.gif) Les Cohortes Célestes ont le devoir et le regret de vous informer que Libres Propos est entré en sommeil. Ce forum convivial et sympathique reste uniquement accessible en lecture seule. Prenez plaisir à le consulter.
Merci de votre compréhension. |
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+6Charly Shansaa Alice jam EddieCochran Biloulou 10 participants | |
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| | Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 6/7/2009, 08:44 | |
| Rappel du premier message :Bonjour Biloulou  Il me semblait que cette nouvelle plairait! |
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Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907
Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
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| | Sujet: 1950 - 27/2/2010, 12:19 | |
| Apres la session sur le projet de loi du systeme sante, reunissant des Representants des deux partis, televisee et parrainee par le POTUS (qui n'a une fois pas de plus pas manquer de rappeler a 2 reprises qu'il etait le president des fois qu'on aurait oublie...  ) et sa menace a peine voilee d'imposer Obamacare (Rien de moins sur d'ailleurs qu'il ait les voix meme en utilisant un moyen qu'il a tant critique lorsqu'il etait senateur: la reconciliation qui permet de faire passer une loi au Senat avec 51 voix au lieu de 60) n'a pas particulierement plu aux Americains, sa cote continue a tomber. Date .....Presidential Appr. index - Strongly Appr. - Strongly Disappr. - Total Appr - Total Disapp 2/26/2010 .......20.........................23..................43......................44.................55 ----- 1/21/2009 .......28.........................44...................16.....................65.................30 |
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| | Sujet: 1951 - 28/2/2010, 03:58 | |
| ... et la glissade continue. Date .....Presidential Appr. index - Strongly Appr. - Strongly Disappr. - Total Appr - Total Disapp 2/26/2010 .......-21.........................22..................43......................43.................55 Un rapport avec les Olympics, sans doute.  |
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| | Sujet: 1952 - 1/3/2010, 05:21 | |
| We must not discard greatest innovator in historyU.S. will lose its hard-earned technology edgeBy WALTER CUNNINGHAM
HOUSTON CHRONCLEFeb. 27, 2010, 10:20PMExcept in wartime, there has never been another government program that produced as much technological innovation as the U.S. space program, and there likely never will be. No other program has so successfully infused the economy, rallied the nation, inspired youngsters toward academic achievement or established the U.S. as the world leader in technology. - Spoiler:
In spite of this, on Feb. 1, President Barack Obama announced the cancellation of the Constellation program of exploration, leaving NASA, for the first time in history, without a specific mission. It is as if President Gerald Ford had canceled the space shuttle program in 1975, just as the last Apollo mission was being flown. The shuttle orbiter development was well under way at the time, but that did not save us from a six-year gap before the next American was launched into space.
Today there is no realistic successor for human spaceflight waiting in the wings.
The biggest consequence of that first gap was the best and brightest of the NASA engineers and scientists leaving to seek more challenging jobs. It took years to rebuild the professional team that would eventually launch 134 shuttle missions and construct the most amazing engineering project in history — the International Space Station.
The space shuttle program not only maintained our preeminence in space, it raised our technical expertise and further increased our prestige among the developed nations of the world — precisely the same reasons the Chinese are now working toward landing a man on the moon.
Congress is our last hope of putting a stop to the dismantling of a once great agency.
Members of Congress are concerned about job losses and the economic impact, but in the long run they are not nearly as costly as the loss of an inspirational vision for the next generation of space scientists, engineers and explorers. You have only to look at Lewis and Clark, our westward expansion and Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the moon to know exploration is in our blood. We should be proud of it. Americans need a frontier.
While NASA and some others are trying to put the best positive spin on the budget proposal, the negative fallout is building. Personnel requirements for the agency's new direction will do little to mitigate the tremendous losses from this foolish cancellation without a replacement in hand. The real loss, as in the 1970s, will be those trained and experienced engineers who are already leaving for more inspiring pursuits.
Spokesmen are trying to rationalize the debilitating cuts in the agency's programs. They claim the “$6 billion increase over the next five years demonstrates President Obama's strong commitment to space exploration.” That is just over 1 percent a year, and $2.5 billion of it is committed to the shutdown of Constellation, the same amount proposed for research on how global warming is affecting the Earth.
