HALF-FULL REPORT 03/22/13

President Barack Obama visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority this week. Israelis "can’t figure out what he’s doing here" said Carolyn Glick.

Apparently, it was to pretend he was George W. Bush. "Second-Term Obama just gave First-Term Obama a whack on the tush," said John Podhoretz

He’s backtracking on his Cairo speech, said Jonathan Tobin. That even the White House now realizes Zero’s much ballyhooed overture to Muslims in Cairo was a "disaster" is one of 8 things we’re learning from the president’s trip, says Jen Rubin.

Obama’s apparent change of heart is too little, too late, says British journalist Con Coughlin. Zero is much less popular with both Muslims and Israelis than was President Bush.

NBC’s Chuck Todd rarely lets his nose stray far from Mr. Obama’s buttocks.  But when Todd asked him why his policies haven’t led to Middle East peace, Zero did not respond graciously.

* * * *

Obama’s policies are emboldening North Korea and Iran, said Claudia Rosett. He’s screwed the pooch in Syria, says David Rohde of the Atlantic magazine.  The Russians think Zero is wrecking the world on purpose, notes Spengler.

* * * *

Is it the Religion of Peace, or the religion of mass murderers?  James Holmes, who shot 70 people in a theater in Aurora, Colorado last summer, reportedly has converted to Islam.

* * * *

The House approved the Paul Ryan Budget Thursday, 221-207, with 10 Republicans voting no.  Then the House passed, 318-109, a continuing resolution which keeps funding for the remainder of this fiscal year at sequester levels.

The law requires the President to present his budget by Feb. 1, but Obama hasn’t.  He did get his NCAA basketball tournament picks in on time.  The Senate GOP Whip introduced an amendment to the CR Thursday to suspend the pay of top OMB officials for every day the president’s budget submission is late.

* * * *

If you thought Dingy Harry Reid couldn’t possibly be more despicable, you were mistaken.

* * * *

Liberals are peeved with Dingy Harry, too.  His refusal to schedule a vote on her bill to ban assault weapons is a "major betrayal of trust," said Sen. Diane Feinstein.

Her bill can’t get 40 votes in the Senate, Dingy Harry said. But after he was savagely criticized by the Left, Dingy Harry changed his mind. Gun control is a tar baby Dems – prodded by hysterical liberal journalists such as those Jim Taranto quotes here — just can’t seem to resist.

The ban on high capacity magazines he rushed through the legislature is unworkable, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo admitted.  The law requires New Yorkers to buy magazines which hold no more than 7 rounds, but nobody makes them. He’s working with the legislature to permit the sale of magazines which can hold (the industry standard of) 10 rounds, but New Yorkers would still be forbidden to load more than 7 rounds into them, Cuomo told the New York Times Wednesday.  Yeah, that’ll be enforceable.

The gun control bills passed by Colorado Dems are unenforceable, too, say sheriffs, but the Dem governor plans to sign them anyway.  If he does, magazine manufacturer Magpul says it will pull out of the state, taking several hundred jobs somewhere else.  Coloradan Ross Kaminski provides more detail.

New York is so left wing Dems are safe no matter how many stupid things they do.  Colorado isn’t like that, as I suspect Dems there will find out next election.

* * * *

Ten years ago Wednesday, the war with Iraq began.  It cost 4,487 American lives, and about a trillion dollars. Was it worth it?

"From today’s vantage point, unfortunately, the answer looks increasingly to be ‘no,’" said Max Boot, who remains an unapologetic supporter of the decision to invade.

Sectarian violence is rising in Iraq, which today is a mess. But it’s a far less dangerous mess to the United States than it would be if Saddam Hussein were still in power.  He was the most powerful ruler in the Arab world, an implacable enemy of the United States, and a really evil mean nasty rotten guy.  We shouldn’t forget that. It turned out Saddam didn’t have much WMD then, but had he remained in power, by now he very likely would have WMD, including nukes.

If he’d known then Saddam didn’t have WMD, he wouldn’t have supported the invasion, Boot said. I still might have, because:

·         Saddam was the biggest threat to the U.S. in the Arab world (even if he wasn’t as big a threat as we thought at the time);

·         in March of 2003, it was critical to demonstrate to our enemies the U.S. wasn’t a paper tiger, and

·         Iraq is by far the most geostrategically important country in the Middle East.

We won the war astonishlingly fast, with amazingly few casualties.  Then – until the 2007-2008 troop surge –we proceeded to lose the peace.  We made a host of mistakes, chief among them being the complete abolition of the Iraqi army, and the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which in the eyes of many in Iraq and around the world, made us an imperial, occupying power. 

