Corzine, including stops in Newark and Camden two days before the election.  On Sunday, Obama exhorted New Jersey crowds, “I want everybody in this auditorium to make a pledge that in these next 48 hours, you will work just as hard for Jon as you worked for me.”

In yesterday’s off-year elections, both candidates were soundly defeated.

In New Jersey, Obama beat McCain by a 16% margin in 2008; this year, the Republican beat the Democrat by 5%, a 21-point reversal.  This, despite the presence of a third-party candidate who took votes away from the Republican and a five-to-one Corzine-to-Christie spending advantage.

In Virginia, Obama beat McCain by 6% in 2008; this year, the Republican beat the Democrat by 18%, a 24-point reversal.  In both Virginia and New Jersey, independents—who voted heavily for Obama and other Democratic candidates in 2008—voted 2-to-1 for the Republican candidate in 2009.

Meanwhile, Obama never showed his face in upstate New York’s 23rd congressional district, where Democratic candidate Bill Owens squeaked past Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman with a victory in Tuesday’s special election.  Obama didn’t directly endorse liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava, but she received heavily publicized support from ACORN, Obama’s pet community organization, which helped solidify her lack of popularity and set in motion events that led to her withdrawal the weekend before the election.

In New York 23, 52% of the electorate voted for Obama in 2008; 49% voted for the Democrat in 2009.  It is miraculous that Hoffman did as well as he did, given the presence of a Republican on the ballot and the fact that Hoffman doesn’t live there, wasn’t familiar with local issues, and joined the race at the eleventh hour.

Bill Clinton’s pariah status in Al Gore’s presidential run and other Democratic congressional and gubernatorial campaigns in 2000 was based, of course, not on drooping support for his policies, but on his drooping boxers.

George W. Bush became a hindrance in 2008 only partly because he didn’t consistently govern as a conservative, but partly because Republican candidate John McCain ran from conservative positions every chance he got.

It was not Obama’s mere presence that flipped New Jersey and Virginia, or his absence that gave New York 23 to the Democrat.  The elections in New Jersey and Virginia—the former with its link to the New York City metro area, the latter with its proximity to D.C. and increasingly industrialized northern suburbs—were more ideologically focused on Obama’s agenda of taxing, spending, and increasing the size of government than the election in rural, upstate New York.

Hoffman lost, and Christie and McDonnell won, because New York 23 was not a referendum on Obama’s legislative priorities, whereas New Jersey and Virginia were.  The election in New York 23, a district that probably has more cows than people and more soldiers (from Fort Drum) than policemen, was about local issues.  In contrast, exit polling revealed that 62% of Virginia voters cited taxes or the economy as their most important issue.  In New Jersey, which has some of the highest income, sales, and property taxes in the country, and was rated last of all 50 states by the Tax Foundation for its business tax climate, 58% of voters mentioned property taxes or the economy as their most pressing concern.

According to Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics, “I do not think that a special election – any special election – is a particularly good barometer of the political climate of any place outside the district in question.”  He is correct—about New York 23, whose results say almost nothing about the country’s concern with the current administration’s goals.  New Jersey and Virginia—whose populations are 12 to 13 times larger than New York 23’s—are far more attuned to and potentially affected by Obama’s agenda.

As former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers noted, Democrats’ battle in New Jersey “can’t be completely attributed to a bad economy and to an unpopular incumbent in New Jersey.  There is something afoot in the land that people are uncomfortable about and one of the issues is spending.  And that is probably the biggest issue.”

Similarly, John Judis of The New Republic notes, “[I]n early August, the margin between Deeds and McDonnell jumped, and remained high for the rest of the election.  At the very same time, Obama’s approval numbers in Virginia plummeted.”  Even Deeds admitted on the campaign trail that Obama’s policies in conjunction with his support were hurting Deeds.

Obama’s blessing is turning into the kiss of death—as witnessed during the health care debate this summer, when the population turned against Congress’s legislation in precise proportion to Obama’s attempts to “explain” it in his press conferences and Sunday talk show appearances.  Beyond widespread mistrust of his agenda, there is growing distaste for Obama as a political figure as a result of his incessant, narcissistic TV and radio appearances and thin-skinned bullying of critics.

The question is when Obama the politician will start to become synonymous with Obama the purveyor of a hated agenda.

