Obama v Palin … Palin?

PUBLIC SERVICE ALERT

The Federal government is closed today in the National Capital Area. Please let me know if you notice.

END PUBLIC SERVICE ALERT

Here's how you know, if you are the President of the United States, that things are going in the wrong direction.

You have scheduled a speech to the Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington, DC.

It snows about 20 inches in Washington, DC weakening your arguments for cap-and-trade legislation

A car spins into the press van travelling with your motorcade

You do the speech and generate headlines like this one from the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram:

Obama Seeks to Rally Glum Dems Amid GOP Challenges

Meanwhile Sarah Palin's keynote speech to the Tea Party meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, is covered like your State of the Union Address had been two weeks earlier, leading the chattering class to compare your appearance with that of Gov. Palin.

Palin's speech generated headlines like this in the Nashville Tennessean:

Palin: Tea Party Movement is a Call to Action

Here's a basic rule of political counter-punching: You want your lowest ranking person in a public fight with your opponent's highest ranking person - preferably your opponent.

For example, if you are managing the campaign for the guy running against an incumbent for Congress, you want to have the kid who does the morning clips in a public argument with the Congressman.

That diminishes the Congressman and enhances the clips kid.

Over weekend the losing candidate for Vice President was, for all intents and purposes, treated as the political equal of the President of the United States.

This, if you are in the political shop at the White House, is not good.

SIDEBAR

I am writing this as I am watching The Game.

The Who (of whom I have been a fan in while I was in high school and through lo these many decades) is performing the half-time show.

I am unclear as to why the NFL has an affinity for British bands which have been together for 45 years, even if they have sold 100 million albums which, ironically, is precisely 100 million albums more than I have sold.

That wasn't what got my attention, though. What did, was the level of political-incorrectness involved with the Who beginning their set with an excerpt from "Tommy" whose refrain is: "That deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure can play pinball."

END SIDEBAR

The Democrats are going backwards at an increasing rate. For example, during the week, U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) said, in a display of classlessness unique even for him, that the new Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown's candidacy was "a joke" because he was sworn in a week early - having buried his Democratic opponent so thoroughly that even the Democratic Secretary of State couldn't find a reason to delay certifying the election.

Everyone in politics knows that if Patrick Kennedy's name were anything but Kennedy he would have long-since been thrown out of office, and rightfully so.

No one poked their head out of the snow to agree with Kennedy, but neither did any Democrat suggest he should zip it.

In New York, former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford is wreaking havoc by sampling the air to see if there is enough oxygen for him to mount a primary challenge against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who was appointed from her U.S. House seat after Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State.

That potentially puts Northeast Dems in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between a Black man and a White woman in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senator from New York.

In the first post-primary Rasmussen survey in Illinois for the Senate seat briefly held by President Obama, the Republican Mark Kirk "holds a modest 46% to 40% lead over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias."

How embarrassing, how debilitating, would it be if Democrats were to lose Obama's U.S. Senate seat?

The good news for the nation is, Obama now realizes that he can't govern without the buy-in of the GOP and is asking for a bi-partisan leadership meeting on health care for next week.

Republicans should go.

Just as Sarah Palin is being treated as the political equal of Barak Obama, Congressional Republicans are now the political equals of Congressional Democrats.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to the Who and to Patrick Kennedy. Also a Mullfoto of what would be the Mullford if it weren't under 27 feet of snow and a Catch Caption of the Day.

Oh, the Weather Outside is ...

At 10:00 last night this was the official language from the National Weather Service winter storm warning:

A Winter Storm Warning remains in effect from 10 AM Friday to 10 PM EST Saturday.

Precipitation type: Heavy snow.

Accumulations: Storm total accumulations of 18 to 24 inches.

Now, I know those of my many readers who live in Antarctica or along Prudhoe Bay in the Arctic consider this a mere dusting. But, for those of us who live in normally habitable climes this is a lot of snow!

In Your Nation's Capital and its environs we consider 2-4 inches of snow grounds for schools closing for at least two days, invoking "liberal leave" policies in Federal, state, and local government offices; and gathering up enough bread, milk, eggs, and toilet paper to last the 82nd Airborne Division three weeks; a good three weeks.