It didn’t have to be that way. What if after we took Baghdad, we’d declared victory and gone home?  That’s essentially what Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld wanted to do.  The sectarian violence we’re seeing now likely would have developed a lot sooner.  But Saddam would be gone, the fear of God put into our enemies, and no one could have accused us of being an occupier.

We stayed, to engage in "nation-building."  It cost us thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and sharply divided Americans.  Iraq became a quagmire for us, but even that had an upside, because it became a quagmire for al Qaida, too.  Islamists from all over the world flocked to Iraq – and we killed them in big bunches.  If they hadn’t been killed there, what might they have done? 

* * * *

This week is also the third anniversary of the passage of Obamacare. Americans are still learning what’s in it.  They haven’t liked what they’ve learned so far. Reviews have been ugly.  The worst is yet to come.

The anniversaries have something in common, Ramirez thinks:

* * * *

Dr. Ben Carson’s speech at CPAC was such a big hit, even the New York Times noticed.  Dr. Carson is "the polar opposite"of Obama, and he scares liberals to death, said Rush Limbaugh.  Though he’s lived for lo these many years in Maryland, a columnist for the Detroit News thinks Dr. Carson should be the next senator from Michigan.

"This idea is simply too good.," said Avik Roy. "At a time when the chaotic implementation of Obamacare will be front and center, Carson will be able to speak intelligently about Obamacare’s flaws."

If Dr. Carson runs for the Senate in either Michigan or Maryland, he’d be a wonderful addition to the young studs already there.  So would this guy, who I think would be on national security policy as big a star as are Sens. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz on domestic issues.

* * * * 

Republicans are more open-minded, much better informed than Democrats, according to this Pew survey.

* * * *

The Republican party has a big time image problem, I noted in a column this week The Republican National Committee agrees.  It issued a 100-page "post-mortem" on the 2012 elections this week.  RNC Chairman Reince Priebus talked about it with Jen Rubin here.  Hugh Hewitt discussed the post-mortem with one of its authors, former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, here.  

The post-mortem drew praise from Jennifer Rubin and Avik Roy; qualified praise from Guy Benson; criticism from Ramesh Ponnuru and John Podhoretz.

Conservatives were upset by passages which said that to attract Hispanic voters, Republicans  "must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform;" and that to be more attractive to young people, the GOP should lighten up on opposition to gay marriage.

Those who charged "sellout" and "betrayal" were reading into the post-mortem stuff its authors didn’t say.  They were careful not to opine about what constitutes "comprehensive immigration reform," and they didn’t recommend Republicans support gay marriage — just that Republicans show more respect and tolerance for those who do.

We should stand by our principles. But if we don’t find a way to do this without expressing hostility towards those with whom we disagree, we’ll never win elections, say Peter Wehner and Noemie Emery.

* * * *

One who gets this is Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, for whom my respect is increasing by leaps and bounds.  I think he may be the smartest Republican politician in Washington.

Paul set forth the one position on gay marriage arguably consistent with conservative principles: Whatever you think of it as a moral or practical issue, it ought not to be up to the government to decide who can marry whom.  I don’t (quite) buy this, but I think Paul’s position is clever and beguiling.

Where Paul’s political smarts really show is on immigration reform.  This isn’t exactly a burning issue in Kentucky, but this back bencher in the minority party in the Senate captured national attention this week by presenting his own plan.  And a clever plan it is.  Paul supports a "pathway to citizenship" for illegals (but is vague about what this might be), but opposes "amnesty," including "the de-facto amnesty we have now," and insists the border be secured first.  This is a conceptual framework that most Hispanics and a large majority of non-Hispanics can support.  He sets himself apart from the GOP herd — but in a way (arguably) consistent with conservative/libertarian principles.

Paul has a genius for recognizing and taking advantage of the rhythm and logistics of politics.  No one makes better use of slow news days.  He manipulates the media, not the other way round.  He understands the value of straying from the herd…but not too far.  Political observers, left and right, are noticing. Paul and Sen. Marco Rubio are "the men who can save the GOP," says S.E. Cupp. Paul and Rubio are "the two most potent forces in GOP politics today," said Politico.

I won’t support him in the primaries if Paul runs for president, because I think his views on national security policy are dangerously naïve.  But I hope he does. He’d be formidable in debates, and would attract for them a larger, younger audience, which badly needs to hear what he says so well.

* * * *

More attention was focused on the GOP’s shortcomings this week, but Stanley Kurtz says its Democrats who are more likely to crack up.  He cites the widening rift between greenie weenies and labor unions over the Keystone XL pipeline. John Hinderaker thinks so, too.  He cites the burgeoning split on gun control.  Matt Continetti agrees. So do I.  For that reason – and because the NCAA basketball tournament began this week – I pronounce the glass to be more than half full.President Barack Obama visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority this week. Israelis "can’t figure out what he’s doing here" said Carolyn Glick.

