What’s In A Name?

The “iPad” moniker was a bad call. Yes, it’s already the butt of jokes. Yes, it falls in line with “iPhone” and “iPod”, but it’s too close to the latter. But then again, a rose with any other name would smell just a sweet, right? Even if the rose sounded vaguely like a feminine hygiene product.

Flash In The Can

I’ve heard plenty of moaning about the lack of Flash. This shouldn’t have been a shock. Apple does not like Flash. It’s proprietary. Flash on OS X performs terribly. For a lengthy take on why the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad will likely never support Flash, see John Gruber’s piece on Apple, Adobe, and Flash.

The other big question is why does the iPad need Flash? To view video — it already does that, and with better performance than Flash. Yes, it doesn’t view all web video, but as Apple’s multitouch devices continue to proliferate, I’m guessing a lot of sites will abandon Flash rather than abandon those devices. (And yes, that includes the porn sites that are probably the reason many want Flash on the iPad…)

To play web games? For one, Apple offers plenty of games through the App Store. Not only that, but many Flash games wouldn’t even work on a multitouch device — especially anything that needs keyboard input. Flash games would suck on multitouch devices.

For ads? The fewer obnoxious ads, the better.

For more interactive web pages? The real solution would be to embrace open web technologies like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. Those technologies aren’t controlled by one company, unlike Flash.

Winners And Losers

The biggest losers in all this could very well be Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Sony. They’ve all heavily invested in e-reader devices, and the iPad makes a lot more sense than those devices. E-Ink screens are nice, but if the iPad makes for a good enough reading device, it won’t matter.

The saving grace for them is that they have the opportunity to create their own reader applications for the iPad. (I’m guessing that both the Kindle and Barnes & Noble reader applications for the iPhone will work on the iPad.) I’m guessing that Amazon sells the Kindle hardware at a loss, in the hopes of making up the difference in book sales. Does Amazon care whether they sell books on the Kindle or the iPad? Probably not. The question is whether Apple cares that third-parties are selling books on their platform. I’d wager they don’t care — Apple isn’t in the publishing business, they’re in the hardware business.

The winners are probably publishers. The iPad gives them some great opportunities to have e-books proliferate in the same way that multitouch apps have. That’s a win for an industry that’s facing some very bad times.

Looking Ahead

Apple is heavily invested in multitouch, and the iPad is just another example of that. It’s an opportunity to fundamentally transform computing. These devices abstract away old concepts like file systems and a hierarchy of folders. The old metaphors can finally be swept away: no more folders, no more mouse cursors, no more file managers, not even windowing systems. This is the face of 21st Century computing: and Apple is setting the trend.

The iPad is just another device, one of the first in a long series of devices. It’s likely to be extremely popular, and is very well designed. But ultimately, it reaches beyond that: this is about redefining the way we use computers. Apple has paved the way, and while others are trying to catch up, the iPad proves they’re still running one step ahead.

UPDATE: John Gruber observes a point I missed: Apple now makes their own blazingly-fast mobile processors. Apple’s acquisition of chipmaker P.A. Semi seems to be paying off. Apple is a hardware company at its core, so designing their own chips is a wise move.

Politics

• President Obama’s popularity will remain mired below 50% throughout most of the year.
• The Democrats will lose more the 40 seats, putting the GOP in control of the House.
• In the Senate, Democrats will not fare much better. Majority Leader Reid will lose his seat, following in the footsteps of Tom Daschle. Chris Dodd also loses his seat to a GOP upstart. Same with Blanche Lincoln.
• The health care bill will be signed into law, and will be a major albatross around the necks of Democrats.
• The Democrats, rather than moving towards the center, will lurch left as the “netroots” convinces many in the party that the reason for the 2010 defeat was because the party was insufficiently “progressive.” The Democrats will end up in the same position the Republicans were in a year ago.
• But Republicans should be wary as well. They will have won not on their own laurels, but because of disgust with the current Congress.
• Cap and trade will be DOA as Congress gets increasingly worried about the political backlash.

International

• The protests in Iran continue in fits and starts, weakening the foundations of the regime. The Iranian government continues to brutalize its own people, while the West does little of consequence to stop them.
• President Obama launches further military action in Yemen to try to remove al-Qaeda.
• A major economic collapse in the EU shakes the foundation of the Euro.
• Gordon Brown faces a vote of no-confidence in Parliament, causing the him to call new elections in the UK.
• The situation in Afghanistan remains unsettled, but the addition of U.S. troops helps calm some of the tensions.
• Iran will come closer to testing a nuclear weapon, and will likely have the capability of doing so by the end of 2010.

Economics

• Unemployment will remain high throughout the year as discouraged workers reenter the workforce. This will be a huge political problem for the Democrats in the 2010 cycle.
• The price of gold and other hard assets will continue to skyrocket on inflation fears, leading to a mini-bubble in asset prices.
• The government will continue with bailouts of major companies, despite President Obama’s focus on debt reduction.
• The national deficit will continue to skyrocket as Congress is unable to restrain spending.

Society/Culture/Technology

• Apple will announce their tablet in early 2010, with a 10-inch touch screen and optional 3G wireless through Verizon rather than AT&T. The tablet (probably not called the iSlate) will have a major effect on the e-reader market, although Amazon will counter by making Kindle content available on the new device. Critics will complain that the price point is too high, but the device will sell like hotcakes anyway.
• E-Books will begin to outsell physical book copies.
• The reality TV show craze will finally, mercifully die off as people get sick of the them.
• Web series will continue to take off from being largely low-budget affairs to being more like regular TV shows. Shows akin to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog will receive much critical acclaim and will begin to supplant conventional TV.
• “Steampunk” will go from a small subculture to the next major popular phenomenon. Things like home canning, writing letters on fine stationery, and Victorian styles will become increasingly popular.
• The death of the newspaper industry will not stop, even though many papers start reconciling themselves with the digital world.