The $19 billion for 2011 is less than 0.5 percent of the proposed federal budget, one-ninth of what it was at its peak in the 1960s. The $300 million increase eliminates the program of human space exploration and sentences the agency to the same starvation diet it has existed on for the past several decades. NASA needs a $3 billion increase to continue operating a viable human space program.
NASA spin is touting “new technology development programs to expand the capabilities of future explorers”— in-orbit fuel depots, rendezvous and docking, closed-loop life support systems, heavy-lift research and development of new engines, propellants, materials and combustion processes.
These may sound new to someone unfamiliar with what NASA has been doing for 50 years, but (with one exception) they are pursuits for which NASA already has an unmatched reputation. Each of these would have played an essential role in the now canceled Constellation program. Without the focus of a specific mission, the raison d'être for these technologies is now “to advance the field of space science.”
In the place of the canceled Ares and Orion hardware, we now have increased support for education, increased spending on the discredited global warming hypocrisy and subsidies to several new commercial rocket companies. And, oh yes, don't forget a new outreach program to Muslim countries without established space programs.
In canceling Constellation with nothing to take its place, the president is saying the U.S. should not have its own human space program and is directing funds to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS. If NASA wants to participate in human spaceflight, it will have to be through contractors.
Market realities
NASA has always contracted for most of its hardware and service needs. Some of the contractors were successful in private industry, and sometimes the government was the sole customer. A company dependent solely on government grants, contracts and guarantees is not a free-market, private enterprise.
To succeed in the private sector a company must raise capital, develop a product, sell it at a profit and show a return on investment commensurate with the risk within a reasonable time frame. Unfortunately, space will not be an attractive commercial opportunity for the foreseeable future. Space exploration is a costly precursor to uncovering commercial opportunities, and it will be decades before a private investor can expect a return commensurate with the risk of exploration.
Until we find a way to make a profit in space, governments and countries are the only institutions able to afford space exploration and live with the extremely long-term returns.
That is why NASA must continue to develop the next-generation human space system, whatever form that system may take. Human space systems cannot be evaluated solely on the basis of scientific return per dollar spent. Dominance in space gives our country credibility or leverage in so many other forms than economic gains; scientific discovery, understanding of the universe, international prestige, military stature and being seen as a country that can do anything we set our minds to.
Limited effect
The COTS program — companies selling services to NASA — made some sense with NASA still in the exploration business, doing the applied research and expanding the envelope of space travel beyond the moon. It would be very difficult for private companies to replicate the singular competence NASA has developed. Even if COTS-created vehicles are successful, they will be woefully inadequate for near-term needs and will do nothing for exploration.
Only government programs — regardless of country — will get humans to the moon and beyond. Space exploration is an activity from which monetary profits cannot be generated, leaving contractors supplying government programs that do not have to show a profit. After 50 years in space, how many lunar or interplanetary space probes have been launched by commercial space companies?
We have been told by the agency that future exploration programs, such as returning to the moon or going to Mars, will be a global effort, not an American one. That may sound appealing with respect to sharing costs and other resources, but it virtually guarantees those programs will take longer, cost more and render them vulnerable to political bickering — like the International Space Station. As a result of the political decision to make the Russians a full partner, the ISS has cost the U.S. $10 billion more, was two years late and required that the station be placed in an orbit unacceptable for most alternative uses.
Degeneration?
Have we really degenerated as a country to the point where we can no longer fund our own exploration? Did we spend $460 billion becoming pre-eminent in space, only to stupidly surrender it? What does our new dependence on other countries to send Americans into space say about our culture, society and prospects for the future?
NASA was always considered in a class by itself. Now, when the world is becoming increasingly dependent on space-based systems, we seem bent on slipping back into mediocrity. How do you rationalize surrendering our pre-eminence in space? The last time a country voluntarily gave up its pre-eminent position in exploration was when the Ming government recalled the Chinese fleets in 1433. That critical error condemned China to worldwide stagnation for centuries.
NASA has always been a mission-driven agency that attracted a particular kind of individual. It focused on the objective, determined the obstacles, solved the problems and, in the end, accomplished the impossible. We all benefit from the technological fallout to our economy and our growing stature in the world. Continuing NASA's program of exploration requires three things: the technology, the resources and the will to do it. We have plenty of the first two, but have we lost the will?
Cunningham piloted the first manned Apollo mission in 1968 and is author of The All-American Boys.