Apparently, it was to pretend he was George W. Bush. "Second-Term Obama just gave First-Term Obama a whack on the tush," said John Podhoretz

He’s backtracking on his Cairo speech, said Jonathan Tobin. That even the White House now realizes Zero’s much ballyhooed overture to Muslims in Cairo was a "disaster" is one of 8 things we’re learning from the president’s trip, says Jen Rubin.

Obama’s apparent change of heart is too little, too late, says British journalist Con Coughlin. Zero is much less popular with both Muslims and Israelis than was President Bush.

NBC’s Chuck Todd rarely lets his nose stray far from Mr. Obama’s buttocks.  But when Todd asked him why his policies haven’t led to Middle East peace, Zero did not respond graciously.

* * * *

Obama’s policies are emboldening North Korea and Iran, said Claudia Rosett. He’s screwed the pooch in Syria, says David Rohde of the Atlantic magazine.  The Russians think Zero is wrecking the world on purpose, notes Spengler.

* * * *

Is it the Religion of Peace, or the religion of mass murderers?  James Holmes, who shot 70 people in a theater in Aurora, Colorado last summer, reportedly has converted to Islam.

* * * *

The House approved the Paul Ryan Budget Thursday, 221-207, with 10 Republicans voting no.  Then the House passed, 318-109, a continuing resolution which keeps funding for the remainder of this fiscal year at sequester levels.

The law requires the President to present his budget by Feb. 1, but Obama hasn’t.  He did get his NCAA basketball tournament picks in on time.  The Senate GOP Whip introduced an amendment to the CR Thursday to suspend the pay of top OMB officials for every day the president’s budget submission is late.

* * * *

If you thought Dingy Harry Reid couldn’t possibly be more despicable, you were mistaken.  (Miko, pls post this Ramirez cartoon here.)

* * * *

Liberals are peeved with Dingy Harry, too.  His refusal to schedule a vote on her bill to ban assault weapons is a "major betrayal of trust," said Sen. Diane Feinstein.

Her bill can’t get 40 votes in the Senate, Dingy Harry said. But after he was savagely criticized by the Left, Dingy Harry changed his mind. Gun control is a tar baby Dems – prodded by hysterical liberal journalists such as those Jim Taranto quotes here — just can’t seem to resist.

The ban on high capacity magazines he rushed through the legislature is unworkable, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo admitted.  The law requires New Yorkers to buy magazines which hold no more than 7 rounds, but nobody makes them. He’s working with the legislature to permit the sale of magazines which can hold (the industry standard of) 10 rounds, but New Yorkers would still be forbidden to load more than 7 rounds into them, Cuomo told the New York Times Wednesday.  Yeah, that’ll be enforceable.

The gun control bills passed by Colorado Dems are unenforceable, too, say sheriffs, but the Dem governor plans to sign them anyway.  If he does, magazine manufacturer Magpul says it will pull out of the state, taking several hundred jobs somewhere else.  Coloradan Ross Kaminski provides more detail.

New York is so left wing Dems are safe no matter how many stupid things they do.  Colorado isn’t like that, as I suspect Dems there will find out next election.

* * * *

Ten years ago Wednesday, the war with Iraq began.  It cost 4,487 American lives, and about a trillion dollars. Was it worth it?

"From today’s vantage point, unfortunately, the answer looks increasingly to be ‘no,’" said Max Boot, who remains an unapologetic supporter of the decision to invade.

Sectarian violence is rising in Iraq, which today is a mess. But it’s a far less dangerous mess to the United States than it would be if Saddam Hussein were still in power.  He was the most powerful ruler in the Arab world, an implacable enemy of the United States, and a really evil mean nasty rotten guy.  We shouldn’t forget that. It turned out Saddam didn’t have much WMD then, but had he remained in power, by now he very likely would have WMD, including nukes.

If he’d known then Saddam didn’t have WMD, he wouldn’t have supported the invasion, Boot said. I still might have, because:

·         Saddam was the biggest threat to the U.S. in the Arab world (even if he wasn’t as big a threat as we thought at the time);

·         in March of 2003, it was critical to demonstrate to our enemies the U.S. wasn’t a paper tiger, and

·         Iraq is by far the most geostrategically important country in the Middle East.

We won the war astonishlingly fast, with amazingly few casualties.  Then – until the 2007-2008 troop surge –we proceeded to lose the peace.  We made a host of mistakes, chief among them being the complete abolition of the Iraqi army, and the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which in the eyes of many in Iraq and around the world, made us an imperial, occupying power. 

