In U.S., Majority Now Say Obama’s Policies "Mostly Liberal"

Fewer than half believe he has kept his election promises

The Economics of a GOP Gubernatorial Sweep

By Larry Kudlow

Against the backdrop of high unemployment and a public revolt against a Democratic health-care bill -- which would significantly increase taxes, slash Medicare spending, and massively raise health-care spending elsewhere in a government takeover of our leading growth sector -- the Republicans swept the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races.

It's interesting that early signs of economic recovery are not helping the Obama Democrats. This is largely because of the 9.8 percent unemployment rate, which is expected to move higher. Even the crazy jobs-saved-or-created campaign is having no discernable impact while the Obamacons try to fight the unemployment rate.

If you go to recovery.gov, the official stimulus website, you'll find that there has been $207 billion in stimulus spending through Oct. 30, 2009 -- including $84 billion in tax benefits, $52 billion in contract grants and loans, and $71 billion in entitlements. So even if we give my friend Jared Bernstein his highly flawed "1 million jobs saved or created," that's $207,000 per job in an economy where the average wage is about $46,000. Not good. Wasteful and ineffectual spending. (In reality, tax credits are spending. For incentivizing, you need marginal tax-rate cuts.)

Mike Flynn of Breitbart's biggovernment.com notes that the government pumped $170 billion into the third-quarter economy. But gross domestic product grew by only $150 billion. As I said, ineffectual spending.

That doesn't meant the economy isn't rebounding. It is. Glitches and all, third-quarter GDP popped up 3.5 percent at an annual rate after inflation. Statistically, the recession is over. That's good. And it corroborates the big stock market rally over the past seven months. This is going to be a business-led recovery as self-correcting firms build profits on top of huge cash flows.

Yesterday's ISM manufacturing report for October also confirms the growth trend with a recovery reading of 55.7, the strongest since April 2006. And this morning's factory orders for September also show a stronger-than-expected gain. Even car sales are expected to rise in October by more than 10 million, at least 1 million better than September. Ford, which refused to take TARP bailout money, reported a surprise increase in profits.

But the depreciating dollar remains a storm cloud over recovery. So are scheduled tax-rate increases and health care legislation that will slam individuals and firms with higher tax burdens and higher tax costs for job creation.

And then there's the Federal Reserve. With gold up another $25 -- setting a new nominal record of $1,079 -- the Fed released a policy statement Wednesday that continues a program of massive money-pumping and a zero interest rate.

This whole Obama policy mix of huge government spending and a depreciating greenback is all wrong. It's pro-inflation, not pro-growth. For a true economic recovery, we need a stable King Dollar and lower marginal tax rates to incentivize job creation.

Jimmy Pethokoukis and others have noted that the first recovery quarter under Ronald Reagan was better than 8 percent, not 3.5 percent. In fact, the average real GDP growth rate for the first quarter of the 10 postwar recoveries is 7.3 percent.

So the economic-recovery story, and even the stock market rally, won't bail out the Obamacons today, although it remains to be seen whether a free-market, anti-tax-and-spend message will emerge from the election sweep by the GOP. If so, it could doom the so-called health care reform that has become a symbol of the leftward-tilting, big-government, economic-control policies emanating from Washington.

Lawrence Kudlow is host of CNBC's The Kudlow Report and co-host of The Call. He is also a former Reagan economic advisor and a syndicated columnist. Visit his blog, Kudlow's Money Politics.

The Double Standard About Journalists' Bias

By John Stossel

I made The New York Times last week. It even ran my picture. My mother would be proud.

Unfortunately, the story was critical. It said, "Critics have leaped on Mr. Stossel's speaking engagements as the latest evidence of conservative bias on the part of Fox."

Which "critics" had "leaped"? The reporter mentioned Rachel Maddow. I wouldn't think her criticism newsworthy, but Times reporters may use MSNBC as their guide to life. He also quoted an "associate professor of journalism" who said my speeches were "'pretty shameful' by traditional journalistic standards." All this because I spoke at an event for Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a "conservative advocacy group."

It is odd that this is a news story. In August, AFP hired me to do the very same thing. I give the money to charity. The Times didn't call that "shameful."

But in August, I worked for ABC News. Now, I work for Fox. Hmmm.

It reminds me of something that happened earlier in my career.

I was one of America's first TV consumer reporters. I approached the job with an attitude. If companies ripped people off, I would embarrass them on TV -- and demand that government do something. (I now regret the latter -- the former was a good thing.)

I clearly had a point of view: I was a crusader out to punish corporate bullies. My colleagues liked it. I got job offers. I won 19 Emmys. I was invited to speak at journalism conferences.

Then, gradually, I figured out that business, for the most part, treats consumers pretty well. The way to get rich in business is to create something good, sell it for a reasonable price, acquire a reputation for honesty and keep pleasing customers so they come back for more.

As a local TV reporter, I could find plenty of crooks. But once I got to the national stage -- "20/20" and "Good Morning America" -- it was hard to find comparable national scams. There were some: Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc. But they are rare. In a $14 trillion economy, you'd think there'd be more. But there aren't.

I figured out why: Market forces, even when hampered by government, keep scammers in check. Reputation matters. Word gets out. Good companies thrive, and bad ones atrophy. Regulation barely deters the cheaters, but competition does.

It made me want to learn more about free markets. I subscribed to Reason magazine and read Cato Institute research papers. Then Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Aaron Wildavsky.

My reporting changed. I started taking skeptical looks at government -- especially regulation. I did an ABC TV special, "Are We Scaring You to Death?" that said we TV reporters often make hysterical claims about chemicals, pollution and other relatively minor risks. Its good ratings -- 16 million viewers -- surprised my colleagues.

Suddenly, I wasn't so popular with them.

I stopped winning Emmys.

I was invited on CNN's media program, "Reliable Sources," to be interviewed by The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz and an indignant Bernard Kalb. They titled the segment, "Objectivity and Journalism: Does John Stossel Practice Either?" It was in big letters over my head.

Apparently, I had broken the rules.

On the air they told me that I was no longer objective. I was too stunned to defend myself effectively. I said something like: "I've always had a point of view. How come you had no trouble with that when I criticized business?"

In hindsight, I wish I'd said: "Look at the title on the wall, you hypocrites! It shows you have a point of view, too. Many reporters do. You just don't like my arguments now that I no longer hew to your statist line. So you want to shut me up."

But I didn't.

So I'll say it now: Reporters who think coercive government control is generally good and I, who thinks voluntary market forces are generally better, both have a point of view.

So why am I the one called biased?

I like what "Americans for Prosperity" defends. I'm an American, and I'm for prosperity. What creates prosperity is free and competitive markets. That means limited government.

And I will speak about that every chance I get.

W.H. diplomacy 'back down to earth'

Foreign policy never goes according to campaign plan, but for President Barack Obama, who promised a hardheaded new engagement with the world, the last week and the weeks he sees looming ahead must be discouraging.

Across a region spanning Pakistan to the Mediterranean, foreign leaders seem to be challenging the very premise of his policy: that foreign countries can reasonably be persuaded to move in the direction of common interests, and that a better-loved America can get more done.

In Afghanistan, an all-out effort to promote a legitimate election turned into a scramble to prevent a civil war and ease the defrauded challenger off the stage. Iran persuaded the White House to drop its late-September deadline for action and then appears to have rejected a deal on nuclear fuel. Great powers such as Russia and China show no appetite for crucial concessions, while the U.S. Congress continues to block major action on a pillar of Obama’s policy goals — international action on climate change.

“This is a clarifying moment,” said David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration foreign policy hand. “It’s not the week that they wanted to have happen, but sometimes it’s better to get your rough lessons early when the stakes are lower.”

Another Democratic analyst, the National Security Network’s Heather Hurlburt, labeled this “back-down-to-earth week.”

“None of these things is more ugly than they were a week or a month or six months ago,” she said. “They’ve now done the easy things, and we got spoiled for six or eight or 10 months: easy thing, applause, Nobel Prize. We’re now at the stuff that’s really hard.”

Less sympathetic analysts see the clarification in more negative terms.

“For an administration that came in thinking it was going to be more realistic than the previous administration, they’ve certainly been hit in the head by real facts,” said Gary Schmitt, a former Republican congressional staffer and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, citing a “growing perception that they’re the team that can’t shoot straight.”

