Obama's recovery: working less, for lower pay

It's swell how the Obama Administration's crack economic team is remaking work in America:

• Lower-wage industries -- things like retail and food preparation -- accounted for 23 percent of the jobs lost during the recession, but 49 percent of the jobs gained over the last year, a recent study (pdf) by the National Employment Law Program found. Higher-wage industries, by contrast, accounted for 40 percent of the jobs lost, but just 14 percent of the jobs gained. In other words, low paying jobs are increasing as a percentage of total jobs, while high-paying jobs are on the decline.

• Meanwhile, the percentage of those working who have part-time jobs and want full-time ones surged in mid-February to 19.6 percent -- almost as high as it was a year ago before the recovery began, according to Gallup numbers. That suggests, of course, that a large number of the new jobs created over the last year are part-time.

• And a recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that even though productivity rose 5.2 percent from mid 2009 to the end of 2010, wages increased by just 0.3 percent. That means only 6 percent of productivity gains were shared with workers. In past recoveries, that figure has averaged 58 percent. This time around, far more of the gains went to shareholders, in the form of profits, which are at record levels.

What this means is that even as the headline unemployment figure declines, the total wage base (on which income taxes are assessed and from which consumers spend the money that generates sales taxes) will not recover to its pre-recession levels. And, in turn, that means that Federal and State tax revenues will not recover along with nominal employment numbers.

To grow our way out of our fiscal problems, we'd need high-paying, full-time jobs. Since the Obama Recovery isn't producing those, we're left with the only alternative: cut government spending drastically. (Historical experience teaches that raising taxes reduces tax revenue in the long run.)

Democracy is a goal, not a starting point

Praveen Swami in the UK Telegraph expresses pessimism that the anti-authoritarian protest movements in the Middle East will result in a blossoming of democracy in the region:

I’d like to believe that the rising tide of popular protest will sweep aside the region’s authoritarian kleptocracies, bring about democratisation and address the problems of its peoples.

The first of these possibilities might just be realised. The second is less likely. The third, I fear, is fantasy.

Referring to the self-immolation of a Tunisian man that set off the revolt in that country, Swami points out that the demise of authoritarian regimes is a necessary but wholly insufficient condition to create freedom and democracy:

Even if the fire Mr Bouaziz lit razes authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, though, it is unlikely to make a huge amount of difference. That’s because the real problem isn’t authoritarian or Islamism or any other -ism, which are but symptoms of a far deeper malaise: the lack of a functional political culture.

Political life in the Middle East has been narcotised by two powerful drugs: oil money and western aid. The powerful patronage networks this cash has engendered, have undermined the integrity of the polity itself. Regimes have been able to defer badly needed reforms. More important, civil society itself has had little incentive to negotiate the condition we call modernity, which demands fundamental changes of attitudes on everything from gender to knowledge.

The one thing Tunisia does have in common with other countries in the Middle East and North Africa is what demographers call a “youth bulge”. Tunisians aged between 15 and 24 made up 21 percent of the population in 2005. Elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, the figures are even higher.

Each year, millions of young people seeking to build a life meet with frustration –the root of the rage we’re seeing on the streets. Youth unemployment ranges, across the region, at between 20 and 40 percent.

If the end of authoritarianism is necessary but insufficient, democratization in and of itself is not enough to make up the insufficiency:

The received wisdom is democracy will somehow solve the problem. This sounds good, but isn’t true. Democracy is a process, not an outcome in itself. Processes don’t guarantee outcomes.

Like people everywhere, residents of the Middle East seek peace and prosperity. But dealing with the problems confronting the region calls for cultural, political and economic transformation of an order that will dwarf Eastern Europe’s transition to a market economy. There there’s nothing to show the protest movements in the Middle East have a leadership with the vision to bring them about.

The democratic successors of today’s authoritarian regimes will find themselves hard-pressed to deliver change, for much the same reasons their predecessors did: the changes needed are too large, and the solutions too painful.

It's certainly true that processes don't guarantee outcomes. But where Swami says "democracy is a process, not an outcome in itself," I would characterize it a little differently:

The building of democracy is a process that leads ideally to the outcome of a stable and robust democracy. The process uses democracy as a tool, but it is not the most important tool nor the first tool that should be brought to bear.