Politics/National

• President Barack Obama’s popularity with the left will bleed away as he moves to governing as a centrist.

  Correct: Late in the year, liberal dissatisfaction started growing, as the President chose to double down on Afghanistan and failed to back the public option in healthcare. While liberals still tend to support the President, Obama has not given them everything they want, and that has not made the liberals very happy.

• Card check legislation will be narrowly defeated in Congress, preserving the rights of the American worker to a secret ballot.

  Not Quite: Card check has been pushed off until next year, where it may well be defeated, but it hasn’t yet gone away as a political issue.

• The Republican Party will continue to spend a year in the wilderness, while the seeds of political renewal will come from outside the party structure.

  Correct: The GOP remains mired, but the real energy lies in the Tea Party movement. The media paints the Tea Partiers as a radical fringe, and some of them undoubtedly are. However, they have energy and motivation, and that can make all the difference. Whether the GOP likes it or not, they will have to ingratiate themselves with the Tea Party movement and capture that energy in a constructive way. Doing so without alienating the vital center will be difficult, but it’s not impossible.

• Vice President Biden will say something incredibly stupid, creating a great deal of tension between him and President Obama.

  Duh: Predicting a Joe Biden gaffe is like predicting that the sun will come up in the east.

• Congress will continue to be unpopular as the economy continues to backslide and more and more scandals mount. By the end of the year, faith in American government will be at a new low.

  Again, Duh: Congress continues to be wildly unpopular with the American electorate, and sweetheart deals, political payoffs, and rampant corruption are to blame. People regard Congress with the same level of distaste they do with plague rats and filthy diapers—and who can blame them?

International

• Iraq will be a bright spot as its nascent democracy continues to develop. Rather than terrorism, its main problem will be corruption and governmental issues. Iraq will start looking less like Lebanon and more like Jordan in terms of its development. The media will basically ignore Iraq, even though there will be no major U.S. troop drawdowns until mid-year at the earliest. President Obama’s Iraq strategy will be a continuation of the existing strategy, not a clean break from the Bush years.

  Correct, More or Less: Iraq has not been in the news much this year. Partially because it is no longer politically expedient, and partially because what’s going on there doesn’t make good news. Parliamentary maneuvering isn’t as sexy as blood in the streets. It is very interesting to note that 57% now say the war in Iraq has been a success, a marked reversal from last year. Yes, it is true that Iraq has a long way to go before it’s as developed as Jordan, but there are many positive signs. There will still be bombings and attacks, but the biggest problem Iraq now faces has less to do with terrorism and more to do with politics. In many ways, beating corruption and political paralysis is harder than beating back al-Qaeda, but Iraq is unquestionably better off now than it was under Saddam’s brutal reign.

• Israel will again stop short of destroying their enemies, slowly backing down after token military actions on the ground in Gaza. Seeing another Lebanon, the Israeli people will reject Kadima and elect Netanyahu as Prime Minister.

  Correct: Operation Cast Lead beat back Hamas, but Gaza remains a problem for Israel. As a result of Kadima’s perceived weakness, Binyamin Netanyahu has able to lead a coalition of right-wing parties as Prime Minister.

• India and Pakistan will be at the brink of war throughout the year, but neither side will pull the trigger. This issue will dominate Secretary of State Clinton’s efforts throughout the year.

  Incorrect: Pakistan is more concerned with the Afghan border than with Kashmir. While it is true that Pakistan has been a major issue for Secretary of State Clinton, so far the India-Pakistan tensions aren’t the most pressing issue.

• Iran will test a nuclear weapon, leading Israel to formally announce that they possess nuclear weapons and that they will use them if necessary. Israel will work to expand ts fleet of ballistic missile submarines.

  Incorrect: Iran is almost certainly much further ahead on weapons development than the West thinks, but so far they have not tested a weapon. Sadly, it appears that this prediction could come true next year. The West does not have enough leverage to prevent Iran from going nuclear.

• Russa’s Gazprom state-owned oil company will collapse, causing massive unrest in the country. Vladimir Putin and his puppet Dmitri Medvedev will use the unrest to further restrict freedoms and consolidate their own power.

  Incorrect: Gazprom remains a powerful tool of the Putin regime, and thanks to its control over much of Europe’s natural gas will likely remain so for the near future.

• Due to oil prices plummeting, Hugo Chavez will be deposed in a bloodless coup.

  Sadly, Incorrect: Chavez will only be removed by a coup, but that seems far-fetched at this point. Chavez seems set to be the 21st Century version of Fidel Castro, much to the detriment of the Venezuelan people.

Economics

• The recession will not go away in 2009.

  Correct: This one was probably a given.

• Obama’s $1 trillion stimulus bill will narrowly pass on a party-line vote. It will not stimulate the economy, but will cause further job losses as small businesses prepare for the worst.

  Correct: Instead of saving jobs, the unemployment rate reached double digits. The “stimulus” has failed on its own terms, failing to create new jobs and leading to yet another “stimulus” bill. The massive increase in national deficit—$1.4 trillion this year alone—will have negative economic effects that far outweigh any benefits of all the spending. The fact remains that the Keynesian multiplier is a myth, and $1 of government spending will not produce even $1 of growth.

• The Dow will sink below 8,000 and not stay above that level for most of the year.

  Incorrect: The Dow has rebounded to above 10,000, although how much of that growth is sustainable over the long term is an open question.

• By the end of 2009, the U.S. will face double-digit unemployment, economic recession, and massive deflation as the credit markets remain frozen.

  Partially Correct: We’ve hit the double-digit unemployment figure and are still in recession. However, it looks like inflation rather than deflation is going to be a problem. By opening the spigots, the Fed has helped ease the credit crunch. The problem is that they have nowhere else to go. With the national debt continuing to rise, running the printing presses is not a sustainable option.

