The old saw about being able to tell when a politician is lying by virtue of his lips moving has the ring of truth to it, even to some politicians. So to solve this problem and restore trust in their governance, you are herewith forbidden to see their lips.

Tonight, a debate is being held for the 5^th District congressional seat in South Carolina. Incumbent John Spratt, who has been in Congress since early in Ronald Reagan’s first term, is going up against Republican Mick Mulvaney. The only problem is, most South Carolinians won’t be able to see the debate. That’s because Spratt has requested no cameras or audio taping of the debate, evidently subscribing to the theory that if a liberal falls in a debate hall and no one hears it, it didn’t really happen.

You see, in addition to being scared of his constituents, Spratt is also Chairman of the House Budget Committee, among whose stellar accomplishments this term was the failure to pass a budget. According to Mulvaney, Spratt’s voting record indicates an almost symbiotic relationship with the governing philosophy of Nancy Pelosi. And like so many Democrats of late, he’s looking down the barrel of an electoral cannon. His debate strategy is therefore the equivalent of a cigarette and blindfold. Oh yes, and an informal poll on whether or not this debate should ban cameras, has Spratt’s position losing 98% to 2%. See you in November, Congressman.

Can the “American dream” truly be reconciled with the call for self-sacrifice found in the Christian Gospel? That is the subject of David Brooks’ latest column:

When Europeans first settled this continent, they saw the natural abundance and came to two conclusions: that God’s plan for humanity could be realized here, and that they could get really rich while helping Him do it. This perception evolved into the notion that we have two interdependent callings: to build in this world and prepare for the next.

The tension between good and plenty, God and mammon, became the central tension in American life, propelling ferocious energies and explaining why the U.S. is at once so religious and so materialist. Americans are moral materialists, spiritualists working on matter.

Platt is in the tradition of those who don’t believe these two spheres can be reconciled. The material world is too soul-destroying. “The American dream radically differs from the call of Jesus and the essence of the Gospel,” he argues. The American dream emphasizes self-development and personal growth. Our own abilities are our greatest assets.

But the Gospel rejects the focus on self: “God actually delights in exalting our inability.” The American dream emphasizes upward mobility, but “success in the kingdom of God involves moving down, not up.”

The Christian Gospel compatible with greed? No, certainly not. But must we forsake the ideals encapsulated in “the American dream” to lead lives in accordance with the Christian message?

The Wall Street Journal just posted tomorrow's opinion page, including a "rando" (an item in "Review & Outlook," where the Journal's unsigned commentary--its editorials--appear) on next week's Republican Senate primary in Delaware. Voters, the Journal argues, ought to cast their ballots for Congressman and former Governor Mike Castle, a moderate Republican, and not for his conservative opponent, Christine O'Donnell, who has the support of the Tea Party.

So GOP primary voters must decide if they want to vote for Mr. Castle, ...who would help Republicans organize the Senate and who opposed ObamaCare but who will give them heartburn on some issue in the future. Or they can vote their heart even if it means giving up a Senate seat....

Politics in our two-party system is about coalition building, and any successful party must stretch across many groups. Republicans will have to accommodate much of the tea party agenda if they hope to assemble a new majority and avoid third-party challenges. But tea partiers who want to restore proper Constitutional limits, rather than merely pad the ratings of talk radio, might recall William F. Buckley Jr.'s counsel* that his policy was to vote for the most conservative candidate who could win.

I've been agonizing over this one--or at least co-agonizing, as I've read Paul Mirgengoff's continuing series on "The Delaware Conundrum," the fifth and most recent of which Paul posted earlier today. I keep hoping for a poll showing that O'Donnell would have even a remote chance of defeating the Democratic in the general. None has emerged. To the contrary. It appears as close to a certainty as ever arises in politics that, whereas Castle would win, O'Donnell would lose, and lose catastrophically.

If I lived in Delaware, I'd vote for Castle.

*William F. Buckley's actual words: that he always supported "the rightward-most viable candidate." And whereas Bill always receives the attribution for that remark these days, he lifted it, as he himself explained, from a liberal who once remarked that he supported the "leftward-most viable candidate." The liberal in question? Bill's friend and perpetual antagonist, John Kenneth Galbraith.

It's historic, all right. Historically radioactive:

At least five of the 34 House Democrats who voted against their party’s health care reform bill are highlighting their “no” votes in ads back home. By contrast, party officials in Washington can’t identify a single House member who’s running an ad boasting of a “yes” vote — despite the fact that 219 House Democrats voted in favor of final passage in March. One Democratic strategist said it would be “political malfeasance” to run such an ad now. Democrats have taken that advice to heart; it appears that no Democratic incumbent — in the House or in the Senate — has run a pro-reform TV ad since April, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ran one.

I wouldn't be surprised if Reid's were the last.

Since our President brought up the subject of dogs, it triggered a few random thoughts on the subject. First, let me say, I like dogs, but dog owners can be a bit much. To wit:

When taping Wheel, players will frequently mention their dogs by name. Are they hoping the dogs will hear their names or call their other dog friends and tell them to watch? By the way, on several occasions, I’ve had to remind the players to mention their kids or their spouse after they’ve said hello to the dogs.