Autocracies that allow the development of a middle class, a functioning economy with adequate employment opportunities, and a culture that values individual freedom can transition successfully to democracy: Taiwan, South Korea and Chile are examples. Most autocracies are prone to corruption, nepotism and suppression of individual freedom, and when they fall, they do not transition to stable democracies: they tend to fall to anarchy or to a replacement autocrat.

So I fully agree that stable democracies will not flourish in former autocracies unless and until they undergo cultural and economic transformations to match their political transformations.

President Prissy

We have finally learned who Barack Obama is.

During the campaign of 2007-2008, he assured us that he was the competent chief executive with a solid plan to rein in government spending even as he revived economic growth, grew employment and initiated a raft of new policies to stop the rise of the oceans and make cars run on sunshine. His ascension to the Presidency, he claimed, would in and of itself raise America's standing in world opinion so much that our enemies would become our friends and our allies would rush to put their blood and treasure into every one of our foreign policy endeavors.

And when the financial crisis of 2008 broke, and the American people asked, "Can you fix this," Barack Obama stepped up and said, "I know everything about fixing the economy."

Now, after two full years of his Presidency, the American people cry, "Our burden of debt has become far heavier, our economic prospects are as dim as ever, more people are out of work than when you took office, our enemies are still determined to kill us -- can you fix this?"

And in his second State of the Union address, he told us clearly: "I don't know nothin' about running no country!"

President Prissy.

Frankly, a coat hanger would have been a major step forward in medical care

The Grand Jury's report begins thusly:

This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.

In 1993, the State of Pennsylvania apparently decided that abortion clinics didn't need supervision or inspection. And one such clinic -- the Women's Medical Society -- found that being exempt from outside scrutiny was a license to mint money by exploiting poor women and murdering their babies.

From the Grand Jury report:

Because the real business of the “Women’s Medical Society” was not health; it was profit. There were two primary parts to the operation. By day it was a prescription mill; by night an abortion mill. A constant stream of “patients” came through during business hours and, for the proper payment, left with scripts for Oxycontin and other controlled substances, for themselves and their friends. Gosnell didn’t see these “patients”; he didn’t even show up at the office during the day. He just left behind blank, pre-signed prescription pads, and had his unskilled, unauthorized workers take care of the rest. The fake prescriptions brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But this drug-selling operation is the subject of separate investigation by federal authorities. Our focus was on the other side of the business.

Murder in plain sight

With abortion, as with prescriptions, Gosnell’s approach was simple: keep volume high, expenses low – and break the law. That was his competitive edge. Pennsylvania, like other states, permits legal abortion within a regulatory framework. Physicians must, for example, provide counseling about the nature of the procedure. Minors must have parental or judicial consent. All women must wait 24 hours after first visiting the facility, in order to fully consider their decision. But Gosnell’s compliance with such requirements was casual at best. At the Women’s Medical Society, the only question that really mattered was whether you had the cash. Too young? No problem. Didn’t want to wait? Gosnell provided same-day service.

The real key to the business model, though, was this: Gosnell catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere – because they were too pregnant. Most doctors won’t perform late second-trimester abortions, from approximately the 20th week of pregnancy, because of the risks involved. And late-term abortions after the 24th week of pregnancy are flatly illegal. But for Dr. Gosnell, they were an opportunity. The bigger the baby, the more he charged.

There was one small problem. The law requires a measurement of gestational age, usually done by an ultrasound. The ultrasound film would leave documentary proof that the abortion was illegal. Gosnell’s solution was simply to fudge the measurement process. Instead of hiring proper ultrasound technicians, he “trained” the staff himself, showing them how to aim the ultrasound probe at an angle to make the fetus look smaller. If one of his workers nonetheless recorded an ultrasound measurement that was too big, it would just be redone. Invariably these second ultrasounds would come in lower. In fact, almost every time a second ultrasound was taken, the gestational age would be recorded as precisely 24.5 weeks – slightly past the statutory cutoff. Apparently Gosnell thought he would get away with abortions that were just a little illegal. In reality, of course, most of these pregnancies were considerably more advanced.

But the illegal abortion business also posed an additional dilemma. Babies that big are hard to get out. Gosnell’s approach, whenever possible, was to force full labor and delivery of premature infants on ill-informed women. The women would check in during the day, make payment, and take labor-inducing drugs. The doctor wouldn’t appear until evening, often 8:00, 9:00, or 10:00 p.m., and only then deal with any of the women who were ready to deliver. Many of them gave birth before he even got there. By maximizing the pain and danger for his patients, he minimized the work, and cost, for himself and his staff. The policy, in effect, was labor without labor.