The good news about this storm is it is coming over a weekend, just as the 16.4 inches of snow we got from the storm in mid-December. The bad news about this storm is that even at the low end of the NWS' estimate - 18 inches - it would qualify as the third or fourth heaviest snow in DC history.

The top snowstorms have been:

1 - 28" Jan 1922

2 - 20" Feb 1899

3 - 18.7" Feb 1979

4 - 17.3" Jan 1996

5 - 16.6" Feb 1983

6 - 16.4" Dec 2009 & 16.4" Feb 2003

If this storm comes anywhere near what is being forecast, plus the four inches we got earlier this week the snowfall for the winter of '09-'10 will total over 38 inches. That is somewhat higher than the average of 15.2 inches for Washington.

The natural tendency for someone who is in the business of being snarky would be to make the point that we might not need much more evidence than this much snow in one year to support the notion that someone's been fudging the global-warming-climate-change data.

I know … I know. "Climate Change" means that unusual weather events will become more common. That's how the "Climate Change" lobby (previously known as the "Global Warming" lobby) explains these decidedly non-warm kinds of events.

This would be jolly cocktail party fodder if it not for the fact that we are pouring tens of billions of dollars into trying to find ways to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere so as to reverse what used to be known as "Global Warming."

President Obama's 2011 budget, which was released on Monday, calls for $36 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.

Why nuclear power plants? Because if you want to replace the 250 million cars and light trucks in American which are currently running on gasoline (mostly imported gasoline if you believe T. Boone Pickens) with 250 million cars running on batteries, you have to have a whole bunch of additional electricity generation capacity so when those vehicles get plugged in every night there are enough electrons to re-charge them.

If you want to be able to power all those electric cars without pouring even more crap into the atmosphere from more coal-burning power plants, you have to build nuclear power plants.

Nuclear plants tend to need a rather long lead time as the people who live in the neighborhoods in which they are going to be built generally would prefer to have them built in someone else's neighborhood and so they go to court to make this preference clear to all parties involved.

Also, the Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu, happens to be a Nobel Prize winning physicist, not a Nobel Prize winning novelist, so you can see where his interests lie.

$36 billion is really a big slush fund to help off-set a climate which may not be as changing as quickly as we had been told. And I think it is fair to ask if there might not be a better use for those loan guarantees than for the construction of nuclear power plants.

At least here in the Washington, DC metro area, this weekend will be one of those rare occasions when those who are believers in climate change and those who are not will be in absolute agreement.

The weather outside is frightful.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to the historical snowstorms in the Washington area; the official definition of "snarky," and to Sec. Stephen Chu's bio.

Also, a Mullfoto of disappointment and a Catchy Caption of the Day with another "Princess Bride" reference.

A Certain Attack

President Barak Obama is working as hard as he can to re-invent himself as a man o' the people who is worried about jobs on Main Street, about bonuses on Wall Street, and about lobbyists on K Street.

Maybe he is. But meanwhile the rest of the world, especially that part of the rest of the world which is trying to destroy us, is hard at work, trying to destroy us.

I know you remember the well-deserved scorn and derision (if not outright dread) at the way in which the President and his hand-picked band of anti-terror experts handled the tighty-whitey-bomber on Christmas Day and its immediate aftermath.

We didn't know quite how immediate was the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab by the Obama Administration until later when we found out he had been read his Miranda rights after 50 minutes which also included medical attention for his burned … area and, for all we know, a nice mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich with the mutton being nice and lean.

Those of us who are pre-disposed to look for minor errors in the way Mr. Obama has gone about trying to figure out this whole confusing President thing for the past 54 weeks were taken to task by our friends on the Left for jumping on the way the Abdulmutallab incident was handled.

As you shake your head sadly over how I have become a tool of the Right, consider an essay by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen which appeared yesterday morning.

Mr. Cohen is anything but a tool of the Right. It would not surprise me to find that he has trained himself to be left-handed just so the word "right" never has to enter his vocabulary. Nevertheless his column was titled:

Obama Administration is Tone-Deaf to
Concerns About Terrorism

Yikes!

