The American Spectator

TUNING OUT
Re: Philip Klein’s Time to Get Out the Iron:

My experiences and other anecdotal evidence is that most people have essentially tuned out Obama and his ilk. He is for all appearances irrelevant to a majority of the public especially when he continues to tell “whoppers”about health care. The only groups that support him en mass are the hard left and, of course, the Black community with the exception of a very small number of informed conservative Blacks. This latter point is really sad since most Black Americans would be horrified if they really thought about Obama’s hard left agenda. But back to my main point, I was having lunch this past weekend by myself in a popular family style restaurant (the clientele is heavily seniors) and when my lunch was brought I somewhat reluctantly asked the waitress if she could please turn down the nearby TV monitor that had Obama delivering his very partisan Labor Day address. I had never been so bold before, usually not wanting to offend anyone, but I knew I could not enjoy my lunch and my copy of TAS if I had to listen to Obama in the background. Interestingly she did so and no one objected that I know of. But do we make a serious mistake by assuming Obama is irrelevant and go about our every day business while he and the hard left go about the dismantling of our freedoms? Probably, but otherwise we would have a great deal of indigestion.
— Jack Wheatley
Royal Oak, Michigan

Robert Gibbs wanted Fox to preempt “Dancing with the Stars” for this?
— Dan Martin
Pittsburgh

GOING TO WASTE
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.’s Is Pat Buchanan a Crank?:

Another superb (as always) commentary by RET. I gave up reading anything by Pat Buchanan ages ago, when he and some other so-called conservatives (i.e. Paul Craig Roberts) fell off the conservative truck and landed in a heap of liberal cow manure, which apparently saturated their pores and led to some sort of dementia. Perhaps, however, blogger Stephanie is correct in asserting that Mr. Buchanan has spent too much time hanging with the derelicts over at PMSNBC, thereby leading to some sort of intellectual mange.

It’s sad to see a good conservative mind go to waste.
— Jim Bjaloncik
Stow, Ohio

No, he just cannot connect with Jews because he believed through his religion as a Catholic, that the Jews killed Jesus. The Pope apologized to the Jews in 1994 for their terrible treatment of the Jews. Pat still has not got the message, that we all sinned and need a Savior, desperately.
— Arlene
St. Louis, Missouri

I wasn’t at the event, but have read PJB (as well as others) on this. It is true the Hitler had, as you say, “limited geopolitical aims,” especially when compared to the British Empire. (Or the Soviets)

I don’t however recall that PJB simply credits Churchill’s response to the complexities of the European situation as simply or merely excited overreactions.

It is all too clear that Hitler was a racist, but then so was Churchill. Read Churchill on Gandhi.

Was Hitler a lunatic? Read Ron Rosenbaum’s “Explaining Hitler.” He was incredibly evil and deluded, for sure.

He was a military incompetent, but nor more so than Churchill.

I don’t think Pat is a crank.
— Robert Christian
Philadelphia

NEW JERSEY-STYLE TALIBAN
Re: George H. Wittman’s Foreign Policy By Avoidance:

In his third paragraph Mr. Wittman refers to a Taliban-imposed “protection tax” on U.S. economic projects in Afghanistan, and says that such payoffs long preceded the Taliban and indeed are common throughout the less-developed world.