There remained, however, a final difficulty. When you perform late-term “abortions” by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women’s Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn’t call it that. He called it “ensuring fetal demise.” The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that “snipping.”

Over the years, there were hundreds of “snippings.” Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the “snipping” was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff. But all the employees of the Women’s Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn’t murder at all.

I am sure that people who defend the practice of partial-birth abortion will point out that Gosnell didn't actually engage in that practice: he instead favored complete-birth infanticide.

The State agencies charged with protecting Pennsylvanians against his horror, the Department of Health and the Department of State, seemed singularly uninterested in doing their duty -- but are now scrambling to find legal counsel:

The first line of defense was the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The department’s job is to audit hospitals and outpatient medical facilities, like Gosnell’s, to make sure that they follow the rules and provide safe care. The department had contact with the Women’s Medical Society dating back to 1979, when it first issued approval to open an abortion clinic. It did not conduct another site review until 1989, ten years later. Numerous violations were already apparent, but Gosnell got a pass when he promised to fix them. Site reviews in 1992 and 1993 also noted various violations, but again failed to ensure they were corrected.

But at least the department had been doing something up to that point, however ineffectual. After 1993, even that pro forma effort came to an end. Not because of administrative ennui, although there had been plenty. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.

The only exception to this live-and-let-die policy was supposed to be for complaints dumped directly on the department’s doorstep. Those, at least, would be investigated. Except that there were complaints about Gosnell, repeatedly. Several different attorneys, representing women injured by Gosnell, contacted the department. A doctor from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia hand-delivered a complaint, advising the department that numerous patients he had referred for abortions came back from Gosnell with the same venereal disease. The medical examiner of Delaware County informed the department that Gosnell had performed an illegal abortion on a 14-year-old girl carrying a 30-week-old baby. And the department received official notice that a woman named Karnamaya Mongar had died at Gosnell’s hands.

Yet not one of these alarm bells – not even Mrs. Mongar’s death – prompted the department to look at Gosnell or the Women’s Medical Society. Only after the raid occurred, and the story hit the press, did the department choose to act. Suddenly there were no administrative, legal, or policy barriers; within weeks an order was issued to close the clinic. And as this grand jury investigation widened, department officials “lawyered up,” hiring a high-priced law firm to represent them at taxpayer expense. Had they spent as much effort on inspection as they did on attorneys, none of this would have happened to begin with.

But even this total abdication by the Department of Health might not have been fatal. Another agency with authority in the health field, the Pennsylvania Department of State, could have stopped Gosnell single-handedly. While the Department of Health regulates facilities, the Department of State, through its Board of Medicine, licenses and oversees individual physicians. Like their colleagues at Health, however, Department of State officials were repeatedly confronted with evidence about Gosnell, and repeatedly chose to do nothing.

Indeed, in many ways State had more damning information than anyone else. Almost a decade ago, a former employee of Gosnell presented the Board of Medicine with a complaint that laid out the whole scope of his operation: the unclean, unsterile conditions; the unlicensed workers; the unsupervised sedation; the underage abortion patients; even the over-prescribing of pain pills with high resale value on the street. The department assigned an investigator, whose investigation consisted primarily of an offsite interview with Gosnell. The investigator never inspected the facility, questioned other employees, or reviewed any records. Department attorneys chose to accept this incomplete investigation, and dismissed the complaint as unconfirmed.

Shortly thereafter the department received an even more disturbing report – about a woman, years before Karnamaya Mongar, who died of sepsis after Gosnell perforated her uterus. The woman was 22 years old. A civil suit against Gosnell was settled for almost a million dollars, and the insurance company forwarded the information to the department. That report should have been all the confirmation needed for the complaint from the former employee that was already in the department’s possession. Instead, the department attorneys dismissed this complaint too. They concluded that death was just an “inherent” risk, not something that should jeopardize a doctor’s medical license.

Apparently the bureaucrats in Health and in State may have felt that after the departure of a pro-life Democrat Governor, a pro-choice Republican Governor would be sympathetic to their unilateral easing of restrictions on abortion clinics. There is a special circle of Hell reserved for those bureaucrats, and they seem to know it.

