Eighty-nine percent (89%) of Republicans are angry with the government’s current policies…78% of voters not affiliated with either major party agree. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Democrats share that anger, but Republicans are three times as likely as Democrats to be Very Angry.

The divide between the Political Class and Mainstream voters, however, is remarkable. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Mainstream voters are angry, but 84% of the Political Class are not…68% of Mainstream voters don’t think the leaders of either major political party have a good understanding of what the country needs today. Sixty-one percent (61%) of the Political Class disagree.

Let’s do the math. 88% of Mainstram Voters are angry, and they represent 81% of likely voters. So over 70% of likely voters are in a snit. It doesn’t look like a good year to be an incumbent, particularly an incumbent who refuses to listen.

we now label the groups Mainstream and Political Class. The questions used to calculate the Index are:

– Generally speaking, when it comes to important national issues, whose judgment do you trust more — the American people or America’s political leaders?

– Some people believe that the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Has the federal government become a special interest group?

– Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors?

To create a scale, each response earns a plus 1 for the populist answer, a minus 1 for the political class answer, and a 0 for not sure.

Those who score 2 or higher are considered a populist or part of the Mainstream. Those who score -2 or lower are considered to be aligned with the Political Class. Those who score +1 or -1 are considered leaners in one direction or the other.

In practical terms, if someone is classified with the Mainstream, they agree with the mainstream view on at least two of the three questions and don’t agree with the Political Class on any…

76% of voters generally trust the American people more than political leaders on important national issues. Seventy-one percent (71%) view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors. On each question, a majority of Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters share those views.

The good news is this: “When leaners are included, 81% are in the Mainstream category, and 12% support the Political Class.”

We’re big fans of advertising. The Lucky Strike and Kodak Carousel episodes of Mad Men are beautiful miniatures of a certain time in American life and American business. The Cheap Trick Audi commercial in the Super Bowl seems to fit these times. It’s ambiguous. Is it an endorsement or repudiation of exquisite environmental sensitivities? (Every scene but one mocks the environmentalists.)

Very clever. Whether you think the Green Police are good or bad, buy an Audi. Strategic ambiguity that works much better than the most recent Tarantino movie. And they thought it through. If you Google Dream Police, the first sponsored link is to the commercial. Nicely done.

Like the education establishment, the Old Media have mostly been allied with and supportive of the leftward leaning trend. This has made it seem like the majority of the country is deep blue, when in fact the bluest areas of the nation are highly concentrated — and several are notably major media centers. Conservatives outnumber liberals 45-19 in America, though you’d never guess that from watching TV or reading the paper. When the history of this era is written, one of the fascinating aspects may be how the internet and the other New Media helped ordinary people to see for themselves that the worldview of those running the Old Media wasn’t so dominant after all.

“We’re facing the risk of extreme runoff, with water running straight into the Bay of Bengal and taking a lot of topsoil with it. A few hundred square miles of the Himalayas are the source for all the major rivers of Asia — the Ganges, the Yellow River, the Yangtze — where three billion people live. That’s almost half the world’s population.” And NASA agrees, and so does the UN Environment Programme, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the World Wildlife Fund, and the respected magazine the New Scientist. The evidence is, like, way disproportionate.

But where did all these experts get the data from? Well, NASA’s assertion that Himalayan glaciers “may disappear altogether” by 2030 rests on one footnote, citing the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report from 2007.

In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report suggests 2035 as the likely arrival of Armageddon, but what’s half a decade between scaremongers? They rate the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing as “very high” — i.e., more than 90 per cent. And the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that report, so it must be kosher, right? Well, yes, its Himalayan claims rest on a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report called “An Overview of Glaciers.”

WWF? Aren’t they something to do with pandas and the Duke of Edinburgh? True. But they wouldn’t be saying this stuff if they hadn’t got the science nailed down, would they? The WWF report relies on an article published in the New Scientist in 1999 by Fred Pearce.

That’s it? One article from 12 years ago in a pop-science mag? Oh, but don’t worry, back in 1999 Fred did a quickie telephone interview with a chap called Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. And this Syed Hasnain cove presumably knows a thing or two about glaciers.

Well, yes. But he now says he was just idly “speculating”; he didn’t do any research or anything like that.

But so what? His musings were wafted upwards through the New Scientist to the World Wildlife Fund to the IPCC to a global fait accompli: the glaciers are disappearing. Everyone knows that. You’re not a denier, are you? India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, says there was not “an iota of scientific evidence” to support the 2035 claim. Yet that proved no obstacle to its progress through the alarmist establishment. Dr. Murari Lal, the “scientist” who included the 2035 glacier apocalypse in the IPCC report, told Britain’s Mail on Sunday that he knew it wasn’t based on “peer-reviewed science” but “we thought we should put it in” — for political reasons.

But wait. AGW is an established fact — except for the facts that aren’t so well established.

An alarming new study shows that health care costs increased last year at the fastest rate in more than a half century. Health care spending rose to an estimated $2.5 trillion in 2009, or $8,047 per person — and is now projected to nearly double by 2019. If we don’t act, this growing burden will mean more lost jobs, more families pushed into bankruptcy, and more crushing debt for our nation.

The conclusion is clear: This isn’t a problem we can kick down the road for another decade — or even another year. We need to pass health reform now. We’re incredibly close. But too many in Washington are now saying that we should delay or give up on reform entirely. So we need to make it crystal clear that Americans understand the stakes for our economy and our lives, and that we want action.

Can you write a letter to the editor of your local paper right now? In just five minutes of your time, you can tell thousands of readers about this new report on spiraling costs, and why abandoning reform is just not an option.

You can also help by posting this note on Facebook, letting your friends know about the new costs study and asking them to join you in writing a letter to a local paper.

President Obama and many allies in Congress are working hard to finish the job — but we can’t rest until it’s done. Your note will help break through the Washington spin and show members of Congress and the media what local voters really believe. Click here to get started…

It’s clear that we’re in the fight of our lives to pass real reform. But after a century of trying, the finish line is finally in sight. As President Obama reminded us all in his State of the Union address, we’re fighting for our families and our country — and we don’t quit…

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

If Obama’s dismissal of Blanche Lincoln is any indication, these guys continue to be committed to a course that is hard to see as a winner — politically or economically. But best of luck!

Funding entitlements — especially medical care and pensions for the elderly — requires reinvigorating the economy. Ryan’s map connects three destinations — economic vitality, diminished public debt, and health and retirement security.

To make the economy — on which all else hinges — hum, Ryan proposes tax reform. Masochists would be permitted to continue paying income taxes under the current system. Others could use a radically simplified code, filing a form that fits on a postcard. It would have just two rates: 10 percent on incomes up to $100,000 for joint filers and $50,000 for single filers; 25 percent on higher incomes. There would be no deductions, credits or exclusions, other than the health care tax credit (see below).

Today’s tax system was shaped by sadists who were trying to be nice: Every wrinkle in the code was put there to benefit this or that interest. Since the 1986 tax simplification, the code has been recomplicated more than 14,000 times — more than once a day.

At the 2004 Republican convention, thunderous applause greeted George W. Bush’s statement that the code is “a complicated mess” and a “drag on our economy” and his promise to “reform and simplify” it. But his next paragraphs proposed more complications to incentivize this and that behavior for the greater good.

Ryan would eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends and death. The corporate income tax, the world’s second highest, would be replaced by an 8.5 percent business consumption tax. Because this would be about half the average tax burden that other nations place on corporations, U.S. companies would instantly become more competitive — and more able and eager to hire.

Medicare and Social Security would be preserved for those currently receiving benefits, or becoming eligible in the next 10 years (those 55 and older today). Both programs would be made permanently solvent.

Universal access to affordable health care would be guaranteed by refundable tax credits ($2,300 for individuals, $5,700 for families) for purchasing portable coverage in any state. As persons under 55 became Medicare eligible, they would receive payments averaging $11,000 a year, indexed to inflation and pegged to income, with low-income people receiving more support.

Ryan’s plan would fund medical savings accounts from which low-income people would pay minor out-of-pocket medical expenses. All Americans, regardless of income, would be allowed to establish MSAs — tax-preferred accounts for paying such expenses.

Ryan’s plan would allow workers under 55 the choice of investing more than one-third of their current Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts similar to the Thrift Savings Plan long available to, and immensely popular with, federal employees. This investment would be inheritable property, guaranteeing that individuals will never lose the ability to dispose every dollar they put into these accounts.

Ryan would raise the retirement age. If, when Congress created Social Security in 1935, it had indexed the retirement age (then 65) to life expectancy, today the age would be in the mid-70s. The system was never intended to do what it is doing — subsidizing retirements that extend from one-third to one-half of retirees’ adult lives.

Ryan seems to be a very serious guy. Here he discusses his ideas with ideological opponent Ezra Klein and the interchange is civil, detailed and thoughtful. (HT: Charles Lane)

If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression — we don’t tinker with health care, let the insurance companies do what they want, we don’t put in place any insurance reforms, we don’t mess with the banks, let them keep on doing what they’re doing now because we don’t want to stir up Wall Street — the result is going to be the same. I don’t know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us into this fix in the first place…

If our response ends up being, you know, because we don’t want to — we don’t want to stir things up here, we’re just going to do the same thing that was being done before, then I don’t know what differentiates us from the other guys. And I don’t know why people would say, boy, we really want to make sure that those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us.