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| | Sujet: 1953 - 1/3/2010, 05:34 | |
| Il y avait longtemps... Updated February 28, 2010'White Right' Wants Obama to Be One-Term President, Farrakhan SaysAP Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan says the stalling of health care legislation is proof.- Spoiler:
CHICAGO -- Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, boasting his divine stature, on Sunday predicted trouble ahead for President Barack Obama and urged him to do more to improve the lives of blacks and the downtrodden.
The 76-year-old leader said the "white right" was conspiring to make Obama a one-term president, and pointed to his stalled efforts to introduce health care legislation as proof. He said those opponents and lobbyists were trapping him into a future war with Iran that could lead to mass destruction.
"The word 'prophet' is too cheap a word. I am a light in the midst of darkness," Farrakhan said at the annual convention of the movement that embraces black nationalism. "It ain't ego, it's my love for you."
An estimated 20,000 people attended the heavily guarded Saviours' Day event at the United Center in Chicago. Followers -- men dressed in navy uniforms and women in white skirt suits with matching hijabs -- cheered on Farrakhan with shouts of "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great."
Farrakhan spent most of the fiery nearly four-hour speech recounting a 1985 vision he had in Mexico. Farrakhan has often described how he believes he was invited aboard an unidentified flying object he calls "the wheel" where he said he heard the late Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad speak to him.
He said that experience led him to inklings about future events, including the United States' 1986 bombing of Libya.
Farrakhan recounted how his divine knowledge has allowed him to recognize countless warning signs over the decades -- such as natural disasters such as the earthquake in Chile -- and said they indicate impending trouble, including for Obama.
Dressed in ornate creme robes, he addressed the president directly:
"Your people are suffering. You can't ease their plight, but you can use your bully pulpit. Speak for the poor. Speak for the weak."
He said helping the Nation of Islam, which has worked to reform black inmates for decades, would also be an answer.
"Put some money on back of us," he said. "We can reform our people."
Farrakhan has vigorously supported Obama for years and used his presidency as a call to action for blacks. That was even as Obama distanced himself from the group for Farrakhan's past comments that many considered anti-Semitic.
Supporters say Farrakhan's words are often taken out of context.
Farrakhan continued his praise of Obama Sunday, and said the nation's first black president was manipulated into disavowing Farrakhan.
He would not say if he and Obama had ever met on the issue.
"They all want to know did I ever meet with him and what did I say or what he say," Farrakhan said in the speech. "I ain't going there."
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| | Sujet: 1954 - 1/3/2010, 05:58 | |
| (Pour copier Lawrence ... )  Obama Signs One-Year Extension of Patriot Act AP President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation's main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act.- Spoiler:
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation's main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act.
Provisions in the measure would have expired on Sunday without Obama's signature Saturday.
The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government's ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security.
Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will:
--Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.
--Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.
--Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.
Obama's signature comes after the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the measure.
The Senate also approved the measure, with privacy protections cast aside when Senate Democrats lacked the necessary 60-vote supermajority to pass them. Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government's authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.
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| | Sujet: 1955 - 1/3/2010, 06:05 | |
| February 28, 2010 Democrats' Obama bounce in California disappearing Samantha Young And Kevin Freking Kent Hancock can't remember tougher economic times in the two decades he's sold used cars in California's Central Valley.- Spoiler:
He brings home less than half the money he cleared a few years ago and has dipped into savings to keep his business open. Hancock, 41, blames politicians for doing too little to get the economy back on track and hopes they are "sweating it a little bit. They should. It shouldn't be a guaranteed job."
Hancock's frustration is evident throughout the nation's most populous state. Just a year ago, the Democratic Party looked at California as a base for adding to its majorities in Congress. Now, it could be a the place where it loses them.
Even Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, widely viewed just six weeks ago as a shoo-in for re-election to a fourth term, now faces the toughest race in her 28 years representing California in Congress.
That was before Republican Scott Brown's upset last month in Massachusetts took from Democrats the seat held for nearly five decades by Edward M. Kennedy, who died last year. Kennedy, like Boxer, was one of the Senate's most stalwart liberals.
"Every state is now in play," Boxer warned fellow Democrats after Brown's victory.
Democrats hold both of California's U.S. Senate seats and 34 of its 53 seats in the U.S. House. A year ago they were looking to pick up as many as eight more from Republicans in districts that President Barack Obama won in 2008.
