The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued II)

In my last commentary entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued)," which I urge the reader to re-read, as well as the start of this analysis entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward" I concluded with a quote from the Center for Policy Research on the Ryan budget and the James B. Stewart article defending it:

We have people who want to be part of the inside Washington conversation who praise the budget's courage and integrity. Then we have people who believe in arithmetic who call it what it is: a piece of trash. By the way, Paul Ryan is a very nice guy.

Then again we have another so-called New York Times “centrist” columnist, David Brooks, whose many fulminations have long ago turned me off. I gave up on him many years ago when he advocated what he called a “flat/fair tax” which to me was, and is, an oxymoron. By definition, for the rich and the poor to pay the same tax can never be fair, though I have since then come to wonder whether our present system, isn’t even worse, with the lower earners paying a higher % of their income than the rich.

In any case here is Brooks' “centrist” take on the Ryan plan. He admits:

The Ryan budget would cut too deeply into discretionary spending. This could lead to self-destructive cuts in scientific research, health care for poor kids and programs that boost social mobility. Moreover, the Ryan tax ideas are too regressive. They make tax cuts for the rich explicit while they hide any painful loophole closings that might hurt Republican donors.

But then having said that, he gets to what really upsets him, and it isn’t the outrages of the Ryan plan. Instead he rips into the President for criticizing its (The Ryan Plan’s) “real deficit-reducing accomplishments” (My careful reading of the plan does not reveal any such accomplishments unless you count the unspecified cuts in expenditures, and even then there is not one iota of an increase in revenue) as “trickle-down, … social Darwinists.” To be sure that is strong language, but that hardly makes it inappropriate, for a document that devastates our social safety net and severely cuts taxes for the rich. Mr. Brooks takes particular exception to the term “Social Darwinist” describing it as, as “a 19th-century philosophy that held, in part, that Aryans and Northern Europeans are racially superior to brown and Mediterranean peoples.” That may be the way it was once used, but Brooks should, and undoubtedly does know, that its meaning in 20^th century America is as The Atlantic describes it:  

“a term in Richard Hofstadter's 1944 book ‘Social Darwinism in American Thought’ which correctly describes it as a ‘phase in the history of conservative thought’ where ‘nature would provide that the best competitors in a competitive situation would win, and that this process would lead to continuing improvement.”

As we can see Brooks’ attack on the President is ad homonym and without foundation. But that is the way of the so-called middle.

But Mr. Brooks is such a symbol of this so-called middle (I call it a phony middle) that I have to dwell a little longer on Brooks’ writing. As early as June 13, 2011 in an article headed “Pundit Under Protest” he writes, as is his wont, with such an evenness, without regard to facts, as to make the article pathetic. Like any politician without principle, only worse, he knows that his audience likes to hear that there is no difference between the parties. He tries to oblige. He starts out by identifying the malaise that has gripped the country. He writes:

The number of business start-ups per capita has been falling steadily for the past three decades. Workers’ share of national income has been declining since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working class — those without a college degree — is being decimated, economically and socially. [Emphasis added]

           

Mr. Brooks states a crucial fact, without focusing on a crucial date: 1983. What happened in 1983? Well nothing in particular, except that it was the second year of the Administration of Ronald Reagan, when the country was set upon a dramatic new course, with the mantra being from then on: “ Government is not the Solution – Government is the Problem” and for the next 38 years, except for first two years of the Clinton Administration, that was the guiding principle of our government. It does not follow, that these polices were the cause of the condition that Brooks describes, but one would think that a discussion of that possibility might have been in order. But never mind that. Let’s see what else he says.

Here is what he says about the Republican agenda:

The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefying boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible… Republican politicians don’t design policies to meet specific needs, or even to help their own working-class voters. They use policies as signaling devices — as ways to reassure the base that they are 100 percent orthodox and rigidly loyal. Republicans have taken a pragmatic policy proposal from 1980 and sanctified it as their core purity test for 2012.

Well so far so good! But of course, being Brooks there is always, “On the other hand.” So here is what he says about Democrats.