Lanes’s reflections follow on Obama’s comments:

he cast Lincoln’s plea for a bit more centrism as a call for a return to Bushism — the “exact same proposals that were in place for the last eight years.” That’s not what she was advocating; it’s not what any Democrat who’s questioning his approach is advocating. But the president set up this strawman, and he pummeled it, rather than engaging Lincoln’s valid concerns.

The second striking thing was how easily he appeared to write off Lincoln politically. Conceding nothing, he implied that her defeat was not only a foregone conclusion, but also an acceptable price to pay for staying the course on policy. To be sure, maybe the whole thing was just kabuki — Lincoln standing up to the president for the benefit of the folks back home who don’t like him, and Obama obligingly playing his part. But it sure looked pretty spontaneous to me.

The Lincoln-Obama debate epitomized the left-vs.-center debate within the Democratic Party these days, which is much broader than health care, even though it is necessarily focused on that for the moment. The question is whether the party should cut its losses on comprehensive health reform, or keep pursuing it despite the political headwinds, on the grounds that even an initially unpopular bill would be easier to defend than no bill at all.

David Plouffe, back in the White House to direct post-Massachusetts political operations, favors nailing the party’s colors to the health-care mast.

If Democrats choose to interpret the results in Massachusetts as an endorsement of the President and an invitation to double down on healthcare, it’s just fine with us. (HT: Wretchard)

Down With the People…Blame the childish, ignorant American public — not politicians — for our political and economic crisis.

In trying to explain why our political paralysis seems to have gotten so much worse over the past year, analysts have rounded up a plausible collection of reasons including: President Obama’s tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, the blustering idiocracy of the cable-news stations, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for any important legislation.

These are all large factors, to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit in our current predicament: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.

Well at least the fellow is consistent. He said only the nastier impulses of the people could stop Obama from being elected in 2008. And he wanted an Obama cabinet full of semi-autistic geniuses.

There used to be a lighter touch in matters like this. Wikipedia: Adlai “Stevenson’s wit was legendary. During one of Stevenson’s presidential campaigns, allegedly, a supporter told him that he was sure to ‘get the vote of every thinking man’ in the U.S., to which Stevenson is said to have replied, ‘Thank you, but I need a majority to win’.”

This is a little painful to watch, as if neither Stephen Colbert nor his audience quite likes making a fool of Attorney General Eric Holder. Still, the point is well made. HT: Polipundit

China unambiguously favours domestic industries over Western exporters and investors. China’s determination to run huge export surpluses and maintain an undervalued exchange rate gives America and Europe cheap consumer products; but it also means lost jobs and the accumulation of ever-more foreign debts.

We’ve talked about the problems of the structural imbalances between Asia and the West previously. William Pesek of Bloomberg points to some potential dangers:

China’s currency reserves grew by more than the gross domestic product of Norway in 2009. Its $2.4 trillion of reserves is a bubble all its own, one growing before our eyes with nary a peep out of those searching for the next big one…if economies were for sale, China could use the $453 billion of reserves it amassed last year to buy Greece and Vietnam and have enough left over for Mongolia…

China aims to diversify out of U.S. Treasuries into other assets and commodities. The question that governments are grappling with is which markets are deep enough to absorb China’s riches? Gold? Oil? Euro-area debt?…Like all pyramid schemes, there’s no easy end in sight and things could end badly. If the dollar collapses, panicked selling by central banks looking to limit losses would shake global markets more than the U.S. credit crisis has.

It is in a way strange that China has not diversified its holdings into international equities, though it had laid the groundwork to do so more than two years ago. From the US standpoint, the clear need is to stop exporting debt, to become self-sufficient in critical areas, and to promote US exports where possible. Our current course is not sustainable.

“The President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn’t be spending their money,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat. “Las Vegas is suffering through one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and we cannot afford for the President to bring us down any further,” added Republican Senator John Ensign. “Nevada has one of the most distressed economies in the country, and the President has done little to focus on job creation over the past year. Discouraging people from coming to our state to make a political point adds insult to injury,” said Republican Congressman Dean Heller.

The mayor of Las Vegas, a former Democrat not affiliated with a political party, was even nastier: ““He didn’t learn his lesson the first time, but when he hurt our economy by his ill conceived rhetoric, we didn’t think it would happen again, but now that it has I want to assure you, when he comes I’ll do everything I can to give him the boot back to Washington…”

Meanwhile, the President said: “If anybody’s searching for a lesson from Massachusetts, I promise you, the answer is not to do nothing.” Clearly we are not objective in this matter, but we get the feeling that the subtext of the Democratic critics’ comments on Las Vegas is: “wake up before it’s too late.”

The Obama administration’s budget director spoke about the proposed $3.8 trillion budget and its accompanying (and understated) $1.3 trillion deficit, saying that the administration is making the “tough choices” when it comes to spending the taxpayers’ money:

Our budget spurs job creation, puts U.S. on fiscally sustainable path…we are also making tough choices in the budget: cutting what doesn’t work or isn’t necessary and investing in what will help to expand the economy and employment in the coming years. The budget thus institutes a three-year non-security discretionary freeze that will save $250 billion over the next decade. As I have said many times before and will again (since it’s still true!), the key to our long-term fiscal future is fiscally responsible health insurance reform.

“Save $250 billion over the next ten years.” Sadly, these days that’s a drop in the bucket, compared to the $5 trillion in deficits over the next five years. And what’s this nonsense about a “fiscally sustainable path“?

As an AP story said in a different context: “NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino defended putting more money into the programs…’This budget is implementing the president’s nuclear vision,’ he said.” Indeed.

D’Aleo and Watts have produced a 110 page paper on problems with the measurement of surface temperature in the matter of AGW. It makes for interesting reading. There is also an amusing piece in the China Daily that refers to the ancient Chinese wisdom that two errors can be discounted but the third error constitutes a tipping point — the IPCC has at least three errors of significance, and a whole lot more if you take into account the work of the gentlemen above. It would seem that it’s only a matter of time now. HT’s: Powerline, AT

The Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday to a senator who had asked for an antitrust review. In the letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, obtained by The Associated Press, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that the Justice Department is reviewing Hatch’s request and other materials to determine whether to open an investigation into whether the BCS violates antitrust laws…

President Barack Obama, before he was sworn in, had stated his preference for a playoff system. In 2008, Obama said he was going to “to throw my weight around a little bit” to nudge college football toward a playoff system, a point that Hatch stressed when he urged Obama last fall to ask the department to investigate the BCS…Hatch, a Utah Republican, was steamed that his home state team was deprived of getting a chance to play for the title last year.

“I’m encouraged by the administration’s response,” he said in a statement. “I continue to believe there are antitrust issues the administration should explore, but I’m heartened by its willingness to consider alternative approaches to confront the tremendous inequities in the BCS that favor one set of schools over others. The current system runs counter to basic fairness that every family tries to instill in their children from the day they are born.”

Under the BCS, the champions of six conference have automatic bids to play in top-tier bowl games, while the other conferences don’t. Those six conferences also receive more money than the other conferences, although the BCS announced this week that the ones that don’t have automatic bids will receive a record $24 million from this year’s bowl games.

As a reader put it at Instapundit: “If they try to control how much sugar I drink in sodas and how college football is played, I can’t think of anything they would not try to control. And, Orrin Hatch is equally to blame. His role lends credence to the idea that the ‘old guard’ Republicans are equally unprincipled.” Indeed.

Republicans didn’t take the lead on the generic ballot — which party’s candidate will you vote for in House races — until March 9-15, 2009, in Rasmussen polling (which samples likely voters and whose results have therefore leaned more Republican than those of other pollsters since Barack Obama’s inauguration). Republicans since took a lead in the NPR poll (July 22-26), Gallup (November 5-8), Bloomberg News (December 3-7), Battleground (December 6-10), CNN/Opinion Research (January 8-10) and Democracy Corps (January 7-11)…

Gallup analyst Jeffrey M. Jones provides useful historic perspective. “Since Gallup regularly began using the generic ballot to measure registered voters’ preferences for the House of Representatives in 1950, it has been rare for Republicans to have an advantage over Democrats. This is likely because more Americans usually identify as Democrats than as Republicans, but Republicans can offset this typical Democratic advantage in preferences with greater turnout on Election Day. Most of the prior Republican registered-voter leads on the generic ballot in Gallup polling occurred in 1994 and 2002, two strong years for the GOP.”…

The current results are as favorable for Republicans or more so than the CNN/Gallup polls taken at this point in the 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004, cycles in which Republican House candidates received more votes than Democratic candidates . All of which leads me to second Charlie Cook’s suggestion that if the election were held today, Republicans would gain more than the 40 seats they need to get a majority in the House. I would go further and say that if the election were held today Republicans would do better than in 1994 or 2002

John Judis in TNR noticed much the same thing the other day; by contrast Mark Mellman’s analysis of Massachusetts seems a little convoluted. However, the election is still nine months away. We’ll have to see what course corrections the Democrats undertake, and what blunders the Republicans manage to make in the meantime.

Were they using their ballots to attack President Barack Obama? Not according to the data. A post-election poll from The Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard found voters approved of the way the president is handling his job by 61 percent to 37. Even Rasmussen found a clear 53 percent majority approving of the president. Just 23 percent of voters overall, and far fewer than half of Scott Brown voters, said their vote was cast in opposition to the president. None of this can be construed as a rejection of President Obama.