The problem with modern-day liberals’ penchant for implementing proposals not authorized by the Constitution isn’t just that they’re sticking their noses where they shouldn’t; it’s that they aren’t sticking their noses where they should.

Fresh out of the gate, in the early days of his administration, President Obama decided to continue President Bush’s plan to take over the nation’s largest car companies and banks by tempting them with bailout funds, then tightening the noose around their necks and micromanaging them from Washington.  Soon after, Obama decided to force taxpayers to guarantee virtually all U.S. mortgages, thus sticking a $5 trillion tab to people who had largely paid their mortgage bills on time.  Recently, Obama decided to cap executive pay for banks that took bailout money, and has expressed an interest in monitoring executive pay for even banks that didn’t take TARP money.

Congress is currently considering unconstitutional legislation—stalled only because they are trying to pass even bigger, more expensive unconstitutional legislation—to impose cap-and-trade regulations to restrict and tax individual citizens’ energy use.

This summer, Obama carried out an amusing little $3 billion scheme that involved paying car owners to destroy their used automobiles and buy new ones, a jaunt that resulted in no significant net energy conservation in the U.S., boosted the auto industries of Japan and South Korea, and hurt the American used car business.

Since July, Democrats’ pet project has been to take over the U.S. health care system.  Not crazy enough to try to force through a single payer system, Senate Leader Harry Reid nonetheless went “rogue” on Monday, in defiance of Senate committee members and moderate Democrats, and announced that the Senate version of the health care reform bill would offer a public health insurance option, though such an option has zero chance of passing in the Senate.

Other fun and unconstitutional dalliances the administration has undertaken in recent months include:

•    Nationalizing the student loan system

•    Nominating for the Supreme Court a justice who believes in ignoring the equal protection offered under the law and considering race and gender in her rulings

•    Threatening to violate free speech rights by regulating the Internet and talk radio in order to ensure “balanced” views and prevent “irresponsible” content

•    Attacking a private organization, FOX News, for criticizing the administration, and threatening its right to freedom of the press by shutting it out of White House interviews to which other major news organizations are invited

•    Appointing 34 unaccountable czars—“green jobs czar,” “science czar,” “diversity czar,” “czar witness protection program czar”—to set policy while circumventing Congress’s approval of either policy or czars

•    Engaging in massive, unprecedented deficit spending to stimulate the economy

Obama’s expansion of federal government rivals the explosion of federal agencies resulting from FDR’s New Deal and the establishment of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the 1950s.

If the Obama administration finds a free moment from poking around in the Constitution identifying such lame justifications for its schemes as “promoting the general welfare,” it might consider dealing with the following urgent tasks, which are actually allowed by the Constitution but seem to have fallen by the wayside:

•    Providing adequate troop levels for our ongoing war in Afghanistan, as the General whom Obama hired to turn around the war requested several months ago.  Joseph Curl of The Washington Times notes, “The White House bristles when asked whether Mr. Obama is so distracted by domestic affairs and health care that he is unable to focus on Afghanistan.”  Hint to Obama: People don’t “bristle” about something that isn’t true—they brush it off their shoulders and move on, because they and everyone else know it isn’t true.  Instead of bristling, Obama might want to consider that his interlocutors are on to something.

•    Taking steps to protect the U.S. and its allies from the threat of a nuclear Iran—beyond Obama’s chilling warning to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he will meet him “without preconditions or preconceptions.”  As the UK Telegraph recently reported, Israel’s former deputy defense minister has somberly observed that Israel can no longer rely on the U.S. to rein in Iran’s nuclear program if Israel wants to survive as a nation.

•    Sticking up for allies Poland and the Czech Republic and honoring our agreement to defend them against potential Russian aggression

•    Providing adequate funding for missile defense rather than slashing it to make room for bloated domestic spending

•    Standing up for human rights in Iran—by not waiting a week after anti-government protests to support the protestors; in China—by not having our Secretary of State rhetorically place the issue of human rights below that of reversing climate change; and in Tibet—by not refusing to meet the Dalai Lama in order to appease China

•    Defending the Honduran government’s enforcement of its constitution in their ouster of President Zelaya for attempting to violate presidential term limits

Recently, The New York Times’ Bob Herbert came out against fighting crime in New York; he called it a racist promise for Mayor Bloomberg to make in his reelection bid.  The Times’ editorial board no doubt approves of Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder’s early decision to drop charges in the Black Panther voter intimidation lawsuit brought last fall after a harassment incident in Philadelphia on Election Day.