…they offer practically nothing. They acknowledge huge problems like wage stagnation and then offer... light rail! Solar panels!... They still have these grand spending ideas, but there is no longer any money to pay for them and there won’t be for decades. Democrats dream New Deal dreams, propose nothing and try to win elections by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare. (Emphasis added)

Boy, what an indictment. But is it true? It may be true of some of the base, but it is not true of the Obama Administration and it is not true of the Democratic Party’s program. It is a contrived caricature. Let us take Medicare. The President proposed and Congressional Democrats passed over almost unanimous Republican opposition $132 billion worth of cuts from Medicare Advantage over 10 years, for which Republicans have been denouncing them as having taking money out of Medicare, if one can believes the hypocrisy. (I am not here going to discuss the merits or lack thereof here – but cite it simply to belie Brooks.)

In addition, months before Brooks falsely alleged that Democrats were unwilling to touch Medicare, in March of 2012 Obama offered as part of a deficit reduction deal with Speaker Boehner, just that, or as the New York Times reported:

The White House agreed to cut at least $250 billion from Medicare in the next 10 years and another $800 billion in the decade after that, in part by raising the eligibility age. The administration had endorsed another $110 billion or so in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs, with $250 billion more in the second decade.

The offered deal included revenue enhancements, and fell apart when Boehner could not sell that part to his Tea Party-dominated Republican House caucus.

But how can Brooks, say, (with a straight face) “by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare.” The answer can only be that Brooks is no more concerned with facts than the Republicans who he is always defending, or at least falsely equating with a President and a party that is actually trying to do something.

As for Brooks’ assertion that “…they offer practically nothing,” “'Let's look at the record” in the immortal words of Al Smith: Mr. Brooks does not have to look at what has been proposed, just at what has been achieved, which because of Republican obstructionism is much less than what has been proposed. See the accomplishments as of November 25, 2009 here.

More has been accomplished since then, but of course upon the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Democrats and the President lost their 60-vote majority in the Senate. With a unanimous Republican determination that nothing will pass with less than 60 votes – which means a vote of 59 in favor, 41 against, or even 35 against, defeats a bill, not much more can be accomplished, and with Republicans capturing the House, gridlock is the order of the day. But here again the suggestion that both parties are at fault for not being willing to compromise, belies the facts. Even tax cuts proposed by the Administration, are blocked, even though the Republican mantra is that tax cuts are always good, but I guess they mean only for the rich.

But Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times, isn’t much better. He thinks that the solution to all our problems is a third party. See my discussion entitled "The Media And Their Columnists."

We will never solve any problems if we constantly seek a false equivalency between the parties, or seek magic from outside them. Let the facts take us where they may, but let us not indulge in a false delusion in an effort not to have to choose. That leaves as either not voting, or voting on the basis of Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, or throwing our vote away on a third party.

But before I close this subject I must examine one more column by Brooks. It is dated April 16, 2012 and is entitled “The White House Argument.” I suggest the reader examine it before my next post. It is one of Brooks’ best jobs yet at sophism. But like all his others, it does far better at obfuscation than at clarification.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued)

In my last post "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward" I concluded with: “Next time I will focus on the so-called Ryan budget, which isn’t really a budget, and discuss how the so called Middle, in the face of this Rightward drift, or is it a Rightward dash, makes excuses and drifts further and further right in an effort to stay in the new Middle."

So first the Ryan budget: Most of the publicity has been given to what the Ryan outline for a budget (his plan) would do to Medicare, but the media has given the impression that it would leave Social Security alone, save for raising the retirement age. That would be nice, but it isn’t so. First Ryan and many of his allies want us to believe that there is no trust fund, that all the money we have paid and are paying in Social Security payroll taxes have already been stolen; that they are no more than an additional tax for the general treasury. That just because the money has been invested in Treasury IOUs backed by the full faith and credit of the US, that it is not a debt that has to be honored. See Charles Krauthammer’s delusional rationality for this here and all the other Right Wing blogs that you can find by Googling “Social Security lockbox.”

But the lockbox exists (it is usually referred to as the trust fund) and will continue to exist, unless and until Ryan, (and Romney who has endorsed the Ryan plan) and their friends manage to get legislation through Congress that would indeed steal it. The only non-partisan source for this information is the Social Security Administration, who on their website explain the trust fund, how it is invested and how long it will last. In a PDF document which you can find here (highlighted at page three) the Social Securities Administration sets forth that the trust fund will be adequate for full payments till 2027, but the Disability insurance fund would have to reduce payments as early as four years from now. (Social Security by the way is not just for seniors.)