• Congress will pass a protectionist trade measure that will have massive ripple effects throughout the world economy. The European Union will push for the WTO to punish the U.S. for their actions. Rather than improve our relations worldwide, America will be disliked ever more intensely across the globe.

  Not Yet: I’m somewhat surprised that the U.S. hasn’t pushed a major protectionist trade measure quite yet. But, much to his credit, Obama has not been a full-fledged protectionist. As politically expedient as it is to bash China and trade in general, the U.S. economy is too dependent on trade for Congress to start re-enacting Smoot-Hawley.

• The one bright spot will be that consumers begin shedding their debts and living more fiscally responsible lifestyles.

  Correct: Consumer debt continues to fall, as people continue to try and pay down their debts.

Society/Culture/Technology

• The last MacWorld will announce the iPhone Nano, a new Mac Mini, and a quad-core iMac. It will be revealed that Steve Jobs is in fact unwell, which will cause Apple shares to slide. However, the corporate culture that Jobs has created will keep Apple innovative.

Partially Correct: Steve Jobs was in fact unwell, having received a liver transplant last year. The iPhone Nano is probably not going to happen, and is probably a bad idea. Better Mac Minis and quad-core iMacs did appear, but later in the year. Instead, new unibody MacBooks were the big announcement at MacWorld 2009.

• Microsoft will release Windows 7 by years-end. It will be better than Vista, but still not sell well due to the decline of the industry.

  Partially Correct: Word is that Windows 7 is selling very well compared to Vista, but Vista did not have good reviews. Windows 7 is much better than Vista, but that’s not saying much. With Apple continuing to do very well, Microsoft’s OS dominance means less and less. The future is mobile, where Microsoft is an also-ran compared to BlackBerry, Google’s Android, and the iPhone and iPod touch.

• The economic downturn will cause a widespread cultural re-examination. Church attendance will climb as people look for stability in their lives.

  Uncertain: In general, church attendance does increase in bad economic times, but there isn’t much evidence that this is holding true now. I’m somewhat surprised that there’s not more definitive evidence on how this recession is affecting church attendance.

• The New York Times will file for bankruptcy protection. Liberal investors will save it from falling, but circulation will continue to drop.

  Partially Correct: It was only a bailout by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim that kept the Times alive, but even then the paper teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. The economics of the newspaper business will not get better any time soon—if ever—and it remains to be seen how the Times will survive in the coming years.

• Star Trek will be a major hit as the public rejects the gloomy outlook of other summer films. Chris Pine will become a breakout star from his role as James T. Kirk.

  Correct: J.J. Abrams reboot of the franchise was a hit, the highest-grossing Trek film ever. Chris Pine’s Kirk was a star turn (as well as Zoë Saldana’s role as Uhura). Star Trek breathed new life into the franchise, and while it wasn’t the deepest Trek film, it was a hell of a great ride, and it was one of the best films of the year.

• A major network will announce a new series to be aired entirely on the web rather than through traditional channels. It will be a major hit and the start of a new trend away from traditional media towards online distribution.

  Incorrect: I’m waiting for this to happen. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was a pioneer for online distribution, but so far the major networks haven’t yet embraced the idea of an online-only series. The time is right to do this, but the networks remain stuck on the idea that legacy media has to be the star. There are plenty of web series (like Felicia Day’s wonderful series The Guild) that prove that web distribution can work. The question is when the major networks will “get it.”

Eight years later, and we have returned to a sense of complacency. The horrors of that day have become less visceral with age. We have, in some sense, fogotten the lessons we learned that terrible day. We have slipped back into the mentality of pre-9/11 America, when shark attacks and Gary Condit were more important than the barbarians at our gates.

We cannot be so complacent. Despite our best efforts, many of those responsible for these inhuman acts are still at large. Afghanistan is still threatened by the Taliban. Pakistan, a country possessing nuclear arms, still has the sword of Damocles over its head as the lawless frontiers continue to incubate terror.

The events of that day eight years ago changed our world. We owe it to those who died to never forget, and never allow this kind of barbarism to reign free again. The long war has not ended. Eight years ago, a city of millions mourned the loss of 3,000. The next attack could see it the other way around. We cannot bear that cost. We must be unflinching in our defense of our values and unyielding in our determination to fight groups like al-Qaeda.

We must never forget what happened eight years ago, or it will happen again.

Yet exactly what does the American people get for this expenditure? On the bright side, the beleaguered automotive industry gets yet another shot in the arm. But that cheery argument repeats the common mistake that I addressed two weeks ago: Using tax dollars to stimulate one industry necessarily impairs the recovery prospects of everyone else. To make matters worse, some stimulus payments are just outright gifts, because lots of last week’s eager sellers might have traded in their clunker in the near future anyhow. And no one has a clue as to how many miles would be put on these clunkers anyhow.

The problem with the “Cash for Clunkers” program is that it won’t provide much stimulus, but it will burn through billions in in taxpayer dollars. Is the possible increase in overall gasoline efficiency worth the $1 billion now spent and the billions more that may be spend reviving the program? It’s doubtful we’ll know, because the actual results don’t matter. Congress is essentially buying support by raiding the public fisc under dubious pretenses.

Two thousand years ago, the called it panem et circenses—but “Cash for Clunkers” seems to have much more consonance, even if the concept remains essentially the same.

The President got elected largely on his ability to transcend the racial politics of the past. He presented himself as a post-partisan healer who rejected the transparent race-baiting of a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton. It was one of the reasons why the Obama campaign went to such lengths to bury Obama’s association with the viciously racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright—because it undercut the narrative they wanted to portray.

Now, Obama has waded right back into the politics of racial polarization with his attack on a veteran Cambridge police officer.

All this will do is polarize the country. The police officer can hardly be accused of being a racist—he taught classes on stopping racial profiling, tried to save the life of NBA star Reggie Jackson, and has a sterling record on the police force. Yet the President, without knowing all the facts, accused him of “acting stupidly” and insinuated that race played a factor in the arrest.