“They had — ironically for realists — unrealistic expectations on what they could accomplish,” he said.

It’s a cliché of presidencies that foreign policy priorities set themselves and that presidents have far less control than they imagine they will. Obama’s key priorities looked, weeks ago, intact. On his most profound challenge, Afghanistan, he was herding key constituencies — from the British military to American Democrats — toward a consensus.

“There had been a huge amount of momentum behind his emphasis on Afghanistan — thanks also significantly to [envoy Richard] Holbrooke — and this election has halted all that momentum,” said Peter Galbraith, an American diplomat who left the U.N. mission to Afghanistan in a dispute about the election.

In Iran, meanwhile, detailed and painstaking talks about shipping nuclear fuel to Russia — a subject of cooperation with French and Russian leaders — also foundered last Friday, when Iran rejected the deal.

Iranian officials were quoted Monday offering only the haziest reassurances.

The country’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, told reporters that Iran has “some technical and economic considerations” about the proposal, The Associated Press reported.

The central problem in those two theaters, and in others, has been the lack of a reliable partner whom Obama can engage.

“There is a unifying issue in the Palestinian territories, in Iraq, in Iran, in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, and that is you need to have a trustworthy partner and the people on the ground need to want to change,” said Rothkopf. “Unless both of those conditions are present, then you’re playing at the margins.”

Some analysts also question the focus of an administration whose foreign policy seems dominated by the president’s personal interest.

“The administration is finding it difficult to have six major priorities,” said Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s not a question of can the administration walk and chew gum, but it’s hard to devote high-level attention to a wide diversity of things.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to the Middle East and Central Asia in recent days contributed to the impression of an unsettled policy approach. In Pakistan, she said bluntly that the Pakistanis ought to know where Al Qaeda leaders are — then walked the candid comment back. In Israel, she praised Israeli leaders for their willingness to compromise — then rushed to shore up a Palestinian leadership that appears to have been badly weakened by that same compromise.

And so Obama has been forced to adjust his targets. On Afghanistan, he declared Karzai’s election “legitimate” Monday — a statement of hope as much as a description of reality. On Iran, he faces congressional pressure for harsh sanctions and a choice of imperfect options, some weaker compromise with skeptical Russian and Chinese partners on international sanctions or sanctions enacted by the sort of Bush-style coalition of the willing, dubbed “the coalition of the like-minded nations” he’s long derided.

What had appeared to be a new approach to foreign policy — a combination of charismatic leadership, moral suasion and cool judgment of interests — at this moment looks like a simpler pragmatism.

But that, for those who want Obama to succeed, is still a welcome change.

“Any foreign policy is going to have ups and downs, but what characterizes Obama’s foreign policy is a great deal of pragmatism and strategy,” said Galbraith. “Strategy by definition means you’re always evaluating the circumstances — the terrain — and making adjustments.”

Chris Christie's Next Case: Who Stole My Election?

Absentee voter fraud may play a significant role in New Jersey's gubernatorial election

By JOHN FUND

The race for governor in New Jersey is so close in final polls that it may well end up in a recount -- the 1981 election did and was decided by less than 1,800 votes. If there is a recount, you can bet disputes about absentee ballots will loom large. Moreover, if serious allegations of fraud emerge, you can also expect less-than-vigorous investigation by the Obama Justice Department -- which showed just how seriously it takes such allegations when it walked away from an open-and-shut voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia earlier this year.

Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow's Garden State contests. Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state. An independent candidate for mayor in Camden has already leveled charges that voter fraud is occurring in his city. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in New Jersey is taking advantage of a new loosely written vote-by-mail law to pressure county clerks not to vigorously use signature checks to evaluate the authenticity of absentee ballots, the only verification procedure allowed.

The state has received a flood of 180,000 absentee ballot requests. On some 3,000 forms the signature doesn't match the one on file with county clerks. Yet citing concerns that voters would be disenfranchised, Democratic Party lawyer Paul Josephson wrote New Jersey's secretary of state asking her "to instruct County Clerks not to deny applications on the basis of signature comparison alone." Mr. Josephson maintained that county clerks "may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis" and insisted that voters with suspect applications should be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Those ballots, of course, would then provide a pool of votes that would be subject to litigation in any recount, with the occupant of New Jersey's highest office determined by Florida 2000-style scrutiny of ballot applications.

Absentee voter fraud is in danger of becoming a hardy perennial in New Jersey. Atlantic City Councilman Marty Small and 13 campaign workers were indicted in September on charges of conspiring to commit election fraud using absentee ballots. One worker pleaded guilty last month. In Newark, five campaign workers were indicted in August on charges involving absentee ballot fraud.

Victor Negron, a campaign adviser for independent mayoral candidate Roberto Feliz, a former director of Camden's public works department, says he's shocked that more than fifteen times the normal number of voters are casting absentee ballots in Camden this year. In the 2005, when the city's voters voted for both governor and mayor on the same day, only 200 absentee ballots were cast. This year, some 3,700 have already been received. At least four voters have approached the Feliz campaign to complain that an absentee ballot was sent to them without their permission or cast for them without their understanding the documents they were signing. I spoke with Uremia Rojas who reports that "a man with a clipboard knocked on my door and had me sign something so I could vote by mail. I was skeptical but signed and got a ballot. I never really wanted one." Says Mr. Negron: "We believe this to be underhanded and a possibly illegal strategy by the Democratic Party to undermine the civil rights of the residents of Camden."

There are additional reports from Camden that Hispanic voters have been misled into voting absentee ballots. So-called bearers who are allowed to collect and carry absentee ballots are said to have encouraged voters to fill out applications for absentee ballots. A few days later, the bearers reportedly return with the actual ballots, which they offer "assistance" in filling out.

Authorities in nearby Philadelphia know about such scams. In one infamous case, a key 1993 race that determined which party would control the Pennsylvania state senate was thrown out by a federal judge after massive evidence that hundreds of voters had been pressured into casting improper absentee ballots. Voters were told by "bearers" that it was all part of "la nueva forma de votar" -- the new way to vote. Local politicos tell me Philly operatives associated in the past with Acorn may now be advising their Jersey cousins on how to perform such vote harvesting.

Elsewhere, an investigation is being conducted into a report that people wearing Acorn T-shirts entered an East Orange hospital near Newark carrying blank absentee ballots and left with completed ballots. New Jersey law allows anyone to pick up an absentee ballot for someone else -- these are called messenger ballots.

After repeated election-related scandals, Acorn has become toxic for many candidates who once relied on the group. But Acorn's longtime allies, the Service Employee International Union and New York's Working Families Party, have both moved into New Jersey. Peter Colavito, Acorn's former political director in New York and a board member of the Working Families Party, is now the political director of SEIU Local 32BJ, which is heavily involved in New Jersey's election. Nationally, the SEIU is a political powerhouse with White House visitor's logs showing that Andrew Stern, its national head, visited 22 times in the first six months of the Obama White House -- more than any other person. "Andrew Stern practically lives at the White House," notes Politico.com.

The Working Families Party, which is co-chaired by Acorn head Bertha Lewis, is no stranger to absentee ballot fraud. A special prosecutor in Troy, N.Y. is investigating New York's September primary, in which at least 38 ballots cast for Working Families Party candidates were thrown out as forged or fraudulent. New York Judge Michael Lynch found "significant election law violations that have compromised the rights of numerous voters and the integrity of the ballot process."

Nor is in-person fraud at the polls unknown in New Jersey. In 2007, a former Hoboken zoning board president noticed a group of men outside a polling place being given index cards by two people. One of the loiterers later tried to vote in the name of a voter who had moved out of the area. When challenged by the former zoning board president, he ran out of the building and was caught. He later admitted to police he was part of a group from a homeless shelter who had been paid $10 each to vote using the names of other people.

That's one reason ElectionJournal.org will be deploying observers with cameras around New Jersey to hunt for irregularities. The Web site hit gold last year when its cameras captured footage of two members of the New Black Panther Party in black combat boots and black uniforms blocking the door of a Philadelphia polling place. One was brandishing a large police-style nightstick and hurling racial epithets at voters.