I have been urging some adjustments now because 2027 is not that far away, and the sooner we act the smaller the adjustments that would have to be made, and we need to assure the young that the Social Security taxes they are paying will not be stolen from them in a system that will not exist when they come of age.

However, according to the Ryan/Romney plan there is no trust fund, meaning they plan to divert it toward wiping out the deficit, rather than reducing the deficit with other cuts, (there are many that are in fact desirable) or (God forbid) taxes on the well off. According to the Huffington Post, Ryan/Romney creates an unprecedented new fast-track procedure to ram through Social Security benefit cuts. To quote from the Post’s article:

                       

Under Ryan's plan, any year Social Security is not in 75-year balance, the president and Congress would have to legislate changes that bring it to solvency through an "expedited process."            

In effect, Ryan would free up Social Security for fast-track cuts by turning it into a regular line budget item. Since Social Security is not part of the general budget, has its own revenue stream, and is forbidden by law from borrowing, it has always been dealt with separately from the rest of the budget. In fact, Ryan had to create a new fast-track process to trigger cuts for Social Security alone, because by law, it is excluded from fast-track reconciliation procedures for the general budget.  

Further, projections of Social Security's solvency change every year, which means that Ryan's plan could force big changes to Social Security based on very short-term variations in the program's finances.

The Ryan “budget”, as endorsed by Romney, then takes the Bowles-Simpson Plan, (there really is no such plan, since the necessary votes for a plan to be put forth were not forthcoming) - and which has not been given support by any member of Congress, and cherry-picks it. He proposes to enact the cuts in the plan, without enacting the revenue enhancements, and he goes far beyond the Bowels-Simpson plans proposals. In fact, by the time he is through Bowels-Simpson is no longer recognizable.

The proposals of the Bowels-Simpson plan have never been fully vetted, but the Ryan plan simply cherry picks them, and proposes benefit cuts over and above the savings that would result from raising the retirement age to 69, which I support as necessary. Incredibly, according to the Huffington Post it cuts benefits for 60% of "Very Low" earners, those with average annual earnings of $10,771 (for graph illustrations see here), reduces benefits for all by changing the cost of living formula, which would take a bigger and bigger bite out of the small benefit now given by Social Security each year, even as fewer and fewer retirees have the benefit of an employers pension, and erodes the link between earnings and benefits.

As for the Ryan/Romney plan on Medicare, which has gotten far more publicity, it would simple do away with the program and substitute for it a voucher system that would do no more than provide a small subsidy toward buying private insurance.

To put it simply and bluntly, the proposals in the Ryan plan are as far Right as could be imagined on the benefit side, and on the revenue side propose a drastic cut in tax rates, which is set forth in detail, and which are supposed to be made up by reductions in unspecified tax expenditures. Why unspecified? I suggest because they are like the bird in the bush. They are not serious, yet the media and the pundits evaluate this proposed “budget” as though the unspecified cuts in tax expenditures were real.

So one would think that the so-called Middle would denounce this document as a fraud and as a Trojan horse for the most Right Wing destruction of our safety net and our most basic regulatory system for the safety of our air, water, pharmaceuticals, etc. But what have they been saying?

Well, let us look at James B. Stewart writing in the New York Times with the title “…Ryan Plan, It’s a Place to Start.” Can anybody who fully and fairly analyses the Ryan/Romney plan truly argue that it is a place to start. Has Mr. Stewart bothered to read the proposals rather than its propagandistic claims? 

In endorsing it he quotes this claim:

The plan stands on two pillars: tax reform and reducing the long-term deficit by reining in entitlement spending… it contends that “the social safety net is failing society’s most vulnerable citizens” and is “poised to unravel in the event of a spending-driven debt crisis”. The tax code, it goes on, “has become a broken maze of complexity and political favoritism; it is overgrown with special-interest loopholes and characterized by high rates, both of which stifle economic growth and job creation.”

And then goes on to say:

“Does anyone, Democrat or Republican, seriously disagree?

Well, No! But what has that to do with the actual proposals in the Ryan plan as outlined above. Mr. Stewart goes on to say that Ryan is a nice guy and if the plan is bad, it is because he has no choice given the stand of his colleagues. So because Ryan is a nice guy, (whatever that means) we should embrace an outrageous plan on the assumption that he doesn’t really mean it. Duh!