Based on the police report of the incident, race did play a part. Prof. Gates’ racist diatribe, not his attempting to get into his own house, is what got him arrested. The mere sight of a white police officer legitimately trying to do his job was met by a tirade by Gates. If anything, it was Gates who “acted stupidly.” Perhaps not stupidly enough to get arrested, but stupidly enough that he was hardly a victim in all this.

By taking sides in this matter, the President was walked right back into the fields of racial polarization. He has diminished his office by attacking a law enforcement officer without knowing the facts—and even if Sgt. Crowley was at fault, the President should not have injected himself into the matter in the first place.

This may not sink the Obama Presidency, but it does hurt him. He came into the Oval Office with the noble goal of being a President for both Black America and White America, a President that would try to heal racial divisions. Now, he has helped to open another racial wound in this country. He “acted stupidly” in doing so, and it may well end up costing him politically at a time when he’s already starting to take political heat.

Charles Krauthammer has a deeply thoughtful piece on the Moon we left behind:

But look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints — untouched, unchanged, abandoned. For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.” We came, we saw, we retreated.

That we ascended to the stars, but then turned our backs to them shows just how foolish our society can be.

Apollo was probably unsustainable, but had we allowed space to be another place where human creativity, ingenuity, and daring could have thrived rather than a sterile “commons” visited only by state actors, our present could have looked much more like the future depicted in 2001.

If an alien race were to come to Earth and see what we have done—or not done—in the past 40 years, I doubt they’d understand it. How a civilization can pull back from such a dazzling achievement would be beyond the understanding of any rational creature.

That solution will not work.

For one, there aren’t enough “rich” people to make up for the current deficit. We could raise taxes to 99% and not came close—and then the rich people would either cease to be rich, or get their assets out of the country faster than you can say “Nancy Pelosi.” What you would have would be capital flight on a truly nightmarish scale.

In order to make up that kind of shortfall, you would not have to tax only the Bill Gateses or Warren Buffetts of the U.S.—you’d have to start taxing everyone who makes a decent living. Our professional classes are already taking a huge hit in this economy—engineers and lawyers are applying for $10/hour jobs because of the economic downturn. If we start taxing them, they will buy less, they will use less services, and the ripple effect will continue right on down the line. It will make the economy worse rather than better.

Taxing the “rich” isn’t going to solve this mess, nor is more government intervention. The sad state of our economy is due to too much government intervention and far too much debt, both public and private. In order to fix this mess we all need to start spending in line with our realistic priorities and not spending money we don’t have.

Taking more money from people with their heads barely above water and giving it to an irresponsible government is not a solution for this economy; it is economic suicide.

Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard…

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You’ll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You’ll endure gibes about your “slutty” looks and your “white trash concupiscence,” while a prominent female academic declares that your “greatest hypocrisy” is the “pretense” that you’re a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.

All of this had something to do with ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin’s gender and her social class.

Douthat has it exactly right: Sarah Palin was despised by the left because she represents a culture that is alien to the left’s worldview. She’s a female, she’s attractive, she’s actively pro-life, she’s rural, she’s plain spoken, and she’s conservative. To the left, such a thing just should not be. She embodies values that stand in very clear contrast to those of the left, and were she to obtain national popularity she could be very influential.

The former governor was not prepared for the race in 2008, and the McCain campaign did an extremely poor job of preparing her for what she would face. Douthat is right that she would have been wise to turn down McCain’s offer, although it is understandable that she did not.

But, Douthat notes, Palin is still relatively popular. She has a net positive approval rating, even after 10 months of constant fire. If Palin wanted to return to politics—and perhaps she does not—a Sarah Palin that had spend some time learning policy and crafting her positions could still be a potent political force.

Right now the lesson of Sarah Palin is that if you’re not prepared for the national stage you will be eaten alive. But there is a possibility, however small, that the lesson down the road might very well be that counting Sarah Barricuda out is a very unwise idea.

The cap-and-trade bill, if passed by the Senate and actually implemented over the next few decades, would do more damage to the country than any economic legislation passed in at least 100 years. It would eventually send most American manufacturing jobs overseas, reduce American competitiveness, and make Americans much poorer than they would have been without it.

The cap-and-trade bill will have little, if any, positive effect on the environment — in part because the countries that would take jobs from US industries tend to be bigger polluters. By making the US — and the world — poorer, it would probably reduce the world’s ability to develop technologies that might solve its environmental problems in the future.

Cap-and-trade is a joke—it is a policy that has already failed in Europe and in virtually guaranteed to fail here in the United States. By giving in to the demands of radical environmentalists, Congress is preparing to take our current recession and plunge it into depression.

As the media focuses once again on celebrity, the advent of the next Great Depression comes closer. Cap-and-trade is terrible policy enacted for foolish reasons, and we will all pay the price for it if we allow it to pass.

At the president’s invitation, ABC News anchors Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer will host a prime time town hall-style meeting from the White House during which Obama – and Obama alone – will answer audience and viewers’ questions about efforts to cover 50 million Americans without health care insurance.

Talk about a bully pulpit for Obama to sell his proposal for the creation of a government-run public health insurance plan.
ABC News’ packaging of the health care special also includes a Good Morning America “exclusive” interview with the President on Wednesday morning, a live broadcast of ABC World News from the White House, a full edition of ABC’s Nightline devoted to the issue, an ABC News webcast and an ABC Radio special.

ABC is essentially become a journalistic whore—giving away their credibility in favor of access to their master’s house. Tonight’s programming will be little more than propaganda, despite ABC’s weak promises that they’ll be critical of Obama’s plans, they have not given any airtime for any dissenting voices to Obama’s attempts to “reform” health care.

