New Orleans rebuilds from the bottom up.

Amir Taheri has some thoughts on what Hezbollah is up to in Lebanon.

Is it really possible that in what should be a banner year for the Democrats, John McCain could be the exception on a night when Republicans fall left and right? I think so, and Bill Kristol agrees. There are a lot of reasons why that might be so, and Kristol points out some of them, including the fact that from 1968 to 1992 the Democrats pretty much ran the show in Congress, yet GOP candidates for President won 5 out of the 7 elections during that period. Americans prefer the "mommy" party for domestic issues, and the "daddy" party for national security and foreign policy issues.

Another sign of trouble for Obama is in this piece in The New York Times about the reaction of some women to the fact that Hillary Clinton is probably not going to be President.

Some even accuse Mr. Obama of chauvinism, pointing to the time he called Mrs. Clinton “likeable enough” as evidence of dismissiveness. Nancy Wait, 55, a social worker in Columbia City, Ind., said Mr. Obama was far less qualified than Mrs. Clinton and described as condescending his recent assurances that Mrs. Clinton should stay in the race as long as she liked. Ms. Wait said she would “absolutely, positively not” vote for him come fall.

Ms. Ferraro, who clashed with the Obama campaign about whether she made a racially offensive remark, said she might not either. “I think Obama was terribly sexist,” she said.

Cynthia Ruccia, 55, a sales director for Mary Kay cosmetics in Columbus, Ohio, is organizing a group, Clinton Supporters Count Too, of mostly women in swing states who plan to campaign against Mr. Obama in November. “We, the most loyal constituency, are being told to sit down, shut up and get to the back of the bus,” she said.

Read the whole thing.

Another area of difficulty for Obama could be in the debate about foreign policy. Bring it on, says former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

At first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.

The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous.

Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.

Like all human activity, negotiation has costs and benefits. If only benefits were involved, then it would be hard to quarrel with the "what can we lose?" mantra one hears so often. In fact, the costs and potential downsides are real, and not to be ignored.

Read the whole thing.