The opening of Cohen's piece read thus:

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer."

Go back and read it again …

Sounds like … Dick Cheney, doesn't it?

Cohen points to Abdulmutallab having been read his rights "after just 50 minutes of interrogation and he, having probably seen more than his share of 'Law & Order' episodes, promptly shut up."

He also writes about the non-witted decision (apparently by Attorney General Eric Holder) to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York City which would have had the effect of

"cordoning off much of Lower Manhattan and placing a security perimeter around the financial district, not only costing something like $200 million a year but also would destroy the economy of the area [giving] KSM, as he is called, a second shot at devastating downtown New York."

And, on the Obama plan to close Guantanamo:

"It is now apparent that there are some bad people there who should be detained way past the time they are eligible for AARP membership."

Then, as if to add to my sense of impending doom, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and others last night that,

"The U.S.'s top intelligence officials said Tuesday that an attempted al Qaeda attack on the U.S. in the next three to six months was 'certain.'"

"Certain?" That's a long way from "probable." And light years away from "possible."

The officials were testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which includes, as a senior Member, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.

SIDEBAR

Reading the name "Rockefeller" and the word "Intelligence" in the same sentence never fails to make me chuckle.

END SIDEBAR

Obama may not be able to protect us against an al Qaeda attack over the next three to six months, but that appears to be an intelligence success compared to what America's head spy, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, told the committee about our "inability" to deal with nearly constant cyber-attacks. In his written statement Blair said:

"Sensitive information is stolen daily from both government and private sector networks, undermining confidence in our information systems, and in the very information these systems were intended to convey.

"We often find persistent, unauthorized, and at times, unattributable presences on exploited networks, the hallmark of an unknown adversary intending to do far more than merely demonstrate skill or mock a vulnerability."

And what is President Obama doing about that?

Running around the country trying to make us forget we're at war.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to the Richard Cohen column as well as the WSJ and CNN coverage of the Intelligence Committee testimony yesterday.

Also, a Mullfoto which I am taking much more seriously since I wrote this column and a Catchy Caption of the Day which will make you scratch your head, if you can get to it.

The Foreign Policy Section of the SOTU

Following his State of the Union speech, there were some muffled remarks that the President Obama had no "foreign policy section."

Not two weeks after I raised the alarm that China is much more than a big spot on the Asian map, but was rushing headlong into controlling the world's economy ( The Sound of China Breaking ) the Washington Post had a front pager yesterday suggesting that China has no intention at stopping at the front door of the bank.

To review the bidding, last week I noted that China had

- Overtaken the US in car sales

- Eclipsed US banks in value

- Surpassed Germany as the world's top exporter

The Post analysis, written by John Pomfret, pointed out that the Obama Administration's decision to sell "$6.4 billion worth of helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, minesweepers and communications gear" to Taiwan was met with an "indignant reaction."

The Chinese "also announced it would sanction the U.S. companies involved in the sale."

The Vice Foreign Minister hauled in the U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, to chat about the sale, a reaction which, along with other recent rumblings, "is worrying governments and analysts around the globe."

About a week ago, the Chinese wagged a finger in the face of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she chided China (along with other countries) for censoring Internet sites calling the U.S. an "information imperialist" and, according to the Financial Times, "telling Ms. Clinton to 'stop finger-pointing.'"

Pretty heady stuff to be telling the U.S. Secretary of State to "button it," but that wasn't the end of it. According to Bloomberg News, at China's request the issue of internet censorship was left off the agenda at the World Economic Conference in Davos which ended last night.

So, China, in denying internet censorship, leaned on the worlds bankers and industrialists to amend the agenda - in effect, censoring the conference.

That the bankers and industrialists, smiled with diffidence, bowed deeply, and acceded to the "request" is even more concerning than China's request.

At what everyone but the U.S. media calls the "failed" climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, according to the Post:

"China publicly reprimanded White House envoy Todd Stern, dispatched a Foreign Ministry functionary to an event for state leaders, and fought strenuously against fixed targets for emission cuts in the developed world."