Voters’ much-discussed “anger” was actually more likely to be directed at Republicans than at the president. Just 16 percent told pollsters they were “angry” about the administration’s polices, with nearly half again as many expressing anger at the policies put forward by Republicans in Congress.

Perhaps Massachusetts voters exempt the president personally but intended to send a strong signal of disapproval to Democrats more broadly. Not so much. Congressional GOPers suffered from a much more negative image in Massachusetts than did their Democratic counterparts. Net favorability for Senate Democrats, while hardly strong, was still 27 points higher than for Senate Republicans…

The Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll found a narrow 43 percent-48 percent margin opposed to a content-less healthcare plan. Rasmussen found 47 percent in favor, 51 percent opposed. Our poll had very similar results, but just 31 percent of voters opposed the bill because it went “too far,” while the balance of opponents felt it did not go far enough.

Okay. Please feel free to believe this if you like and good luck. 80% of Brown voters opposed Obamacare, according to the WaPo poll in the first paragraph — and 60% “strongly opposed” it. (BTW, Rasmussen reports continued fallout from Massachusetts, and not the kind that Mellman would approve of.)

Someone at IBD did a lot of homework to come up with this chart. It is, in its way, a perfect miniature of the cognitive dissonance in America today. There’s a President who can appear sensible and centrist when he wants to, and there’s a large group of Americans who are gravely concerned about the next three years, because they see a President who instinctively veers left and doesn’t understand the world very well. How to make sense of this?

Depending on your political point of view, the President’s cabinet might look great; for others it’s evidence of GIGO. What is undeniable is that a President’s cabinet is, in some sense, a reflection of his worldview. Thus it seems clear from the chart that President Obama’s differs considerably from the fairly consistent pattern of his predecessors. Over 90% of his cabinet has no private sector experience, a disturbing number when you think about it.

The private sector world and the public sector world are very different places, as statistics illustrate, and have different understandings of incentives and economics. Oftentimes, there’s little overlap between the two. So it’s not surprising that President Obama’s words, however well delivered, can have very different meanings to different audiences. In a sense, there really are Two Americas, and 2010 will probably tell us a little bit about which one is larger. (HT: Powerline)

Noam Chomsky was right when he pointed out that there is a similarity between the policies of America and those of mafia gangs. They are the true terrorists…

The talk about climate change is not an intellectual indulgence. Rather, it is a reality. All of the industrialized countries, and especially the large ones, bear the responsibility for the crisis of the greenhouse effect. Most of them, though, rallied around the Kyoto accords, and agreed to limits on emissions of harmful gases. However Bush Jr., and Congress before him, rejected this accord in order to please the large corporations, which are themselves the ones responsible for speculation, monopolies, and the rise in the cost of living. And they are behind globalization and its tragic consequences.

Meanwhile, former Marxist, J.D. Salinger stalker, and crack-cocaine experimenter (its in the book) Roger Simon had this to say about a recent Scientific American article:

their boneheaded article Negating “Climategate“: Copenhagen Talks and Climate Science Survive Stolen E-Mail Controversy now reads as if it were written by David Biello somewhere around 1993. Oh, well, back when this nonsense was written (December?) some people still believed the Himalayan glaciers were about to disappear, not to mention the Amazonian rainforests. Nor did we know that not just the East Anglia CRU, but also our own NASA had been playing fast and loose with AGW temperature facts…The poor editors of SA are taking a drubbing in the comments, which they richly deserve.

One of these fellows is wrong, but whom? Let’s go poll a faculty lounge at UC Berkeley and get the answer.

It is interesting to note that Obama’s performance in the Q&A relied on many of the same rhetorical techniques he used in his campaign speeches — (a) claiming that authorities both left and right approve of various of his policies, (b) positioning himself in the rhetorical center; (c) asserting facts that are clearly untrue, but are sufficiently non-specific to not invite refutation. We don’t recall hearing the “straw man” chestnut, but perhaps we weren’t listening closely enough. In many ways, Obama sounded like the campaign 2008 fellow. He’s quite an effective Pied Piper when he wants to be.

The situation has changed! Because of the Christmas attack, we now know that America is in danger of being attacked by terrorists. It’s not as if there have been any other major attacks on America soil that might have clued us in.

Oh wait, we just thought of one. A long time ago, a bunch of terrorists hijacked four airplanes, destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, and murdered nearly 3,000 people. Come to think of it, that attack has been in the news recently because of President Obama’s decision to give the masterminds a criminal trial in New York City rather than a military one at Guantanamo Bay.

But like we said, that attack was ages ago, long before Obama was president. It’s part of the mess he inherited from his predecessor. It’s completely different from the current terror threat, the one that started when the situation changed on Christmas. That is Obama’s fau–uh, sorry, we mean that’s a different part of the mess he inherited from his predecessor, so you can’t really blame him for, um . . . hmmm…Look, you try cooking a soufflé! Anyway, that’s the bad news. The good news is these people won’t be running our health care.

We certainly hope not. These people are really beyond parody. Bret Stephens noted the very long list of Obama administration foreign policy gaffes and rebuffs the other day. If the world weren’t a dangerous place, it would be read as farce.

Apple iPad Hands On from PopSci.com on Vimeo.

Via Popular Science.

Senators trying to salvage climate-change legislation this year are circulating a scaled-back plan to reduce emissions in a bid to win over more lawmakers. Among proposals being discussed to achieve President Barack Obama’s goal of capping carbon-dioxide pollution is a “hybrid” approach combining a tax on carbon emissions from refineries and emissions limits for other industries, according to Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. “We’re looking at everything,” Senator John Kerry told reporters on Capitol Hill yesterday. The Massachusetts Democrat is working with Graham and Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, to craft bipartisan energy and climate legislation. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed a so-called cap-and-trade bill last year with support from Obama and companies such as General Electric Co.

Opponents, including billionaire Warren Buffett, said the emissions-trading program aimed at curbing greenhouse gases would amount to a burdensome tax on consumers. Comparable legislation stalled in the Senate.

Global warming was dead last among 2010 Americans’ priorities, according to a Pew poll, and no wonder, since it is undoubtedly the greatest scientific scam and scandal of at least the last century. Why look to Washington for leadership when these fellows are so far behind the times and really haven’t caught up with the Open Source world we increasingly inhabit?

He’s The One, all right. The handsome, athletic pol with the comely wife and two lovely daughters who precipitously rose from the State Legislature to pull us all together.

The fresh face and disarming underdog America’s been waiting for, someone who suffered through his parents’ divorce, watched his mom go on welfare and survived some wayward youthful behavior to become disciplined and successful — a lawyer, a lawmaker and a devoted family guy who does dog duty.

Someone who’s always game for a game of pickup basketball, loves talking sports and even boasts beefcake photos. A pro-choice phenom propelled into higher office by conservatives, independents and Democrats, a surprise winner with a magical aura. The New One is the shimmering vessel that we are pouring all our hopes and dreams into after the grave disappointment of the Last One, Barack Obama.

The only question left is: Why isn’t Scott Brown delivering the State of the Union? He’s the Epic One we want to hear from. All that inexperience can really be put to good use here.

Obama’s Oneness has been one-upped. Why settle for a faux populist when we can have a real one? Why settle for gloomy populism when we can have sunny populism? Why settle for Ivy League cool when we can have Cosmo hot? Why settle for a professor who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies and profligate Democrats when we can have an Everyman who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies and profligate Republicans? Why settle for a 48-year-old, 6-foot-1, organic arugula when we can have a 50-year-old, 6-foot-2, double waffle with bacon?

It is absurd for Americans to have political Messiahs. What nonsense!. Brown would do well to steer as far away from that as possible. Americans went on a mystery date with a certain Mr. Wonderful and the euphoria lasted, as with most fads and crushes, for only a brief time. It’s getting through the next three years that is the challenge.

“He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.”

We thought about that fellow just last June. And now former worshippers of a certain demi-god are having second thoughts. Funny thing about that.

He’s done everything wrong…Obama’s ability to connect with voters is what launched him. But what has surprised me is how he has failed to connect with the voters since he’s been in office. He’s had so much overexposure. You have to be selective. He was doing five Sunday shows. How many press conferences?

And now people stop listening to him. The fact is he had 49.5 million listeners to first speech on the economy. On Medicare, he had 24 million. He’s lost his audience. He has not rallied public opinion. He has plunged in the polls more than any other political figure since we’ve been using polls. He’s done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things.

I don’t consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster. One business leader said to me, “In the Clinton administration, the policy people were at the center, and the political people were on the sideline. In the Obama administration, the political people are at the center, and the policy people are on the sidelines.” I’m very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately…

The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around. The Democrats are going to get killed in this election. Jesus, looks what’s happening in Massachusetts.