If protecting citizens against violent crimes by fellow citizens isn’t a legitimate Constitutional function, then what is?

I think we have a good idea regarding the priorities the administration will and will not be focused on for the next four years.

On matters such as whether to spend $800 billion on “stimulus” projects, $1 trillion on health care “reform,” or billions of dollars to build stadiums in the “city” of Chicago, President Obama is all about the now.  When it comes to approving a months-old request from his beleaguered general in Afghanistan to increase troops in an eight-years-and-running war to support the dying soldiers already there, Obama engages in leisurely stargazing.

Never mind that only a wee percentage of funds are seeping out eight months after the stimulus bill was passed, health care legislation wouldn’t start until 2013, and the 2016 Summer Olympics don’t take place for seven years.  Those items were all at the top of Obama’s to-do list.

The war in Afghanistan just entered its ninth year.  Obama formulated his grand strategy for Afghanistan in March, and replaced his former commander there with General Stanley McChrystal in June.  McChrystal, as requested, made his assessment of what was necessary to implement Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy, including adequate troop levels, and has been waiting since August for Obama to give him what he needs.

Now Obama tells us that before troops can be approved, we need to make sure we have a strategy.  As George Will recently asked, didn’t Obama formulate his strategy in March?  Has it changed since then?  If not, then why the delay in sending troops to carry it out?

For one, we are told that discontent is brewing among Congressional Democrats over sending more troops, and that Obama wants to take into account their diverse opinions.  Yet discontent is always brewing among Democrats over sending any American troops anywhere, unless the mission is purely humanitarian and serves absolutely no U.S. security interest.  People who think it’s always wrong to go to war or escalate a conflict cannot be trusted to give strategic advice on troop levels in any specific conflict.

Even Hillary Clinton is sane enough to realize that if we follow Vice President Joe Biden’s preferred plan of stepping up surgical strikes and predator attacks against Al Qaeda leaders, maintaining current troop levels, and allowing the Taliban to retake large swaths of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda will return to the region before we know it.

Now, as a red herring, senior Democrats are criticizing McChrystal for “violating” the chain of command, simply because after a speech he gave last week he honestly answered a question on strategy by referencing the need for more troops in Afghanistan.

To remind Obama: McChrystal was brought in to replace General David McKiernan due to Obama’s stated intent to implement the new counterinsurgency strategy that General David Petraeus had successfully used in Iraq.  McChrystal privately requested 30,000 to 40,000 additional troops in August, a detail that was leaked to the press.  Last week, he obliquely reiterated the need for more troops in his factual response to a question.  How was he supposed to know that Obama had gone all mushy and was reconsidering his already committed to strategy?

To satisfy critics’ demand that he say nothing precise without clearing it with our commander-in-chief, McChrystal’s response to questions about strategy in Afghanistan would have had to have been, “We’re going to win in Afghanistan.  As for details, please ignore everything I’ve said before and the report and troop request I issued in August—all of that may or may not be true and reflect my honest assessment of the situation and the reason I was hired, but I have to speak with Obama to see if his strategy has changed in the last five minutes.”  (This would have been an especially interesting standard for McChrystal to live up to, inasmuch as Obama had had exactly one phone conversation with the general since he took command before last week.)

The most infuriating aspect of having to listen to all this dithering over troops is that we just went through this whole process in Iraq several years ago—and the “troop dilemma” was conclusively decided in favor of the surge option.  George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld mistakenly ignored the advice of then-General Eric Shinseki to implement massive troop increases in 2003.  The war bumbled along for several more years, until General Petraeus sent more troops and began his counterinsurgency operation in 2007, and by 2008 we were hardly hearing a peep from Iraqi insurgents.

In other words, we learned what to do in Afghanistan from what we finally did in Iraq.  General Petraeus now supports General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency operation in Afghanistan.  Why do we have to learn this bloody lesson the hard way all over again, just because Obama wants to appear “thoughtful”?