The Bush Justice Department filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and the two individuals. When none of the defendants answered the lawsuit, a federal court rendered a default judgment against the defendants. But last May, Attorney General Eric Holder dropped charges against the party and the two individual defendants. Another man was given the mild sanction of being barred from displaying a weapon near a polling place for three years. To groups that may be contemplating vote fraud in tomorrow's races, such an outcome will hardly be seen as a big deterrent.

Does U2 Still Matter?

Published October 29, 2009

By Craig Rosen / LiveDaily Contributor

"The only band that matters." Those words were thrust upon The Clash upon the release of "London Calling," when the punk legends were at the height of their powers. While The Clash's stand as rock's most important band was brief, they did have an enormous impact on a little group from Dublin, Ireland, known as U2. Since The Clash's demise, U2--Paul "Bono" Hewson, Dave "The Edge" Evans, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr.--is one of the few rock acts in the world that managed to "matter" during the '80s, '90s and into '00s. Whether it's shilling iPods (now Blackberrys), trying to save the world one small gesture at a time, or delving into sonic experimentation with their longtime producer pals Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, U2 has had an undeniable impact on not only music, but popular culture.

Yet there are signs U2's influence may be faltering. "No Line On The Horizon," the band's most recent release, has failed to yield a mainstream hit single; "Get On Your Boots" reached No. 5 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, but failed to crossover to the pop chart, stalling at No. 37 on The Hot 100. And, with sales of 1 million copies in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan, "No Line On The Horizon" is the band's weakest-selling effort since SoundScan began tracking sales data in 1991. By comparison, the band's polarizing 1997 effort "Pop" has sold 1.5 million copies, according to SoundScan.

Still, U2 remains a juggernaut in the concert arena--or, in the case of its current trek, on the stadium circuit. The band topped Pollstar's recently released 2009 third-quarter ticket-sales chart with sales of 2.3 million ducats, besting such perennial best-sellers as AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay and Madonna.

As the band rolls out additional dates on its groundbreaking 360 Tour, LiveDaily thought we'd check out U2's impact by asking various musicians (from the legendary Quincy Jones and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Doug Clifford to up-and-comers like electronic sensation RJD2 and rising indie band Portugal The Man) and assorted music-industry types if U2 still matters and why.

Quincy Jones, legendary producer/arranger, entertainment mogul

"Are you kidding me? I just went to a show of theirs in New York that seemed like it had 200,000 people in attendance! They had the audience in the palm of their hand, and, most importantly, they showed their care for the world. Their relevance transcends music--it's almost like its own belief system, which is probably why those four dudes have stayed together for so long. On a side note, I just want to point out that my knowledge of Da Vinci wouldn't be remotely the same without Bono."

(In honor of Jones' attendance at U2's Giants Stadium show on Sept. 23, Bono slipped in a few lines from Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," which was produced by Jones.)

Ray Waddell, Billboard, senior touring editor

"I think it's pretty obvious U2 matters and could make a case as the most 'important' rock band in the world, if demand and creativity are the barometers. They continue to push themselves artistically, both in the studio and through innovative, ambitious touring. They are in the uppermost echelon of artists in terms of global demand, rarefied air occupied only by The Rolling Stones. U2 are currently touring with a production unlike any before, playing to packed stadiums in a 360-degree configuration all over the world, setting attendance records all over the place. The staging and video are pretty mind blowing, but do not overwhelm the band, which is playing in top form. They open with several songs from the new album and the crowds instantly embrace the new material. By the time they wrap the tour next year, U2 360 will be one of the biggest tours ever in terms of both gross and attendance. I think they can continue to do this as long as they want to do it."

Doug "Cosmo " Clifford , drummer, Creedence Clearwater Revival

"I have nothing but respect for U2 because they have managed to stay together as a band for decades. They have stayed viable at a very high level through the many changes in the industry over the years. They have given back so much to people in need, making a real difference in the lives of millions of people around the globe. They are truly a class act. Bravo!"

Bob Lefsetz, industry commentator/author of the "Lefsetz Letter" blog

"They matter financially. And to those in their forties who remember 'The Joshua Tree.'

"They're meaningless in terms of new music. If only they'd realize this, and start to record and release new music that's not overmanaged and overmanipulated to try and be successful, but is recorded for the pure joy of it."

John Baldwin Gourley, singer/guitarist, Portugal. The Man

"U2 will matter forever, that is not up for debate. I just can't imagine charging your fans, who have made you, that much for a concert or a T-shirt, but maybe I have no perspective of the size of things"

Kasim Sulton, bassist/singer, Utopia, session and touring pro

"Very few bands/musicians have the capacity to remain popular and contemporary after 25 years together. Much like a roman candle, there might be four or five truly good records before the magic sputters and the artists find themselves held hostage to their initial success, playing the same old songs because that's all the audience really wants. U2 is one of the only bands that consistently tops the last record, the last tour, and continues to remain one of--if not the only--bands that can release an album and have it mean more than the previous one. Consistently. Case in point: The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Aerosmith and most other artists in that stratosphere of success can still sell out tour after tour, yet nothing they've released in the last 15 years compares to their early material. U2 still matters."

Paul Donoghue, bassist/vocalist, Glasvegas

"I don't think there's a question over whether U2 still matter or not. They still play to stadiums of new and old fans alike, something very few acts can achieve over such a long career. They still have desire and soul, which doesn't seem to have waned. They're still writing strong material and aren't relying on their back catalogue, which so many people do. They also are a huge inspiration to so many people ... any band with aspirations larger than playing the local shithole to four of their mates has taken something from U2. And just look at the huge bands lining up to support them. It was an honour for us to support them, and if they threw the towel in tomorrow, they'd still be relevant in 50 years time. Of course they still matter."

Bertis Downs, R.E.M. advisor

"Of course U2 still matters--they make music all their own, are many people's favorite band, carry themselves in a manner like no one else, and make a huge difference with their approach to their responsibilities as a role model for so many others. And, to my ears, they are still pushing their creative envelope every time they release a record."

RJD2 (a.k.a. RJ or Ramble Krohn), artist/producer

"U2 sells out venues that are literally 100 times the size of rooms that I play. So if U2 doesn't 'matter,' then what is a degree 100 times smaller than 'mattering'? Does it surpass 'existing'? Whatever it is, that is what I am--sub-existence. Also, for the record, anyone who goes around saying things like 'someone doesn't matter' is a status-obsessed douche."

Glenn "G5" Gyorffy, bassist, Anvil

"Absolutely! U2 have been, and still are, one of the biggest bands in the world. They've inspired some of the greatest music of the past two-and-a-half decades as well. There was a time when they sounded unique but now you can hear their sound in just about every pop band. U2 will always matter! Just like the Beatles will always matter!"

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Who Killed Nortel? The Inside Story - Ottawa Citizen

U2's Rose Bowl show breaks U.S. attendance record

NASHVILLE (Billboard) – It took 22 years, but U2 has broken its own attendance record for the best-attended single concert performance at a U.S. venue by one headliner.

The band's 360 Tour played the Pasadena, California, Rose Bowl on October 25 to a sellout crowd of 97,014 -- the highest attendance on record for one U.S. show by a single headliner based on box office totals reported to Billboard.

The old record was set on September 25, 1987, at the now-demolished John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia with a crowd of 86,145 in attendance for the band's Joshua Tree Tour.

This year's Rose Bowl performance grossed more than $9.9 million, considerably more than the 1987 Philly show, which brought in a mere $1.5 million in ticket sales.

Among the top five single-concert attendances on record in the U.S., the top three are all U2 performances. The third-highest attendance is also from the band's current tour, at its September 29 sellout at FedExField in Landover, Maryland, with 84,754.

Pink Floyd's May 29, 1994, show at the Ohio State University football stadium is in fourth place with 75,250. The Backstreet Boys round out the top five with a sold-out show at the Georgia Dome on February 19, 2000, when 73,337 fans filled the Atlanta stadium to see the pop group's Into the Millennium Tour.

U2's Rose Bowl show excelled in gross ticket sales as well as attendance. With $9.96 million grossed, it is the second-highest-grossing single U.S. concert by a solo headliner. The concert is second only to the Three Tenors' July 20, 1996, sold-out show at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The Rolling Stones make up the rest of this top-five list with a Giants Stadium concert of its own on September 15, 2005, a sold-out benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall on March 14, 2006, and an outdoor show at Chicago's Soldier Field on September 10, 2005.