That list of takeover targets has now been winnowed down to three: GOP Reps. Dan Lungren in Sacramento, Mary Bono Mack of Palm Springs and Ken Calvert of Corona, in Southern California.
Republicans, meanwhile, have expanded their takeover list.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who's recruiting Republicans to challenge incumbent California Democrats, said he has no worries that the GOP will lose any of the House seats it now holds in the state. Democrats, he said, will have to focus on keeping seats in perennially competitive districts in other states.
"They have too many of their own members playing defense and needing money," McCarthy said.
McCarthy named four California House Democrats on the GOP's target list: Jerry McNerney of Pleasanton, who represents a district in which Republicans are a majority; Loretta Sanchez of Garden Grove, who faces a Republican challenger seeking to motivate the district's growing Vietnamese population; and Jim Costa of Fresno and Dennis Cardoza of Atwater, who represent agriculture-dependent districts decimated by high unemployment.
McNerney faces competition no matter the election year. His district stretches from the wealthy and slightly left-leaning suburbs of the eastern San Francisco Bay area to more conservatives suburbs and farming communities in the San Joaquin Valley.
Sanchez's district is in a part of Orange County that leans Democratic but voted for former President George W. Bush in 2004 and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. It has a large Vietnamese-American population. "They come out and vote in large numbers, and they're 2-to-1 Republican," says her opponent, state Assemblyman Van Tran.
The fates of Costa and Cardoza, whose districts are in California's Central Valley, will depend largely on the region's economy. Unemployment in some parts of the valley, where much of the nation's food is grown, has soared beyond 30 percent. Richard Avilla, 59, who lives in Cardoza's district, is about to be unemployed himself. He is closing his office supply store in nearby Turlock.
"Things aren't going well. Regardless of whether it's a Democrat or Republican, they better be worried because they are doing their jobs and failing," Avilla said.
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Freking reported from Washington.
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| | Sujet: 1956 - 1/3/2010, 06:20 | |
| Breath in - Breath out Defiant Rep. Charles Rangel vows reelection bid despite uproar over alleged ethics violationsBY Celeste Katz
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, February 28th 2010, 12:04 AMRoca/News
Rep. Charles Rangel, 79, is planning to run for another term.
Rep. Charles Rangel made it clear Saturday: He's running this year for a 21st term as Harlem's congressman.
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Rangel, under fire for alleged ethics violations, acknowledged he was aware of calls for his retirement or resignation.
His response?
"Run for reelection," the 79-year-old Democrat told the Daily News after a Harlem meeting of city leaders.
The powerful head of the Ways and Means Committee was rebuked this week by a House ethics committee for accepting corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008.
He's also facing charges of failure to pay taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic, hiding a half-million dollars in income and reaping a sweetheart deal on four rent-stabilized apartments.
Rangel was first elected to the House in 1970.
On ne peut pas dire qu'il ne resiste pas (meme si c'est grace au soutien de sa grande amie Nancy  )
- Spoiler:
February 28, 2010, 10:08 AM ET
Pelosi Stands By Her Chairman
By Susan Davis
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave no indication that her support was wavering for embattled Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, in the wake of his admonishment by the House ethics panel last week.
“It said he did not knowingly violate House rules. So that gives him some comfort,” the speaker told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. Rangel was publicly admonishment by the panel for violating House rules by failing to properly disclose financial details of trips he took to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008.
The ethics panel didn’t find sufficient evidence to conclude that Rangel knew that misleading information was provided to the ethics committee before the trips were approved. His office said in a statement last week that the ethics committee “found that the chairman himself had no actual knowledge that the trip in fact violated House rules.”
A growing number of House lawmakers, including some Democrats, has said Rangel should resign his post heading the powerful tax-writing committee until the matter is fully addressed.
Pelosi on Sunday wouldn’t concede that the chairman should step aside if more admonishments were to come down from the ethics panel. Rangel is under other ethics investigations involving his personal disclosure forms on his financial assets.
“Well, why don’t we just give him a chance to hear what the independent, bipartisan” ethics panel finds, she said. “They work very hard to reach their conclusions and we obviously [know] there’s more to come here.”
The speaker admitted that the case didn’t look good to the public. “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “But the fact is, is that what Mr. Rangel has been admonished for is not good. It was a violation of the rules of the House.”