When a dog does some sort of little “trick” and the owner says, “Isn’t he smart?” I usually respond, “Yes...for a dog.” I still think the average two-year-old can use crayons better than even the wisest dog.

When people ask whether I own a dog (I do), the follow-up question is often, “What’s its name?”What’s its name? Do they plan on sending Christmas cards?

As for dressing dogs in hats and sweaters and such, well, if dogs could talk, I suspect they’d often apologize for their owners.

The Supreme Court will soon hear the appeal in Snyder v. Phelps. The case concerns a fundamentalist pastor (Fred Phelps) who decided to protest what he perceives to be the military’s tolerance of gays and lesbians -- by heckling at military funerals.

In 2006, Phelps and his supporters demonstrated at the funeral of a fallen Marine, Matthew Snyder. They yelled and waved signs saying “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” Snyder's father won a verdict for intentional infliction of emotional distress, but the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, saying that the judgment violates the First Amendment rights of the protestors.

Eugene Volokh -- for whom I have great respect -- has co-authored an amicus brief arguing that liability for "outrageous" speech will kill free debate on college campuses. That may be true, but the more important question is: what does the First Amendment protect? My understanding is that it prohibits prior government restraint on speech, but was never intended to mean that you can't face legal consequences for your speech after-the-fact. Presumably defamation laws also have a "chilling effect" on speech, but that doesn't mean they violate the First Amendment.

What does it mean for there to be a realignment, what is there to be gained from such a development, and how can it be effected? That is the question.

There have been five such events in American history: in 1800, 1828, 1860, 1894, and 1932. Some would add 1980 to the list, but I think that Ronald Reagan and the Republicans failed to capitalize adequately on the gains they made that year. Had Reagan run a principled, partisan campaign in 1984, things might have been different.

In every one of the five cases listed above, those in opposition were offered a golden opportunity by the party in power. In every case, those in opposition seized that opportunity and reoriented national policy in the aftermath. In every case, those in opposition presented themselves to the general public as a party of principle and acted as one after achieving victory. In every case, they seized upon what many perceived as a threat to republican liberty and the American way of life and acted to eliminate the putative threat.

When the Federalists in Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 and John Adams signed them into law, they opened the door to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Jeffersonian Republicans. When Henry Clay threw his support in Congress to John Quincy Adams in 1824, thwarted the Presidential ambitions of Andrew Jackson, and managed to pass into law large parts of a Hamiltonian program that he would eventually call “the American system,” he opened the door to Jackson, Martin van Buren, and the coalition that came to be called the Democratic Party. In the 1850s, when the proponents of Negro slavery pressed successfully for a repeal of the Missouri Compromise and Roger Taney and his proslavery Supreme Court handed down their decision in the Dred Scott case, they opened the door to Abraham Lincoln and our nation’s second Republican Party. When the Democratic Party split in the wake of the financial Panic of 1893 and the proponents of silver coinage and inflation within that party turned on Grover Cleveland and threatened to take over the party, it brought new life to the Republicans in the congressional elections of 1894 and paved the way for a decisive face-off between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan in 1896. And when Herbert Hoover responded to the economic crisis of 1929 by encouraging the Federal Reserve Board to keep interest rates high, by signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, and by raising taxes and deepening the recession, it opened the door to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party.

Had Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley, and FDR proved feckless in office, they would have squandered victory. But they managed successfully to represent the Federalists, the Whigs, the slave power, the Bryan Democrats, and the Hoover Republicans as a threat to republican liberty and the American way of life, and in the process they effected a return to first principles.

I would submit that Obama, Emanuel, Pelosi, and Reid have offered today’s Republicans a comparable opportunity. Like Herbert Hoover, they have managed economic affairs in such a manner as to prolong and deepen a recession. And like the Federalists in 1798, the Whigs in the 1820s, and the slave-power conspirators of the 1850s, they have acted in such a manner as to suggest that republican liberty is in peril.

What the Republicans have to do to effect a realignment is to nationalize the congressional elections by taking every major bill that the Democrats have passed and representing it as part of a larger plan aimed at reducing the American people to servitude. This should not be hard to do.

Barack Obama promised to “transform” America, and he has done his best to make good on that promise. We have seen the Democrats mount a systematic campaign to steal elections with the help of ACORN and similar organizations. We have watched them press to eliminate the secret ballot in unionization campaigns. We have stood aghast as they shoved through Congress on a single-party vote a series of bills mammoth in length, incomprehensible even after they were passed, and unread by those who voted on them. We have witnessed a massive expansion of the administrative state, and money has been spent in such a fashion as to threaten the country with bankruptcy. There is a crisis. It has deepened, and everyone knows it. Moreover, as Rahm Emanuel promised, his party has not let that crisis “go to waste.” It has exploited it to effect a radical transformation of the country – and the American people are aware that they have been had.