(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

As luck would have it, luck saved NYC's subway commuters

The New York City subway bombing plot was just five days away from being consummated when it was discovered.

The suicide attack, planned to mark last year’s anniversary of the September 11 attacks was to be the biggest plot in the US since 2001.

Previous reports had suggested that the men were under surveillance by the FBI for some time before their planned attacks but sources now say the plot came close to success.

The plot was only foiled when one of the men emailed an al-Qaeda fixer in Pakistan to ask for advice on mixing chemicals, security sources on both sides of the Atlantic have told The Daily Telegraph.

Three men were allegedly planning to strap bombs to themselves and attack the underground with coordinated explosions planned to emulate those on London five years ago.

The lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of New York subway riders were saved by the faulty memory of a would-be jihadist and his failure to take notes.

The New York investigation began on September 6 2009 when an Afghan-born man brought up in Queen’s, New York also began emailing [the 'fixer'] Sohaib.

Najibullah Zazi was desperate to be reminded of his bomb-making instructions from a visit to Pakistan a year earlier.

He had already bought hydrogen peroxide and other bomb-making chemicals but wanted to know what proportions to use.

Luck is a good ally but a highly capricious one. Better to de-fang the Pakistani jihadi networks -- which may entail forcing their supporters in Pakistan's government and military to cut them off. As messy and difficult as that may be, it is likely a necessary precondition for stopping plots of this type at the source.

Racism, Obama and the Progressive Left

In The Best of the Web blog at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto considers the proposition that criticism of Barack Obama from the Left could be racist (prompeted by a joking comment by Rush Limbaugh):

As NewsBusters.org reports, Ed Schultz of MSNBC took Limbaugh's remark personally: "[Limbaugh] is now accusing me of being a racist," the talking horse said on MSNBC's "The Mr. Ed Show."

This leads NB's Noel Sheppard to observe: "Any person with even a room temperature intelligence quotient would know that Limbaugh was claiming racism because any time anyone on the right has criticized Barack Obama since the moment he threw his hat into the presidential candidacy ring in February 2007, said person has been accused of racism by the Left." Sheppard thinks Schultz didn't get the joke, which seems unlikely. After all, Limbaugh explained the joke.

But maybe it's not entirely a joke. That thought is prompted by a pair of opinion pieces that appeared in liberal newspapers over the weekend, both by black writers: columnist Colbert King in the Washington Post on Saturday and novelist Ishmael Reed in the New York Times on Sunday. Neither man goes quite so far as to call Obama's progressive critics racist, but both travel a significant distance in that direction.

Taranto presents the kernels of the arguments by King and Reed, and concludes:

As we have argued, the leftist charge that conservative opposition to Obama is racist is in part a cynical appeal to fear, aimed at persuading blacks to continue voting Democratic. But this could backfire. If Reed and King are right, there is no reason to assume that the progressives' self-definition is widely accepted among blacks. Thus the progs' harsh attacks on Obama are likely to look as racist as the conservatives' attacks do.

In our view, progressives are largely innocent of the racism charge. As we argued Friday, they have turned against Obama because they are infantile, not because he is black. To put it more gently, their quarrel with Obama is over policy, not race--and that much they have in common with conservatives. Which of course was Limbaugh's point.

I would argue that Progressives (and others) are guilty of racism toward Obama from a different perspective. Progressives are prone to believe in the myth of the "Noble Savage" and to idealize the "Magic Negro."

Taranto summarizes Reed:

His central argument is that those who "criticize President Obama for keeping his cool"--who urge him "to 'man up' " and start "slapping people left and right"--do not understand the cultural constraints under which black men operate in America: "If President Obama behaved that way, he'd be dismissed as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people."

But at the same time, Progressives have their own set of cultural constraints that they impose on Black Americans. Progressives are more likely to see Barack Obama, because of his skin color, his direct African parentage and his partial upbringing in exotic Indonesia, as a being outside of the dominant American ethnocentric and nationalist culture.

Surely as a Black man born of an African Muslim father, Obama must (in their view, and the view of those less Left-leaning but equally seeking a healer for America's racial wounds) possess the power to resist the pernicious influences of American culture and history and to be able to govern differently. To them, Obama represents both the Noble Savage, untainted by inbred Americanness, and the Magic Negro, untainted by the victimhood and resentments of the African-American experience.