It didn’t have to be that way. What if after we took Baghdad, we’d declared victory and gone home?  That’s essentially what Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld wanted to do.  The sectarian violence we’re seeing now likely would have developed a lot sooner.  But Saddam would be gone, the fear of God put into our enemies, and no one could have accused us of being an occupier.

We stayed, to engage in "nation-building."  It cost us thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and sharply divided Americans.  Iraq became a quagmire for us, but even that had an upside, because it became a quagmire for al Qaida, too.  Islamists from all over the world flocked to Iraq – and we killed them in big bunches.  If they hadn’t been killed there, what might they have done? 

* * * *

This week is also the third anniversary of the passage of Obamacare. Americans are still learning what’s in it.  They haven’t liked what they’ve learned so far. Reviews have been ugly.  The worst is yet to come.

The anniversaries have something in common, Ramirez thinks.  (Miko, pls post this Ramirez cartoon here)

* * * *

Dr. Ben Carson’s speech at CPAC was such a big hit, even the New York Times noticed.  Dr. Carson is "the polar opposite"of Obama, and he scares liberals to death, said Rush Limbaugh.  Though he’s lived for lo these many years in Maryland, a columnist for the Detroit News thinks Dr. Carson should be the next senator from Michigan.

"This idea is simply too good.," said Avik Roy. "At a time when the chaotic implementation of Obamacare will be front and center, Carson will be able to speak intelligently about Obamacare’s flaws."

If Dr. Carson runs for the Senate in either Michigan or Maryland, he’d be a wonderful addition to the young studs already there.  So would this guy, who I think would be on national security policy as big a star as are Sens. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz on domestic issues.

* * * * 

Republicans are more open-minded, much better informed than Democrats, according to this Pew survey.

* * * *

The Republican party has a big time image problem, I noted in a column this week The Republican National Committee agrees.  It issued a 100-page "post-mortem" on the 2012 elections this week.  RNC Chairman Reince Priebus talked about it with Jen Rubin here.  Hugh Hewitt discussed the post-mortem with one of its authors, former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, here.  

The post-mortem drew praise from Jennifer Rubin and Avik Roy; qualified praise from Guy Benson; criticism from Ramesh Ponnuru and John Podhoretz.

Conservatives were upset by passages which said that to attract Hispanic voters, Republicans  "must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform;" and that to be more attractive to young people, the GOP should lighten up on opposition to gay marriage.

Those who charged "sellout" and "betrayal" were reading into the post-mortem stuff its authors didn’t say.  They were careful not to opine about what constitutes "comprehensive immigration reform," and they didn’t recommend Republicans support gay marriage — just that Republicans show more respect and tolerance for those who do.

We should stand by our principles. But if we don’t find a way to do this without expressing hostility towards those with whom we disagree, we’ll never win elections, say Peter Wehner and Noemie Emery.

* * * *

One who gets this is Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, for whom my respect is increasing by leaps and bounds.  I think he may be the smartest Republican politician in Washington.

Paul set forth the one position on gay marriage arguably consistent with conservative principles: Whatever you think of it as a moral or practical issue, it ought not to be up to the government to decide who can marry whom.  I don’t (quite) buy this, but I think Paul’s position is clever and beguiling.

Where Paul’s political smarts really show is on immigration reform.  This isn’t exactly a burning issue in Kentucky, but this back bencher in the minority party in the Senate captured national attention this week by presenting his own plan.  And a clever plan it is.  Paul supports a "pathway to citizenship" for illegals (but is vague about what this might be), but opposes "amnesty," including "the de-facto amnesty we have now," and insists the border be secured first.  This is a conceptual framework that most Hispanics and a large majority of non-Hispanics can support.  He sets himself apart from the GOP herd — but in a way (arguably) consistent with conservative/libertarian principles.

Paul has a genius for recognizing and taking advantage of the rhythm and logistics of politics.  No one makes better use of slow news days.  He manipulates the media, not the other way round.  He understands the value of straying from the herd…but not too far.  Political observers, left and right, are noticing. Paul and Sen. Marco Rubio are "the men who can save the GOP," says S.E. Cupp. Paul and Rubio are "the two most potent forces in GOP politics today," said Politico.

I won’t support him in the primaries if Paul runs for president, because I think his views on national security policy are dangerously naïve.  But I hope he does. He’d be formidable in debates, and would attract for them a larger, younger audience, which badly needs to hear what he says so well.

* * * *

More attention was focused on the GOP’s shortcomings this week, but Stanley Kurtz says its Democrats who are more likely to crack up.  He cites the widening rift between greenie weenies and labor unions over the Keystone XL pipeline. John Hinderaker thinks so, too.  He cites the burgeoning split on gun control.  Matt Continetti agrees. So do I.  For that reason – and because the NCAA basketball tournament began this week – I pronounce the glass to be more than half full.