As I said in my earlier post, if the Republicans re-establish themselves as a party of principle – as a counter-conspiracy intent on defending republican liberty – and do so by means of a new Contract with America, they will win a very large victory, indeed; and they will have positioned themselves in such a way as to be able to effect a lasting realignment.

In 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt summed up his assault on the Republican Party, on the Hoover administration, and on the financiers and titans of industry so prominent in the 1920s with the following words: “A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.” What FDR said on that occasion was untrue, but in the context of the Great Depression his rhetoric was effective.

Today, however, such a claim would be well-founded. A small group of men and women – lead by Obama, Emanuel, Pelosi, and Reid and backed with enthusiasm by virtually every Democrat in the Senate and the House – really has sought “an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor - other people’s lives”; and Americans in ever-increasing numbers now worry that their lives will no longer be free, that their liberty will no longer be real, and that they will no longer have the wherewithal with which to pursue happiness as they understand it.

All that the Republicans have to do over the next few years, if they wish to effect a realignment, is to articulate the inchoate fears inspired by Obama, Emanuel, Pelosi, and Reid and to spell out what they intend to do to roll back the administrative state and lay those fears to rest. Are the Republicans up to the challenge? This is the question we now face.

All that I can say at this time is that encouragement has been accorded the Republicans. As I pointed out in the second of my two posts yesterday, the Tea-Party Movement in every corner of the land has announced itself as a credible threat to Republicans in Name Only. Witness the ascendancy of Sharron Angle in Nevada, of Joe Miller in Alaska, of Marco Rubio in Florida, of Rand Paul in Kentucky, and of Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. These days even that John McCain wannabee Lindsey Graham is assiduously toeing the line. The times they are a-changin’.

The so-called Ground Zero Mosque—the Muslim community center that calls itself Park51—just launched its new blog moments ago.

Several hours ago, via twitter, Park51 announced that it “will be launching our beta blog and new branding today at 3pm est.” So for the last few hours, I kept wondering: exactly how will the GZM rebrand itself? What will the "new branding" look like? I thought, perhaps, that the blog might start off with an entry about the great mystic Sufi poet Rumi, or a short declarative piece that denounces Hamas as a terrorist organization, or maybe even with an announcement that it plans to move shop to build a more perfect bond with the community. There were a number of possibilities, remote and not, which were running through my head.

What I wasn't expecting, what I did not consider, was a blog whose eco-friendly, new agey references are more plentiful than its references to Islam.

Its rebranded "vision" is:

Park51 is a nonsectarian community, cultural and interfaith spiritual center along with a Muslim prayer area and a monument to honor all those we lost on 9/11. Park51 enriches lower Manhattan in body and spirit, with ecologically conscious design and operation. Our goals are pluralism, service, arts and culture, health and healing. A group of downtown Muslim-Americans envisioned a sanctuary where everyone is welcome to learn, experience the arts and culture and explore their relationship to faith. In the near future, Park51 will offer green, world-class recreational and educational facilities, and a friendly and accessible platform for conversations across our identities [my italics].

And here is its new "mission"--which includes still more amorous references to the environment.

Park51 celebrates arts, culture and ideas, bringing the best of the world to New York City, and New York City’s energy and diversity to the world. Park51 will become a model for future institutions, with its inclusive focus, sustainable design and dedication to social needs.

Park51 strives to:

Encourage dialogue, harmony and respect amongst all people, regardless of race, faith, gender or cultural background.

Establish a state-of-the-art eco-friendly facility that will serve as a model and inspiration for sustainable space in an urban context.

Cultivate neighborly relations amongst New Yorkers, fostering civic participation

Revive the historic Muslim tradition of education, engagement and service.

Promote Muslim-Americans identities, engaging New York’s many and diverse Muslim communities.

Build partnerships and relationships with institutions who share our values

Provide a wide array of social services for children, women & families, seniors immigrants, small business owners and high-need adult populations [my italics].

I'm no marketing expert, but don't you usually rebrand a company or an organization in order to change its image in a way that appeals to either different OR more people? If the point of Park51/GZM is to promote pluralism and cross-cultural understanding, shouldn't it have rebranded itself in a way that reached out to those who, in the eyes of the mosque's leaders, understand it least--to critics of the mosque, like harried conservatives and wary moderates? As it is, the rebranded Park51 continues to appeal to its fair-weather supporters (feel-good liberals taking a stand for the religion "of the other") while offering no quarter to its critics.

Park51/GZM, for instance, could have extended a hand to its critics by, at the very least, distancing itself from 9/11. It needn't be the "Ground Zero Mosque" if it were not for the fact that it keeps tying its mission to 9/11, as its new blog announces in the "About" section.

The first footnote of any law review article usually goes like this: "all errors are the author’s alone.” Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Kopel suggests that President (and former law professor) Obama might want to include such a footnote in the next installment of his memoirs. But the standard wording is boring, so David lists some alternative footnotes he's actually used:

• Any errors are the fault of no-one in particular; rather, society itself is to blame.
• All errors are the authors’ sole responsibility, but persons aggrieved by any such errors are encouraged to sue the companies which manufactured our computers.
• Errors are entirely the responsibility of sinister unknown forces, not the authors.