TOP ATTENDANCE AT A U.S. CONCERT BY A SINGLE HEADLINER:

1. U2 - Rose Bowl; Pasadena, Calif. (October 25, 2009) Attendance: 97,014 Gross: $9,960,036

2. U2 - John F. Kennedy Stadium, Philadelphia (September 25, 1987) Attendance: 86,145 Gross: $1,593,683

3. U2 - FedExField; Landover, Md. (September 29, 2009) Attendance: 84,754 Gross: $6,718,315

4. Pink Floyd - Ohio State University Stadium; Columbus, Ohio (May 29, 1994) Attendance: 75,250 Gross: $2,406,920

5. Backstreet Boys - Georgia Dome, Atlanta (February 19, 2000) Attendance: 73,337 Gross: $2,787,098

The three envelopes

Old Soviet joke:

Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev.

"Niki, I'm dying. Don't have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble."

A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: "Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe."

A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: "Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe."

Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: "Prepare three envelopes."

In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama has already burned through a good 49. Is there anything he hasn't blamed George W. Bush for? The economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad -- everything but swine flu.

It's as if Obama's presidency hasn't really started. He's still taking inventory of the Bush years. Just this Monday, he referred to "long years of drift" in Afghanistan in order to, I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan.

This compulsion to attack his predecessor is as stale as it is unseemly. Obama was elected a year ago. He became commander in chief two months later. He then solemnly announced his own "comprehensive new strategy" for Afghanistan seven months ago. And it was not an off-the-cuff decision. "My administration has heard from our military commanders, as well as our diplomats," the president assured us. "We've consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments, with our partners and our NATO allies, and with other donors and international organizations" and "with members of Congress."

Obama is obviously unhappy with the path he himself chose in March. Fine. He has every right -- indeed, duty -- to reconsider. But what Obama is reacting to is the failure of his own strategy.

There is nothing new here. The history of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is a considered readjustment of policies that have failed. In each war, quick initial low-casualty campaigns toppled enemy governments. In the subsequent occupation stage, two policy choices presented themselves: the light or heavy "footprint."

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we initially chose the light footprint. For obvious reasons: less risk and fewer losses for our troops, while reducing the intrusiveness of the occupation and thus the chances of creating an anti-foreigner backlash that would fan an insurgency.

This was the considered judgment of our commanders at the time, most especially Centcom commander (2003-2007) Gen. John Abizaid. And Abizaid was no stranger to the territory. He speaks Arabic and is a scholar of the region. The overriding idea was that the light footprint would minimize local opposition.

It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, but it proved wrong. The strategy failed. Not just because the enemy proved highly resilient but because the allegiance of the population turned out to hinge far less on resentment of foreign intrusiveness (in fact the locals came to hate the insurgents -- al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan -- far more than us) than on physical insecurity, which made them side with the insurgents out of sheer fear.

What they needed, argued Gen. David Petraeus against much Pentagon brass opposition, was population protection, i.e., a heavy footprint.

In Iraq, the heavy footprint -- also known as the surge -- dramatically reversed the fortunes of war. In Afghanistan, where it took longer for the Taliban to regroup, the failure of the light footprint did not become evident until more recently, when an uneasy stalemate began to deteriorate into steady Taliban advances.

That's where we are now in Afghanistan. The logic of a true counterinsurgency strategy there is that whatever resentment a troop surge might occasion pales in comparison with the continued demoralization of any potential anti-Taliban elements unless they receive serious and immediate protection from U.S.-NATO forces.

In other words, Obama is facing the same decision on Afghanistan that Bush faced in late 2006 in deciding to surge in Iraq.

In both places, the deterioration of the military situation was not the result of "drift," but of considered policies that seemed reasonable, cautious and culturally sensitive at the time but that ultimately turned out to be wrong.

Which is evidently what Obama now thinks of the policy choice he made on March 27.

He is to be commended for reconsidering. But it is time he acted like a president and decided. Afghanistan is his. He's used up his envelopes.

All Falling Down . . .

Money

Obama’s mega-borrowing is predicated on a rather thin margin of safety. We can service nearly $2 trillion in additional debt this year — on top of the existing $11 trillion — only because interest rates are so low.

But as a veteran of the near usury of the 1970s and early 1980s, I see no reason why interest rates won’t shoot up to 10% once the economy recovers and the U.S. has to convince lenders to buy our paper in an inflationary spiral. In other words, we could fork out each year about $150-200 billion in interest costs on our annual red ink, in addition to paying annually another trillion dollars to service the existing debt. (We forget that many of us young people in the 1970s and 1980s simply never bought anything new due to high interest: my first new car was not purchased until 1989 when interest was only 7.2% on it; my parents bought a small condo in 1980 for the unbelievably low rate of 8.8%, due only to redevelopment incentives in a bad neighborhood of Fresno. Inflation will be back, even in this quite different age of globalized competition and low wages.)

When Obama talks of a trillion here for health care, a trillion there for cap-and-trade, it has a chilling effect. Does he include the cost of interest? Where will the money came from? Who will pay the interest? Has he ever experienced the wages of such borrowing in his own life? Did he cut back and save for his college or law school tuition, with part-time jobs? Did he ever run a business and see how hard it was to be $200 ahead at day’s end?

What destroys individuals, ruins families, and fells nations is debt — or rather the inability to service debt, and the cultural ramifications that follow. When farming, I used to see the futility in haggling over diesel prices, trying to buy fertilizer in bulk, or using used vineyard wire — when each day we were paying hundreds in dollars in interest on a “cut-rate” 14% crop loan.

The difference between the 5th century BC and late 4th century BC at Athens is debt — and not caused just by military expenditures or war; the claims on Athenian entitlements grew by the 350s, even as forced liturgies on the productive classes increased, even as the treasury emptied. At Rome by the mid-3rd century AD the state was essentially bribing its own citizens to behave by expanding the bread and circuses dole, while tax avoidance became an art form, while the Roman state tried everything from price controls to inflating the coinage to meet services and pay public debts.

Integral to public debt are two eternal truths: a public demands of the state ever more subsidies, and those who pay for them shrink in number as they seek to avoid the increased burden.

Once the conservative Bush people started talking about trillions in debt in terms of percentages of GDP rather than of real money, I feared we were done for: if a so-called conservative is doing this, I thought, what will the liberal Congress do when it gets back in power?

(One more historical truth: the melodramatic language of people dying, starving, being ignored, etc. increases as the level of government services expands as the fears of public insolvency spread: in the late 1930s our grandparents thought tiny sums from social security were lavish godsends, now we assume a temporary suspension in cost-of-living increases on top of generous pay-outs is nothing short of a national disaster and proof of our collective selfishness.)

Abroad

The same storm clouds pile up on the horizon of foreign policy. One can get away with Carterism for a year or two. Remember, Jimmy Carter was loved up until about 1978, as he bragged of human rights, slashed defense to use the money for more entitlements, promised to get troops out of Korea, sold out the Shah, intrigued with the exiled Khomeini, pooh-poohed communists in Central America, sold warplanes without bomb racks to our allies, lectured on the inordinate fear of communism and sermonized how no one would die on his watch.

We were his Plains Sunday school class, he the sanctimonious prayer leader. The lions abroad would lie down with us, the new lambs, at home. “I will never lie to you” Carter repeated ad nauseam. I used to listen to his call-in empathy radio shows while driving to work as a grad student, and at 24 thought “Does this adult really believe all this?”

And then somewhere around 1979 the world finally sized him up — and the result was a bleeding American goat crossing the Amazon as the piranha swarmed. Radical Islam was on the rise. The Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. Nicaragua blew up. Iran took hostages. And in reaction Carter devised brilliant strategies like boycotting the Olympics and arming jihadists in Pakistan — and more lecturing us from the rose garden. He wanted a flashy hostage rescue mission — after slashing defense in 1977-8: but the two don’t mix, as he learned.

Obama likewise is outside the mainstream of bipartisan Democratic foreign policy as practiced by Truman, JFK, LBJ, and Clinton. He’s to the left of Carter, and indeed, on both Afghanistan and Iran, to the left of France and Germany. Readers, none of you thought you would ever see Europeans wanting us to buck up in Afghanistan and get tougher against Ahmadinejad.