When Obama cuts a deal to preserve tax cuts for the "wealthiest" Americans as a response to mere political considerations, he violates the trust that Progressives put in him to be truly different from other American Presidents. Obama himself seems not to understand this: not only has he lashed out at disappointed and angry Progressives with anger and disappointment of his own, but he's fed the perception of being the "same old, same old" by relying so heavily on Bill Clinton, to the point of leaving Clinton to handle a Presidential press conference without the presence of the present President.

During the Clinton Presidency, Progressives seem to have forgiven Clinton a multitude of sins against Progressivism. They didn't necessarily expect any more from a Southern good ol' boy. But seeing Barack Obama commit some of those same offenses has sparked an outpouring of rage, and I contend it's not unfair to say that he's being held to a different standard by the Left because of his race.

Credence Calamity Survival

This is the video message that President Obama sent to the Democratic Caucus meeting:

I keep the tax rates from risin'.
I see the Democrats get mad.
I see the Progressives fightin'.
I see the optics going bad.
Don't look with crossed eyes
At historic compromise,
There's some tax rates on the rise.

I hear tax deadlines a-nearin',
'Cause New year's Day is coming soon.
I fear jobs a-dissapearin'.
My Presidency gone to ruin.
Don't look with crossed eyes
At historic compromise,
There's some tax rates on the rise.

For Twenty-Twelve let's stick together,
I know this vote will be a bitch.
Help me ride out this nasty weather:
Next term, I'll help you screw the rich.
Don't look with crossed eyes
At historic compromise,
There's some tax rates on the rise.

Those Money-Grubbing Israelis vs. A Self-Hating Jew

Writing on The Atlantic's website, Jeffrey Goldberg says, "Don't Give to the Jewish National Fund."

Israel's per capita GDP is nearly $30,000. Israel is a rich country. The fact that it doesn't possess adequate firefighting equipment is its own fault. The fact that the leadership of its fire service is incompetent is its own fault. At some point, the good-hearted Diaspora Jews who still think of Israel as a charity case are going to have to tell their cousins to learn to fully-fund basic services like firefighting if they want to be thought of as citizens of an advanced country.

There are a great many good causes in Israel that deserve help, and a great many causes here in America that deserve our help. It seems to me, however, that Israel's national fire service should be funded by Israel's government, not by the people of Boca Raton, Potomac and the Upper West Side.

I've e-mailed Mr. Goldberg to thank him for his insight.

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

Thank you for your item, “Don’t Give to the Jewish National Fund. ” Your argument is so persuasive that I only wish you’d made it six years ago.

You see, if Israel is a rich country, the USA is still much, much richer. Since it was the Government that failed to maintain the levees in New Orleans and the Government that failed to evacuate the people of New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina, it’s the Government’s fault and sole responsibility for the havoc, loss of life and material destruction that occurred there. Now that I understand this, I feel like such a putz for sending donations for Hurricane Katrina relief. Is there some way, do you suppose, that I can get my money back?

Incidentally, it’s pretty outrageous that those schnorrers in Israel are asking for donations for disaster relief from their Jewish cousins overseas. The Israeli government wasted so much money sending medical teams and a field hospital to Haiti after the earthquake – clearly they should have used that money for firefighting equipment and personnel, and let the Haitians fend for themselves.

Best regards,

[stuiec]

The Waldorf Salad Effect

Remember the 'Waldorf Salad' episode [edited: not the last episode as I originally posted] of Fawlty Towers? A hard-ass American and his English wife arrive at the hotel late, and Basil is too cheap to bribe his chef to stay and cook their dinner. It's not a hard order: screwdrivers to drink, steaks, and a Waldorf salad. Needless to say, Basil screws everything up and makes it worse by trying to make it look like someone else's fault, and the American tells his wife to get her bags -- they're leaving.

As the American gives Basil what for in the lobby, all the resident guests of the hotel line up to watch. The American tells Basil that his is the worst excuse for a hotel that he's ever had the misfortune to set foot in, and Basil asks his resident guests if they're satisfied. None say a word, and Basil starts to offer the American a refund with a supercilious sneer -- and then a voice pipes up, "I'm not satisfied."

And one by one each of the guests pours out a litany of complaints about the hotel's lousy service and shabby accommodations. The American's assessment of Fawlty Towers and its proprietor are fully vindicated.