One eerie possibility is that Democrats actually believe all that nonsense they were spouting in 2008 about “many factors” being responsible for quelling the violence in Iraq, such as: cooperation from the nice Iraqi people, efforts made by the efficient Iraqi government, Sunni-Shiite compromises, the weather, oh—and also some super-helpful troops that were sent over at the last minute.

Some have suggested that Obama may listen to his inner Zen and take the “middle way”—that is, approve a modest increase, such as 10,000 troops, but not meet McChrystal’s full request.  This solution would offer the twin advantages of putting more U.S. soldiers in harm’s way and not giving McChrystal enough troops to succeed in his mission.  Sounds like a winner!

As Senator John McCain recently noted, half-measures in war “lead to failure over time and an erosion of American public support,” as in Iraq.  Or, as Ike Shelton, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, more succinctly put it, Obama had better not “half-ass it and hope.”

For the measured consideration of the International Olympic Committee, I present 16 reasons to host the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro instead of Chicago:

(1)    President Obama wants them in Chicago.  Really badly.  More important than his wanting them in Chicago is his decision to drop everything in the middle of a recession, a health care debate, and two wars to head to Copenhagen on separate jumbo jet junkets with his wife to make a special entreaty for his home city.  Obama has taken a stronger stand on the Windy City’s candidacy than he has on, say, any particular health care provision or whether to send more troops to Afghanistan.  Even more important than Obama’s not having his priorities straight is his obvious, calculated presumption that because the world loves him so much, it would be the diplomatic equivalent of kicking us out of the UN not to award Chicago the Olympics after his in-person plea.

(2)    Billions of dollars’ worth of building contracts and infrastructure development would be required in a city (Chicago) known for construction payback schemes, money laundering, insider dealings, an overloaded transit system, and general public corruption, incompetence, inefficiency, and interruption of service.

(3)    Numerous Obama cronies own property near Washington Park, the proposed stadium site, and would profit handsomely from the games being held there.

(4)    No one actually wants to be in Chicago in the summer—or any time of the year, for that matter, except for about three hours in late spring.  Dozens of Chicago residents die heat-related deaths every summer, and they’re not even competing in decathlons.

(5)    Everyone wants to be in Rio, any time of the year.

(6)    In fact, everyone wants to visit South America, and Rio would be only the first city on the entire continent to have ever hosted the Games.

(7)    If the Olympics absolutely have to be in Chi-town, why not the Winter Olympics, a much smaller and less disruptive affair than the Summer Olympics, and one that suits the city’s climate?

(8)    Chicagoans have been clamoring since spring not to have the Olympics in their hometown.  This is the first campaign I know of in which the best case for the games to be held in one city (Rio) is being made by residents of another city (Chicago).  Following the procedures of standard Chicago thug-style machine politics, the Chicago Olympic Committee recently ordered a local Fox affiliate not to rerun a segment airing interviews with numerous Chicagoans who told reporters to “Take it to Rio!” and to hold the event “Anywhere but here!”

(9)    The website “Chicagoans for Rio 2016” posts numerous fun and horrifying facts about the travails suffered by past Olympic host cities, such as the following: (a) Montreal took 30 years to pay off its Olympics-related debts from 1976; (b) 21 out of 22 stadiums and arenas built for the Athens games just five years ago are currently unused; and (c) Barcelona actually became a slightly less cool city for having once hosted the games.

(10)    An average of 5-10 or more crimes a day are reported in Washington Park alone, including assault, battery, burglary, motor vehicle theft, robbery, and sex offenses.  Chicago was the murder capital of the country in 2008 with 510 victims.  The Chicago Police Department doesn’t even publicly report the incidence of rape, which should tell you something.

(11)    The Chicago 2016 website advertises that it would host a “Blue-Green” event, meaning the following: “low-carbon Games” with energy-efficient technology, reduced water usage, recycling of 85% of tournament materials, and “sustainability.”  As an afterthought, “showers for athletes” was added to the budget for the games.

(12)    Chicago’s city deficit stands at almost a quarter of a billion dollars.  Beijing had an estimated 26 billion dollar overrun for its 2008 games.  Athens’ was $17 billion in 2004.  London estimates a $9 billion overrun in 2012.  Yet Chicago’s 2016 website boasts that its budget includes a piddly “$450 million contingency to cover unforeseen costs.”  Quick—complete this analogy: Chicago : Olympics :: Obama : _____.  (And I swore I wasn’t going to write about health care this week!)