For now, however, Obama surely sounds mythic. The world adores us. We apologize for slavery, genocide, the cold war, and Hiroshima; you name the sin, Obama wrinkles his brow and provides the mea culpa. Brazilians love it. Egyptians now say we’re A-OK; even sourpuss Russians now smile. Listen to Obama apologize and you would have thought that Americans have leveled Grozny, or obliterated Hama, or swallowed Tibet.

Our administration officials praise the mass-murdering Mao, or talk up the U.N. “human rights” commission. We reach out to Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chavez, Putin, and others. We snub the Brits, the Europeans, the Japanese, Colombians, Israelis and eastern Europeans. Russia tries a simple gambit — a) lie about helping on Iran, b) in exchange get the U.S. out of the anti-missile business in eastern Europe — it works so well that Putin brags that he expects more of this, as if he is sitting at a rigged roulette wheel in Vegas.

Like our spiraling debt, there will be a reckoning soon, maybe in a year or two — and it will cost more than boycotting the next Olympics.

Fuel

Then there is energy. We are in a very temporary lull of cheap energy, as the world economy catches its breath. And while Obama was right to stiffen efficiency standards and promote alternate energies, he is neglecting the only mechanisms that can tide us over for the next 20 years — more natural gas, domestic oil, shale, tar sands, clean coal, and nuclear energy.

We should be on a dash to build nuclear plants for the coming demand from plug in hybrids and spikes in electricity usage. We should be leasing as much natural gas lands as possible, to gain the supplies to run energy plants and to power vehicles. There is plenty of oil in the Dakotas, California, Texas and in the Gulf and we should be drilling there like mad. Sorry, even Santa Barbara should either ban SUVs or have oil derricks on the horizon. Sarah Palin knows far more about ANWR than does Van Jones.

Instead, we talk grandly of cap and trade, solar and wind, and green lunacies, while very shortly it will cost $5 a gallon to fill up the fleet of Barack Obama’s SUVs. Putin, sly fox that he is, only welcomes a confrontation with Iran: a great way to drive oil speculation sky-high. Ditto the Saudis and the rest. We are one Middle East crisis away from a $100 fill-up.

Terrorism

Here is our anti-terrorism policy.

1) Euphemism: hope that words can change reality — “overseas contingency operations” aimed at “man-caused disasters” (this will mean there is no more terrorism as our enemies are no longer demonized).

2) Apologies to Islam: boast that Muslims fueled the Renaissance, invented printing, pretty much gave the world our present civilization, while we offended them after 9/11 (this will mean no more plotting inside the U.S. to kill us all, as they sense our newfound empathy).

3) “Bush Did it”: a) blame Bush the Impaler for our unpopularity and shredding the Constitution to pacify the Middle East and Europe; while stealthily keeping in play most of his protocols like Predators (more attacks in last 9 months than Bush did in 3 years); tribunals, renditions, intercepts, wiretaps, and Guantanamo, etc.); (this will mean that we copy Bush, but blame him for our failures and claim success as our own).

4) Reach-out: Become socialist at home, and UNish abroad, to convince an Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chavez, Putin, and others that we are a declining, 1950s British-like socialist state, a threat to no one, exceptional in the manner that Greece is, and becoming, as Pravda boasts daily, more like them than they like us (this will mean, why hate us when we are one of you?).

5) Declare victory and leave: there is a reason why Afghanistan and now Iraq have flared up since Obama took office, and it may well have to do with the fact that radical Islam, defeated in Iraq, stalemated in Afghanistan, suddenly bets that with a little push here and there, Obama will declare victory and leave, with something like “We can’t win Bush’s wars.” If I were a terrorist, I might think, “One or two more big death days, and this American government will Mogadishu its way home”).

In a year or two, al Qaeda will begin to suspect we are the weaker horse. They hated us when we were strong, but they will hate us even more when we appear weak. There will be renewed plots at home, and a fiery Middle East within two years — with all sorts of opportunists like China and Russia ready to capitalize.

Why the pessimism? I think there are a few truths that transcend politics and remain eternal. In life as a general rule, debt has to be paid back, and with greater pain and anger than it was to borrow it. Bullies do not respect magnanimity, but tragically interpret it as weakness to be exploited rather than to be admired.

Hoping that something good comes true — like being self-reliant through solar and wind — does not make it true; neglecting the riches at hand to dream about greater riches that do not exist is adolescent. Radical Islam hates the West, not because of what we do or say, but because of who we are: a dynamic, mercurial culture that challenges all the protocols of a traditional, tribal and religiously fundamentalist society.

Diplomacy is a tool to lessen, but not eliminate, tensions — a way to conduct foreign policy, not a foreign policy in and of itself.

I hope I am wrong about all of the above, and that human nature really has magically changed in the era of Obama. So close your eyes, listen to the Messiah’s voice, and repeat: “Debts will be forgiven by creditors; inflation will not follow from massive borrowing; breakthroughs in solar and wind will power our cars and heat our homes; enemies will admire our compassion and join us to achieve world peace; and terrorists are either misunderstood or provoked needlessly by our bellicosity that alone stands in the way of peace.”

Believe all that and you can lie back and enjoy the age of Obama.

The Kitty-Cat Who Roared

President Obama keeps roaring out deadlines like a lion — only later to meow like a little kitty.

Remember, for example, how he bellowed to cheering partisan crowds that he would close down the detainment facility at Guantanamo within a year?

The clock ticks — and Guantanamo isn't close to being shut down. It once was easy for candidate Obama to deplore George W. Bush's supposed gulag. Now it proves harder to decide between the bad choice of detaining non-uniformed terrorist combatants and the worse ones of letting them go, giving them civilian trials or deporting them to unwilling hosts.

Going back further to September 2007, candidate Obama postured about Iraq that he wanted "to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year — now!"

That "now!" sure sounded macho.

On Iraq, candidate Obama also railed that "the American people have had enough of the shifting spin. We've had enough of extended deadlines for benchmarks that go unmet."

Talk about "unmet" deadlines and "spin” — here we are in October 2009, and there are still 120,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The reason why Obama fudged on his promised deadline is that the surge in 2007 worked. American deaths plummeted. The theater is quiet. Iraqi democracy is still there after six years. Obama cannot quite admit these facts, but on the other hand he does not want to be responsible for undermining them.

This July, our president roared out another impending deadline. He warned Iran that it had to prove its compliance with non-proliferation protocols by September — or face new consequences since the U.S. was not going to "wait indefinitely."

Now it's October, and even the French are exasperated that Obama still sounds like the king of the jungle but acts like a purring house kitten. And no wonder that Iran and its patron Russia seem to be calculating that Obama will figure that a nuclear Iran is less troubling for him than the consequences of offending Vladimir Putin, spiking oil prices or using force in the volatile Middle East.

The list of what a melodramatic Obama threatens or promises to do and what he actually does is endless.

Healthcare: The president once warned Congress that it had to pass comprehensive reform by the August congressional recess. August came and went, and now we're still waiting, waiting, waiting . . . .

Afghanistan: This was once Obama's promised war to win — the one we had to refocus on after supposedly taking our eye off the ball to fight in Iraq. Now, instead, we are suddenly blaming the eight-year-old Karzai government for not being the stable partner we need to finish the job.

Ethics reform: During the campaign, Obama vowed to end lobbyists in government, post legislation on the Internet five days before a presidential signing, and air healthcare negotiations and discussion on C-SPAN.

In short, just imagine if Obama were to warn Congress to get healthcare done by Nov. 15 — or else; or to give Iran one last chance until the first of the year to stop enriching uranium; or to promise that Guantanamo really, really will close on March 1, 2010. Would anyone take him seriously, much less fret about the consequences of ignoring those vows?

Obama ran on the accusation that Bush missed promised targets and deadlines. Yet when the loud reformer Obama himself proves even emptier in his promises than Bush, he suffers an additional wage of theatrical hypocrisy.

But there is an even greater problem. Overheated rhetoric got Obama into these jams — and he seems to expect that his dramatic flair can always get him out as well. So we all await more of the empty hope-and-change hocus-pocus — as Obama explains how he never really promised to get out of Iraq "now!" or to "take further steps" against Iran in September 2009.