Obama voter Professor David Michael Green:

Barack Obama has now, in just a year’s time, become the single most inept president perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my lifetime. Never has so much political advantage been pissed away so rapidly, and what’s more in the context of so much national urgency and crisis. It’s astonishing, really, to contemplate how much has been lost in a single year…

A successful president is one who articulates a strong and compelling narrative for the nation. So, in your quest to avoid rising even to mediocrity, be sure to leave a great big gaping canyon where that whole narrative thing is supposed to go. No New Deal, no Great Society, no New Frontier or War on Terror for you. Nope! Just a thousand little projects with little non-solutions to big problems. Hey, why not inject yourself into Cambridge, Massachusetts community police politics while you’re at it!…

you’ll also want to take the most important power the president has — the bully pulpit — and totally piss it away. Appear everywhere at once, all the time, saying lots of nice words, about a thousand different issues. But never with passion, never with compelling simplicity, never with repetition, and never with urgency. Pretty soon you’ll turn being everywhere into being nowhere. Everyone one will tune out your ubiquitous self. Give up the high moral ground which is the most important asset of the office you hold, and you’ll make sure that no one ever listens to you anymore. You will persuade the public of nothing. Except that you are irrelevant.

Bob Herbert weighs in with this. NYT: “Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it…Who is Barack Obama? Americans are still looking for the answer.”

These rather harsh assessments from former Obama supporters are not good news for him or, frankly, for the country. Our assessment of the man is also downbeat, but then again, we didn’t vote for him or his strange promises, and we oppose most of his policy initiatives. It is bad news for the country to have, for the next three years, a President many of whose foes and former fans regard as this inept.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Sunday defended the decision to read alleged bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights after just 50 minutes of interrogation, saying that “FBI interrogators believe they got valuable intelligence and were able to get all that they could out of him.”

“That decision was made by the Justice Department and the FBI by experienced FBI interrogators, Gibbs said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But make no mistake — Abdulmutallab was interrogated and valuable information was gotten by those experienced interrogators.” After he was read his rights, Abdulmutallab stopped cooperating with investigators. “The Department of Justice made the right decision, as did those FBI agents,” Gibbs said.

White House adviser David Axelrod, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” also dismissed “this notion that he was lawyered up and didn’t give us information.” “Many of the people who are criticizing us now were celebrating” criminal trials for terrorists held under President George W. Bush, said Axelrod

The Washington Post on KSM’s rather lengthier discussions with US officials:

In 2005 and 2006, the bearded, pudgy man who calls himself the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks discussed a wide variety of subjects, including Greek philosophy and al-Qaeda dogma. In one instance, he scolded a listener for poor note-taking and his inability to recall details of an earlier lecture.

Speaking in English, Mohammed “seemed to relish the opportunity, sometimes for hours on end, to discuss the inner workings of al-Qaeda and the group’s plans, ideology and operatives,” said one of two sources who described the sessions, speaking on the condition of anonymity because much information about detainee confinement remains classified. “He’d even use a chalkboard at times.”…

“He wrote us an essay” on al-Qaeda’s nuclear ambitions, the official said. “Not all of it was accurate, but it was quite extensive.” Mohammed was an unparalleled source in deciphering al-Qaeda’s strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, the summary said, including describing in “considerable detail the traits and profiles” that al-Qaeda sought in Western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the United States.

Feel free to decide for yourself which approach better serves the intelligence-gathering needs of the US. For what it’s worth, the Washington Post publicly changed its previous editorial position on the administration’s handling of the matter and now says: “The administration claims Mr. Abdulmutallab provided valuable information…before he clammed up. This was immediately after he was read his Miranda rights and provided with a court-appointed lawyer. The truth is, we may never know whether the administration made the right call or whether it squandered a valuable opportunity.”

The IPCC’s 2007 report, which won it the Nobel Peace Prize, said that the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”. But it emerged last week that the forecast was based not on a consensus among climate change experts, but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999. The IPCC admitted on Thursday that the prediction was “poorly substantiated”…

Syed Hasnain, the Indian glaciologist erroneously quoted as making the 2035 prediction…and other leading glaciologists pointed out at least five glaring errors in the relevant section.

It says the total area of Himalyan glaciers “will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by the year 2035”. There are only 33,000 square kilometers of glaciers in the Himalayas. A table below says that between 1845 and 1965, the Pindari Glacier shrank by 2,840m — a rate of 135.2m a year. The actual rate is only 23.5m a year.

The section says Himalayan glaciers are “receding faster than in any other part of the world” when many glaciologists say they are melting at about the same rate. An entire paragraph is also attributed to the World Wildlife Fund, when only one sentence came from it, and the IPCC is not supposed to use such advocacy groups as sources.

Who cares? The people are so gullible that they don’t care if you defraud them and steal their money with utterly bogus “scientific” claims — but apparently they start caring when money gets too short to fund such nutty extravagances. In other news, there is apparently no reliably accurate statistical data supporting meaningful warming in the US over the past century. But party on if you like.

(Extra bonus good fun: Hasnain works for a Pachauri company, and the now-disowned claim about the glaciers helped that company land a big contract and grant. Suckers! HT: Roger Simon)

The WSJ covers some of the same ground as this piece.

In 2009, 7.9 million public sector employees belonged to a union, compared with 7.4 million union workers in the private sector. The union membership rate for public sector workers (37%) was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers (7%). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 43%. This group includes workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters.

Private sector industries with high unionization rates included transportation and utilities (22%), telecommunications (16%), and construction (14%). In 2009, low unionization rates occurred in agriculture and related industries (1%) and financial activities (2%)…

– More public sector employees (7.9 million) belonged to a union than did private sector employees (7.4 million), despite there being 5 times more wage and salary workers in the private sector.

– Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate at 38%.

NYT: “The overall unionization rate edged lower, to 12.3 percent last year from 12.4 percent in 2008…7.2 percent of private-sector workers were union members last year, down from 7.6 percent the previous year. That, labor historians said, was the lowest percentage of private-sector workers in unions since 1900.”

“Workers in education, training and library occupations had the highest unionization rate at 38%.” Now it is easy to understand why our educational institutions are the way they are.

In 1968 we received our first promotion, from rear-window man to front-window man at Steve’s Auto-Magic Car Wash, a happy event. The front-window man got more tips, and there was pretty much nothing worse than doing the windows in the back of a Ford LTD police K-9 station wagon. A couple of years before that we got fired for the first time, for lousy dishwashing at 2:30am at the Lobster House Marina. Diners had reason to cheer the excellent judgment of the proprietor of that restaurant.

Since then we’ve done all sorts of things: teaching math to middle school students, commercial and investment banking, buying, selling and running companies, suing and getting sued, doing well and doing poorly, a reasonably full range of experiences in the private sector. We’ve also worked for the government, student summer jobs like clerk-typist for the US Navy and the sweetest job of all: mailman. There’s little more exhilarating than being sent out at 8:30 in the morning with a can of doggie-pepper-spray, the special key that opens all the large mailboxes in the land, and the admonition never to come back before 3:30, even if (especially if) we completed our rounds two hours earlier.

Our experiences may or may not be typical, but most everyone has their war stories if they’ve lived long enough. As the man said, example is the school of mankind and he will learn at no other; experience is the best teacher.

But what do you do if you are 48 years old and have practically zero experience in business (except for one little job that you apparently fibbed about)? What do you do if you have no experience in the private sector and unemployment is around 20% for the critical cohort of 25-54 year old men — and yet you have been entrusted with the power and responsibility to make key judgments about how to fix this? Where would you go to learn? Whose judgment would you rely on? How would you know the difference between good advice and bad advice?

But there’s even a more fundamental problem than that. What if you have had such a casual relationship with facts and figures that you have no problem spouting economic gibberish with conviction? What if you have such a casual relationship with the truth that even your most ardent supporters are fed up with you and getting increasingly public about saying so? As Roger Simon said without excessive exaggeration about President Obama: “Nobody believes anything he says anymore.”

President Obama’s decision to go after the banks after his loss at the hands of Scott Brown showed both poor political and policy judgment — beating up on the private sector is hardly the way to get the private sector revved up and creating jobs. (BTW, we’re not opposed to financial regulatory reform, but Obama didn’t stop with that and instead stressed punitive measures for banks — he just sounds so tiresome and retro in that faux-populism of his, like he’s giving a speech to the IWW in 1917 or something.)

Even if President Obama had a world of experience and excellent judgment, the next few years would provide daunting challenges for the private American economy and our perilous public finances. That his working experience in the American economy is practically nil, and his instincts are counterproductive, do not bode well for a robust economic recovery. (And we haven’t even begun to address the inept foreign policy underlying that stunning loss of Massachusetts.) We wish there were a happy way out of this, but that seems a vain hope at the moment.

“The majority is deeply wrong on the law…Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money.”…

As Justice Anthony Kennedy noted in his opinion, the McCain-Feingold “campaign finance” law — which until yesterday’s ruling made it a felony for corporations to engage in certain political speech — exempted “media companies” like the New York Times Co…

McCain-Feingold, in other words, granted a small group of companies, including the New York Times Co., the privilege to speak freely about politics, while denying it to all other corporations — not only “companies…that exist to make money,” but also taxable nonprofits that exist to represent a point of view, including the advocacy arms of the Sierra Club, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.

The editorial published by the New York Times Co. includes no mention of the special privilege the New York Times Co. enjoyed under McCain-Feingold — a privilege that creates at least the appearance of a journalistic conflict of interest. Is not the failure to disclose the New York Times Co.’s interest in McCain-Feingold a serious violation of journalistic ethics?

President Obama responded as expected to the Supreme Court ruling: “With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans…That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision.”

On the other hand, another alleged administration supporter commented: “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.” However, the man who said that didn’t tolerate dissent for too long.