Ok, that one was before Obama "reset" his Presidency last Wednesday, so he gets a pass on folding up like a water-logged yard-sale card table in the face of Chinese objections to what we have been told over and over again is the single most important issue facing humans.

China threatened neighboring Cambodia against granting sanctuary to 22 Chinese Muslims, some of whom China had accused of participating in anti-Chinese demonstrations last summer.

Cambodia sent them back and, as a "thank you note" China "signed 14 deals with Cambodia worth $1 billion.

Here's a protocol tip: If you want to meet with senior Chinese leaders, don't meet with the Dalai Lama first. China "denounced" German Chancellor Angela Merkel, cancelled a summit with France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, and according to Pomfret's piece

"suspended ties with Denmark after its prime minister met the Dalai Lama and resumed them only after the Danish government issued a statement in December saying it would oppose Tibetan independence and consider Beijing's reaction before inviting him again."

President Obama, on the other hand, "declined to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, before visiting China in November to avoid offending China's leaders."

Nevertheless, when President Obama went to China and acted like the new kid at school, the NY Times noted:

"China effectively stage-managed President Obama's public appearances, got him to make statements endorsing Chinese positions of political importance to them and effectively squelched discussions of contentious issues such as human rights and China's currency policy," said a [U.S.] China specialist.

China is the second largest economy in the world, behind only the U.S. but it is quickly becoming the most important economy because of the enormous potential for selling things to 1.3 billion Chinese (about a billion more people than are in the U.S.)

Now, they are becoming among the most important players on the diplomatic world stage and the U.S. and the E.U. seems to be at sea as to what to do about it.

No wonder there was no foreign policy section of the President's State of the Union speech.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to the Washington Post and NY Times articles. Also a Mullfoto which I think I may have stolen, but is still funny, and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

A Long Year Ahead

An article in the Washington Post over the weekend quoted a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan as saying:

There is always . . . [an] attempt by everybody to get into the State of the Union; every little crappy agency wants their stuff, their agenda, included.

Add to that the frenzy of phone calls, visits, promises, and threats between lobbyists, their clients, and anyone they believe has influence on the contents of the speech and you can see that if the amount of time, energy, and money in Washington, DC which is devoted to trying to get just one sentence into a State of the Union address were aimed in the same direction, Haiti would have been rebuilt as Macau by now.

I told someone last week that there are only two people who know what is going to be in the SOTU: The President, and whoever types the text into the Teleprompter.

Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution requires that the President - any President:

"shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient"

The section of any SOTU which includes the "measures" he judges "necessary and expedient" is known as the "laundry list;" the litany of legislation which the President wants the Congress to take up.

As I suggested in Wednesday morning's MULLINGS, the post-speech reactions could have been written last Monday. Democratic pundits thought it was the very best State of the Union speech ever delivered. Republicans thought it was too long in time, too short on national security, and too much like a campaign speech.

As the kids say: What-EVER.

Other than what I considered to be astonishing bad manners in chiding the members of the Supreme Court on their campaign finance decision last week while they were sitting ten feet from him in front of an international audience, it was like almost every other SOTU I've ever watched: Instantly forgettable.

The Congress has not - and, it appears now, will not - pass anything near the massive overhaul of the nation's health care system which Obama envisioned and which has taken up nearly all the time of the U.S. Senate since Labor Day.

The list of legislative failures is pretty long: No climate bill, no energy bill, no card-check, no health care to name but four major initiatives.

With the Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts about to be held by a Republican, it is difficult to see how those will get a second life in 2010.

It was one thing for the Obama spinners to say that the results in Virginia and New Jersey last November were the result of in-state issues which had nothing to do with the White House. But the election in Massachusetts was for a federal office and the thud of the Democratic message is still echoing up and down every hallway of each Senate and House office building on Capitol Hill.

The general reaction to the whole thing has been Obama is attempting to re-set, re-boot, or re-establish his Presidency. As you've read here before, an Administration which is aggressively on-message is the most potent political force in America, so he may do it.

But, I don't think so. At least, not before the mid-term elections on November 2.