Mr. Stewart goes on to say: “The question is what would happen to the big break that the wealthy now get — the lower rate on capital gains.” Yes, that is indeed the question! What is there that makes this “plan” (more accurate than “budget”) appealing, if so basic a question is not answered. All Mr. Stewart can offer is that the Club for Growth has criticized it –so it must have merit.

Fortunately an article that appeared on the website of the Center for Policy Research exposes the Stewart article for what it is. In a short article it demolishes the Stewart contentions and concludes rightly:

We have people who want to be part of the inside Washington conversation who praise the budget's courage and integrity. Then we have people who believe in arithmetic who call it what it is: a piece of trash. By the way, Paul Ryan is a very nice guy.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward

Let us suppose we were watching a sporting event and the referees, or the umpires, depending on the sport, called far more fouls on one team then on the other. Very likely we would conclude that the team that had the most fouls called on it was violating the rules more frequently. Now let us suppose that the team that kept violating the rules started complaining that the referees were unfair and that they ought to call an equal number of fouls on both teams, and the referees complied. Would anybody think that was a good thing? Now let us suppose that the team that that had been committing the most fouls wasn’t satisfied with the evenness of foul calls regardless of actual behavior, then called for the abolition of all rules, and people wanting to seek a middle ground started saying, well lets get rid of half of them, would that be a good thing? But that is exactly what is happening.

The media, which I have criticized again and again, ought to be fearless, but they are craven. They are always seeking to call an equal number of fouls on the two political parties regardless of actual behavior.

Everything in the media has become one side says and the other says. What about facts? The media has abandoned its role as the ultimate fact finder. Thus evolution has been an established fact for many decades, but because one of our major parties has denied it, the media reports it as though it were a partisan issue.

Man-made global warming is an established scientific fact, with more than 90% of climatologists agreeing with this finding, but out of fear from the Republican deniers, the word “global warming” is rarely mentioned in our media and a so-called scientific TV channel, The Discovery Channel, runs a series on Climate Change, without ever mentioning its established causes.

If one of our parties decided that the earth was flat, or that the sun moves around the earth, these established facts, would, in the treatment by our media, become, “Republicans say…and Democrats say…” That makes our media no better than my hypothetical referees. John Huntsman, may be a good Republican in so far as he support its regressive approach to taxes and the safety net, but he says: “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming” and warns against his party becoming the “anti-science party”.

But the question is how has the Republican Party’s Rightward drift moved the Middle so far Right.

If we start with Reagan we find that while his rhetoric laid the groundwork for the present rightward drift, his actual policies were moderate by comparison. Thus while present Republican orthodoxy is no increase in taxes or revenue to close the huge budget deficit, Reagan, when faced with a growing deficit introduced TEFRA, which is described by the Right Wing blog The Free Market as “the largest tax increase in American history” and his supply-side economic plan was described by his Vice President, George H.W. Bush as “Voodoo Economics." It was not until the Presidency of George W. Bush that the groundwork was laid for actually destroying all that had been accomplished by both Republican and Democratic Administrations since FDR, and under the guidance of V-P Cheney the plan was set in motion.

Bush tried to abolish Social Security and substitute for it “individual investment accounts," but that was met with so much opposition across the political spectrum that it was soon abandoned. But it is not opposed by the Tea Party, which is now synonymous with the Republican Party.

Instead a plan was put into action that called for creating a large deficit, taking the country from the surplus that was inherited from the Democratic Clinton Administration of  $236 billion and a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion, and turned it into a $1.3 trillion deficit and a projected 10-year shortfall of $8 trillion, while at the same time leaving the country in the worst economic downturn since the great depression of 1929.

(I believe that turning a huge surplus into a huge deficit was part of the plan. The recession was not, and Bush should not be tasked with the deficit from the TARP, because given the threat of a meltdown of the financial system, this step was essential, as was the rescue of the auto industry, and the stimulus, which had the almost immediate effect of ending the economic recession.)           