By the way, the ACLU filed an amicus brief in support of the position the Supreme Court ultimately took. In a world where communication is so cheap and omnipresent, those who want to stifle or control political speech from any source are to be regarded with suspicion.

Over the past two years, more than seven million Americans have lost their jobs in the deepest recession our country has known in generations. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t hear from folks who are hurting. And every day, we are working to put our economy back on track and put America back to work. But even as we dig our way out of this deep hole, it’s important that we not lose sight of what led us into this mess in the first place.

This economic crisis began as a financial crisis, when banks and financial institutions took huge, reckless risks in pursuit of quick profits and massive bonuses. When the dust settled, and this binge of irresponsibility was over, several of the world’s oldest and largest financial institutions had collapsed, or were on the verge of doing so. Markets plummeted, credit dried up, and jobs were vanishing by the hundreds of thousands each month. We were on the precipice of a second Great Depression.

To avoid this calamity, the American people — who were already struggling in their own right — were forced to rescue financial firms facing crises largely of their own creation. And that rescue, undertaken by the previous administration, was deeply offensive but it was a necessary thing to do, and it succeeded in stabilizing the financial system and helping to avert that depression.

Since that time, over the past year, my administration has recovered most of what the federal government provided to banks. And last week, I proposed a fee to be paid by the largest financial firms in order to recover every last dime.

So with Scott Brown to be seated, and the apparent death of the healthcare monstrosity, the administration trots out another populist theme to change the subject, find a new enemy to blame for the nation’s woes and (perhaps) fire up the base and mobilize the masses. How do we know this? Two reasons: (a) there is no reason for Obama to make the remarks at all, unless he was trying to score political points; and (b) Democrats (even Geithner?) agree among themselves that Obama’s idea about a special bank tax and certain other punitive measures are dumb and/or non-starters:

Barney Frank:

“I will be supportive of this with a time frame of no less than 3 or 5 years before it gets done,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., on CNBC TV. “To have all these sales at the same time would be a fire sale and I can’t support that.”

Cramer:

“Everyone on Wall Street knows how bogus this is,” he said. Cramer said he wished Goldman Sachs would have posted a loss or burned all the money in a furnace because “then we wouldn’t have this tax.”

More Cramer: What did Goldman Sachs do to deserve this? That’s all I can think of in the second day of President Obama’s nuclear strike against firms that invest in anything other than plain-vanilla loans. If you parse the words of Obama’s statement Thursday you come out with three thrusts: Smaller banks will keep us out of trouble and will not be needed to be bailed out and what causes a bank to need bailing is private-equity and hedge fund investing. In other words, Goldman Sachs could cause a bailout because it does the most hedge fund investing and private equity of any of the publicly traded firms. No wonder Obama picked the same day as Goldman Sachs’ conference call — he was talking about Goldman. I wish he had been on the call. “Congratulations guys, on a good quarter, let this be the last one because you made so much money,” he might have said. At least everyone wouldn’t have had to be punished for Goldman’s sin of making too much money.

Warren Buffett:

“If it’s some kind of a guilt tax or something of that sort because banks were among the whole United States that were saved back in 2008, everybody was taken care of then. And the banks, basically, somebody like Wells, it’s cost them a lot of money to be in the TARP and it was basically forced upon them. (They) didn’t want to take the money, but really had no choice. So that’s cost Wells a lot of money. The government’s made a lot of money off Wells. They’ve made a lot of money off Goldman. They’ve made a lot of money off J.P. Morgan. And where they’re going to lose money, at least where its possible they’ll lose money, is in the auto companies.

So if you’re going after the people you saved, you might say GM shareholders didn’t get saved, the GM bondholders didn’t get saved. What happened there is they kept employment. I’m the last guy to suggest that you should go and put a special tax on autoworkers. (Laughs.) If you’re really looking for the people who benefited from government losses, you’d have to look there. Or if you look at Fannie or Freddie. Are you going to go and tax the members of Congress who ran Freddie and Fannie…

The American people love the idea of Goldman or AIG or anybody like that, those are bad names. They don’t think so much about Freddie or Fannie which are that expensive and which Congress ran. But I just think a tax that’s enacted with the idea that the headlines will be appealing and that a certain amount of vengeance will be achieved, I don’t think that’s the greatest form of tax policy.”

We’re reminded of the Isiah Berlin fox/hedgehog distinction, noted by a professor at UC Berkeley: “Hedgehogs are big-idea thinkers in love with grand theories: libertarianism, Marxism, environmentalism, etc. Their self-confidence can be infectious. They know how to stoke momentum in an argument by multiplying reasons why they are right and others are wrong. That wins them media acclaim. But they don’t know when to slam the mental brakes by making concessions to other points of view. They take their theories too seriously.” President Obama is part of that portion of the US that has had little or no contact with the private sector during their lives, the business world where most of life takes place. He is anti-business and he knows almost nothing about business. In a sense he lives in an alternate reality. Not good news for the rest of us.

a new warning from health experts: Sitting is deadly. Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged periods — even if you also exercise regularly — could be bad for your health. And it doesn’t matter where the sitting takes place — at the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or TV — just the overall number of hours it occurs…Figures from a U.S. survey in 2003-2004 found Americans spend more than half their time sitting

And all this time we thought that cow and sheep parping was the deadliest thing going.

A review of polling in Massachusetts, in other states and nationally shows the same thing: By about a 2-to-1 margin, independents have turned on Democrats. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that two-thirds of independents would prefer Republicans controlled Congress. The same polls show the voters don’t even like Republicans.

It’s a strange poll — 55% of respondents did not approve of President Obama’s handling of healthcare, but 64% said they disapproved of Republicans’ handling of the same issue. However, a more basic point, that Republicans should not get complacent and return to their bad old ways, is valid.

Voters went for the hope-and-change Obama in part because he promised fiscal sobriety after the Bush $500 billion deficit. Instead, in utterly cynical fashion, Obama trumped that red ink four times over. In the process, he developed a terrible habit of promising favored constituencies a hundred billion here, a hundred billion there as if it were all paper money — rather than real borrowed currency that will have to be confiscated in the future from the beleaguered taxpayer. It only makes it worse than the more the administration borrowed, printed, and spent, the higher unemployment rose and the lower economic activity plummeted.

Most have had enough of pie-in-the-sky talk of massive new health-care entitlements, cap-and-trade taxes and regulation, more stimulus, and more takeovers of private enterprise. The country is broke and the people want to pay off, not incur more, crushing debt. What got us into the mess was too much borrowing, skyrocketing debt, and reckless spending — not too many balanced budgets and too much lean government.

No politician quite gets a pass for deception and prevarication. Obama in his narcissism thought his sonorous rhetoric made him exempt from a “read my lips” or “I didn’t have sex with that woman” moment. It didn’t.

People heard his serial promises about airing the health-care debate on C-SPAN, his new-transparency / no-lobbyist vows, and his monotonous boasts to close down Guantanamo within a year. All that is now “inoperative.” The problem was not just that Obama made promises that he broke, but that he made them so frequently and so vehemently — and so cavalierly broke them. That brazen campaign deception is problematic for a politician, but proves fatal for a self-appointed messiah…

Almost immediately after Obama showed his ideological cards last spring, I suggested in the first weeks of his presidency that the bait-and-switch president would soon face a Carter/Clinton moment in which he could either press on with his polarizing ideology, damage his party for a generation, and eventually end up churlish and sneering at the electorate, who did not appreciate his exalted morality and genius — or triangulate and follow the Dick Morris/Bill Clinton model of talking and acting sort of centrist. Who knows after Obama’s Scott Brown moment?

Jay Cost adds: “Let’s hope that this untested, young, inexperienced fellow the country elevated to the highest office in the land has the good sense to recognize the message the Bay State sent last night, to understand that messages of similar intensity will be sent in November, and to direct his staff to make necessary changes.” The thing that seems clear to us is that if Barack Obama doesn’t recalibrate his course after the stunning loss of Massachusetts, the next three years could be quite perilous for the country.

some of the polls taken beforehand bear out Obama’s role in Coakley’s defeat. In the final January 17 poll by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning North Carolina outfit that picked up Brown’s surge early in the month, 20 percent of the respondents who voted for Obama in 2008 said they’d vote for Brown. Among those voters, only 22 percent approved of Obama’s presidency, and only 13 percent backed his health care plan…

The Suffolk University poll in Massachusetts, which like the PPP poll, was pretty much on target in the final result, singled out two white working-class towns, Gardner and Fitchburg, as bellwethers. Obama won Gardner, where Democrats hold a three-to-one registrations edge, by 59 percent to 31 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 56 percent to 42 percent. Obama won Fitchburg, with a similar Democratic edge, by 60 percent to 38 percent in 2008. Brown won it by 59 percent to 40 percent. That suggests a fairly dramatic shift among white working class voters…

The age group that most strongly favored Brown was sixty-five to seventy-four-year-olds by 58 to 38 percent. The same group opposed national health insurance by 48 percent to 28 percent and thought the federal government couldn’t afford such a plan by 66 percent to 33 percent. This age group also included the highest percentage of voters — 41 percent — who said they “strongly opposed” Obama’s plan…

If you look at national polls, Obama has suffered the greatest loss of approval among exactly the same groups. In the Pew polls, Obama suffered a drastic drop in support in the $30,000-$75,000 income group, from 63 percent to 17 percent approval in February 2009, to 53 percent to 35 percent disapproval in the January 14 poll.

