Why do women still gush over this creep ?

Newt Gingrich expresses himself on the stimulus proposal. Always clever and humorous Newt points out Congress is investigating the use of steroids in athletics but favors using steroids to boost the economy! (See 1 below.)

Morris puts his finger on just what Shelby Steele wrote about months ago and which I recently brought your attention regrading the fine line Obama has to walk. I repeat again what Steele said, ie, Obama must appeal to whites but cannot do so appearing to be too "black" in his appeal to Black voters.

The Clintons are playing the race card with Sleaze Bill telling their "Black friends" how loyal he has been as "America's First Black President." What sickening cleverness but one should never expect less from the Clintons, who will do whatever it takes win and why women still gush over this creep is mystifying! Perhaps a psychiatrist can explain because it borders on being sexual.(See 2 below.)

Mubarak makes a critical mistake by not expelling Gazans but perhaps he fears the consequences if he does. Both Olmert and Mubarak should learn their tolerance of Hamas will have far reaching and ominous consequences for both their nations.

Once again, by insisting on a Palestinian vote, which Hamas won hands down, the administration created a monster which has come back to haunt and GW's efforts to bring about a solution to the Palestinian -Israeli problem, which was always iffy, seems now to be doomed.(See 3 and 4 below.)

I have been premature in believing war between and Hams and Israel would have already begun but I continue to believe it is inevitable and if Israel had leadership that did not have its head in the sand no doubt Hamas would already be reeling. The article below suggests the U.N. is creating that which it professes it is seeking to prevent by always knowing the facts and disregarding them when it comes to Israel's right to defend itself.

Since Israel is always blamed for defending itself it should take the offense and tell the world and the U.N. to stick it! I know, easier said than done but eventually it will come to that. (See 5 below.)

Another take on Sleazy Bill by William Greider. He finds swarmyness! (See 6 below.)

Dick


1) A Washington Insider Economic Package That Is Too Small and Too Temporary

Republican staff advisers are developing an economic package within the timid boundaries allowed by the Washington establishment. The package they are working on is too small, too temporary and clearly inadequate for the scale of the economic problems we face.

To make matters worse, the Democrats who control Congress will begin demanding even less-useful and more-destructive economic proposals that will spend a lot more money with even less hope of helping the economy.

The Federal Reserve chairman will forget that his primary job is protecting the stability and strength of the dollar and will become a complicit political player in trying to develop an insider package that will only weaken the dollar still further. We saw evidence of this yesterday, when Chairman Bernanke and his colleagues reduced the Federal Reserve's federal funds rate three-quarters of a percentage point. As a result, the dollar dropped in global markets almost immediately.

In short, the normal patterns of Washington, D.C., are likely to lead to temporary, marginal tinkering when what America really needs is long-term, fundamental reform to protect the dollar, increase productivity and create jobs.

In 1955, Congress declared they would undertake a dramatic simplification of the Tax Code on behalf of small businesses. In the 53 years since that announcement, the tax code has grown a staggering 478% from 172,000 words to over 995,000 words.

We are witnessing the same destructive pattern that led to "stagflation" in the 1970s -- the economic disaster that ultimately led Gov. Ronald Reagan to win the presidency on the dual pledges of anti-inflationary monetary policy and a fiscal policy of cuts in non-defense spending, regulation and taxes in order to revive the economy.

This same destructive pattern led the first Bush Administration to break its "no new taxes pledge," which set the stage for the Democratic victory of 1992.

And it was this same pattern that led the Clinton Administration to adopt the largest tax increase in history in 1993 and set the stage for the Contract with America and the first Republican House majority in 40 years.

Why a Washington Insider Stimulus Package Is Doomed to Fail Politically

This pattern of Washington insider negotiating and posturing is doomed to fail politically because of the power of the world financial news system and because this gimmicky approach goes against the fundamental desires of the American people.

Just open the financial pages from yesterday: The world markets have already condemned the initial administration proposals.

If the stimulus package was designed to be a confidence builder, it is clearly failing.

On Monday, London fell 5.48%, Germany 7.16%, China 5.14%, Hong Kong 5.49% and India 7.41%. This was the world's investors' way of making clear they were not reassured.