In short, ABC has decided to become a political propaganda network for the White House. Not only is this blatantly against the “watchdog” role of the press, it also violates the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. That Code requires journalists to “[a]void conflicts of interest, real or perceived.” Here, ABC is trading objectivity for access, but even if they are not, the fact that not a single voice will be given time is more than enough to “perceive” a conflict of interest. The Code demands that journalists “[r]efuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.” Here, ABC is compromising their journalistic integrity in order to curry favor with the Obama White House and gain access to the administration. One could go one, but the point has been made: what ABC is doing is a violation of professional ethics.

It is ironic that a party that has called for a “fairness doctrine” to promote “balance” on the airwaves and criticizes other networks for being “biased” seems to be silent as ABC refuses to give equal time. It only exposes the hypocrisy of those who would censor talk radio to prevent dissenting voices from having a bully pulpit.

This sort of thing should not happen in a free society: and that this is not the product of government coercion is even more distressing. It is one thing to become a slavish propaganda organ for the ruling clique at the barrel of a gun—but that ABC will prostrate themselves of their own volition is even more disgusting.

ABC has no objectivity. They have allowed themselves to become an uncritical propaganda organ for the Obama Administration and should be treated with the same critical eye as one would treat any other state-run propaganda outlet.

President Obama was right to speak carefully about the events in Iran during the first week of protest. But it’s time for him to express his solidarity with the Iranians who are so bravely taking to the streets each day. He can do that without seeming to meddle if he chooses his words wisely.

Obama should invoke the Iranian yearning for justice — which was a powerful theme of the revolution. He should cite Iran’s own rich history of political reform, going back to Cyrus the Great, whose declaration of human rights was chiseled in the Cyrus Cylinder in 539 B.C. He should cite the Iranian constitution of 1906, which established elections and basic freedoms. Democracy is not an American imposition but an Iranian tradition.

“We clearly have to be on the right side of history here,” says Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment and an informal adviser to the White House. But he cautions that “if we try to insert ourselves into the momentous internal Iranian drama that’s unfolding, we may unwittingly undermine those whom we’re trying to strengthen.”

President Obama’s unwillingness to make a statement of solidarity is puzzling. Direct intervention would be a very bad idea, but the myth that any act of official support would harm the pro-democracy movement seem wrong. For one, the idea that the Iranian people actually still care about the overthrow of Mossadegh seems unlikely: Iran is a country where most the population was born after the 1979 revolution: Mossadegh is ancient history. Secondly, Obama has already “meddled” by requesting the Twitter delay maintenance to allow Iranian dissidents to communicate—a move that undoubtedly helped the Iranian resistance.

This is a time for solidarity. The free people of the world cannot turn a blind eye to the oppression that is harming the Iranian people—especially as the Khameini/Ahmadinejad regime tries to crack down on the protesters.

The people of Iran are risking their lives for the cause of freedom. As human beings, we cannot ignore their pleas. The very least the American government can do is put its moral authority into pressuring the Iranian government to avoid bloodshed. President Obama has, undoubtedly, a massive amount of political capital on the world stage. He should use it and he should make it clear that while the United States will not intervene unless asked, that we are with those who seek individual rights and human dignity anywhere they may be.

Rather than offering any crumbs of support to the Iranians who are literally putting their lives on the line for their own freedom, Barack Obama could only manage “deep concerns.” In Obamaland, it’s not as important to offer even moral support to people trying to shake off the yoke of a barbaric dictatorship as it is to not appear to be “meddling.”

This all sounds quite familiar, and everyone over 30 has seen it before. Did somebody replace the “community activist” with a self-righteous peanut farmer while we weren’t looking?

The fantasy that “moderates” within the mullah regime can be coaxed into a “grand bargain” has taken in better men than Barack Obama, but Obama doesn’t even have the excuse of not being aware of that prior history. The level of self-loathing an American has to possess to believe that the Khomeinists are a brutal, terror-supporting regime entirely because the US hasn’t been nice enough to them is pretty staggering.

President Obama is laboring under the entirely mistaken premise that because the U.S. overthrew the Mossadegh regime 30 years before most Iranians were even born, that someone we have no legitimacy in the region. That assumption is pure garbagemdash;Obama unquestionably has great power to at the very least show solidarity to the Iranian people. Even French President Nicolas Sarkozy felt free to uncategorically condemn Iranian brutality.

When the French are showing far more spine than you are, it’s a sure sign you’re on the wrong side of the issue.

President Obama is wasting his capital in the Middle East by sitting on the sidelines. The idea that a U.S. show of support would hurt the Green Revolutionaries in Iran is a myth. President Bush openly showed support for the March 14th protesters in Lebanon seeking to end the Syrian occupation of their country. Despite President Bush’s low standing in the region, that call did not hurt the Lebanese people’s cause. Why in the world does Obama think that joining the chorus of world leaders will hurt?

Collier seems correctmdash;Obama shares in the worldview of placing blame on the United States. He is unwilling to use America’s capital because he doesn’t believe in it. He quite literally blames America for the situation rather than seeing the United States as a force that could put its weight behind the crucial cause of freedom in Iran.

John Podhoretz makes the controversial, but compelling argument that Obama’s interests are best served by an Ahmadinejad win. Given that Obama has been taking steps towards deacute;tente with the Iranians and the subtle legitimization of the Ahmadinejad/Khameini regime, having that regime suddenly lose all legitimacy undercuts all of that work and makes Obama look like a fool. Obama’s interests are in a swift return to “normalcy” rather than a messy revolution and a nascent Iranian democracymdash;that reeks too much of George W. Bush for the Obama foreign policy team to take.

A show of solidarity is not “meddling”, especially when the rest of the world has made their position clear. Obama is showing no leadership on that issue, as the Iranian people are inspiring with their bravery. If ever there was a time when “hope” and “change” were needed by a people, the Iranians need it now. Too bad that on this issue Barack Obama is one again voting “present”.