Liz Sidoti, senior political writer for the AP, filed a piece about the lack of coattails that Obama is exhibiting:

The list of White House failures is growing: It hasn't galvanized the legions of 2008 Obama backers in three major statewide losses. It hasn't prevented primary challenges for at least two vulnerable Senate Democrats even though Obama endorsed them. And it hasn't recruited strong candidates for Senate seats once held by Vice President Joe Biden and the president himself.

If the President can't get the Congress to adopt "such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient" and he can't help Democrats get elected, then it will be a very, very long year until the next State of the Union.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to the AP's "fact check" piece which explores what the President said and what the reality is; and Liz Sidoti's piece on Democrats' faltering electoral chances. Also a Mullfoto of a familiar sign in an unfamiliar place and a REALLY good Catchy Caption of the Day.

The CNN Poll & the SOTU

Today's national poll comes to us courtesy of CNN which released its survey Tuesday afternoon.

The top-line number in this poll - approve/disapprove (Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President?) has Obama hanging in at 49-50; under water but just.

Being minus-one on the approve/disapprove is troublesome enough for the White House, but let's look back to his February 2009 numbers and see how he has fared as Americans have gone from judging Obama in the afterglow his election and inauguration to twelve months of actual performance.

Remember, this week has Obama's approval is at 49-50. In CNN's poll taken on February 18-19, 2009 Obama's job approval was 67-29 a margin of 38 percentage points.

So?

So, let's do a little higher math. The margin between a good mark (approve) and a bad mark (disapprove) has gone from +38 to -1 or a difference of -40 which if it is not an off-the-cliff number it is certainly in the careening downhill range.

The poll went on to list a series of Obama attributes. The respondent was asked for each one whether it applied to the President or not.

For instance, "Can [Obama] bring needed change?" got a 53-47 applies/doesn't apply result. Plus 6. But looking again at February poll respondents then said the question about bringing change applied by 69-49. Plus 40.

The decline in Americans' confidence in Obama being a change agent has gone from +40 to +6 or down 34 percentage points.

Yikes! That is a big change.

You can see the whole list of these attribute questions on the Secret Decoder Ring page today but if you do you will see that on every one of them - and there are eight that CNN shared with us - Obama is down at least 22 percentage points from his February numbers.

The largest drop - 40 points - is on the question of whether Obama, "Is a strong and decisive leader?" In this poll 60 percent of respondents agreed, 39 disagreed (+21) which, standing alone looks pretty good.

But, if you compare that with his numbers in February on the leadership question, 80-19 (+61) you can see that he has lost forty percentage points.

Ok, as you know polls are polls. The winners send blast e-mails; the losers say "shut up and deal," but these numbers are beginning to settle in and I guarantee you they were being passed around in the Republican and Democratic cloakrooms in both the House and Senate as soon as they came out yesterday.

Keep in mind, too, that this poll comes on the heels of the Massachusetts Massacre last Tuesday. The President had to go up to campaign for Martha Coakley which puts her on a list of Presidential endorsement failures including the Democrats running for Governor in Virginia and New Jersey, the Chicago Olympic bid, and the Copenhagen global warming conference to name four that come immediately to mind.

In light of the CNN poll, does the President have to give the Greatest Speech of His Charmed Life tonight to save his Presidency?

No. Of course not.

I'm not sure I can remember a President blowing a State of the Union speech. The House chamber is packed and the Members of the President's party are primed (especially the House Members) to stand, stomp, cheer, and applaud at the drop of a semicolon so President Obama will do well.

In the post-speech punditry-fests, it will be judged a standard Goldilocks speech. Depending upon who is scoring it will have been sooo goood, tooo looong, or juuuust right.

Someone will have the job of counting how many times he will have been interrupted by applause, how many minutes the speech went, and how many legislative initiatives he will have asked for.

For as much time and attention spent on the SOTU, they tend to have relatively little lasting effect other than when an "Axis of evil" line comes spinning out (George W. Bush, 2002) or a Lenny Skutnik (Ronald Reagan, 1982) is celebrated sitting in the gallery.