When Jan. 1, 2010, comes and goes, I expect the president to say that, "I can no more shut down Guantanamo than I can . . . . "

Well, by now you know the rest of what follows.

The Grand Demythologizer: The Gospel and Idolatry

Obama's Minions Are Ingrates

The Bush administration did leave a plan for Afghanistan.
by Stephen F. Hayes
11/02/2009, Volume 015, Issue 07

On October 18, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and, in the process of answering questions about Barack Obama's strategy on Afghanistan, accused the Bush administration of failing to ask the most basic questions about that country and our war there. The president is asking the questions that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side, and the strategic side. What is the impact on the region? What can the Afghan government do or not do? Where are we on the police training? Who would be better doing the police training? Could that be something the Europeans do? Should we take the military side? Those are the questions that have not been asked. And before you commit troops  .  .  .  before you make that decision, there's a set of questions that have to have answers that have never been asked. And it's clear after eight years of war, that's basically starting from the beginning, and those questions never got asked. Then, after former vice president Dick Cheney used a speech on October 22 to accuse the Obama administration of "dithering" on Afghanistan, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs responded by claiming that the Bush administration did not care about U.S. troops. "What Vice President Cheney calls 'dithering,' President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public," said Gibbs. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously." Gibbs went on, calling Cheney's comments "curious" and claiming that a request for troops from General David McKiernan during the final year of the Bush administration "sat on desks in this White House, including the vice president's, for more than eight months." So there are two separate and very serious charges that Obama White House officials are making about their predecessors. First, that the Bush administration had no real Afghanistan policy and failed for eight years to ask the important questions about the war there. And second, that the Bush administration ignored requests from commanders on the ground to increase troops in Afghanistan. Bush administration officials were furious. "The idea that we just sat on our f--ing asses--it's really a slander," says one senior Bush administration official. "It's just not credible that we didn't take this seriously." In fact, the Bush administration did ask those questions. From mid-September to mid-November 2008, a National Security Council team, under the direction of General Doug Lute, conducted an exhaustive review of Afghanistan policy. The interagency group included high-ranking officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the office of the director of national intelligence, the office of the vice president, the Pentagon, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Its objective was to assess U.S. -policy on Afghanistan, integrating a simultaneous military review being conducted by CENTCOM, so as to present President Bush with a series of recommendations on how best to turn around the deteriorating situation there. The Lute group met often--sometimes twice daily--in a secure conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. (The group used the room so frequently that other national security working groups that had been meeting there were required to find other space including, occasionally, the White House Situation Room.) The Lute review asked many questions and provided exhaustive answers not only to President Bush, but also to the Obama transition team before the inauguration. "General Jones was briefed on the results of the Lute review, and that review answered many of the questions that Rahm Emanuel says were never asked," says Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. Jones and Hadley discussed the review, and Lute gave Jones a detailed PowerPoint presentation on his findings. Among the recommendations: a civilian surge of diplomats and other non-military personnel to the country, expedited training for the Afghan National Army, a strong emphasis on governance and credible elections, and, most important, a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy. Jones asked Hadley not to release the results of the Lute review so that his boss would have more flexibility when it came time to provide direction for the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Bush officials reasoned that Obama was more likely to heed their advice if he could simply adopt their recommendations without having to acknowledge that they came from the Bush White House. So Hadley agreed. "Mr. Emanuel either did not know about our review or chose to lie about it," says Eliot Cohen, who served as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and was one of the principal participants in the Lute review. Virtually nobody believes Emanuel is clueless. In any case, the author of the review, Doug Lute, remains a senior Afghanistan adviser in the Obama White House. Perhaps more infuriating for Bush veterans was the suggestion by Gibbs that the Bush administration ignored requests for more troops. It's nonsense, they say. McKiernan wanted more troops--he asked for three additional brigades in the summer of 2008--but he understood that he could have them only when they became available. "McKiernan was making requests down the line," says a Pentagon official, "and late in 2008 we did have the ability to commit more forces. So we did." Indeed, Bush sent nearly 7,000 additional troops to Afghanistan before he left office, including one brigade that had been repurposed from Iraq. One Bush veteran asks, "If it's true that the Bush administration sat on these troop requests for eight months, is the White House suggesting that the Pentagon was incompetent or negligent or both? That would be a good question to put to the defense secretary--and President Obama is in a position to make him talk." I couldn't reach Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, but I did talk to a senior defense official who serves with him. This person stressed that Gates has gone to great lengths to avoid being dragged into political fights between administrations. Nonetheless, he offered a strong rebuke to the present White House political team. "There was no request on anyone's desk for eight months," said the defense official. "There was not a request that went to the White House because we didn't have forces to commit. So on the facts, they're wrong." When Obama took office, he ordered an Afghanistan review of his own. Led by former CIA official Bruce Riedel, the Obama review team looked at Afghanistan and made its recommendations. On March 27, the president announced his new Afghanistan strategy--one that included many of the recommendations of the Bush administration's review. And that is another indignity. Not only did the Obama administration understand full well that the Bush administration had conducted a comprehensive assessment of Afghanistan, and not only had Jim Jones asked that the Bush review be withheld from the public--but Obama's "new" strategy bore an uncanny resemblance to that prescribed by the Lute review. Says Eliot Cohen, "My challenge to the Obama administration is: Why don't you declassify both documents--the Bush administration's Afghanistan review and your own." Not surprisingly, Republicans were among the most outspoken supporters of Obama's strategy announced in March. And while Democrats on Capitol Hill did not, for the most part, voice their opposition in public, they registered their concerns in private conversations with White House officials. They had a receptive audience. Several top White House officials, including Emanuel, Jones, David Axelrod, and Joe Biden, remain skeptical of escalating U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan. And according to the man who conducted the Afghanistan review for the Obama White House, Bruce Riedel, politics is at the center of those concerns. "I think a big part of it is, the vice president's reading of the Democratic party is this is not sustainable," Riedel told the New York Times. "That's a part of the process that's a legitimate question for a president--if I do this, can I sustain it with political support at home? That was the argument the vice president was making back in the winter." It is a legitimate question for a president. Why then, as Obama again nears a decision on the way forward in Afghanistan, would Rahm Emanuel pick a fight with Republicans--the very people who gave the president his most ardent backing the last time he announced a new strategy? Could it be that Emanuel hopes to foreclose one of Obama's options--the one Emanuel opposes--before the president makes his decision? Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

U2 + YouTube = 10 million streams

For a band that has its own 3-D film and is performing under a giant spaceship-like contraption on its current tour, an Internet stream may not seem all that fancy. Yet it certainly proved to be a powerful promotional device.

U2's live broadcast Sunday night of the Pasadena stop on its 360 Tour generated 10 million streams across seven continents, according to a YouTube spokesman. What's more, since being archived on YouTube on Monday, the concert has tallied more than 1 million streams.

Information, however, on the average length of time viewers watched the nearly 2 1/2-hour concert was not readily available. YouTube has also not yet broken the numbers out into individual users.

Now Pop & Hiss is being purely speculative here, but it's probably a safe bet that the latter number was a few million fewer than 10 million, considering the U2 channel on YouTube has generated about 8.4 million views, as of Wednesday evening.

Nevertheless, there's no doubting U2's live draw, both online and in the flesh. The Rose Bowl concert had a crowd of more than 100,000 people, including Rose Bowl staff. The stream was also the largest event in YouTube's history, according to a statement from the company.

Liked what you saw and missed the Rose Bowl concert? U2 will be back in Southern California on June 6, 2010, performing at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. Ticket information has not yet been released.

--Todd Martens

U2 @ The Rose Bowl, 10/25/09

"Luckily, we don't believe in luck. Grace abounds!" @ 1:15:45 into the show.

Dick Cheney's remarks regarding President Obama dithering on Afghanistan

Former vice president Dick Cheney has made some negative remarks on President Obama’s handling of the war in Afghanistan. Referring to President Obama as ‘dithering’ Dick Cheney delivered a speech titled, “Concerns about America’s Foreign Policy Drift” at the Center for Security Policy on October 21, 2009. The remarks were delivered as Dick Cheney received the Keeper of the Flame Award. Here is the transcript of the speech as well as the full video.


The remarks have received great attention and focus as President Obama determines whether or not to commit an additional 40,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan.