So help me write the first footnote to Obama's presidential memoir. "All errors of my administration were the fault of....?"

Last night I expressed my elation at Rasmussen's latest poll, which showed Republicans with a 12-point lead in generic polling, saying that any more good news might kill me. Apparently, I've been reprieved.

But there's something undeniably screwy going on here. Today Gallup may be telling us that the GOP and the Democrats are tied, but just a week ago Gallup had Republicans up by ten. One poll is an anomaly or outlier. But which one?

Chicagoland!

Mayor Richard Daley says he will not run for re-election in 2011. "The truth is I have been thinking about this for the past several months," Daley said at a City Hall news conference. "In the end this is a personal decision, no more, no less." Daley spoke for less than five minutes and took no questions. [...]

Earlier this year, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel voiced his mayoral ambitions. But the former North Side congressman quickly added that he wouldn't take on Daley, for whom he served as a strategist and fundraiser in the mayor's first winning bid.

Daley has been a dud of a mayor, and Rahm's interest in the job is a matter of public record. But the President's falling fortunes and the doom stalking Congressional Democrats have effectively closed the door on Emanuel's future in federal government. (I'm guessing Obama won't appoint him to the Supreme Court.)

UPDATE: Tim Carney: "Looking forward to the Blago-Rahm-Roland Burris primary in Chicago." Sam Stein adds Oprah.

UPDATE 2: The Fix (Via Allahpundit): "a senior Obama Administration official said Emanuel is likely to run for the post. 'I’d be shocked if he doesn’t run,' the official said." Cuomo in Albany and Emanuel in Chicago -- it all makes a certain sense, doesn't it?

UPDATE 3: Michael Goldfarb tweets: "My WH sources tell me Valerie Jarrett is at the top of the short list for Rahm's job."

In some ways, we're still voting like a 50/50 nation. But in others, the numbers show a growing, accelerating pendulum swing. So watch for flipping polls. In this climate, they're beginning to look like tipping points:

• "Forty-six percent approve of the job President Barack Obama is doing while 52 percent disapprove. Those numbers are worse when it comes to Obama's handling of the economy with just 41 percent offering approval and 57 percent disapproving."
• "Rasmussen [...] shows Fiorina picking up 48% of the vote, while Boxer draws support from 47%. [...] These numbers show a slight shift from results with leaners found two weeks ago, when Boxer led Fiorina 49% to 44%."
• And a tipping point to come? "Washington Sen. Patty Murray currently leads Republican challenger Dino Rossi by five points and has just barely reached the 50-percent mark [...]. Murray leads Rossi, 50 percent to 45 percent [...]. It’s expected to be a tight campaign through November and the new DSCC poll has the contest three points closer than it was in April, when a [...] poll gave Murray an eight-point lead.

No one.

And that's what freaking people out.

Well, not everyone. But it sure is making the establishment -- on both sides -- sit up and take notice. From Hotline:

The Tea Party movement, which is still dismissed by skeptics as an undisciplined collection of passionate but exotic conservatives, garners plenty of respect from political operatives in both parties according to the latest results of the National Journal Political Insiders Poll.

Typical of the GOP sentiment was this statement: "Yes, they've nominated some wacky candidates. But their intensity will help Republicans across the board, wacky and non-wacky alike." Said another GOP Insider, "Motivated voters are better than depressed voters. We can worry about re-electing this [freshman Senate] class in six years.

"Plenty of respect" is code for: we're freaked out. We're scared. This thing is happening and there's no one in charge.

Usually, a movement like this has a face, a leader. The people following the movement tend to associate it with that person -- the Perot Voter, for instance -- and the people against the movement do what they can to discredit that person. And the rest of the political establishment knows that there's someone there -- some person to call -- to make a deal with.

Because there's always been a person in charge, to either follow and vote for, or try to discredit, or make a deal with.

But that's where the Tea Party is so different, and so unnerving. There's no leader -- oh, sure, Palin and Beck circulate through it, but they don't crystallize the movement. They're not the leaders as much as they're the most famous members.

The Tea Party is a network. It's only possible thanks to the explosion of networks on the web. Who's in charge of Facebook? Who's in charge of Twitter? No one. Just like no one is in charge of the Tea Party, which is vast and growing and terrifying to the people who need someone (anyone!) to be in charge.

The Tea Party is doing to American politics what new media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) are doing to Old Media: breaking down the hierarchies, busting up the org chart, freaking out the suits.

The mantra has begun: depending on the poll, 11-to-18 percent of Americans apparently think President Obama is a Muslim, proving that his opponents are racist, Islamophobic ignoramuses. Whoa, cowboy! Here are a few thoughts on those figures, assuming them to be accurate.

First, you can find significant numbers of people who believe almost anything, including that the U.S. planned the World Trade Center attacks. Second, why is it such a terrible thing to believe he’s a Muslim? Respondents might be misinformed or ill-read, but why do we assume they hate the guy? Maybe they just misidentified his religion. Maybe some of those who were polled actually were Muslims. Maybe they were Democrats. It’s safe to say at least 18% of Americans would make the wrong guess about any President’s religion.