However, she added: “It was not something that jeopardized our country in any way.”
mais bon, ca devient tout de meme de plus en plus ... difficile pour lui.
et Shansaa qui nous a abandonnes.  |
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| | Sujet: 1957 - 1/3/2010, 06:50 | |
| February 28, 2010 A 'Cure' for Character By George WillWASHINGTON -- Peter De Vries, America's wittiest novelist, died 17 years ago but his discernment of this country's cultural foibles still amazes. In a 1983 novel, he spotted the tendency of America's therapeutic culture to medicalize character flaws: - Spoiler:
"Once terms like identity doubts and midlife crisis become current," De Vries wrote, "the reported cases of them increase by leaps and bounds." And: "Rapid-fire means of communication have brought psychic dilapidation within the reach of the most provincial backwaters, so that large metropolitan centers and educated circles need no longer consider it their exclusive property, nor preen themselves on their special malaises."
Life is about to imitate De Vries' literature, again. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry's encyclopedia of supposed mental "disorders," is being revised. The 16 years since the last revision evidently were prolific in producing new afflictions. The revision may aggravate the confusion of moral categories.
Today's DSM defines "oppositional defiant disorder" as a pattern of "negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures." Symptoms include "often loses temper," "often deliberately annoys people" or "is often touchy." DSM omits this symptom: "is a teenager."
This DSM defines as "personality disorders" attributes that once were considered character flaws.
"Antisocial personality disorder" is "a pervasive pattern of disregard for ... the rights of others ... callous, cynical ... an inflated and arrogant self-appraisal." "Histrionic personality disorder" is "excessive emotionality and attention-seeking." "Narcissistic personality disorder" involves "grandiosity, need for admiration ... boastful and pretentious." And so on.
If every character blemish or emotional turbulence is a "disorder" akin to a physical disability, legal accommodations are mandatory. Under federal law, "disabilities" include any "mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities"; "mental impairments" include "emotional or mental illness." So there might be a legal entitlement to be a jerk. (See above, "antisocial personality disorder.")
The revised DSM reportedly may include "binge eating disorder" and "hypersexual disorder" ("a great deal of time" devoted to "sexual fantasies and urges" and "planning for and engaging in sexual behavior"). Concerning children, there might be "temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria."
This last categorization illustrates the serious stakes in the categorization of behaviors. Extremely irritable or aggressive children are frequently diagnosed as bipolar and treated with powerful antipsychotic drugs. This can be a damaging mistake if behavioral modification treatment can mitigate the problem.
Another danger is that childhood eccentricities, sometimes inextricable from creativity, might be labeled "disorders" to be "cured." If 7-year-old Mozart tried composing his concertos today, he might be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and medicated into barren normality.
Furthermore, intellectual chaos can result from medicalizing the assessment of character. Today's therapeutic ethos, which celebrates curing and disparages judging, expresses the liberal disposition to assume that crime and other problematic behaviors reflect social or biological causation. While this absolves the individual of responsibility, it also strips the individual of personhood, and moral dignity.
James Q. Wilson, America's pre-eminent social scientist, has noted how "abuse excuse" threatens the legal system and society's moral equilibrium. Writing in National Affairs quarterly ("The Future of Blame"), Wilson notes that genetics and neuroscience seem to suggest that self-control is more attenuated -- perhaps to the vanishing point -- than our legal and ethical traditions assume.
The part of the brain that stimulates anger and aggression is larger in men than in women, and the part that restrains anger is smaller in men than in women. "Men," Wilson writes, "by no choice of their own, are far more prone to violence and far less capable of self-restraint than women." That does not, however, absolve violent men of blame. As Wilson says, biology and environment interact.
And the social environment includes moral assumptions, sometimes codified in law, concerning expectations about our duty to desire what we ought to desire.
It is scientifically sensible to say that all behavior is in some sense caused. But a society that thinks scientific determinism renders personal responsibility a chimera must consider it absurd not only to condemn depravity but also to praise nobility. Such moral derangement can flow from exaggerated notions of what science teaches, or can teach, about the biological and environmental roots of behavior.
Or -- revisers of the DSM, please note -- confusion can flow from the notion that normality is always obvious and normative, meaning preferable. And the notion that deviations from it should be considered "disorders" to be "cured" rather than stigmatized as offenses against valid moral norms.