In the last year of Republican dominance (2008) the US lost 2.6 million jobs. Almost an equal number were lost in the first year of the Obama Administration, but the difference can be seen from this graph: 

I urge the reader to access and examine in enlarged size. During 2008, the last year of Republican control, the trend was constantly downward, going from minute job creation in the first two month, to a constant decline, with only two month bucking the trend slightly. After President Obama took office, and before he could take any action on job creation, the job losses remained stagnant at over 800 thousand a month. At the beginning of February 2009, the President signed the Recovery Act, (also known as the stimulus, which has been denounced as ineffective, causing the public to believe this to be true) and for the next two month job creation continued to tank, while the stimulus worked itself into the economy. But the following month the decline went from 800,000 jobs lost to 300,000 jobs lost. The following month there is a set back causing the job losses to increase by just under 100,000, and then there is a steady decline in jobs lost, until beginning in 2010 there is job creation in every single month through 2011 and continuing into 2012, but according to US News & World Report, the total job creation would be much greater, but for the constant decline of public sector jobs, e.g. in June of 2011 a disappointing 18,000  total jobs were added. But actually 57,000 private sector jobs were created, offset by the loss of 39,000 public sector jobs. 464,000 public services employees have found themselves jobless since local government employment peaked in September 2008 under the Republican Bush Administration.

Republicans would argue that what happens in the public sector is irrelevant, since in their view the more public sector jobs are eliminated the better. But I would suggest that the people who need jobs, care little whether it is a public or a private sector job, and as for the economy, every job in whatever sector adds to consumer purchasing power, the engine that ultimately drives the economy, or at least 70% of it. Certainly, wasteful jobs in the public sector (or for that matter in the private sector) are never desirable, but all statistics show that the jobs lost are not patronage jobs, but rather teachers, firemen, policemen, and other public servants providing vital services to their communities. Why are they being laid off in such large numbers? The answer is mostly the necessity of falling off revenues due to the recession, but partly due to political fanaticism, which seems to believe government and all its employees are ipso fact bad.

Nothing can be done about the political fanaticism, but as for budgetary constraints this could have been avoided if the price for support of the stimulus by Republican Senators Snowe (ME), Collins (ME) and Specter (PA) were not the elimination from the bill of roughly $40 billion in aid to states. But for that price, which had to be paid, total job creation would now be much greater, resulting in more purchasing power, and a more robust recovery. But even moderate Republicans, and not many are left, are, after all, Republicans, and if they are to cooperate, they must have their pound of flesh. See here.

But I digress!!!

As I have said many times before in my posts, it is not about the deficit. That is a phony stalking horse. Republican budgets, including the latest Ryan budget, do not lead to a balanced budget. The purpose of having created, (and I am convinced it was deliberate), a large budget deficit, was because they were hoping to use it as a cudgel to achieve what they always wanted to achieve, the abolition not only of the entitlements, but of all federal programs other than defense. This would include ending financial support to women’s health programs, abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency, formed in the Republican Nixon Administration to protect our health from the contaminants in the air that we breathe and water that we drink, to keep our food and our children’s toys safe, to make sure our drugs are efficacious and safe, and that we not return to the days when snake oil was the order of the day, etc. The list is far too long to enumerate here.

They claim that they only want to push these functions to the states, but anyone who follows state politics knows that the industrial interests that want carte blanch to run rough shot over consumers, find it much easier to do so at the state level, where far fewer people vote, where media coverage is much less intensive, and where as a result, their lobbying efforts are even more effective than they are at the federal level.

Even as I write this the Republican Party continues to drift further rightward, as Senator Lugar, who was rated by the very Right Wing Club for Growth in 2006  as having voted according to their dictates 52% of the time, and under pressure moved rightward so that in 2007 it was 57%, in 2009 it was 76% and 2011 it was 80%, goes down to defeat in the Republican primary.

No wonder Susan Collins went from an approval voting record in 2008 of 30%  to one in 2009 of 60% though she has since gotten some backbone, voting 51% and 44% in 2010 and 2011 respectively, still much more Right-wing than in 2009, and her colleague from Maine Olympia Snowe, after having gone from an approval rating from the Club for Growth of 12% in 2008  went to an approval rating of 55% in 2011, before being unwilling to give up even more of her independence, retired.

Next time I will focus on the so-called Ryan budget, which isn’t really a budget, and discuss how the so called Middle, in the face of this Rightward drift, or is it a Rightward dash, makes excuses and drifts further and further right in an effort to stay in the new Middle.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Mystery of the Blind Chinese Lawyer

While the media frequently loves a mystery it appears to have been blind to this one.

If the facts here do not constitute a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes, it is difficult to imagine a better one.