Furthermore, to make the situation even more intense, the power of the markets is amplified by the global financial news system. Market reactions are transmitted instantly, 24 hours a day, by cable news and other news outlets.

I was on the new Fox Business Channel as a guest on Neil Cavuto's show Monday evening. By then, it was clear that the on-air analysts were joining the investors in condemning the stimulus package as inadequate and ineffective.

Americans Want Long-Term Solutions

The American people will ultimately reject the stimulus package, because it violates one of their deepest beliefs. Americans believe in long-term solutions, not short-term fixes. This Washington insider maneuvering is politics as usual at a time when the American people are crying out for a change of course.

In our American Solutions polling last summer, the American people told us by a margin of 92% to 5% that our goal should be to provide long-term solutions instead of short-term fixes. You can find this and other economic data in the Platform of the American People in Real Change and at AmericanSolutions.com.

Overwhelmingly, the American people told us that they are prepared to be told the truth and for large, fundamental changes.

Short-term fixes are going to be rejected by the American people, and the politicians who endorse them are going to find their reputations suffering as a result.

Why a Washington Insider Stimulus Package Will Fail Economically

The stimulus packages being discussed won't just fail politically, they'll also fail economically. The size of the challenge is much bigger than the size of the current solutions being offered by Washington.

Consider these economic indicators:

* Gold has been hitting record highs ($914.30 an ounce a week ago). Gold was up 32% in 2007.

* U.S. Treasury notes, historically the best store of currency value, have lost 20% compared to gold since August 2007.

* Silver has hit a 24-year high ($16.60 an ounce last week).

* Platinum has skyrocketed to $1,592 an ounce (and if platinum is a primary metal in the next generation of cars, the world's supply will run out in 15 years, according to some estimates).

* Oil hit $100 a barrel but has slid to about $90 a barrel on recession news. (A weak economy means declining oil prices, a strong economy means rising oil prices.)

Harbingers of Inflation

High commodity prices like these are usually harbingers of inflation.

The declining dollar has been a similar indicator of inflationary pressures coming.

* The producer price index was up 7.7% through November 2007. That is the biggest jump in 34 years.

* The consumer price index was up 4.2% through November 2007. That is the biggest jump in 17 years.

The Role of the Federal Reserve: To Protect the Value of the Dollar

In this setting, it is important for Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Fed to remember their primary mission: protecting the value of the dollar.

People want their government to keep the value of its currency. We won't save and invest if we think politicians are going to steal our earnings and savings by inflating the currency.

The Fed should focus its eye firmly on strengthening the dollar and driving inflation down to 2%.

If the world came to believe the Fed was serious about protecting the dollar, the price of oil would decline substantially, the price of gold would decline substantially, the world's capital flows would return to the United States and the economy would be inherently healthier.

Creating Jobs and Productivity While Stabilizing the Dollar

If the Federal Reserve should focus on creating a stable dollar, the President and Congress should focus on increasing productivity and creating jobs.

Our political leaders should concentrate on making the American worker more successful in competing with China, India, Japan and Europe. They should also ensure that long-term productivity gains in the United States result in real prosperity that would enable Americans to pay off their debts and increase their savings for their retirement years.

Recognizing the Reality of Democratic Control of Congress

Any economic plan has to start with the recognition that Democrats control Congress. That means they get to have a large say in a successful package.

The difficulty here is compounded by the fact that the Democrats have a lot less to lose by allowing nothing to happen, because they will blame any economic problems on President Bush and the Republicans.

The key is to give the Democrats substantial influence over half the economic growth package -- the half aimed at increasing consumer spending -- but insist that the President and Republicans control the other half of the package aimed at increasing productivity and creating jobs.

Give Democrats Control Over Half the Stimulus Package. . .

If Republicans were proposing consumer stimulus plans, an ideal change would be to offset the payroll tax for both individuals and employers. Almost nothing would increase take-home pay for working Americans as fast or enable businesses to hire more people.

A second good option would be a significant increase in the tax allowance for children. This would help working families and single working mothers and could have a very positive impact.

For their part, the Democrats will almost certainly want some kind of direct giveaway program of rebates or some other payment.

As long as the amount is capped at half of a very robust package (say $150 billion of a $300 billion package), it should be the price Republicans pay to get a productivity-increasing bill through a Democratic Congress.