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| | Sujet: 1958 - 1/3/2010, 07:03 | |
| Curb Your Exhilaration Obama's down, but not out. BY William KristolMarch 8, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 24 "There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.” Republicans and conservatives have recently had reason to appreciate the truth of Winston Churchill’s statement. - Spoiler:
President Obama and the Democratic Congress had a real shot at transforming American politics and public policy into European-style social democracy. When Obama spoke to Congress a year ago, on February 24, 2009, it certainly seemed he would have a chance to succeed.
Last week—one year later—he was on the defensive at his own health care “summit” thanks to the massive public hostility to his health care proposal.
What a difference a year makes.
Republicans deserve some credit. From the beginning of this Congress, GOP leaders kept their heads, staked out their positions sensibly, and held their members united in opposition to Obama’s project.
Meanwhile, conservative policy analysts and polemicists made the arguments against elements of that project more compellingly than might have been expected. But Republicans and conservatives don’t deserve the bulk of the credit for stopping—or at least significantly slowing down—Obama before he was able to do as much damage as he intended.
Who does?
(1) President Obama himself. As one wag commented, Obama turned out to be quite an effective community organizer. But the community he organized was a majority of the American people in opposition to his agenda of big-government liberalism.
(2) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Republicans, -facing overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, should thank their lucky stars to have squared off against an ideologically blinkered speaker of the House and a short-tempered, incompetent majority leader of the Senate.
(3) Conservative and independent grassroots activists. It’s this simple: No Tea Parties, no defeat of Obamacare. It wasn’t just the practical and political effect of the demonstrations across the nation. It was the example of people not being intimidated by elite opinion, the example of their willingness to fight what was supposed to be an inevitable new era of liberal big government, and the enterprise that self-generating and self-organizing activists showed in resisting the Obama agenda. A year ago, Republicans were confused and conservatives dispirited. The Tea Parties did more than anyone else to change this. For all that may be problematic about some aspects of this new activism, the fact remains that the Grand Old Party owes Tea Partiers much more than they owe Republicans—which is why the condescension of some GOP elites toward them is not only unseemly but foolish.
(4) The American people. The voters took control of Congress away from Republicans in 2006 and took the White House away in 2008. But despite the financial crisis, they didn’t fall for the siren song of much bigger government. Despite their wish for the new president to succeed, they didn’t succumb to the temptation—or to the urging of liberal elites—to give him a blank check. Rahm Emanuel’s remark just after the election—you never want to let a serious crisis to go to waste—cynically assumed that the American public could be easily manipulated. Instead, Emanuel’s dimestore Machiavellianism may have doomed the Obama presidency. Conservatives should learn the lesson of Emanuel’s failure and reaffirm their faith in the wisdom of the American people.
So we’ve, at least for now, dodged the bullet. It’s exhilarating. But now comes more hard work. In Virginia and New Jersey last year and in Massachusetts in January, Republicans went on the offensive. They need to stay on the offensive, overcoming their natural stolid conservatism. They need to welcome upstart candidates and unorthodox political strategies. They need to be open to new formulations of issues. In the pages of newspapers and magazines, conservatives have begun to lay out sensible and appropriately modest (as befits a congressional-year election) policy proposals that contrast with the Democrats’. This needs to be pushed ahead, steadily and relentlessly, through November 2010.
Then the big task of 2011: framing a post-financial crisis, post-Obama governing vision for the country. And then the task of 2012: finding a candidate, and winning the chance to govern. All of that lies ahead. For now, a little exhilaration is in order. But only a little.
—William Kristol
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| | Sujet: 1959 - 1/3/2010, 07:16 | |
| He's No FDRBarack Obama’s shrinking presidency.
BY Fred Barnes
March 8, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 24
President Obama spent seven hours last week acting like a committee chairman, not a president. - Spoiler:
Rather than preside over the nationally televised health care “summit” of Democratic and Republican members of Congress, Obama was a participant. He big-footed Democrats and responded to Republican statements himself. He talked and talked and talked, considerably more than anyone else and for a total of two hours. When Obama delivered a concluding monologue, the TV cameras panned to a drowsy and bored group of senators and House members, the Republicans especially.
Did Obama lower the presidency to the level of mere legislator? Perhaps. But I think Obama’s behavior at the summit answers a separate question, one that’s lingered since he was elected more than 15 months ago. Is Obama the new FDR? The answer is no.
If Franklin Delano Roosevelt were president today, the summit never would have happened. As the top priority on his agenda, liberal health care reform would have been enacted already. For Obama, the summit was a last-gasp attempt to revive his moribund legislation. More than likely, it will fail.
