Charles Krauthammer is greatly relieved by the results of the recently concluded Nuclear Security Summit:

What a relief. I don’t know about you, but I lie awake nights worrying about Canadian uranium. I know these people. I grew up there. You have no idea what they’re capable of doing. If Sidney Crosby hadn’t scored that goal to win the Olympic gold medal, there’s no telling what might have ensued.

Still I think he’d feel better if the bigger picture had been addressed:

All this during a week when top U.S. military officials told Congress that Iran is about a year away from acquiring the fissile material to make a nuclear bomb. Then, only a very few years until weaponization.

At which point the world changes irrevocably: The regional Arab states go nuclear, the Non-Proliferation Treaty dies, the threat of nuclear transfer to terror groups grows astronomically.

A timely reminder: Syria has just been discovered transferring lethal Scud missiles to Hezbollah, the Middle East’s most powerful non-state terrorist force. This is the same Syria that was secretly building a North Korean-designed nuclear reactor until the Israeli air force destroyed the facility three years ago.

But not to worry. Canadian uranium is secured.

So it’s all posturing. Of course the President’s posture is a little troubling too, as council member, JoshuaPundit, observes.

The New York Times does an anthropological study of the Tea Party movement and observes (via a poll)

They are far more pessimistic than Americans in general about the economy. More than 90 percent of Tea Party supporters think the country is headed in the wrong direction, compared with about 60 percent of the general public.

That must be a comfort for the Democrats, only 60 percent of the general public thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction!

Juan Williams wrote an excellent column in the Wall Street Journal the other day, Tea Party Anger Reflects Mainstream Concerns. Williams concluded:

This all makes for populist anger, embodied in the tea party movement, at politicians who are not focused on the jobs agenda. The politician at the top of the totem pole right now is Barack Obama. He is black. But the relevant point to critics white and black is not his skin color but the persistent high unemployment rate and the government’s focus on Wall Street bailouts and health-care reform.

However, in the middle of the article he wrote:

It is a fact that the tea party is an overwhelmingly older, white and suburban crowd. It is true that Republicans in Congress are almost completely white. And it is also true, according to some black and gay Democrats, that a tea party rally against health-care reform at the Capitol degenerated into ugly scenes in which racial and homophobic epithets were used and spit flew on some members of Congress. There are suspicions that tea party anger boiled over into the spate of personal threats against Democrats who voted for the health-care bill.

I highlighted a troubling phrase. What does he mean that that the charge he repeated was “…true according to to some … Democrats?” either it was true or it wasn’t. If the charge that they made was accurate it was true; if it didn’t happen, then it was false. Truth is not a relative term.

Mark Steyn documents that the claim is false. (via memeorandum)

On March 20th, something truly extraordinary happened. On the eve of the health care vote, a group of black Democrat Congressmen (eschewing the private tunnels they usually use to cross from their offices to the Capitol) chose to walk en masse through a crowd of protesters, confident that the knuckledragging Tea Party goons they and their media pals have reviled for a year now would respond with racial epithets.

And then, when the crowd didn’t, the black Congressmen made it up anyway. Representative Andre Carson (Democrat, Indiana) insisted he heard the N-word 15 times. He’s either suffering from the same condition as that Guam-flipper from Georgia, or he’s a liar. At a scene packed not only with crews from the Dem poodle media but with a gazillion cellphone cameras, not one single N-word has been caught on audio.

So the best interpretation of Juan Williams’ claim is that these Congressmen are delusional. That’s hardly reassuring.

UPDATE: Council member the Provocateur points out that, racism, such as exists at Tea Parties comes from an outside source that is trying to ride the movement’s coat tails.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Via Hot Air

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) defended the ObamaCare bill on WJR’s Paul W. Smith show yesterday when the host wondered why Democrats wait until 2014 to stop people from dying through lack of universal health care coverage. Dingell tells Smith that it takes a lot of hard work and preparation to create a system that will “control the people.” Freudian slip? I’ve clipped the complete question and answer, so you can decide for yourself. The American Thinker transcribed the answer (via CentristNet):
Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

(emphasis mine)

Click here to view the embedded video.

via InstaPundit

“WE MAKE ‘EM UP AS WE GO ALONG:” I’m guessing that this Alcee Hastings video will appear in a few political ads this fall . . . .