Third, why is it so unfathomably moronic to believe he’s a Muslim? It’s not as if they’re saying he’s a Martian. Obama’s mixed heritage was touted as a great plus during the campaign. How surprised should we be that some people made a wrong assumption?

And finally, why are these poll findings being characterized as an attack on the President? Is it wrong to be a Muslim? Is it something to be ashamed of? Why is the Left so upset by this? Aren’t they protesting just a bit too much?

There's a bummer of a graph making the rounds:

Roger Kimball asks: "Is it worth it? Is four years at Yale (or Harvard, Princeton, or any other “competitive” college) worth $53,000 x 4 plus annual tuition increases for a grand total (assuming you are entering right now) of roughly a quarter of a million dollars?"

This is a question that, to the consternation of academic administrators, more and more parents — not to mention responsible teenagers — are asking themselves.

At Phi Beta Cons, Matthew Shaffer puts the question in relative terms:

Statistically measuring the real value of education is beyond my ken. But as a recent college graduate, I find it hard to believe that college is 3.5 times more valuable than it was in 1978, or more valuable at all, particularly with students studying so much less.

Shaffer's fellow PBC Nathan Harden relays the painful New York Times tale "of Allison Brooke Eastman, whose fiancé broke off their engagement after she disclosed the massive student-loan debt she had acquired on the way to becoming an X-ray technician/part-time photographer."

Remember kids: student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy! Not that that's stopped America's outstanding student loan debt, as Zac Bissonnette has noted, from surpassing its credit card debt -- for the first time in history. It's enough to make you wonder whether anyone could ever have made good on the implicit deal that drove so many upward-mobility-driven kids to sign on the dotted line.

I have been arguing for some time – first here in August 2009, then in posts linked here and archived here, here, and here – that a realignment might be in the offing. By now, it should be obvious that such an opportunity has presented itself to the Republicans. Last week, the Gallup poll suggested that on the generic Congressional ballot the Republicans have a 10% advantage. Yesterday, as Peter Robinson has pointed out, the Rasmussen poll suggested that the Republicans have a 12% advantage – which means that the Gallup poll was not an outlier: it was indicative of a powerful trend still underway.

This in turn suggests that on the first Tuesday in November the Republicans are likely to win an historic victory. If current trends continue, I suspect that they will pick up more than seventy seats in the House and perhaps as many as twelve in the Senate. How, one might ask, can they take full advantage of this remarkable opportunity? How might they transform a victory into a realignment?

They face, I think, two obstacles – one internal, the other external – and they cannot get past the latter if they do not get past the former.

The external obstacle is simple: next to no one trusts them. Their conduct when last in the majority in both houses was unprincipled and appalling.

The internal obstacle is less easy to describe. In an earlier post, entitled Patronage, Principles, and Political Parties, I remarked on the fact that the Founding Fathers made no provision for organized political parties, that Americans thereafter found it impossible to govern effectively in their absence, and that the separation of powers tends to subvert their cohesion. Congressman and Senators are caught between the dictates of the party discipline necessary for effective governance and the demands of local constituents, and the parties they form within the House and the Senate tend to oscillate between operating as parties of patronage and functioning as parties of principle.

In a later post entitled John Boehner’s Testing Time, I argued that the Republicans will be unable to get past the internal obstacle standing in the way of their seizing the opportunity Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have afforded them unless they turn themselves into a party of principle, and I suggested that they do so by drafting a new Contract with America in which they promise to restore constitutional government in this country and spell out in some detail what this entails. In this fashion, they can bind their members to vote for a repeal of Obamacare and for rolling back the administrative state, and in this fashion they can begin to recover the trust of the American people.

In my next post, I will spell out what, I believe, should be the unifying theme of their campaign this Fall and over the next two years.

When discussing corruption in Turkey, I've always struggled to explain--both to Turks and Americans--why it is somehow different from corruption in America. I've never attempted to persuade anyone that there's no corruption in America. That would be manifestly absurd. But it's a different kind of corruption, and its systemic effects are different.

I read Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong some time ago, before I'd lived in Turkey. I was re-reading it this morning when I came across this sentence:

The difference between Middle Eastern and Western economic approaches can be seen even in their distinctive forms of corruption, from which neither society is exempt. In the West, one makes money in the market, and uses it to buy or influence power. In the East, one seizes power, and uses it to make money. Morally there is no difference between the two, but their impact on the economy and on the polity is very different.

Yes. Of course. I re-read that sentence about a dozen times, wondering how it had escaped me.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the reaction of Gen. Petraeus to International Burn a Koran Day, not to be confused with Patriot Day:

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort. Gen. David Petraeus said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.

FOX News reports meanwhile on the reaction in Afghanistan:

"We know this is not just the decision of a church. It is the decision of the president and the entire United States," said Abdul Shakoor, an 18-year-old high school student who said he joined the protest after hearing neighborhood gossip about the Koran burning.

UPDATE: With a little help from a local friend, Jonah cautions against the hype.