Let us examine the facts: A blind self-taught lawyer named Chen Guangcheng is placed under house arrest by the Chinese authorities. According to reports the house arrest is severe. According to Human Rights Watch:

Since July 2011, increasing numbers of Chinese citizens have attempted to break the unlawful blockade around Chen’s home in order to visit him and express support. These activists encounter obstruction by police and plainclothes thugs who appear to operate at official behest and who unlawfully detain them and prevent them from reaching Chen’s hometown in Dongshigu, Linyi County of Shandong Province. Some activists have been beaten and robbed in their attempts to reach Chen’s village. Chen and Yuan were reportedly brutally beaten for four hours by the local mayor and other officials, in the presence of their daughter.  

Chen said that guards had, during the period of confinement, broken one of his wife’s bones and physically assaulted his elderly mother on her most recent birthday.

The reader should note that the guards prevented activist supporting Chen from reaching him. According to Amnesty International:

Visitors attempting to see Chen while under house arrest told media they were beaten, robbed of their possessions, and driven away from the village with bags over their heads in one famous attempt to visit the blind activist, Batman actor Christian Bale and a CNN television crew accompanying him were roughed up by a local guard.

According to the Sun Sentinel of South Florida:

The yard appeared enclosed with a high wall, a feature of homes typical of the rural areas of northern China. Outside the Chen home is a dusty, quiet village of one-story brick and concrete houses surrounded by farmland.

Other reports mentioned barbed wire.

Yet wonder of wonders, suddenly activists who had not been able to get to Chen before were able to scale the wall, get through the barbed wire, elude the guards and get to him, at the very moment that a high level US State Department delegation was on the way to Beijing.

Not only get to him, but lead this blind man, past the guards without being seen, get him over a wall, and make it to Beijing and the American Embassy. All without his family accompanying him, and without any concern that retribution would be visited upon them.

He then tells the embassy personnel that he wants them to negotiate for his release from house arrest, to be allowed to have medical treatment, to be reunited with his family in Beijing and then to be allowed to study at a Chinese university. American diplomats get the Chinese to agree to all the terms and Chen leaves the Embassy and goes to a hospital where he is reunited with his family.

END OF STORY, or at least one would have thought so. An American diplomatic triumph!!!

Suddenly Chen claims to have discovered that his family and those who helped him were beaten after his escape. Is that not what he should have, and probably did anticipate? The Chinese now, ostensively, bar American diplomats from seeing him in the hospital, but allow him to have a cell phone. ARE THE CHINESE STUPID OR WHAT ARE THEY UP TO?

Chen then announces that upon his discovery that his family has been abused (surprise, surprise), asks to be allowed to go to the US with his family, starts phoning all over the world with his cell phone and the Chinese do not interfere. He calls the Associated Press, he calls American officials at the Embassy and he telephones Chris Smith (R-N.J), the chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, to examine Chen Guangcheng’s quandary. See here. Lo and behold Chris Smith knows that Chen is going to call and has a Chinese interpreter and cameras standing by.

STRANGE, STRANGE, but the American media saw nothing strange. Just another example of the strange behavior of the American media.

Of course there is an immediate attempt to make the incident into an American political football, as Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, says it would be a “dark day for freedom’’ if press reports were borne out that U.S. officials had persuaded Mr. Chen to leave his sanctuary in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, when all indications were that they had simply been following his wishes. Things, however, don't turn out so well for Romney. According to the Wall Street Journal: “Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, a mega-church, said in an interview Friday:"

The way the administration has handled this thus far is encouraging, especially given the positive response of the Chinese people and the Chinese government to date. But ultimately, the proof of their competency will be in the final result. He said it wasn’t the time to criticize administration officials working toward a solution. 

Right now, as Christians, we ought to be praying for Secretary (Hillary) Clinton and the Obama administration instead of taking cheap shots for partisan gain,’’ the pastor said. 

Asked about Mr. Romney’s statements, he added: “I don’t think now is the time to engage in political partisanship.

But Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), said he will formally request a congressional review of all cable traffic, classified or otherwise, that surrounded the negotiations for Chen to leave the embassy. 

Now that it appears to have been agreed that Chen and his family are to come to the US with the consent of all concerned, unless Chen changes his mind again. It is to be hoped that the partisanship will end – BUT THE MYSTERY REMAINS.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.