Finally, we have Al Sharpton, who may not be an elected official but who, nevertheless, represents the President with a segment of the electorate. (via Seraphic Secret)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Al Sharpton: “Well, first of all then we would have to say that the American public overwhelmingly voted for Socialism when they elected President Obama.”

…

Now take a look at how Obamacare is going to effect the medical industry. This crippling Obama tax guarantees fewer jobs, less medical innovation, and a lower quality of health care in America. But the Democrat Socialists don’t care because everyone will have lousy medical care. That’s considered social justice.

If this is what Democrats and their supporters say in their own favor, shouldn’t we be just a little wary?

The Washington Post, I suppose, is honest enough to acknowledge:

The Supreme Court has given Congress wide but not unfettered latitude in regulating interstate commerce. It barred federal efforts to promulgate laws that ban guns near schools and those addressing violence against women, ruling that these activities have nothing to do with commerce. But health insurance is a commodity, and a consumer who sits on the sidelines has a significant impact on the market. And the federal government’s interest in that market functioning efficiently to provide health-care access to all is undoubtedly a legitimate public purpose. So the case is not as clear-cut as many legal scholars have argued, but the federal government has a strong defense.

I credit the Post for acknowledging that the mandate presents real constitutional questions. Still I believe that when the issue was abortion, the Post wasn’t nearly as cavalier about legislative attempts to limit abortion. If the cause of healthcare reform were not so near and dear to the editors of the Post, I think they’d be a lot more indignant about an attempt to overstep the bounds of the constitution.  (I guess “reform” is more powerful than the constitution as the Post has also championed campaign finance “reform” even though it restricted the right to free speech.)

The “federal government’s interest” really can have nearly universal application. The Post is part of an industry that is in decline. It also represents one of the freedoms guaranteed by our bill of rights. Why don’t the Post’s editors argue that the federal government has an interest in maintaining a free press and that forcing citizens to buy a paper will save the free press? What they consider to be a “strong defense” is a bit too strong.

Here are a couple of anecdotes about what our health care has been. First from a few month ago, here’s the Optimistic Conservative:

My mother went in for cataract surgery on both eyes earlier this summer.  She was able to elect to have this surgery now, even though she was not blind yet in either eye – unlike seniors in Britain.  Both surgeries went beautifully, and featured advanced procedures that included the insertion of lenses to improve her vision overall.  Mom lives in Oklahoma City, and is on Medicare supplemented by some rather expensive “Medi-Gap” insurance she pays for herself.

During the first surgery, her heart monitor detected an arrhythmia that led to further tests, including an angiogram, with a cardiologist; and he determined in July that she would need a bypass for both chambers of the left side of her heart.  She will be having that surgery tomorrow.  She is otherwise in very good health, at a few weeks shy of her 70th birthday, and has been ambivalent about this whole process because, other than tiring easily, she has been having no apparent symptoms of obstructed blood flow from the heart.  But the standard of American medicine is to address a problem like this when it is caught.

Her children are glad it was caught, and that she can have a bypass now, and better prospects for at least 20 more years with us, instead of 10 or 5.  Dealing with it early improves Mom’s prospects for full recovery and high quality of life, as well.  Moreover, unlike Canada’s or the national health systems of Europe, America’s medical system is able to get her in for a bypass in 18 days from the angiogram that told the cardiologist she would need one.  (The Optimistic Conservative will be heading for Oklahoma City early next week to accompany Mom home, and stay with her for the monitoring period after her release from the hospital.)

She has two other stories that are well worth reading.

From today, Karen Avrech remembers her son, Ariel:

I know that with more government control there will be more poorly trained staff. There will be less choice. There will be rationing. Second opinions will be a rarity.

Ariel needed a stem cell transplant because he had a recurrence. At first the insurance company denied the transplant. The doctors on the committee thought it was too risky. We hired a lawyer and he was accepted. All it took was one letter.

Ariel lived six more years.

What would have happened under Obamacare?

According to the bill’s champions more people would be covered by insurance. The question is whether Americans will be getting the same level of care. They likely won’t and will pay more for less.

Marjorie Margolies(-Mezvinsky) encourages Democrats to drink the Kool Aid.