Starting Thursday morning, the problems facing the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will be the same ones they faced when they went to work today: A President who has frittered away his political capital on policies which most Americans don't like.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to the CNN poll, the February - January comparison, Axis of Evil and Lenny Skutnik. Also a Mullfoto which is only amusing because it is not in English and a topic-appropriate Catchy Caption of the Day.

It's the Policies, Stupid

The Obama White House has been in a frenzy of activity since last Tuesday night when Republican Scott Brown won the special election for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.

The very next morning, President Obama declared war on the big banks by announcing what the Agence France-Presse (AFP) called,

"the largest regulatory crackdown on US financial institutions since the 1930s, would ban the banks from using taxpayers' money to engage in proprietary trading or operating hedge funds and private equity funds."

This had the effect of (a) Changing the debate from how the result in Massachusetts made Democrats in general and the President in particular, look weak (he had campaigned there on the previous Sunday); (b) Allowing the White House to proclaim Obama America's Populist-in-Chief; and (c) Driving the stock markets into the ground.

According to reporters Renae Merle and Tomoeh Murakami Tse writing in the Washington Post yesterday,

"By Friday's closing bell on the stock exchange floor, the Dow Jones industrial average had plunged 4 percent over four days. And in a move reminiscent of the depths of the financial crisis, investors piled into government bonds, seeking cover from the turbulence."

The spitting and fussing among Democrats as to who knew what about the race in Massachusetts, when they knew it, and what they did about it was so much fun to watch, I actually bought popcorn to eat as I watched the cable chat shows.

On Saturday, the WashPost's Chris Cillizza reported that former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was coming on board as a non-official political advisor to make some sense of how the Washington Democrats deal with House, Senate and Governor's races in November.

According to the Atlantic's Mark Ambinder:

Plouffe doesn't report to David Axelrod, or Jim Messina, the deputy White House chief of staff, or to Jen O'Malley Dillon, the DNC executive director or to Gov. Tim Kaine, the DNC chairman, or to Patrick Gaspard, the political director. He reports to the President. Informally. But this informal channel is Plouffe's and Plouffe's alone.

Golly, Buffalo Bob! Remember back during the campaign for President when Sen. Obama said he would remove the "perpetual campaign" apparatus from the White House?

Yeah, well...

The polling out of Massachusetts tells me that it the result was not a failure of politics, but a failure of policy by the White House and its allies on Capitol Hill.

A poll done for the AFL-CIO after the election showed that union families voted for the Republican, Brown, by a margin of 49-46 percent. True, Brown only carried union households by three percentage points, but he should have LOST that bloc by 40 percentage points.

Why? According to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake on CNN's State of the Union program yesterday, it's because they don't like the taxing of so-called "Cadillac health plans" which includes many plans negotiated by unions for their members.

A poll done by the Washington Post showed that the health care issue was "Extremely" or "Very" important for 93 percent of voters who cast their ballot for Brown.

Also on the health care issue, 65 percent of Brown voters thought they would be worse off if the Congress passed and the President signed a health care reform bill. Only 38 percent of those who voted for the Democrat thought they would be better off. Fully half of Coakley's voters said it wouldn't make much difference.

I.N.T.E.N.S.I.T.Y.

The next two most important issues for Brown voters were "jobs and the economy" (91 percent) and "The way Washington is working" (90 percent).

For nearly half the voters (48 percent) Barack Obama was not a factor in deciding their vote. They just didn't care.

This may be the earliest point in history that a President has stood on the brink of being a lame duck: 364 days into his Administration.

Adding a political operative to the inner circle of the White House will not help. It misses the essential point: Starting in November when the GOP won the Governors' mansions in New Jersey and Virginia it has been clear that the Obama/Reid/Pelosi style and substance were not resonating with the voting public.

The result in Massachusetts last Tuesday showed that for yet another segment of the population which has had the opportunity to express itself at the ballot box, Obama's policies have diminished from a lack of resonance to active dissonance.

Obama can tinker with the political shop all he wants, but to misquote my neighbor James Carville: It's the policies, stupid.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to the WashPost review of the week on Wall Street and to the Poll. Also the last (for now) of the photos from Ukraine. This is a pretty good one. And a Catchy Caption of the Day which is senseless.