Michael J. Totten, already a veteran observer of Middle Eastern affairs has some trenchant commentary on the brewing revolution in Iran. He calls the Iranian regime “an enemy of the entire world.” That’s no hyperbole: the regime in Tehran is illegitimate and oppressive. The Iranian people deserve better. They deserve to have a government that exists for the betterment of the people, not a government that keeps them impoverished and isolated from the rest of the world.

This revolution is being carried live on Twitter, as that seems to be the most reliable communications method for the Iranian people right now. What is amazing about this revolution is that it is the first Web 2.0 revolution. Social networking sites like Twitter, YouTube, and others are serving as avenues for communication and coordination, and brave Iranian dissidents are breaking through the regime’s efforts to stifle their voices.

This is a fight for the future of Iran. The Ahmadinejad/Khameini regime can only survive by force, they have lost the Iranian people. This will end in one of two ways: in a new Iran, or in blood.

I pray that this ends with a new and free Iran. I wish the Iranian people strength in these coming days, and I stand in solidarity with the people of Iran.

The Ahmadinejad regime must go. As the cry goes out in Tehran—Allahu akbar! Death to dictators!.

Chris Matthews is a smart, politically astute observer of politics, but my last appearance convinced me that “Hardball” has evolved from a straight political news program with quality guests to one that has more in common with its network’s prime-time slant. Like most of the evening programming on MSNBC and the Fox News Channel, “Hardball” has become a partisan, heavily ideological sledgehammer clearly intended to beat up one party and one point of view.

During the show on which I appeared, Matthews referred more than once to Republicans as “Luddites” and took every opportunity imaginable to portray them as crackpots. The show’s topics inevitably pander to the most liberal Democratic viewers and present Republicans and conservatives in the least flattering of terms.

I don’t mean to single out Matthews for criticism because he actually understands politics and I believe that he would prefer to do a serious political show. Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and the newest addition to MSNBC’s unfortunate lineup, Ed Schultz, are far worse than “Hardball.”

The reality is that TV news is based around appealing to the lowest common denominator—and there are a dwindling number of worthwhile TV news programs available. For example, while FOX is famous for the blowhards Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, they do have some very good straight political coverage and Brit Hume’s nightly show was one of the best in the industry. However, their bread-and-butter was in “opinion journalism” (an oxymoron if ever there was one). FOX had good political coverage, and for all their supposed conservative bias they did a good job of reporting on serious matters as well.

MSNBC, however, decided to become a cargo-cult version of FOX News with a leftward tilt. They managed to find an ego as big as Bill O’Reilly’s with an even bigger chip on his shoulder in the form of Keith Olbermann. Olbermann has all the tact and grace of a rabid pit-bull that just ate PCP-laced dog food. In his world, Republicans make Nazis look like Boy Scouts—making him unwatchable by anyone who doesn’t share a similarly rabid worldview. The execrable Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow are in a similar vein.

Sadly, there just doesn’t seem to be an appetite for hard news on TV these days—if you want to be informed about the world, you use the Internet and get the facts for yourself. Right now, TV news is used in the same way a drunk uses a lamppost—for support rather than illumination.

Perhaps if Chris Matthews had declined to allow himself to be prostituted out to MSNBC’s brand of acid-drenched partisanship it would have saved Hardball from becoming a mockery of itself. If more journalists wanted to report the facts rather than spin them the state of TV journalism would be better. However, that would require some serious intellectual diversity, and journalism in general is a monoculture. FOX has done yeoman’s work in allowing a different perspective to have a voice, but it’s set a standard for valuing kneejerk “opinion” over strong journalism. The rest of the TV networks are copying the worst of that model.

TV news networks are hemorrhaging viewers, and given this race to the bottom, it’s not hard to understand why.

Ilya Somin has a detailed critique of Judge Sotomayor’s record and finds her minimally qualified. As he puts it:

…[H]er record is far less impressive than that of most other recent nominees, such as Roberts, Alito, Breyer, and Ginsburg. Each of these was a far more prominent and better-respected jurist than Sotomayor, and Breyer and Ginsburg were leaders in the development of their respective fields of law. Sotomayor also seems far less impressive than Diane Wood and Elena Kagan, reputedly her top rivals for this nomination. The current nominee’s qualifications are likely better than Harriet Miers’ were; but Miers’ nomination failed in large part because of her relatively weak resume. Among the current justices, probably only David Souter and Clarence Thomas had professional qualifications similar to or worse than Sotomayor’s.

It would be hard to find a less qualified nominee than Harriet Miers, but Sotomayor does not strike me as a strong candidate. She is, to be sure, qualified for the position, but a seat on the Supreme Court is the pinnacle of the American legal profession. The Supreme Court has housed some of the greatest minds in the practice: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, Robert Jackson, and even the current Court has incredibly talented judges such as Stephen Breyer (on the “left”) and Antonin Scalia (on the “right”). Does Sotomayor match up with those legal minds? Her record, at least on a cursory glance seems to suggest not.

Judge Sotomayor is not widely considered to be an expert or leading light on a particular field of law, as Stephen Breyer was in administrative law. She has not shown the intellectual caliber of someone like Antonin Scalia or Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Instead, she seems to have been picked because she is a female Hispanic with an interesting life story that meets the basic qualifications.

Now, that is not to say that Judge Sotomayor is an intellectual lightweight—generally one does not get nominated for a Circuit Court of Appeals or even graduate from a top-tier law school without possessing a strong intellect. Moreover, Judge Sotomayor is no less qualified than the Justice she is replacing—which is damnation by faint praise given that David Souter was the least intellectually gifted and least competent member of the Court.

It should not be surprising that Obama picked a left-wing candidate. That part was a given. President Obama was not going to pick out a candidate more conservative than the decidedly liberal Justice Souter. Her personal ideology should not be at issue: Justices Breyer and Ginsberg were both strongly liberal judges, but were well-qualified nominees whose nominations were consented to by the Senate in a bipartisan manner.