I’m not what you’d call a Pollyanna. In fact, I’m pretty sure if something can go wrong, it will. As for the glass being half empty or half full, I not only come down on the half-empty side, I’m pretty certain there’s a crack in the bottom of the glass that will drain the whole thing dry. Despite all that, I’m growing more and more convinced that November’s elections will mark an extraordinarily important turning point in the relationship between the government and the governed, and not simply because the Democrats are likely to have their clocks cleaned. Despite the efforts of the Left and their cohorts in the press to paint their opponents as ignorant, hate-mongering racists, this is shaping up to be a serious election in which serious people are weighing serious issues. It’s not about slogans and personalities and trivialities; it’s about deficits and government power and the Constitution and the courts and scores of other important issues. In short, we’re about to have a grown-up election.

Equally significant is the fact that our elected officials may actually be coming to grasp the serious mood of the electorate. This is not simply a case of exchanging your scoundrels for ours; it’s a call to dramatically alter our direction and focus seriously on the way government does business and its role in our lives. And if you dare to think the voters are kidding and you can go on with business as usual, they’ll be happy to throw you out, too, when the first opportunity presents itself. Bringing home the pork will no longer assure your permanent status in public life, nor will saying one thing while doing another, nor failing to come to grips in a serious manner with the challenges facing us. Voters really seem to mean business this time, and they’re chomping at the bit to express themselves.

It’s as if a series of revelations has suddenly washed over the voting public. They’ve seen the follies of their government and the deer-in-the-headlights look of its leaders when this nation’s citizens stand up and say, “Stop it! We’re in charge!” And they’re not being intimidated by efforts to silence them. They seem to be saying, “Racists? This country elected an African-American President, and now we’re racists? Hate-mongering? You look down on us and dismiss us and try to mischaracterize us, and we’re the haters?”

I’ve said before that this upcoming election feels different from any other I’ve experienced in my lifetime, and that feeling grows each day. Any politician ignoring the coming wave does so at his own risk. It’s going to be a grown-up election, and it could be a game-changer.

More from Pat Sajak

The Most Insufferable Man in the World

The Bill of Rights, 2010 Style

What's a Rich Liberal to Do?

I Am Obama's Game Show Czar

Thanks to all who turned out for our first Rico Soirée, right across from the ballpark in San Francisco. We were happy to see that all 50 San Francisco conservatives (we're including you libertarians in that bucket, Kenneth) showed up -- including Nancy Pelosi's opponent this Fall, John Dennis.

Next stop... Minneapolis, Los Angeles, or New York City?

The NY Times conducted a poll recently asking New Yorkers for their views on the GZ mosque, apparently expecting the majority to agree with the paper that the mosque is an all-around swell idea. When the poll demonstrated that a majority in fact find the mosque insensitive and ill-advised, the Times published an editorial denouncing...New Yorkers. The WSJ's invaluable Best of the Web Today gave it a well-earned fisking:

The Times editorial is a classic of muddled thinking and self-righteous attitudinizing:

"As the site of America's bloodiest terrorist attack, New York had a great chance to lead by example. Too bad other places are ahead of us. Muslims hold daily prayer services in a chapel in the Pentagon, a place also hallowed by 9/11 dead. The country often has had the wisdom to choose graciousness and reconciliation over triumphalism, as is plain from the many monuments to Confederate soldiers in northern states, including the battlefield at Gettysburg."

We're not sure we agree with the Times that the proposed mosque is akin to a monument honoring enemy soldiers. But if we accept the analogy for the sake of argument, shouldn't postbellum reconciliation at least wait until the war is over?

Ed Driscoll had a prescient blog post titled 'Something Weird Happens When Presidencies Go Wrong.' It looks at how Presidential gaffes and incompetence beget more Presidential gaffes and incompetence. This clearly plagues President Obama but he's by no means the first president to suffer in this manner.

And that was before his speech yesterday. I didn't listen but followed online a bit. He said something that I'm sure made his aides just groan:

“They talk about me like a dog,” Obama said with a chuckle of his political opponents. “That’s not in my prepared remarks but it’s true.”

Not in your prepared remarks? I wonder why! Since he uttered this, one side of my Twitter stream has pretty much been a non-stop joke fest. A sample:

@iowahawkblog Didja hear about the dyslexic agnostic narcissist President? He laid awake all night wondering if he was really Dog.
@ExJon My dog is mad at me again. (I talk about her like Obama.)
@jtLOL Who’s a good president? Obama’s a good president, isn’t he? Yes he is! http://bit.ly/aUvfps
@gpollowitz In dog years, Obama has served his full two terms.

I'm sure that President Obama thought this would go over better. But with his critics responding to an important speech unveiling his new jobs plan with hours of jokes, he might want to be more mindful of that TelePrompTer in the future.

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One of the ways that defenders of the mosque near ground zero make their case is curious. They say, "Did we fight the building of Christian churches in Oklahoma City after Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building there?"

There's quite a bit going on in this type of statement. The point is to draw equivalencies between Islam and Christianity, to say that violence committed in the name of a religion should not tar the entire religion, to suggest that people who oppose the mosque project near ground zero are Islamophobic bigots and hypocrites.