I feel your pain. Eighteen years ago, I was elected on the coattails of a popular young Democratic president who promised a post-partisan Washington. A year later, with partisan gridlock capturing the Capitol, there was a razor-thin vote on the House floor over legislation that Democrats said would remake the country and Republicans promised would bankrupt it.

I was pressed on all sides: by constituents opposed, my president needing a victory and Republicans promising my demise. I was in the country’s most Republican district represented by a Democrat. I had repeatedly said, “I will not be a ‘read my lips’ candidate,” when asked if I would promise not to raise taxes.

I voted my conscience, and it cost me.

Her message to “wavering Democrats” in one sentence: “I lost my seat, so you should too.” What a thoughtful message from the administration.

Related: Candidate tells constituents to “hang him.” (via Instapundit)

via memeorandum:

W.H. plan to remake education law

Yesterday Barry Rubin provided a refresher course on the topic of the Jewish presence in “east” Jerusalem.

October 31, 2009: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lavishly praises Israel as making “unprecedented” concessions in stopping construction on West Bank settlements while it is still going to build in east Jerusalem.

November 1, 2009: The U.S. State Department cheers Israel’s announcement that it will stop construction on West Bank settlements but not in east Jerusalem: “Today’s announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

March 12, 2010: Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says that Israel building in east Jerusalem is an “insult” to the United States, jeopardizes the bilateral relationship, and damages the cause of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meryl Yourish provides a list of supportive comments that Barack Obama has made regarding Israel. I especially liked this one:

And then there are those who would lay all of the problems of the Middle East at the doorstep of Israel and its supporters, as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of all trouble in the region. These voices blame the Middle East’s only democracy for the region’s extremism. They offer the false promise that abandoning a stalwart ally is somehow the path to strength. It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.

Which is why the administration sent David Axelrod onto all the talk shows yesterday to complain. (via memeorandum)

The issue, Axelrod said, is a “flare point throughout the region” and puts U.S. interests at risk. “It is important for our own security that we move forward and resolve this very difficult issue,” Axelrod said.

Believe it or not once upon a time Sen. George Mitchell complained about an administration that sought to prohibit Israel from building in east Jerusalem.

Obama by Proxy via Instapundit.

Palin’s admirers often marvel at how the charges leveled against her are far more applicable to the current President. People who voted for an undistinguished junior senator from Illinois with few accomplishments are quick to assault Palin’s “lack of experience.” The same folks who instruct us that Barack Obama is a physical paragon, and Michelle Obama is the most beautiful woman in the world – a goddess who causes fashion models to slink from her path in shame – belittle Palin for her good looks. Defenders of the most fabulously corrupt administration in modern history mumble about the murky details of obscure “scandals” manufactured by Alaskan bloggers. They turn away from the sad spectacle of a manifestly incompetent President to sneer that a woman who alters the course of legislative battles with blog posts is some kind of an idiot.
They dismiss Going Rogue as “ghost written” while ignoring the specter of Bill Ayers plodding through Obama’s books, a sputtering bomb clutched in its skeletal fingers. A few lines scribbled on Palin’s palm glow more brightly in their imaginations than terabytes of data flowing across the screen of Obama’s teleprompter. They accuse Palin of being a “divisive” and “polarizing” figure, while Obama launches Taxi Driver rants against evil insurance companies, cops acting stupidly, tonsil-stealing doctors, and everyone else who crosses his path.
I used to dismiss these contradictions as simply hypocrisy, but perhaps these people are angry at Palin because of her perceived similarities to Barack Obama, not in spite of them. They need someplace to ground the lightning of their frustration and disappointment, and they’re not allowed to be angry at Obama.

It’s a clever observation, but how does he account for this visceral hatred of Sarah Palin even before Barack Obama served a day in office? Consider the Washington Post’s endorsement of Barack Obama, which stated:

And we find no way to square his professed passion for America’s national security with his choice of a running mate who, no matter what her other strengths, is not prepared to be commander in chief.

But as Don Surber pointed out way back:

Democrats nominated an inexperienced but cute senator who won’t just be a heartbeat from the presidency; he will be the heartbeat.

The Sen. Obama’s lack of experience didn’t give the Post’s editors pause, but Gov. Palin’s lack of experience was used to Sen. McCain’s detriment. Maybe the anti-Palin crowd is expressing its frustration with the President, but it isn’t the only dynamic going on.