Among respondents over sixty-five years old, he went from 60 percent to 17 percent approval to 54 percent to 31 percent disapproval. In its January 2010 poll, Pew has a breakdown by race that is even more disturbing. Whites with some or no college — a rough designation for working-class whites — disapprove of Obama’s presidency by 54 percent to 36 percent.

Obama became president without many of the votes that would have gone to Hillary Clinton, because he generated such intensity of support from other elements of his base. Losing places like Gardner and Fitchburg, as well as the Jacksonians and the suburbs (as Virginia and New Jersey demonstrated) can not be good news for Democrats in 2010.

“people talk about the potency of the health-care issue, but from our own internal polling, the more potent issue here in Massachusetts was terrorism and the treatment of enemy combatants,” says Fehrnstrom. Health care, he says, was helpful in fundraising, but it was the campaign’s focus on national security in the final week that he believes helped to give voters another issue to associate with Brown.

Andrew McCarthy adds: “Scott Brown didn’t modulate his positions to send a thrill up the media’s leg. He said the United States needs to stop apologizing for defending itself. And he won going away.”

As it turned out, Scott Brown won the election, garnering about 52% of the vote, not a landslide, but impressive, considering that Ted Kennedy got 69% in 2006, the last time he ran — a turnaround of 22% from D to R. Roger Simon points out that Barack Obama took Massachusetts in 2008 by 27 points, which would be a swing of 32 points in barely more than a year.

Brown won with a margin greater than Ronald Reagan’s in 1984 (2.8%). Turnout was higher than in the 2006 regular election. It’s hard to know exactly how big a deal the election of Scott Brown is, but even Barney Frank thinks it means that Obamacare in its current form is dead.

The Boston Globe reported the 50-49 victory of Martha Coakley over Scott Brown in the special election to fill the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy.

Oops! That was well before the polls closed.

In a poll of 1,231 likely Massachusetts voters conducted this weekend, Public Policy Polling found that voters’ stance on the health overhaul strongly lined up with which candidate they back. Among those who support the legislation, Ms. Coakley led 92% to 5%. Among those who oppose the legislation, Mr. Brown led 95% to 4%.

Mr. Jensen, the Democratic pollster, said that his outlet has polled voters in about 25 states on the health overhaul since July. While a small plurality of voters in Maine and Connecticut backed the health overhaul at times, no state poll has ever shown that a majority of voters support the effort. Independents in particular have turned against the idea.

Bad things tend to happen to parties that ignore the clear will of the majority. It happened to the GOP too.

Now, I’ve heard about some of the ads that Martha’s opponent is running. He’s driving his truck around the commonwealth — (laughter) — and he says that he gets you, that he fights for you, that he’ll be an independent voice. And I don’t know him, he may be a perfectly nice guy…

So, look, forget the ads. Everybody can run slick ads. Forget the truck. (Laughter.) Everybody can buy a truck. (Laughter.)…

we asked Martha’s opponent what’s he going to do. And he decided to park his truck on Wall Street. (Laughter.)…

Martha’s opponent is already walking in lockstep with Washington Republicans, opposing that fee, defending the same fat cats who are getting rewarded for their failure. Now, there’s a big difference here. It gives you a sense of who the respective candidates are going to be fighting for, despite the rhetoric, despite the television ads, despite the truck. (Laughter.)…

So I’d think long and hard about getting in that truck with Martha’s opponent. (Laughter.) It might not take you where you want to go. (Laughter.)…

You can tell from Scott Brown’s stump speech that he seems to easily relate to the world of sports and popular culture as well as a more rarefied political world. As nearly everyone has observed, Martha Coakley does not, and it does seem that something about that truck seemed to viscerally bother Obama.

In any event, it is perhaps telling that Obama or his speechwriters wanted to belittle the truck and reduce it to a laugh line (”Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck”). Who would have imagined that the final verdict on the administration’s healthcare bills would possibly be reduced to how you feel about guys who drive trucks?

DoD force protection policies are not optimized for countering internal threats. These policies reflect insufficient knowledge and awareness of the factors required to help identify individuals likely to commit violence. This is a key deficiency. The lack of clarity for comprehensive indicators limits commanders’ and supervisors’ ability to recognize potential threats. Current efforts focus on forms of violence that typically lend themselves to law enforcement intervention (e.g, suicide, domestic violence, gang-related activities) rather than on perceptions of potential security threats. To account for possible emerging internal threats, we encourage the Department to develop comprehensive guidance and awareness programs that include the full range of indicators for potential violence.

Answer: the report is about an “alleged perpetrator“. Disgraceful. There would be more people alive today (a) if the DoD did not willfully blind itself in service of political correctness; and (b) if the soldiers at Fort Hood were permitted carry their weapons.

Thank you very much. What a privilege it is to share the stage with John Ratzenberger, Lenny Clarke, Doug Flutie, Curt Schilling, Fred Smerlas, Steve DeOssie, and many, many others - and my favorite singer, Ayla Brown.

As you know, Curt Schilling made the news just a couple of days ago when my opponent didn’t recognize his name. Of all the many false accusations she’s made in this campaign, one of the strangest was to call Curt Schilling a Yankee fan. Let me properly identify the guy she’s been smearing on the radio: His name is Curt Schilling, formerly of the World Champion Red Sox - you know, a baseball team that plays at Fenway Park.

Doug Flutie, what can I say, great guy, great career, and I am proud you are here. John Ratzenberger, a wonderful actor, you brought a lot of laughs to us during your many years with Cheers. Fred and Steve, you are legends and good friends. Ayla, thank you for again sharing your beautiful voice. Millions have seen her on national TV, and going through this campaign I’ve got an idea of what Ayla went through on “American Idol.” She had to deal with Simon Cowell, and I had to deal with David Gergen.

Our campaign is going strong, and the finish line is in sight. The day of decision is almost here. The whole nation is watching, but the choice on Election Day belongs to you and no one else. Friends and fellow citizens, I’m Scott Brown, I’m from Wrentham, I drive a truck and I’m asking for your vote.

When we started this campaign just a few months ago, the political machine wrote us off. A Senate seat in Massachusetts, we were told, was already spoken for - and this special election was just a minor detail that wouldn’t get in the way. The political machine already had a short-term placeholder in the Senate. Now all they needed was a long-term placeholder, and everything had been arranged.

Well, there was just one little problem with that plan - the independent-thinking people of Massachusetts wanted a real choice, and they - and you — have made this a real contest.

The voters are doing their own thinking, and the machine politicians don’t quite know how to react. So they put in a distress call to Washington, and the next thing you know, Air Force One is landing at Logan.

My first response is very simple: Democrat or Republican, the president of the United States is always welcome in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Now, it wasn’t exactly a scheduled visit. Sort of a last-minute thing. The political machine controlled that Senate, he was told, and it was going to stay that way.

Well, the party bosses gave the president some bad information. This Senate seat belongs to no one person and no one political party - it belongs to the people of Massachusetts.

Maybe they also told President Obama that I had no chance at all. After all, who ever heard of guy from Wrentham getting elected to the U.S. Senate? But as the president might remember, upsets like that have been known to happen.

The president may recall as well how much he used to talk about a new kind of politics - about campaigns based on conviction, instead of just false and small-minded negative ads. Well, as long as he’s paying a visit, he might want to talk to Martha about that. Not only are her ads negative, they are malicious. How quickly the politics of hope have become replaced by the politics of desperation. Shame on Martha.

Before the president rushed to the scene, we saw my opponent standing with a former president, the governor, the senior senator, the appointed senator - the whole party establishment, right on down the line.

At the beginning, it felt like me against the machine. But guess what? I was wrong. It’s us against the machine.

I don’t need an establishment to prop me up. I stand before you as the proud candidate of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents across Massachusetts, north and south, east and west.

The party machine is in high gear for my opponent. The establishment is afraid of losing their Senate seat. You can all remind them that this is not their seat, it is yours.

Should I have the honor of representing our state in Washington, D.C., I will serve no faction but Massachusetts. I will pursue no agenda but what is right. I will be nobody’s senator but yours.

One of the great advantages of being independent is that you meet voters of every kind. And you learn what people are really thinking about the big issues facing our state and our country. The political experts are still wondering how this little campaign of ours grew so fast and gathered so much strength and momentum. The reason is simple.

We do not want a senator whose only question on health care is to ask Harry Reid, “How do you want me to vote?” Massachusetts wants real reform, and not this trillion-dollar Obama health care bill being forced on the American people.

This bill would raise taxes. It would cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars. It would be unfair to our veterans. It would destroy jobs, and run our nation deeper into debt. It is not in the interest of our state or country - and as your senator, I will insist we start over.

I will work in the Senate to reform health care in the right way, the honest way. No more closed-door meetings behind the scenes. No more arrogant party leadership. We can do better, and as the 41st senator I’ll make sure of it.

In health care, we need to start fresh, work together, and do the job right.

On the question of taxes, my opponent this week endorsed yet another tax increase. She summed up her whole approach by saying, quote, “We need to get taxes up.”

She has it exactly wrong: We need to get job creation up, and taxes down. I will work in the Senate to put government back on the side of people who create jobs - and as John F. Kennedy taught us, that starts with a tax cut for the American people.

As a lieutenant colonel and 30-year member of the Army National Guard, I will keep faith with all who serve, and with our veterans, too. I will work in the Senate to defend our nation’s interests and to keep our military second to none.