Thank you all very much. It’s a pleasure to be here, and especially to receive the Keeper of the Flame Award in the company of so many good friends.


I’m told that among those you’ve recognized before me was my friend Don Rumsfeld. I don’t mind that a bit. It fits something of a pattern. In a career that includes being chief of staff, congressman, and secretary of defense, I haven’t had much that Don didn’t get first. But truth be told, any award once conferred on Donald Rumsfeld carries extra luster, and I am very proud to see my name added to such a distinguished list.


To Frank Gaffney and all the supporters of Center for Security Policy, I thank you for this honor. And I thank you for the great energy and high intelligence you bring to as vital a cause as there is – the advance of freedom and the uncompromising defense of the United States.

Most anyone who is given responsibility in matters of national security quickly comes to appreciate the commitments and structures put in place by others who came before. You deploy a military force that was planned and funded by your predecessors. You inherit relationships with partners and obligations to allies that were first undertaken years and even generations earlier. With the authority you hold for a little while, you have great freedom of action. And whatever course you follow, the essential thing is always to keep commitments, and to leave no doubts about the credibility of your country’s word.
So among my other concerns about the drift of events under the present administration, I consider the abandonment of missile defense in Eastern Europe to be a strategic blunder and a breach of good faith.


It is certainly not a model of diplomacy when the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic are informed of such a decision at the last minute in midnight phone calls. It took a long time and lot of political courage in those countries to arrange for our interceptor system in Poland and the radar system in the Czech Republic. Our Polish and Czech friends are entitled to wonder how strategic plans and promises years in the making could be dissolved, just like that – with apparently little, if any, consultation. Seventy years to the day after the Soviets invaded Poland, it was an odd way to mark the occasion.


You hardly have to go back to 1939 to understand why these countries desire – and thought they had – a close and trusting relationship with the United States. Only last year, the Russian Army moved into Georgia, under the orders of a man who regards the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. Anybody who has spent much time in that part of the world knows what Vladimir Putin is up to. And those who try placating him, by conceding ground and accommodating his wishes, will get nothing in return but more trouble.
What did the Obama Administration get from Russia for its abandonment of Poland and the Czech Republic, and for its famous “Reset” button? Another deeply flawed election and continued Russian opposition to sanctioning Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.


In the short of it, President Obama’s cancellation of America’s agreements with the Polish and Czech governments was a serious blow to the hopes and aspirations of millions of Europeans. For twenty years, these peoples have done nothing but strive to move closer to us, and to gain the opportunities and security that America offered. These are faithful friends and NATO allies, and they deserve better. The impact of making two NATO allies walk the plank won’t be felt only in Europe. Our friends throughout the world are watching and wondering whether America will abandon them as well.
Big events turn on the credibility of the United States – doing what we said we would do, and always defending our fundamental security interests. In that category belong the ongoing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the need to counter the nuclear ambitions of the current regime in Iran.

Candidate Obama declared last year that he would be willing to sit down with Iran's leader without preconditions. As President, he has committed America to an Iran strategy that seems to treat engagement as an objective rather than a tactic. Time and time again, he has outstretched his hand to the Islamic Republic's authoritarian leaders, and all the while Iran has continued to provide lethal support to extremists and terrorists who are killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic continues to provide support to extremists in Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, the regime continues to spin centrifuges and test missiles. And these are just the activities we know about.


I have long been skeptical of engagement with the current regime in Tehran, but even Iran experts who previously advocated for engagement have changed their tune since the rigged elections this past June and the brutal suppression of Iran's democratic protestors. The administration clearly missed an opportunity to stand with Iran's emocrats, whose popular protests represent the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979. Instead, the resident has been largely silent about the violent crackdown on Iran's protestors, and has moved blindly forward to engage Iran's authoritarian regime. Unless the Islamic Republic fears real consequences from the United States and the international community, it is hard to see how diplomacy will work.


Next door in Iraq, it is vitally important that President Obama, in his rush to withdraw troops, not undermine the progress we’ve made in recent years. Prime Minister Maliki met yesterday with President Obama, who began his press availability with an extended comment about Afghanistan. When he finally got around to talking bout Iraq, he told the media that he reiterated to Maliki his intention to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq. Former President Bush's bold decision to change strategy in Iraq and surge U.S. forces there set the stage for success in that country. Iraq has the potential to be a strong, democratic ally in the war on terrorism, and an example of economic and democratic reform in the heart of the Middle East. The Obama Administration has an obligation to protect this young democracy and build on the strategic success we have achieved in Iraq.


We should all be concerned as well with the direction of policy on Afghanistan. For quite a while, the cause of our military in that country went pretty much unquestioned, even on the left. The effort was routinely praised by way of contrast to Iraq, which many wrote off as a failure until the surge proved them wrong. Now suddenly – and despite our success in Iraq – we’re hearing a drumbeat of defeatism over Afghanistan. These criticisms carry the same air of hopelessness, they offer the same short-sighted arguments for walking away, and they should be summarily rejected for the same reasons of national security.


Having announced his Afghanistan strategy last March, President Obama now seems afraid to make a decision, and unable to provide his commander on the ground with the troops he needs to complete his mission.


President Obama has said he understands the stakes for America. When he announced his new strategy he couched the need to succeed in the starkest possible terms, saying, quote, “If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or allows al-Qaeda to go unchallenged – that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.” End quote.
Five months later, in August of this year, speaking at the VFW, the President made a promise to America’s armed forces. “I will give you a clear mission,” he said, “defined goals, and the equipment and support you need to get the job done. That’s my commitment to you.”


It’s time for President Obama to make good on his promise. The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger.


Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries. Waffling, while our troops on the ground face an emboldened enemy, endangers them and hurts our cause.


Recently, President Obama’s advisors have decided that it’s easier to blame the Bush Administration than support our troops. This weekend they leveled a charge that cannot go unanswered. The President’s chief of staff claimed that the Bush Administration hadn’t asked any tough questions about Afghanistan, and he complained that the Obama Administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.


In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision – a good one, I think – and sent a commander into the field to implement it.
Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.


It’s worth recalling that we were engaged in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, supporting the Mujahadeen against the Soviets. That was a successful policy, but then we pretty much put Afghanistan out of our minds. While no one was watching, what followed was a civil war, the takeover by the Taliban, and the rise of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. All of that set in motion the events of 9/11. When we deployed forces eight years ago this month, it was to make sure Afghanistan would never again be a training ground for the killing of Americans. Saving untold thousands of lives is still the business at hand in this fight. And the success of our mission in Afghanistan is not only essential, it is entirely achievable with enough troops and enough political courage.


Then there’s the matter of how to handle the terrorists we capture in this ongoing war. Some of them know things that, if shared, can save a good many innocent lives. When we faced that problem in the days and years after 9/11, we made some basic decisions. We understood that organized terrorism is not just a law-enforcement issue, but a strategic threat to the United States.


At every turn, we understood as well that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. We had a lot of blind spots – and that’s an awful thing, especially in wartime. With many thousands of lives potentially in the balance, we didn’t think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.


The intelligence professionals who got the answers we needed from terrorists had limited time, limited options, and careful legal guidance. They got the baddest actors we picked up to reveal things they really didn’t want to share. In the case of Khalid Sheik Muhammed, by the time it was over he was not was not only talking, he was practically conducting a seminar, complete with chalkboards and charts. It turned out he had a professorial side, and our guys didn’t mind at all if classes ran long. At some point, the mastermind of 9/11 became an expansive briefer on the operations and plans of al-Qaeda. It happened in the course of enhanced interrogations. All the evidence, and common sense as well, tells us why he started to talk.


The debate over intelligence gathering in the seven years after 9/11 involves much more than historical accuracy. What we’re really debating are the means and resolve to protect this country over the next few years, and long after that. Terrorists and their state sponsors must be held accountable, and America must remain on the offensive against them. We got it right after 9/11. And our government needs to keep getting it right, year after year, president after president, until the danger is finally overcome.

Our administration always faced its share of criticism, and from some quarters it was always intense. That was especially so in the later years of our term, when the dangers were as serious as ever, but the sense of general alarm after 9/11 was a fading memory. Part of our responsibility, as we saw it, was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America … and not to let 9/11 become the prelude to something much bigger and far worse.