(13)    Each host city tries to top the previous host city in sheer spectacle, bombast, and expense.  Beijing spent $42 billion in 2008.  Hmm… are there are any stimulus funds left over for “shovel-ready” projects like building unwanted stadiums in Chicago?

(14)    Rio de Janeiro means “River of January.”  Chicago derives from a Native American word for “wild onion.”

(15)    Chicagoans for Rio pits the two leading contender cities head-to-head in a number of categories, and the winner is clear every time: nicknames (The Marvelous City vs. The Second City), beaches (Copacabana, Ipanema vs. 63rd St., Calumet), histories (capital of the Portuguese empire vs. rail yard), statues (Christ standing vs. Lincoln sitting), signature events (naked people dancing vs. chubby people eating).

And most damningly:

(16)    Michelle Obama said in her Copenhagen speech this week that holding the Olympics in Chicago might inspire another child there to become the next… Barack Obama.

Jonathan Martin of Politico notes that, even though racism against the president is supposedly widespread, “it’s still a sensitive enough issue that the [Democratic] party doesn’t broach it directly.”  By “sensitive,” of course, he means “far-fetched, ludicrous, and laughable.”

Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) claims that in Senator Joe Wilson’s outburst toward the president last week, Wilson “kind of winked at that element” of the U.S. that disrespects Obama because he is black.  I’m not sure what criminal statutes are on the books for “kind of winking” at an “element,” but I do know that Democrats’ charges of racism until recently have been so timid and indirect, because they know that if they made them openly, they might have to produce actual evidence of racism.

Lately some of the attempts to label opposition to socialized medicine and trillion-dollar deficits as racism have gotten more blatant.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright was just caught on video snarling, “I think the racists in the right wing are upset because poor people are about to be helped.”  And it wasn’t even during one of his weekly sermons!

Jimmy Carter weighed in on the subject over the weekend: “[A]n overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man… [and] a belief among many white people… that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.”

MSNBC bloggers recently wrote, “Whether it’s fair or not, there is a perception growing that race is driving some elements of the opposition to Obama.”

Maureen Dowd wrote of Wilson in the New York Times, “[F]air or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”  Oh, the New York Times doesn’t need to be fair!  Stop being so hard on yourself!

According to Dowd, who was praised by liberal bloggers everywhere for finally stating openly what they believed but didn’t feel comfortable expressing, “Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.”  Note to Dowd: None of the conservatives in Congress did, and it had nothing to do with Obama’s being brainy or black—it had everything to do with his being wrongheaded and pompous.

Dowd lamented “the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as… socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people.”

I don’t know—some would say that taking over banks, car companies, and the health care industry is a bit socialist; wanting to “spread the wealth around” is a bit Marxist; having a spiritual mentor who railed against white people in church for 20 years is a bit racist; nominating former communists as czars is a bit Commie; receiving material support from groups that beat up health care protestors at townhall meetings is a bit Nazi; and planning to set up government panels to ration end-of-life care implies a willingness to snuff old people.  Then again, some don’t write for the New York Times.

Dowd added, “Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president… convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.”  Yes, and the “shocking disrespect” for the office of Congressman at mostly white Senators and Representatives’ townhall meetings has convinced me: Some people just can’t believe white people can be in Congress and will never accept it.

Dowd charged that Obama is “at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension” and that “this president is the ultimate civil rights figure—a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.”

For liberals, the equation is “challenged” plus “black” = “victim of racism.”

I suppose we need to inform Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Sonja Schmidt, Mychal Massie, and other fantastic black conservative and libertarian commentators and harsh Obama critics that their opposition is based on mere black self-hatred.

It was also insinuated by major media outlets that the massive tea party held in Washington over the weekend was fueled by racist resentment of a black man in the White House.  As amply documented by photos of the event, however, signs protested the actions of not just Obama but: Bush, Congress, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Steny Hoyer, Saul Alinsky, government, and the mainstream media, among many other targets.

Tea party signs protested Medicaid and Medicare’s insolvency, passing on trillions of dollars of debt to future generations, providing health care to illegal immigrants, paying for abortions through health care legislation, excessive taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, government takeover of the automobile industry, and the appointment of czars.  (Take that, NAACP!)