In our debate, my opponent insisted that there are no longer any terrorists in Afghanistan. Maybe the president can pull her aside today and explain the basics: There are still many terrorists in Afghanistan, Martha! They are at war with the United States, and for the safety of this nation we must defeat them

As an attorney, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation - they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.

Raising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists is the agenda of a new establishment in Washington. And they think you’re on board with all of it. They think they own your vote. They’re sure they can’t lose. But on Election Day, the Bay State will set them straight.

If Brown wins the election there will be a lot of over-analysis from both parties. Our two cents: people are tired of the grandees in Washington not listening to them and trying to impose, big, expensive, complicated things on them, come hell or high water. That is an unAmerican as you can get — its opposition began in Boston, after all, more than two centuries ago. Obama the professor seems the personification of this narcissistic and inflexible “I know better than you do” approach, and a substantial portion of the American people have had it up to here with his act.

Yet a protest is not a policy. This is not 1994. The harder part for Republicans is to fashion an approach that does not look like power brokers like Tom DeLay will replace the Reids and Pelosis. One approach to the issue might focus on three things: (a) restoring American pride, not bowing and scraping before other nations; (b) focusing on removing the greatest dangers to American independence — you know, those things that when they go wrong, everyone asks “why didn’t they do something about that, with all the time on their hands? and, most difficult, (c) repairing an American economy beset with structural problems that have generated 20% unemployment among men.

Copenhagen, cap and trade, American cowboyism, “green jobs” and Rube Goldberg healthcare are the big problems and priorities in faculty lounges and the dreamworld of the elites. To one extent or another these are all fantasies. Hence, things have spun out of control under Obama and the people are saying “no” to all that. A majority of Americans would prefer freedom and betterment of their lives to the fantasies of the utopians among us. The question at hand is how to turn a massive protest into a positive program.

Obama was above all the candidate of poetry, but America’s problems are mostly prose. Yet to make the sentiment underlying the Brown protest something sustainable, Republicans need to reach for grander themes than “no.” We’ll just have to see who among them, if any, is capable of rising to the occasion.

“Understand what’s at stake here Massachusetts. It’s whether we’re going forward or going backwards,” Obama said during a rally for Coakley as he tried to energize his dispirited base in this Democratic stronghold. “If you were fired up in the last election, I need you more fired up in this election.”…

“Martha’s opponent already is walking in lockstep with Washington Republicans…She’s got your back, her opponent’s got Wall Street’s back. Bankers don’t need another vote in the United States Senate. They’ve got plenty. Where’s yours?”

Meanwhile, we got an email from Mitch Stewart that read in part: “We’re getting last-minute reports of right-wing groups flooding the state with attacks ads and robo-calls. They’re hoping to defeat Martha Coakley and elect an extreme Republican”. How extreme? This extreme: “Former Boston Red Sox pitcher and World Series champion Curt Schilling and former Boston College and NFL quarterback Doug Flutie appeared with Brown at a rally Sunday in Worcester.”

We hereby present the final evidence that this election has descended to opéra bouffe on the part of the Democratic Party: “Barney Frank, when asked whether Coakley’s recent dip in the polls was related to sentiments about President Obama, quipped, ‘President Obama is not Martha Coakley in drag’.” One can only marvel at the thought process that culminated in that particular sentence.

it’s hardly a shock to hear that some Dems would prefer to set aside tackling climate change–especially so soon after a grueling health care fight. “We need to deal with the phenomena of global warming,” Indiana Senator Evan Bayh recently groused, “but I think it’s very difficult in the economic circumstances we have right now.”

Difficult, but maybe less so than Bayh thinks. The House has already passed its own climate bill, complete with a cap on heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and, in the Senate, Democrats have begun to get some welcome support from the other side of the aisle. Susan Collins is co-sponsoring a cap-and-dividend bill, which would essentially tax carbon dioxide at the source and refund most of the proceeds to households, while a few Republicans (like Lisa Murkowski) had positive things to say about last month’s Copenhagen accord, which put key developing countries on a path to curtailing their own emissions.

\Interestingly, one of the most forceful advocates for a Senate climate bill in recent weeks has been Republican Lindsey Graham. “All the cars and trucks and plants that have been in existence since the Industrial Revolution, spewing out carbon day-in and day-out, you’ll never convince me that’s a good thing for your children and the future of the planet,” he told a crowd in South Carolina, the day after being censured by Charleston County’s GOP for working with Democrats on the issue. “Whatever political pushback I get,” he added, “I’m willing to accept, because I know what I’m trying to do makes sense to me.” Lately, he’s been huddling with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman on a “tripartisan” bill to reduce emissions.

Some have argued that Congress would be crazy to take on an issue as divisive as climate change in an election year, but the Senate, with only one-third of its members up for reelection, is less susceptible to that calculus than the House. And election-year timidity may be more an invention of pundits than historical fact.

To us these people seem out of their minds. We’re in a crisis and these bozos are in cloud-cuckoo-land. (a) When 20$ of American men do are not employed, the number 1, number 2, and number 3 issue is jobs, jobs, jobs — good, private sector jobs. Which means government needs to help and get out of the way at the same time. Furthermore, even if we weren’t in a time of pronounced global cooling, why fiddle around with nonsense like this when it is perfectly clear that countries like China and India aren’t going to play along (except to go to conferecnes where they laugh at us behind our backs). Washington: fools and damned fools.

We’re reminded of 2004. Senator John (”Lambert Field“) Kerry ran for President claiming that he was 30 yards away from Bill Buckner in 1986 (a game which we attended and which flashed neon congratulations to Boston at Shea before the tragic event). Unforced sports errors like those of Coakley and Kerry are perhaps the modern equivalent of whisper campaigns. The MSM mostly won’t report them, but things like the Shilling moment, Manny Ortiz, and Lambert field well have an impact among citizens who (a) vote in special elections; (b) spend more than a bit of time in taverns. How large that group is in Massachusetts we shall find out shortly.

troubling…is the lack of disclosure on the part of the White House, the Senate, the DNC and other Democratic leaders who distributed Gruber’s work and cited it as independent validation of their proposals, orchestrating the appearance of broad consensus when in fact it was all part of the same effort.

The White House is placing a giant collective bet on Gruber’s “assumptions” to justify key portions of the Senate bill such as the “Cadillac tax,” which they allowed people to believe was independent verification. Now that we know that Gruber’s work was not that of an independent analyst but rather work performed as a contractor to the White House and paid for by taxpayers, and economists like Larry Mishel are raising serious questions about its validity, it should be made publicly available so others can judge its merits.

Gruber began negotiating a sole-source contract with the Department of Health and Human Services in February of 2009, for which he was ultimately paid $392,600. The contract called for Gruber to use his statistical model for evaluating alternatives “derived from the President’s health reform proposal.” It was not a research grant, but rather a consulting contract

Hamsher seems an honest critic of Obamacare from the Left. If must drive her out of her skin to be treated no differently than many Republicans. The administration got the report that it bought alright, but it is also now getting the same disrespect from some voices on the Left that it has earned among moderates and conservatives. Sometimes you get what you pay for, only it doesn’t quite work out the way you intended.

Like a majority of Americans, we’ve, had it up to here with this fellow’s tired, self-involved strong-arm-ism on priorities that have little to do with the horrible, real, and unprecedented problems of the American people. 2013 can’t come fast enough.

there is a subdued, almost dispassionate quality to her public appearances, which are surprisingly few. Her voice is not hoarse from late-night rallies. Even yesterday, the day after a hard-hitting debate, she had no public campaign appearances in the state.

Coakley bristles at the suggestion that, with so little time left, in an election with such high stakes, she is being too passive. “As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?’’ she fires back, in an apparent reference to a Brown online video of him doing just that

(Deft political touch, Senator-to-be Coakley, dissing the occupation of politics and Fenway Park in one fell swoop!) Here’s the video in question:

We recall a story about Ted Kennedy running for reelection in the 1970’s, courtesy of our chum E.J. Dionne. Kennedy was standing outside a factory shaking hands one cool fall morning at 6 am as the workers came through the chain-link gate. One of the men said to Kennedy as he took his hand: “Senator, you’ve never worked an honest day in your life.” Kennedy thought for a moment, looked the man straight in the eye and said: “You know, you’re right.” Kennedy probably got that guy’s vote.

We may disagree with Senator Kennedy’s policies, but at least he demonstrated an aptitude for the job of being a politician. Brown seems to be a politician as well. This gal Coakley, on the other hand, is an odd duck, a non-politician by nature who, as the Boston Globe itself said, tries to conceal herself — and lately apparently condones thuggery (video analysis here) — in order to win. Not the Democratic Party’s finest hour. (HT: Ace)

China seems in some ways like America of a century ago, and in some ways like the early post-WWII period. The nasty air and endless cavalcades of trucks carrying intermediate industrial goods in places like Jinan are reminiscent of cities like Pittsburgh during the period of America’s industrial apogee more than half a century ago. (Steel output in the US peaked in 1959, in case you didn’t know.)

One metaphor for the past and present in China’s industrial development is this: in some new as well as old buildings (some airports, hotels and office buildings) there is no central heating in public areas, conference rooms and many offices. Employees, even executives, keep the lights unlit; everyone wears overcoats, even in meetings in places of business. This is particularly noticeable when the temperature is 10-15 degrees, which it has been for some time now. Gleaming buildings with people shivering in the lobby; Americans wouldn’t put up with it for ten minutes.