Of course, in order for this statement to work, it requires Timothy McVeigh to not just be a fanatical Christian but to claim that he bombed the federal building because of his religious views.

Neither of these things could be further from the truth. McVeigh did have ties to religion -- his parents had raised him as a Catholic, for instance. But he described himself as an agnostic. And he was quite clear about why he bombed the building. It had absolutely nothing to do with religion and everything to do with anger at the federal government over its actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. His religious views aren't exactly secret. Sam Donaldson interviewed one of the reporters, Dan Herbeck, who knew McVeigh best:

DONALDSON In these letters to you that you're publishing this morning, once again, he talks about his belief or nonbelief in an afterlife. And he said, "I will improvise, adapt and overcome. If I'm going to hell, I'm going to have a lot of company."

What does that mean to you, Dan?

HERBECK Well, he is an agnostic. He doesn't believe in God, but he has told us he doesn't not believe in God.… Death is part of his adventure, as he describes it to us. And hee told us that when he finds out if there is an afterlife, he will improvise, adapt and overcome just like they taught him in the Army.

So why does the belief about McVeigh persist? I don't know. President George W. Bush once alluded to it, as has former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham. Last week NPR's Michel Martin said it on CNN.

And yet all facts to the contrary, USA Today has just run another piece perpetuating the myth. Sadly, it's written by a seminary president.

Note to everyone: if you want to claim that Christianity is just as violent as Islam by pointing to one other event in history, pick an example based in reality.

Last week, when Gallup showed Republicans ten points up in the generic poll, the news sounded so good I could hardly stand it. Today? Rasmussen has Republicans up twelve. Rasmussen had the GOP up by 12 once before, three weeks ago. But still. A double digit lead, three times in three weeks.

As Redd Foxx used to say on Sanford & Son, "I'm ready to go now."

You all know that I don't think Sarah Palin's remotely qualified to be president and I surely don't think she's the next Margaret Thatcher. But this Vanity Fair hit job makes me sympathize fulsomely with those who support her simply out of indignation with the snobbery of her critics. Are we really supposed to take seriously the damning indictment that she signs her books with an Autopen? That she jokes about wearing push-up bras to get what she wants? (Find me a woman who hasn't made that joke.) That she makes the same speech over and over? (It's called a stump speech.) That her teenage kids call her a phony? (Whose don't?)

This part, particularly, is preposterous:

Whenever I heard Palin speak on the road, her remarks were scored with code phrases expressing solidarity with fundamentalist Christians. Her talk of leading with “a servant’s heart” is a dog whistle for the born-again. Her dig at health-care reform as an expression of Democratic ambitions to “build a Utopia” in the United States is practically a trumpet call (because the Kingdom of God is not of this earth, and perfection can be achieved only in the life to come).

"Dog whistle for the born-again?" Not only is this obnoxious, it's ignorant. It is indeed a Christian view that the Kingdom of God is not of this earth and that Utopian political schemes are therefore a heresy. But this is hardly a view confined to a conspiracy of sister-marrying snake-handling sub-arctic Pentecostalists who are summoned by means of dog whistles and secret codes. This was, for example, precisely Margaret Thatcher's (non-conformist Methodist) opinion.

Not that I'm saying she's the new Margaret Thatcher. She's not. There are many legitimate grounds to find her a ludicrous candidate for the presidency. But if she were even remotely qualified, I'd vote for her just to spite Vanity Fair, I really would.

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Economist Russell Sobel's provocative suggestion:

Our analysis suggests not that gangs cause violence, but that violence causes gangs. In other words, gangs form in response to government's failure to protect youths against violence. The surprising implication of our insight is that efforts to reduce gang activity could actually increase violent crime.

He provides an easy-to-understand example of how this works -- prison:

This is one of the only places where a 40-year old white man would be a gang member, and for good reason. In prison, inmates are frequently the victims of violence and intimidation that go unreported (or if reported, unpunished). This makes the environment similar to that in government-run schools and on inner-city streets. An inmate who joins a gang receives protection, which lowers the odds that he will be a victim of violent crime. Once again, the underlying demand for gangs stems from the presence of pre-existing violence.

Of course, there's no reason why this must be an either/or choice. Gangs definitely cause violence. That they arise due to violence also stands to reason.

Hat tip: Richard Starr.

Ed Morrissey at HotAir:

What happens when over a hundred billion dollars in borrowed cash gets plunged into infrastructure spending and it fails to kick-start the economy? According to this administration, spend another $50 billion on the same failed policy. Barack Obama will unveil his new economic stimulus plan in Wisconsin today, while Russ Feingold looks for a place to hide [.]

True, the election-season timing here is making the administration look especially foolish, as Politico's Jim VandeHei pointed out on Face the Nation:

Does the White House understand this?” asked guest host Harry Smith. “Do you feel any sense of panic or concern” on the part of the administration? ”They get it. There's panic. There’s concern,” VandeHei said. “The reality for this administration stinks, politically and practically, when it comes to the economy. You’re not going to be able to change that 9.6-percent unemployment figure. You can’t get anything from Congress in the next couple of months.”