The reason is tied to what is probably the greatest difference between FDR and Obama. Roosevelt took command of Washington. Obama hasn’t. “FDR became the father of the modern presidency by moving the Chief Executive to the center of the American political universe,” John Yoo writes in his new book on presidential power, Crisis and Command. “Roosevelt’s revolution radically shifted the balance of power among the three branches of government.”
Obama has weakened the presidency and strengthened the power of Congress—a shift in the other direction. FDR seized legislative authority. The bills that Congress passed in his first 100 days and beyond were produced by the Roosevelt administration and ratified reflexively by Congress. There’s a reason you probably don’t know who Henry Rainey and Joe Robinson were. They were rubber stamps, Rainey as House speaker, Robinson as Senate majority leader.
But in Obama’s Washington, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid are powerhouses.
The job of actually writing bills—the economic stimulus, health care, cap and trade, the omnibus appropriation—was turned over to them and their colleagues. To put it more bluntly, Obama has abdicated where FDR ruled like a king (at least in his first year in the White House).
Roosevelt’s strategy worked. Obama’s hasn’t. The FDR agenda passed, though the Supreme Court later struck down important parts of it. Except for the stimulus, Obama’s top priorities haven’t passed. FDR moved on, in 1935 and 1936, to getting the so-called Second New Deal (Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act) enacted. Obama’s future looks less rosy.
It’s clear that Roosevelt had an ambitious vision and a far more expansive idea of the presidency than Obama has. When I first heard the tale that Obama had told congressional Democrats to write the bills and he’d sell them, I thought it was apocryphal. Now I’m not so sure. Obama seems to see presidential power as purely rhetorical.
Two appealing aspects of Roosevelt’s public style have not been duplicated by Obama. He hasn’t come close. “In contrast to presidents who inundate the nation with words, Roosevelt rationed his broadcasts,” writes presidential historian Fred Greenstein in The Presidential Difference. He gave four fireside chats his first year, then fewer. In a letter cited by Greenstein, FDR said “the public psychology cannot be attuned for long periods of time to a constant repetition of the highest note in the scale.”
Obama, in contrast, talks incessantly on practically any subject. He was interviewed at halftime of the recent Duke-Georgetown basketball game on—you guessed it—basketball. He has debased the value of the “exclusive” interview with the president by granting so many. Obama is ubiquitous, and always talking. He’s lost his connection with millions of Americans, who’ve tuned him out. He’s sparked a political backlash. FDR didn’t until his second term.
Then there’s the mystery of FDR the man. “The man behind the style was an enigma,” Greenstein writes. This created a mystique and enhanced his influence. Obama is relatively transparent and has less clout. When he tries to promote a deal in public or intimidate an opponent—he tried both at last week’s summit—he comes across as a bossy senator or chief of staff.
To Obama’s credit, he hasn’t claimed to be the reincarnation of FDR. At a fundraiser last year, he said he’d put his “first four months (in office) up against any prior administration since FDR.” The “since” gets Obama off the hook. The FDR issue has been raised mostly by friendly liberals in the media.
It’s an unfair comparison. Roosevelt’s reputation for imposing a liberal makeover on America is impossible to match. But Obama has tried. And in one significant way he’s been successful. Like FDR, he’s broadened the size and scope of the federal government. Should his health care and cap and trade bills pass, along with the authority to seize any financial institution whose collapse would be “a systemic risk” to the economy, Obama would put himself in FDR’s class as a supersizer of Washington’s power. He’s not there yet.
By following another Roosevelt example, Obama has bought trouble. FDR thought government spending would spur economic recovery. It didn’t. And his surge in regulation and tax increases actually impeded economic growth and job creation.
So, too, with Obama. Same policies, same result. Yet he appears puzzled why there were 4 million fewer jobs in the country after a year of his presidency. Liberal critics such as economist Paul Krugman insist FDR’s stimulus wasn’t large enough and neither is Obama’s. Conservatives believe Obama’s policies are wrong, and what works are across-the-board individual and corporate tax cuts.
Either way, Obama comes up short.
For Obama, the most brutal disparity between him and FDR is likely to come in November. After the Democratic landslide of 1932, Democrats won still more seats in Congress in 1934. In this year’s midterm congressional elections, that’s an outcome Obama can only dream about.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
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