Americans have largely forgotten how far the country has come in a short time and have in many cases lost the gift of gratitude. China’s collective memory of its hardscrabble past is very much alive.

Sevugan sent out an email to reporters featuring a link to a story on the lefty website TPM. The headline: “Is Sarah Palin Avoiding Mass Senate Race?” The story quoted a Democratic strategist saying that “it’s interesting” that Palin is “nowhere to be found in this race.” TPM conceded that GOP sources say there has been “no talk” about Palin visiting Massachusetts. But that didn’t stop Sevugan, who is quoted declaring that Palin’s supporters “are anxious for her to weigh in.” At the top of his email to journalists, Sevugan wrote, “Come on, Sarah, why are you being so shy?”

A couple of hours later, Sevugan was emailing again, with a message entitled, “Has the Pit Bull lost her bark?” What followed was a statement from Sevugan on “the surprising silence from Sarah Palin on Republican Scott Brown’s bid for the U.S. Senate.” Sevugan demanded to know: “Where on earth is Sarah Palin herself? Clearly her supporters are anxious for her to weigh in.”

Question: will MSNBC or CNN now run against Fox using the same strategy?

Barack Obama has spent the past year doing big-time Islamoschmoozing, from his announcement of Gitmo’s closure and his investigation of Bush officials, to his bow before the Saudi king and a speech in Cairo to “the Muslim world” with far too many rhetorical concessions and equivocations. And at the end of it the jihad sent America a thank-you note by way of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear: Hey, thanks for all the outreach! But we’re still gonna kill you.

According to one poll, 58 percent of Americans are in favor of waterboarding young Umar Farouk. Well, you should have thought about that before you made a community organizer president of the world’s superpower. The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate, and you can’t blame the world’s mischief-makers, from Putin to Ahmadinejad to the many Gitmo recidivists now running around Yemen, from drawing the correct conclusion.

For two weeks, the government of the United States has made itself a global laughingstock. Don’t worry, “the system worked,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Incompetano. Don’t worry, he was an “isolated extremist,” said the president. Don’t worry, we’re banning bathroom breaks for the last hour of the flight, said the TSA. Don’t worry, “U.S. border security officials” told the Los Angeles Times, we knew he was on the plane, and we “had decided to question him when he landed.” Don’t worry, Obama’s counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, assured the Sunday talk shows, sure, we read him his rights, and he’s lawyered up but he’ll soon see that “there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements.”

Oh, that’s grand. Try to kill hundreds of people in an act of war, and it’s the starting point for a plea deal. In his Cairo speech, the president bragged that the United States would “punish” those in America who would “deny” the “right of women and girls to wear the hijab.” If he’s so keen on it, maybe he should consider putting the entire federal government into full-body burkas and zipping up the eye slit so that, henceforth, every public utterance by John Brennan will be entirely inaudible. Americans should be ashamed by this all-fools’ fortnight.

On Thursday, having renounced over the preceding days “the system worked,” the “isolated extremist,” the more obviously risible TSA responses, the Gitmo-Yemen express checkout and various other follies, the president finally spoke the words: “We are at war.” As National Review’s Rich Lowry noted, they were more or less dragged from the presidential gullet by Dick Cheney, who’d accused the commander in chief of failing to grasp this basic point. Again, to be fair, it isn’t just Obama. Last November, the electorate voted, in effect, to repudiate the previous eight years and seemed genuinely under the delusion that wars end when one side decides it’s all a bit of a bore

From time to time a certain reality seeps through in the media. But most of the time people seem to just ignore the fact that a war has been very explicitly declared on the West and the values of the Enlightenment. Many Americans still wish the whole thing would just go away since fighting it entails doing away with much of two generations of creeping political correctness. For a brief moment the Obama administration talked the talk, but many in the West seem to want to play roulette and hope that we’re able to skirt some really bad thing by biding our time and just hoping that somehow things get better. That doesn’t sound like much of a strategy.

You are familiar of course with the unemployment rate, which would be at 10.4%, had not the labor force decreased by 661,000 in December. You may not be familiar with the employment rate, that percentage of the US adult population that has a job. The employment rate is now 58.2%, the lowest since August of 1983. Even more disturbing is the employment rate among men:

According to an analysis done by TIME Magazine’s Justin Fox, almost 20% of 25-54 year old men are unemployed today, a receord since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track of the data just after World War II. An unemployment rate of 20% among men in their prime is shocking. Absent the substantial government transfer payments today and the large labor force participation by women, the 20% male unemployment figure would be regarded as a national emergency.

Rome is burning. And yet Congress and the administration fiddle with crooked healthcare deals, tomfoolery such as AGW, perverse nonsense like cap and trade, imaginary “green” jobs, the treating of enemy combatants as mere crooks, etc. — and their policies towards hostile powers are even more ill-informed and provocatively weak. It’s hard to imagine a government more out of step with the people.

White House officials say it was Mr. Obama himself who pressed the idea of a surge of his own, openly acknowledging in a meeting that he had criticized it harshly during the campaign…

The deployment time in the case of Iraq was six months; when the Pentagon first came to President Obama two months ago with a plan that stretched over 18 months, he offered up some withering questions. He turned to Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the head of Central Command and the commander in Iraq during the Bush surge, and asked: “What takes so long? What’s so hard about this?”

“What’s so hard about this?” Such a telling college-professor-like question, and the Times seems to portray it as evidence of “withering” insight and focus. As if all that needed to be done was put some guys on airplanes and that’s it. Hey, what’s so difficult about that? But Obama’s question came from a Commender-in-Chief who also talked about the “sheer improbability” of the success of the allied invasion of Europe on D-Day, and called the Berlin airlift “the most unlikely rescue in history“. Egad! Let’s just hope we make it out alive and in one piece to February 2013. It looks dicier by the day.

(BTW, the bickering and backbiting about the Afghanistan surge has already begun at the White House.)

Iran has now accumulated more than 1.5 tonnes of low-enriched uranium, more than enough, if further enhanced, for one nuclear bomb. It is pressing ahead with tests of ballistic missiles that could one day convey a nuclear warhead. Western intelligence agencies, meanwhile, are now robustly rejecting a US intelligence assessment that Iran stopped work on warhead design back in 2003.

It was just two years ago that the US government issued an NIE that declared “with high confidence” that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and now the other western intelligence services are robustly rejecting the 2007 conclusions. What’s up with that? Were the analysts wrong then, or wrong now, or wrong both times?

If you’re a registered voter in Massachusetts, your friendly Democratic Senate candidate, Martha Coakley, is sticking her thumb in your eye. Coakley, in exquisitely diva-like form, is refusing all invitations to debate her Republican opponent in the race, Scott Brown, unless a third-party candidate with no apparent credentials is included on the stage. She may also require a crystal bowl of orange-only M&Ms in her dressing room…

We tend to elect our members of Congress for life in this state, especially when they’re Democrats, which they usually are. This particular race, a special election, has unfolded at breakneck speed. We have two barely known candidates — Coakley has run statewide just once, Brown is a state senator from exurbia — trying to fill a huge void at a time of war and economic upheaval. And Coakley’s overriding strategy is to quietly back into the job, to have you, the voter, know less about the major candidates rather than more…

let’s take a look at Coakley’s campaign schedule for today. Well, actually, we can’t. There isn’t one. She isn’t doing anything in public — no meetings with voters, no debates, no public appearances. For all we know, she’s spending much of her time at home with the shades drawn waiting for Jan. 19, Election Day, to come and go…

The funny part about a good campaign is that voters not only get to meet the candidate, but the candidate gets to meet the voters and learn what’s on their minds…dodging looks like the Coakley way.

Brown trails Coakley by less than 10 points, which is not bad, considering that he’s running in a very blue state. Since special elections like this one are often decided on who turns out to vote, the Globe’s stinging piece can’t but hurt Coakley. We’ll see what happens.

President Bush had several such moments. His nomination of the clearly underqualified Harriet Miers (she can’t write!) was one. It (a) smacked of cronyism, and (b) seemed to validate a key contention of the other team, that George Bush was not too bright The nomination of Miers tended to undermine the defenses of Bush that he might be tongue-tied, but he was smart enough and a straight shooter. Another such moment was Bush’s endorsement of a very unpopular and unenforceable-by-design immigration bill, in language that was deeply offensive to conservatives.

President Obama has had episodes that approached these Bush experiences, at least in our opinion. They included his inanimate response to the brutality in Iran and his unemotional responses in the matters of Hasan and the undiebomber. Obama’s defenders took the position that his cool responses showed a man of deep strategy, instead of a guy who didn’t get it. Those debates remain undecided in political terms to this day. But his repudiation of a campaign pledge of openness and transparency is another matter. Liberals wanted an end to what they saw as the obfuscation, secrecy and outright lies of the Bush administration, and Obama offered himself as the cure, promising unparalleled openness and transparency on numerous occasions. Then he betrayed his supporters. This was one reaction:

It remains to be seen what will be the fallout to the Obama administration of repudiating his pledge of transparency and accountability to his supporters. Maybe very little. Or maybe it will soon be his press secretary’s turn to get thrown under the bus — an Obama trademark in such uncomfortable moments.