This is what we are seeing in the American political landscape today. It's the end of what rdbrewer at Ace of Spades HQ called the Abilene Paradox: because a few individuals were pushed past their limit and spoke up about how crappy the ruling regime is, the people at large have now discovered that everyone else around them is as unhappy and fed up as they are.

The polls bear this out:

Tilted toward the GOP from the start of the year, the political environment has grown even more favorable for Republicans and rockier for President Barack Obama and his Democrats over the long primary season that just ended with a bang.

With November's matchups set and the general election campaign beginning in earnest Wednesday, an Associated Press-GfK poll found that more Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction than did before the nomination contests got under way in February. Also, more now disapprove of the job Obama is doing. And more now want to see Republicans in control of Congress rather than the Democrats who now run the House and Senate...

"I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that they're out of office," said independent voter Robbin Payton of Newport News, Va., reflecting just how toxic the environment is for the party in power.

This is why we get such perverse pleasure out of watching the floundering and flopping of Gibbs and Pelosi and Reid and Obama: they're playing the comic role of Basil Fawlty, insisting against all objective evidence that everything is fine and that any problems that might exist are definitely someone else's fault. What made Basil such an enduring character was his obvious knowledge that everything was on the verge of total collapse and only his desperate machinations could keep his entire life from falling down around his ears -- and that's what makes today's Democrat leaders and Obama Administration officials just as funny as he was.

Dirty tricks in Egypt's election campaign

Mohammed El-Baradei is best known outside Egypt as the do-little head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Inside Egypt, however, he is a critic of the Mubarak regime and a putative proponent of democracy.

Apparently the Mubarak regime, which has the next generation Mubarak in the person of Gamal preparing to take over from Papa Hosni, takes El-Baradei seriously as a threat. El-Baradei thinks so, and thinks the regime is behind a dirty trick on Facebook.

The Egyptian government has been blamed for the emergence of photographs of Mr ElBaradei's daughter Laila variously dressed in swimming costumes or sitting in places were alcohol was served, in an attempt to outrage more conservative members of Egyptian society.

The photographs, apparently taken from her Facebook profile without her knowledge, were posted elsewhere on the social networking site under the title "ElBaradei's Family Secrets".

Although the creator of the group by claimed to be a friend of Laila's who was opposed to her father's activities, Mr ElBaradei told a local newspaper that he believed the government was behind the Facebook group because he had called for "democracy and economic reform" in Egypt.

"Such a campaign is the usual and only response of the regime towards whoever demands democracy," he told the independent Dustour newspaper.

Since he returned to Egypt in February, after serving 12 years as the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr ElBaradei has emerged as the most recognisable dissident in the country which has been ruled by President Hosni Mubarak for nearly three decades. Mr Mubarak, 82, is widely believed to be preparing his son Gamal for succession.

I haven't ever been to the Red Sea coast of Sinai, but I tend to think there are plenty of Egyptian women there wearing something more revealing than a "Burkini." It remains to be seen how scandalous the Egyptian public will see these photographs as being. Moreover, the Islamicist wing of Egyptian society (including the Muslim Brotherhood) are the ones most likely to find the pictures lascivious, and yet they are themselves staunch opponents of the Mubarak regime, and so may be willing to overlook Laila's immodesty in order to use her father to bring down the dynasty.

Jonathan Alter, Closet Birther?

Look at Newsweek's latest cover:

THE MAKING OF A

TERRORIST-CODDLING

WARMONGERING

WALL STREET-LOVING

SOCIALISTIC

GODLESS

MUSLIM

PRESIDENT*

* who isn't actually any of these things

BY JONATHAN ALTER

Wow, Jonathan - are you telling us that Obama isn't really the President of the United States? What do YOU know that the rest of us don't?

From Bee Lo Obama's new CD, "The Economy-Killer"

At Ace of Spades HQ, Ace notes that the Democrats are losing the "millennial generation" of voters. This prompted me to consider how the White House might try to counter that trend -- and, combining that with the likely result of the mid-term elections, I envisioned this Presidential Address from the Oval Office:

I see you swept into office by the voters I love
And I'm like, FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooo!
I guess the change and the hope just weren't enough
And I'm like, FUCK YOU
And FUCK THEM, too!
I guess you would be richer
if your job was still wit'cha
Now, ain't that some shit?
And now Pelosi is out I just stand here and shout,
Hey, voters! FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooh

I was only too willin to spend eight hundred billion
But that didn't seem to make a dent
You love the Tea Party but I'm more of a soiree
A Kobe-eating President

I pity the fool who gets elected by you
(Oh shit they're spoiled brats)
Well
(Gave up on the Democrats)
Ooo
I got some news for you
Yeah run and tell your Sarah and Glenn

I see you swept into office by the voters I love
And I'm like, FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooo!
I guess the change and the hope just weren't enough
And I'm like, FUCK YOU
And FUCK THEM, too!
I guess you would be richer
if your job was still wit'cha
Now, ain't that some shit?
And now Pelosi is out I just stand here and shout,
Hey, voters! FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooh

Now I know that I had to borrow
From China and your grandchildren
Trying to keep ya, trying to please ya
But unemployment is still pushing ten

I pity the fool who gets elected by you
(Oh shit they're spoiled brats)
Well
(Gave up on the Democrats)
Ooo
I got some news for you
Yeah run and tell your Sarah and Glenn

Now all you little voters, why you wanna hurt me so bad?
(So bad, so bad, so bad)
I thought you were sick and tired of W and his dad
(His dad, his dad, his dad)
Uh! Whyyyy? Uh! Whyyy?!?
Uh! Whyyyy, people?!?!?
Ooo, I'm the one -- oh! -- you waited for!!!
OOOOO!

I see you swept into office by the voters I love
And I'm like, FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooo!
I guess the change and the hope just weren't enough
And I'm like, FUCK YOU
And FUCK THEM, too!
I guess you would be richer
if your job was still wit'cha
Now, ain't that some shit?
And now Pelosi is out I just stand here and shout,
Hey, voters! FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooh

The Left used to think triumphalism was bad

Prior to the Coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Left warned of a bloodbath. Saddam's army was the third-largest in the world; it had advanced weaponry, much from France and other top armament producers; its chemical weapons would rain down on the invaders. Media reports of the military ordering up 200,000 body bags for U.S. service members deepened the atmosphere of dread.

In the actual event, Iraq's military proved extremely weak. The invasion moved swiftly and Baghdad fell in just three weeks.

But rather than exult in the swift victory and express gratitude for the light loss of American and British lives, the Left instead invoked an even greater danger ahead. America, it warned, was going to fall victim to a demonic force of its own making: Triumphalism.

American triumphalism, they said, would turn the Iraqi people against us. Shi'ite triumphalism would alienate the Sunni and cause them to engage in sectarian violence. The British in Basra were held up as a model of moderation: unlike the Americans with their imposing and fearsome helmets and dark glasses, the Tommies patrolled Basra in berets and uncovered faces.

Looking back, certainly Shi'ite triumphalism stoked Sunni fear and anger, but not as much as the Sadrite Shi'ite militia or the Islamofascist influence of Al-Qaeda or the resentment of deposed Ba'ath party members did. And the British seemed early on to be winning the hearts and minds of the people of Basra -- until the city started on a downward spiral of terrorism and murder, and a few of the British soldiers turned out to be bad apples willing to torture and kill Iraqis in their custody.

But the Left had a valid point about Triumphalism: putting up monuments to act as a constant reminder to the people you defeated of their failure is much more likely to make them hate you than love you. And even if your intention and belief is that the monument should only represent respect and honor to the victors and not malice or humiliation to the vanquished, it's unlikely the vanquished will see it that way.

So who in their right mind would defend the Park51 project as a good idea for promoting respectful dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims? Even if the developers' intentions are pure, they should be now realize that a lot of non-Muslims don't see it that way.

And there are a few Muslims who go further and ascribe malicious intent to the developers. The Dubai-based general manager of Al-Arabiya television, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, says, "I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime." Canadian Muslim writers Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah go further:

New York currently boasts at least 30 mosques so it's not as if there is pressing need to find space for worshippers. The fact we Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel. The proposal has been made in bad faith and in Islamic parlance, such an act is referred to as "Fitna," meaning "mischief-making" that is clearly forbidden in the Koran.

The Koran commands Muslims to, "Be considerate when you debate with the People of the Book" -- i.e., Jews and Christians. Building an exclusive place of worship for Muslims at the place where Muslims killed thousands of New Yorkers is not being considerate or sensitive, it is undoubtedly an act of "fitna."

