The Empire State Building glows red for China. What are they thinking? “Historians of the revolution noted the unimaginable—and often forgotten—toll of the revolution and China’s communist rule, which has taken tens of millions of lives through years of war, famine, reeducation and wholesale slaughter. ‘China gets treatment that other dictatorships can only dream of—a free pass on human rights,’ said Arthur Waldron, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The revolution and its aftermath may have been deadlier than any world war: though estimates vary, research from the historian Chang Jung shows that as many as 72 million people died as a result.”

Pakistan isn’t pleased with the suggestion that America could bug out of Afghanistan. The foreign minister says, “This will be disastrous . . . . You will lose credibility. . . . Who is going to trust you again?” And what about the White House–run seminars (Biden vs. McChrystal on counterinsurgency)? He says that “the fact that this is being debated—whether to stay or not stay—what sort of signal is that sending?”

In Virginia’s gubernatorial race: “McDonnell tops Deeds 45-32 percent on the question of whom voters trust to deal with transportation issues. On taxes, McDonnell is more trusted by a 51-36 percent margin.”

Not so many green shoots: “The U.S. economy shrank less in the second quarter than first thought but negative news on jobs and on manufacturing in the country’s Midwest in September pointed to a patchy recovery from recession.”

The Obama era isn’t turning out to be as bad for them as Republicans feared. From Gallup: “In the third quarter of this year, 48% of Americans identified politically as Democrats or said they were independent but leaned to the Democratic Party. At the same time, 42% identified as Republicans or as independents who leaned Republican. That six-point spread in leaned party affiliation is the smallest Gallup has measured since 2005.”

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) likens the health-care crisis to the Holocaust and says Republicans want people to die. He then apologizes — to the dead. The media yawns. No censure will be forthcoming. (Double standards? Well, that would assume there are standards in the House of Representatives.) I’m sure the president will speak out soon on the “coarsening” of the debate, right?

Daniel Henninger on Obama’s charm offensive with despots: “There is something slightly weird about all this activity. If the Obama team wanted to make a really significant break from past Bush policy, it would say it was not going to just talk with the world’s worst strongmen but would give equal, public status to their democratic opposition groups. Instead, the baddest actors in the world get face time with Barack Obama, but their struggling opposition gets invisibility.”

Good thing everyone ignored that silly idea about carving Iraq into three parts: “Across the political spectrum—Sunni and Shiite, secular and Islamic—party leaders have jettisoned explicit appeals to their traditional followers and are now scrambling to reach across ethnic or sectarian lines. In some cases, the shift is nothing less than extraordinary.”

del.icio.us

Google

Facebook

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 6:00 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.