Now, Jim VandeHei isn't exactly a White House spokesman. On the other hand, who got Obama into this predicament in the first place? Congressional Democrats scrambling to escape the wrath of November can run all they like from Obama. The President, meanwhile, is stuck with himself -- and the embarrasing contradictions of his economic policy.

A week of doing radio interviews has left me vaguely disgusted with myself. Honestly, if all you knew about Margaret Thatcher was what you'd heard me say in one of these interviews, you wouldn't know much. It's not for want of trying on my part, but there's just no time to make a serious argument this way.

Even as the words are coming out of my mouth, I'm thinking, "That doesn't really make sense if I don't explain the context; there's an obvious counter-argument; that's too simplistic." But I don't have time to elaborate, and the medium itself militates against equivocation and hesitation--you can't say, "Well, the answer is quite complicated, let's look at unemployment rates in various regions of Britain from 1979 to the present, keeping in mind the different government definitions of 'unemployment' and some of the technological changes in various industries ... " because by the time you're done with that sentence, you're breaking for the commercial.

Most of these interviews run about six minutes long, absolute maximum half an hour. And what I end up saying--that unemployment came down under Thatcher--is really not enough to understand the story. It doesn't convey at least two essential points: first, that it skyrocketed before it came down, causing immense misery; second, that in some parts of Britain, it still hasn't come down. People who end up thinking, because of something I've said, "Thatcherism worked!" won't appreciate that it worked at a very high cost. They would not be sufficiently well-informed if they declared, based on what I've argued, that they wanted a good dose of Thatcherism in America, and they wouldn't understand what this will probably entail.

I know, I know--people won't form firm political opinions just because they hear me speak on the radio. I haven't dived off the deep end of the vanity pool here; I know I'm not that influential. But on aggregate, if they're just getting their news from the radio, I don't think they'd be getting a deeper perspective on any political issue, would they? Am I wrong about that?

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Happy Labor Day. For most of our neighbors, election season really begins tomorrow. Republicans, led by conservatives, are poised to do extremely well in November. But what then? The statist project has burrowed into our constitutional republic over a span of 80 years. How do we stage a concerted, long-term effort to reverse the trend, first by reigniting economic growth to ward off immediate calamity, then by slowly and methodically restoring our country?

I offer here my own omnibus American Liberty and Recovery Act of 2011, fully realizing that it is too ambitious in scope -- one of many reasons why I'm not a politician.

Liberty

1. Repeal Obamacare. If repeal is vetoed refuse to fund implementation of the bill.
2. Reform health care (for real this time) by permitting consumers to purchase health insurance across state lines. Also, equalize the tax treatment of employer-provided and individually-purchased health insurance.
3. Deny EPA funding to regulate carbon dioxide, eliminating this backdoor effort at centralized industrial policy via administratively enacted cap and trade.
4. Direct Treasury to unwind and privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
5. Direct Treasury to sell its stakes in US banks and automakers.
6. Reverse the Gulf of Mexico oil-drilling ban.
7. Repeal Obama’s new CAFÉ standards – automaker stimulus we can believe in.
8. Repeal Dodd-Frank financial regulation – avoid the coming nightmare.
9. Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley financial regulation – end the nightmare we already know by bringing back small company IPOs.
10. Repeal the ethanol mandate for automobile fuel. Direct EPA to preempt state-by-state custom fuel blends, creating a truly national market.

Recovery

1. Extend the Bush tax cuts – all of them.
2. Reduce the US corporate income tax rate, at 35 percent the second highest on earth, to 15 percent. Get out of the way as corporate dollars and jobs flood back into America.
3. Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. One tax system at a time is enough.
4. Implement an Accelerated Cost Recovery System modeled on the Reagan-era depreciation schedule to spur investment in plant and equipment. Watch American small businesses start growing again.
5. Enact the Ryan plan to place entitlement spending on a more sustainable trajectory
6. Weed TARP and stimulus dollars out of the federal budget baseline. Return overall federal spending to pre-financial crisis levels.

So, fellow Ricochetans, if you were the incoming Speaker in the 112th Congress, what would you do in the first 100 days to save our country from the current crisis and set the stage for 2012 and beyond?

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) fired back Sunday afternoon at a New York Times story that said party leaders were planning a "brutal triage of their own members in hopes of saving enough seats to keep a slim grip on the majority." Van Hollen released a statement saying that the story "erroneously" said that the DCCC would redirect resources to two dozen viable campaigns if a review in the next two weeks showed that vulnerables weren't gaining ground. -- The Hill

Of the Times story, Jay Cost reminds us that "[t]his kind of "incumbent party makes hard choices" story is inevitable in a year like this, but it is really something to see it come out in early September. Sizeable numbers of incumbent Democrats lack a "path to victory," even this far out?" It's the kind of story that any party leader in Van Hollen's position would instinctively deny. But that's not the kind of denial that's really killing the Dems these days.