Maybe we ought to believe these people, who understand Islamic sensibilities from the inside, when they say that they understand how Park51 could be seen as triumphalist, and may indeed be intended as an expression of triumphalism.

But the Left, which used to rail against the evils of Triumphalism, now gives it their full-throated endorsement. And they turn a blind eye to the actual Muslims warning against Park51's triumphalism. Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast writes, "It’s telling that the people Republicans are turning to for their anti-mosque street cred are not 'moderate, peace-loving' Muslims, since even Muslim Republicans are disgusted by their party’s actions. The GOP’s new heroes are former Muslims like Nonie Darwish and Ayaan Hirsi Ali." Nor does he reserve his venom exclusively for Republicans: "We’re supposed to believe, we savvy, pragmatic liberals, that the Democrats fleeing the anti-Muslim stampede are mere opportunists, not actual bigots."

This isn't narrow-mindedness, it's razor-thin-mindedness, and it ignores the fact that America is in fact a far more tolerant and accepting country for Muslims than even many Muslim countries are. In the United States, Sunni or Shi'ite or Sufi or Ahmadi Muslims need not fear being murdered in their homes or mosques by the religious majority or oppressed by their government; the same cannot be said in Pakistan or Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Jonah Goldberg at National Review writes, "In any decent society, tolerance must work both ways. If the majority is expected to show respect for a minority, the minority must also show some tolerance for the values of the majority. I’m no strict majoritarian – one with right on his side is the majority as far as I’m concerned. But this isn’t a clear-cut issue of right and wrong. It’s more complicated than that. It’s about deference and decency and common sense. And one of the things common sense should tell us is that it is not only unfair but terribly ill-advised to portray 7 out of 10 Americans as bigots when they are anything but."

Common sense also tells us that anyone sincerely seeking dialogue between faiths and communities should avoid even the appearance of triumphalism -- and that anyone who persists in giving that appearance in the face of protests from a majority of his neighbors isn't at all sincere about peace and harmony.

"A stubborn man without conviction"

James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web points out that President Obama’s nearly-instantaneous pivot on the issue of the “Ground Zero mosque” (the Park51 Islamic cultural center) shows that “Barack Obama is a stubborn man without conviction.” While this latest episode is a very stark and visible example, the insight it offers into Obama’s character and political modus operandi is hardly new.

Obama’s long had the habit of saying something to pander to an audience and then “explaining” to a different audience how he didn’t really say what he said. The only thing that’s changed is that the mainstream media is unwilling to cover for Obama when he contradicts himself.

One of the best examples is his 2008 speech to AIPAC.

“Let me be clear. Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper — but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

It took very little time for that last sentence to be “clarified” by the candidate’s campaign.

“…Barack Obama did not rule out Palestinian sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem when he called for Israel’s capital to remain “undivided,” his campaign told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

“‘Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,’ Obama declared Wednesday, to rousing applause from the 7,000-plus attendees at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference.

“But a campaign adviser clarified Thursday that Obama believes ‘Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties” as part of “an agreement that they both can live with.’

“‘Two principles should apply to any outcome,’ which the adviser gave as: ‘Jerusalem remains Israel’s capital and it’s not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967’.”

It is pretty clear that Obama operates on the principle that voters’ memories are short and that he will therefore not be held to account for any position he takes or promise he makes that later gets “clarified” into its diametric opposite.

Will Bill Clinton drive Barack Obama to forgo re-election?

This could be the event that drives Obama not to seek a second term: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton back different Colorado candidates.

Barack Obama's influence over the Democrat party is under threat after Bill Clinton backed a rival candidate to that favoured by the President in a key US Senate seat.

The former president recorded a telephone message for voters backing Andrew Romanoff, who is hoping to be the Democrat senator for Colorado, a key state in the forthcoming midterm elections.

The intervention of Mr Clinton threatens to undermine Mr Obama, who has been a prominent support of Michael Bennet, the incumbent Democrat senator who is also fighting to contest the seat.

Obama has already had to turn to Bill Clinton for political help, both in the 2008 campaign and in office. If this midterm election demonstrates that the past President and not the sitting one has the most influence in the Democratic Party, Obama may decide that living as a past President is a pretty sweet deal compared to the meat grinder he'd face in his re-election campaign... especially if Bill manages to persuade Hillary to run again.

UPDATE: Bennet wins with 60% of the primary vote, allowing the Democrat Party establishment to claim that Obama is still politically relevant.