Eight years into the effort, one thing we know is that the enemy has spent most of this time on the defensive – and every attempt to strike inside the United States has failed. So you would think that our successors would be going to the intelligence community saying, “How did you did you do it? What were the keys to preventing another attack over that period of time?”


Instead, they’ve chosen a different path entirely – giving in to the angry left, slandering people who did a hard job well, and demagoguing an issue more serious than any other they’ll face in these four years. No one knows just where that path will lead, but I can promise you this: There will always be plenty of us willing to stand up for the policies and the people that have kept this country safe.


On the political left, it will still be asserted that tough interrogations did no good, because this is an article of faith for them, and actual evidence is unwelcome and disregarded. President Obama himself has ruled these methods out, and when he last addressed the subject he filled the air with vague and useless platitudes. His preferred device is to suggest that we could have gotten the same information by other means. We’re invited to think so. But this ignores the hard, inconvenient truth that we did try other means and techniques to elicit information from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and other al-Qaeda operatives, only turning to enhanced techniques when we failed to produce the actionable intelligence we knew they were withholding. In fact, our intelligence professionals, in urgent circumstances with the highest of stakes, obtained specific information, prevented specific attacks, and saved American lives.
In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.


For all that we’ve lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings – and least of all can that be said of our armed forces and intelligence personnel. They have done right, they have made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.

Last January 20th, our successors in office were given the highest honors that the voters of this country can give any two citizens. Along with that, George W. Bush and I handed the new president and vice president both a record of success in the war on terror, and the policies to continue that record and ultimately prevail. We had been the decision makers, but those seven years, four months, and nine days without another 9/11 or worse, were a combined achievement: a credit to all who serve in the defense of America, including some of the finest people I’ve ever met.


What the present administration does with those policies is their call to make, and will become a measure of their own record. But I will tell you straight that I am not encouraged when intelligence officers who acted in the service of this country find themselves hounded with a zeal that should be reserved for America’s enemies. And it certainly is not a good sign when the Justice Department is set on a political mission to discredit, disbar, or otherwise persecute the very people who helped protect our nation in the years after 9/11.


There are policy differences, and then there are affronts that have to be answered every time without equivocation, and this is one of them. We cannot protect this country by putting politics over security, and turning the guns on our own guys.


We cannot hope to win a war by talking down our country and those who do its hardest work – the men and women of our military and intelligence services. They are, after all, the true keepers of the flame.
Thank you very much.

For Obama, The Fall Below 50% Looms

The chief issue of the day was whether to escalate the war further or de-escalate. There were economic concerns. And there was a president "too intent on a search for consensus," as historian Robert Dallek wrote in his biography of Lyndon Johnson.

It was early May 1966. The first time Johnson's public approval rating fell below 50 percent in the Gallup Poll. A month later, on June 9, Press Secretary Bill Moyers informed Johnson that, "Conversations with Gallup, Harris, and other professionals in the poll business confirm only one thing: Our standing is down and likely to drop further."

It will not, of course, take this president an entire month to digest the same bad news. And that bad news will likely come sooner for Barack Obama than most previous presidents.

If Obama falls below 50 percent before mid-November, it will mark the third-fastest rate since World War II.

Obama is on the edge. The new Gallup/USA Today poll has Obama's approval at 50 percent. He first saw 50 in the Gallup tracking poll in late August. He has since returned to that precipice on several occasions, as he did Wednesday, only to slightly recover.

The Afghan war now weighs down Obama. He too is a man who has long sought consensus. The defining trait of Obama now dogs him. In health care, progressives sense momentum on the public option. They want Obama to personally take up their fight.

Obama may soon choose sides. He recently took a firmer hand to Wall Street. He is talking in more partisan tones. He may still take up the public option on health care. A fall below 50 can spur those choices. It did for Johnson. But the middle way is also a choice.

Below 50, Johnson distanced himself from the most vulnerable Democratic congressmen. He wanted to appear less partisan. He went to the Midwest for big speeches. He met on background with reporters. And he bombed, escalating the campaign in North Vietnam. Johnson briefly recovered, only to soon fall again.

Johnson had his problems with inflation. Obama's has it far worse economically. And for this president, it will still get worse before it gets better. Unemployment will likely soon reach double digits.

The cause of the fall is not, at first, the news. It's the majority lost. Fifty percent means mandate. It's symbolic, not unlike the Dow Jones 10,000 mark. Insignificant but for what it captures. And in a republic, it captures power. Public approval is the currency of political capital. It's how platforms become policy.

Below 50, the framing of Obama's presidency will be altered. A majority lost, even once recovered, can be lost again. After a heavyweight champion is first knocked down, his opponent knows the champ can go down. It will be like that for Obama.

Political opponents will pounce. National stories will tell of a president who has lost the people. Even at 49, the president is in charge of the same divided nation. But the view has changed. Below 50, the bully pulpit loses its bully. Legislative battles become more difficult.

In the age of tracking polls, a president can fall below 50 and come back the next day. But once the fall is sustained, it sticks. And in this manic news environment, sustained means only a matter of days.

Gerald Ford (after three months) and Bill Clinton (after four months) were the first presidents to lose the majority. But unlike Clinton, Obama won with a majority. It's his to lose. So the loss would mean more.

Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman are the other two presidents to lose the majority during their first year. Reagan first fell below 50 in mid November 1981. It took Truman 11 months.

John F. Kennedy is the only modern president never to fall below 50. His approval rating was in the high 70s at this point in office.

Early on, Obama proved unable to emulate Kennedy's appeal. His problem is now more ordinary. Even excluding Kennedy, Obama's modern predecessors lost the majority on average after 23 months in office; the median was 13 months. Obama has served nine.

Nothing is written. Obama might hold the majority far longer. The bulk of his decline came over the summer, largely due to the health care debate. His polling has since stabilized. But the extent he has already fallen is striking.

On Wednesday, Gallup reminded Obama of what was lost. Obama had the worst third quarter decline in public approval of any elected president in the post-war era.

Still, it's the fall below 50 that hits hardest. Some presidents never do recover. Like Johnson, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter could not.

But Reagan reminds us that a public can be won back. Reagan, like Obama, faced the worst recession to date. He languished for two years below 50 and went on to win an historic landslide.

Obama is his own man, in his own Washington. No analogy is perfect. But all successful presidents need the public at their back. And Obama remains a most ambitous president.

David Paul Kuhn is the Chief Political Correspondent for RealClearPolitics and the author of The Neglected Voter. He can be reached at david@realclearpolitics.com and his writing followed via RSS

White House Tactics Go Too Far

WASHINGTON -- Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he's put a horse's head in Roger Ailes' bed.

Not very subtle. And not very smart. Ailes doesn't scare easily.

The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led (by) and following Fox."

Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration -- from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health care legislation -- the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House "pool" news organizations -- except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.

This was an important defeat because there's a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

There's nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms.

Madison argued that the safety of a great republic, its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests. His insight was to understand "the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties." They would help guarantee liberty by checking and balancing and restraining each other -- and an otherwise imperious government.

Factions should compete, but also recognize the legitimacy of other factions and, indeed, their necessity for a vigorous self-regulating democracy. Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian.

But didn't Teddy Roosevelt try to destroy the trusts? Of course, but what he took down was monopoly power that was extinguishing smaller independent competing interests. Fox News is no monopoly. It is a singular minority in a sea of liberal media. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC vs. Fox. The lineup is so unbalanced as to be comical -- and that doesn't even include the other commanding heights of the culture that are firmly, flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.

Fox and its viewers (numbering more than CNN's and MSNBC's combined) need no defense. Defend Fox compared to whom? To CNN -- which recently unleashed its fact-checkers on a "Saturday Night Live" skit mildly critical of President Obama, but did no checking of a grotesquely racist remark CNN falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh?

Defend Fox from whom? Fox's flagship 6 o'clock evening news out of Washington (hosted by Bret Baier, formerly by Brit Hume) is, to my mind, the best hour of news on television. (Definitive evidence: My mother watches it even on the odd night when I'm not on.) Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She's been attacked for extolling Mao's political philosophy in a speech at a high school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one's own choices. Mao as champion of individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?

The White House communications director cannot be trusted to address high schoolers without uttering inanities. She and her cohorts are now to instruct the country on truth and objectivity?