However, as Prof. Somin adeptly points out, her judicial philosophy is a legitimate reason for combatting her nomination:

I am also not favorably impressed with her notorious statement that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Not only is it objectionable in and of itself, it also suggests that Sotomayor is a committed believer in the identity politics school of left-wing thought. Worse, it implies that she believes that it is legitimate for judges to base decisions in part on their ethnic or racial origins.

The role of a judge is to dispassionately and fairly apply the law without preference or bias. It remains an open question whether Judge Sotomayor will follow the law or undermine the rule of law by giving preference to those based on gender, race, class, or her own personal feelings. If it is the case that she will, respect for the rule of law demands that the Senate refuse to consent to her nomination.

Judge Sotomayor was not the worst pick that President Obama could have made (Secretary Napolitano was the least qualified of the four contenders), but Judge Sotomayor was not as qualified as Judge Wood or Elena Kagan. However, politically, Sotomayor may be the more confirmable.

In the end, President Obama could have picked a legal heavyweight—but instead he picked someone based largely on personal rather than judicial qualities. Judge Sotomayor may be qualified to sit on the Court, but it is unlikely that she will be one of its brightest stars. Given that she is replacing the execrable Justice Souter, it is hard to see her being any worse. Still, there are liberal candidates, and liberal female candidates that President Obama could have nominated that would be stronger picks for the Court. It is likely that Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed, and probably on a bipartisan basis, but she is not the kind of distinguished jurist that will make a strong contribution to American jurisprudence. She will, however, be a reliably liberal vote on the Court, which seems to be President Obama’s primary criterion for picking a nominee.

Rep. Pelosi has ended up making a laughingstock of herself—her desperate attempts to backpedal from her own words are Clintonian in audacity without the skill of Slick Willy. Even the mainstream press has caught on.

Krauthammer puts the political impact of all this succinctly:

The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at the time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly reelected the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken. It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions — our blindness to al-Qaeda’s plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that the interrogation would extract intelligence that President Obama’s own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed “high-value information” — and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

And they were right.

In the end, that’s correct. The “torture” issue will never have legs because the average American doesn’t share the sense of moral outrage that some have over that issue. In war, bad things happen. People get killed. Killing is a moral wrong, yet it is part of the nature of warfare. In the same vein, a practice like waterboarding may be credibly called torture, and torture is a moral wrong. Yet it is also a part of war. Pelosi doesn’t care about the morality of torture, she wants to score political points for partisan reasons. Some have a legitimate, rational, and moral objection to these practices, but they are a distinct minority.

In the end, Pelosi’s dissembling masks the real issue here. Waterboarding someone who was directly responsible for the inhuman September 11 atrocity is morally and politically different than the mistreatment of detainees. The abuses of Abu Ghraib and others are examples of acts that harm America’s reputation and dishonor our military. Yet the focus is not on those acts, but on the waterboarding issue. Were this a moral rather than a political issue, detainee abuse would be placed in its full context, rather than being used as a truncheon against the Bush Administration.

Pelosi’s lies are political in nature, just like this whole attempt at a partisan witch-hunt. Even for those who legitimately and truly oppose torture, tying their wagons to such a despicably partisan crusade only undercuts the seriousness of their position. If the anti-torture campaign will be spearheaded by outright liars like Rep. Pelosi, it will never be taken seriously.

It wasn’t that the Bush Administration went on an orgy of spending that made a mockery of conservative principles, or that social conservatives had a message that tended to alienate rather than include, it’s that the the strong national security message of the GOP caused them to lose:

Like their short-sighted cheerleading for a “surge” in Iraq, which failed on its own terms, and their subsequent carping this year that the Pentagon budget increase is too small, the mainstream right’s apologies for torture are not only morally bankrupt but also divorced from the reality of the intelligence, or lack thereof, these methods provided. Much as liberals needed their internal critics to challenge the welfare status quo over the last three decades, conservatism desperately needs similar internal dissent concerning the warfare state. But there is almost none.

One reason for the lack of dissent and accountability is that the majority of the GOP was deeply implicated in supporting and defending the war in Iraq, the signature failure of national security conservatives. To a large extent, the party has defined itself around the ideological fictions used to justify and continue the war long after the country had turned against it. This process was aided by the disappearance of antiwar Republicans in Congress. Never numerous in the first place, most have been replaced by Democrats during the past two cycles.

Now, this argument is wrong, but it isn’t fundamentally wrong. It is wrong on the facts. The surge did work, it worked better than had been expected, and as a testament to how well it worked, the Obama Administration has not disavowed it. President Obama, were the Iraq issue as toxic as it is claimed, could have withdrawn all U.S. troops ASAP. Instead, Obama’s war strategy is not that much different than what a President McCain’s strategy would have been—a gradual and conditional withdrawal over the next year to two years. Moreover, the Obama Administration is hardly rejecting the idea of a hawkish foreign policy. During the debates, Obama needled McCain about getting bin Laden. Hardly the act of someone who wants to push for a more restrained war. Obama has been sending more drones into Pakistan, even though such actions may be dangerous. Rather than de-escalation, Obama plans to put more troops into Afghanistan and has signaled a muscular U.S. foreign policy.

The truth of the matter is, doves don’t win elections in the U.S. Muscular foreign policy is widely accepted by both political parties in the United States. The idea that the GOP lost because they embraced “hegemony” is something only someone inside the intellectual bubble of academia could take seriously.

Moreover, Larison divides the GOP into three wings: social, fiscal, and national security conservatives. The reality is that both social and fiscal conservatives also tend to be national security conservatives. There isn’t a separate wing of conservatives that believe in a strong national defense but not social issues or fiscal ones. Rather, both socially-minded and fiscally-minded conservatives tend to be interested in national security issues. That’s why it’s not that surprising that Evangelicals tend to be supportive of “torture” against suspected terrorists—there is no hard and fast line between social conservatives and national security conservatives. The Reagan coalition was largely built around national security issues, and a strong national defense has been one of the common issues shared by a vast majority of Republicans and conservatives.