Finally, signs supported tort reform, health savings accounts, a flat tax, gun rights, the war on terror, and a strange, unheard-of cult called “Liberty.”

Notably absent from protest signs were calls for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and the resegregation of water fountains.  As Obama correctly observed in one of his health care speeches this summer, “This is not about me.”

As for the occasional reference to race on protest signs, Martin writes, “Republicans see an important distinction between Obama critics who are genuinely worried about his… policies and those whose fears go beyond the president’s liberalism…  But for some Democrats, it’s difficult to make that distinction when conservative marchers take to Washington bearing images of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Obama that read, ‘He had a dream, we got a nightmare.’”  And for some Republicans, it’s difficult to make a distinction between signs comparing King and Obama that would be acceptable to liberals and those that would be branded “racist.”

As one prescient and widely photographed sign at the protest read, “It doesn’t matter what this sign says—you’ll call it racism anyway.”

President Obama is the opposite of Hamlet—he is desperately eager to do something on health care reform, right this minute, but he doesn’t particularly have any idea what it should be.

Obama spent most of July insisting that Congress had to pass a bill for him to sign before the August recess, in case they didn’t have enough political momentum by the time they got back.  Privately, Congressional Democrats fumed that Obama was offering no details on his preferred plan and was simply telling his spokespeople to assure them he would not rule out anything they decided.

Just before the recess, Obama got on TV for a Wednesday night address to the nation to “explain” the “details” of his “plan.”  The public’s reaction to his vague answers to reporters’ questions revealed as much frustration at his lack of specifics as Congress felt.

Since then, Obama has played “good cop, bad cop” with an unwilling Congress: Obama makes flowery promises—everyone who’s happy with the status quo can keep things as they are, everyone who’s unhappy can have everything completely different—while Congress is forced to work out the ugly details, like who’s going to pay for the plan.

At some point, Obama shifted away from his push for “health care reform” and began hinting that what he really wanted was “health insurance reform,” but he was too cowardly or indecisive to state his altered intention outright.

Obama similarly began to disavow the necessity of the public option when it became clear there were not enough votes in the Senate to pass a bill with one.  Rather than declare his switch in tactics openly, Obama implied that this had been his position all along, when he had clearly and repeatedly stated in the past that a public option would be necessary in order for him to sign a bill.  After the resulting backlash by House Democrats and Congressional leaders, Obama is once again on the fence about whether legislation must contain a public option or not.

Even New York Times columnists have been grumbling about Obama’s failure to make the case for health care reform.

As Bob Herbert complained, Obama “has been remarkably opaque about his intentions regarding health care.  He left it up to Congress to draft a plan and he has not gotten behind any specific legislation.  He has seemed to waffle on the public option and has not been at all clear about how the reform that is coming will rein in runaway costs.  At times it has seemed as though any old ‘reform’ would be all right with him.”

It’s obvious why dishonest politicians would choose to keep details of unpopular and impractical legislation vague in the early stages—i.e., to keep people from figuring out that it won’t work, will cost too much money, or will give the government greater control over our lives.  But at some point, leaders have to take a stand on what they will and will not tolerate, and let the chips fall where they may.  At  this point, Obama is acting as though he would be content to sign a phone book as long as the cover said “Health Care Reform Bill.”

Obama seems to think he can stay above the fray and maintain his popularity by not get involved in any messy details requiring those things we call “choices.”

But as Michael Barone notes, “The president must either insist on a ‘government option’ insurance plan or must let it be known that he will sign a bill without one…  Sooner or later the old politician’s dodge… won’t wash.”

Obama’s return-from-August-recess televised address to the nation Wednesday night is supposed to make it clear where he stands on the details of the various plans offered by Congress, after several months of hands-off cheerleading on his part.  But it’s obvious that things will be no clearer after his speech than before: his handlers are already scolding curious reporters for wanting to know specifics about what he’ll say and even whether the public will know where Obama stands on the public option after his address.

In a pre-speech interview today, Obama declared that “we do intend to get something done this year,” but hedged by saying that he was still “open to new ideas.”  Open to new ideas?  This is the same guy who demanded that Congress simply had to pass a comprehensive overhaul by the end of July?

Obama and his staffers are urgently motivated to do something, anything, on health care reform, so that they will be able to say that they did—something, anything.