David Frum's Blog, page 189

Post-Convention Hangover: America Isn't Working

Optimist: The economy created 92,000 jobs in August (on first estimate) - that's better than nothing.

Obama Brings His B Game

In his acceptance speech, Mitt Romney answered two questions: am I human? Am I scary?

A Medicaid Election Doesn't Favor The Right

Josh Barro agrees with David's Medicaid observation, and notes how brutal a weapon Medicaid can be for Democrats in this election.

Iran: Gay Rights Are A Jewish Plot

From the nation whose leader denies the Holocaust, a stunning example of homophobic anti-Semitism.

America's Allies In Iraq Abandoned By Obama

Tonight, President Obama will undoubtedly remind Americans he got us out of Iraq. What he probably won't mention is what that means for Iraqis who helped America achieve stability in the troubled state. Eli Lake reports that Sheikh Ahmad Abu-Risha, a major figure in helping beat back the Al-Qaeda based insurgency in western Iraq, "misses" the president who assured him America would fulfill its promises.

Where's Simon Cowell When You Need Him?

Just outside the MSNBC Cafe yesterday, I passed a gaggle of demonstrators. They were making some point about the Democrats not being left-wing enough, and the way they had made their point was by ... dressing up in high-school theater costumes and singing (badly) a Broadway style musical number with ironic lyrics about "pragmatism." (Their voices warbled over the word.) I know this has become a kind of thing among a subset of protesters, but really: Broadway show tunes seem a strang...

Charlotte Putting Tampa To Shame

This point by David Corn about the differences between the Tampa and Charlotte vibe seems entirely correct to me.

Obama "committed" on Jerusalem? Riiiiight.

On CNN Starting Point this morning, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the viewing audience that the omission of mention of Jerusalem as Israel's capital from the 2012 Democratic platform was a mere glitch, an oversight. The omission, she continued, was corrected at the behest of President Obama to reflect his personal fierce commitment to the unity of the city within Israel.

The Housing Bubble? Clinton Helped Build That

As Bill Clinton collects his accolades, let's recall: the key decisions that inflated the housing bubble of the 2000s - and that laid waste to the US economy in 2008 -- were taken under Bill Clinton's administration: the decision to leave derivative trading unregulated, the decision to allow deposit-taking institutions to engage in proprietary trading, the pressure on banks to relax mortgage lending standards, the decision to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to grow enormously large...

Clinton Socks GOP In Its Glass Jaw

In the arena in Charlotte, former president Clinton detonated the H-bomb of the 2012 campaign: the Medicaid issue.