There is, however, an element of truth here as well. The GOP lost in large part due to the war in Iraq, a war that was never convincingly explained by the President and suffered from poor management from 2003–07. The “surge” was the product of the Administration finally listening to the people fighting the war rather than dictating from the top down. President Bush never convincingly explained why we were in Iraq so long and why the sacrifice of American blood and treasure was worth it. There was truth in the adage that we were “fighting them over there rather than over here,” but that logic was never followed through.

The GOP has many problems, but “interventionist” foreign policy is not one of them. The Obama Administration continues to play lip service to the idea of a more “humble” foreign policy while still engaging in interventions abroad. Isolationism has not played a major role in U.S. politics since the end of World War II, and for good reason. America’s superpower status demands world leadership, and we can’t have one without the other. If the GOP becomes a policy that abrogates its positions on a muscular U.S. foreign policy, they will lose. While Iraq hurt the GOP in 2006 and 2008, the GOP’s foreign policy positions helped re-elect President Bush in 2004 when Kerry’s weakness on national security proved to be fatal.

The real lesson here is that if you’re going to fight a war, fight it well and keep the American people fully engaged in the conflict. To argue that the lesson conservatives should learn from the last election cycles is to abandon a deeply-held and popular principle of conservatism and embrace a discredited and dangerous isolationism is to learn exactly the wrong lesson.

In 2007, wind and solar generated less than 1 percent of U.S. electricity. Even a tenfold expansion will leave their contribution small. By contrast, oil and natural gas now provide two-thirds of Americans’ energy. They will dominate consumption for decades. Any added oil produced here will mostly reduce imports; extra natural gas will mostly displace coal in electricity generation. Neither threatens any anti-global warming program that Congress might adopt.

Encouraging more U.S. production also aids economic recovery, because the promise of “green jobs” is wildly exaggerated. Consider. In 2008, the oil and gas industries employed 1.8 million people. Jobs in the solar and wind industries are reckoned (by their trade associations) to be 35,000 and 85,000, respectively. Now do the arithmetic: A 5 percent rise in oil jobs (90,000) approaches a doubling for wind and solar (120,000). Modest movements, up or down, in oil will swamp “green” jobs.

Samuelson assumes that the White House is interested in common sense—they’re not. What the White House cares about is what all politicians care about—catering to their constituencies. The reason why Obama does not favor more domestic energy is because there’s no political upside to it for him. Obama can’t afford to annoy the environmentalist lobby that plays to American’s worse environmental fears. If he did, he’d risk losing political support.

Even though domestic energy exploration makes sense in terms of energy policy, national security, economics, and even environmentally, none of that means anything. It won’t play well politically, so it is dead on arrival.

That’s the way our government works in the 21st Century. For all the talk about “hope” and “change” the Obama Administration is as nakedly political as any other, and a politically unpopular program will not be enacted no matter how beneficial the results, and a policy that is economically ruinous but politically popular will always win out. It’s Reding’s Second Law of Public Policy—the best policy will always lose out to the most politically popular policy.

President Obama could show real leadership by dramatically increasing domestic energy productions. But “drill baby drill” was the motto of the other side, and with the worldwide recession pushing oil prices down, there won’t be a serious political demand for more domestic energy until the next crisis hits and it’s far too late.

Everyone looks at the GOP’s problems through the lens of “conservatives” versus “moderates.” That is the wrong way to look at the issue: what this battle really is about is “principles” versus “politics.” The moderates want the GOP to play towards what they see as the political “center”—or the left. The principle-minded factions wants the GOP to stand on a bedrock of principle.

The moderates have a point. If you want to win as a party, you go where the votes are. It’s classic Anthony Downs, the voters fall along a bell curve and the party that can capture the most votes in the middle will win the election.

But the problem is that if the choice is between the Democrats and the Democrats-Lite, why not vote for the real thing? If Republicans start advocating for more government control, they lose the conservative and libertarian wings of the party and end up losing anyway.

There has to be room for both. The GOP cannot win by turning its back on its principles, but it has to be able to advocate for those principles. Being the best conservative in the world does absolutely nothing unless the GOP cannot get others to understand the importance of that stand.

That is the problem with the GOP today. They have no ability to connect with the average voter. They’ve lost the popular imagination, they’ve lost their political “brand” and there is no message coming from the GOP today. Even when they do have a point, they are so ham-handed in making it that they end up hurting each other.

All is not lost. Obama is a mule—a rare character that comes out of nowhere, establishes power, but leaves no lasting coattails. Obama is a rare individual, which makes him dangerous to the GOP, but the more the Democratic Party becomes a cult of personality, the worse off they are. Obama becomes largely irrelevant no later than 2016, and by then the sheen will be off. If the GOP hasn’t gotten their act together by then, they’ll have gone the way of the Whigs. Now is the time that the GOP needs to regroup and experiment.

That is what the GOP ultimately needs to do. They can’t be afraid of failure. They’ve already failed, now is the time to be bold. Yes, the GOP needs to stand on its principles, but what they really need to do is win on those principles. That means trying everything they can to advocate for their values and seeing what sticks. As badly as Michael Steele’s first weeks on the job has been, at least someone is trying new tactics.

Politics is cyclical, and the Democrats are already sowing the seeds of their own downfall. They will grow complacent and arrogant (and have already), and the GOP will get their opening. Exploiting that weakness will take time and trial. But the Republican Party must learn to stand for something and be able to make that stand one that others will join. That is a tall order, but it is the way politics work in America. Politics is cyclical, and any claim of permanent Democratic majority status is as premature now as claims of a permanent Republican majority in 2002 were then.