Here's the bottom line trade-off: Republicans should offer relative freedom to the Democrats to design the consumer stimulus part of the bill but then insist on similar freedom to design the productivity increasing portions of the bill.

. . .With a Big 'If'

There is a big "if" involved in this approach.

The Republicans have to be prepared to play hardball. They have to stand firm for a powerful productivity- and growth-oriented component or be prepared to accept the failure of the package.

The Democrats will attempt to panic the Republicans into giving up all their principles just to get "something" passed quickly.

It is very important for the President and House and Senate Republicans to stand firm for a sophisticated package that would actually increase productivity.

The first key to productivity improvements is that they have to be permanent so people can rely on them.

A Bold Plan for Economic Growth

What America needs is deep, fundamental reform to make American businesses more competitive so American workers have better paying jobs with greater job security.

The change from the current situation to a powerfully competitive American future is a much bigger change than anyone in Washington is contemplating.

Here are a few proposals that would begin to move us in the right direction:

1. Adopt the Rangel proposal for a corporate income tax cut.

When even liberal Democrats such as Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) recognize that the United States is killing jobs at home by having the second-highest corporate income tax in the world, there is a possibility of getting something done. In Rangel's generally bad bill of massive tax increases there is a provision for a corporate income tax rate cut. Republicans should simply lift that section from his bill and propose it in his name.

2. Abolish or index the capital gains tax.

A plurality of Americans favor abolishing the capital gains tax (American Solutions polling found a margin of 49% to 41%). This number will go up as Americans look at the disastrous impact of the financial meltdown on their planned retirement funds and their children's college education funds.

Abolishing the capital gains tax would lead to an immediate jump in the value of the stock market, leading to an immediate jump in the value of every retiree's 401(k). More importantly, it would lead to a burst of new investments in the United States, creating a foundation for long-term economic growth.

If abolishing capital gains is politically impossible for Democrats (who tend to be anti-capital in between high-dollar fundraisers) to accept, then the fallback position should be to index the capital gains tax so inflation does not erode capital gains. As Richard Rahn has pointed out, this would have a big effect on increasing investment in America.

3. Allow 100% expensing of all investments in new equipment.

If American businesses could write off 100% of their new equipment within one year of its purchase, there would be a boom in equipping American workers with the best and most modern equipment so they can compete with any economy in the world.

These kinds of real, permanent changes would begin to make America more competitive and more productive. They will allow the dollar to increase in value as investors start to buy up dollars to invest in the low-tax U.S. economy. In turn, this will give the Fed more room to keep interest rates low. These changes would be a step toward permanent, long-term, improved economic health.

And Don't Forget About Scoring

It is essential to remember that anything good for the American economy will be scored badly by the bureaucrats at the Joint Tax Committee and the Office of Management and Budget. Both bureaucracies have a history of being anti-capitalist, anti-market and anti-growth in predicting how economic policy changes will effect economic growth and government revenue.

The answer, however, is simple.

Establish a margin of error equal to how wrong they were in scoring revenue from the last cycle of tax cuts. Then declare that anything within that margin of error is scored as acceptable.

The fact is that it is impossible to establish sound policy for economic growth with Socialist scoring. However, in the short run, it is impossible to change these two entrenched bureaucracies.

Therefore, the answer is simply to publish the degree to which the bureaucrats were wrong in the last two or three tax-cutting cycles and write the bill within that margin of historically provable inaccuracy.

Good News From Innovative Governors: Sanford Proposes an Optional Flat Tax

In the Platform of the American People, there is overwhelming support for an optional flat tax with a one page tax form. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) has picked up on this overwhelming desire for real change in how we pay taxes.

Here's what Gov. Sanford had to say about the optional flat tax in his State of the State address:

"A flat tax alternative that would allow someone the option of forgoing exemptions and instead pay a 3.4% flat tax in this state. We continue to believe finding ways to lower the marginal tax rate is vital to our economy, vital to competitiveness and in this case vital to the taxpayer's pocket. It is worth noting that a recent report from the Federal Reserve documented the connection between lower income tax rates and higher economic and employment growth. This is something we can do to better the economy of our state, and I'd thank Rep. Merrill for introducing a bill toward this end."

Louisiana's Jindal Starts With Accountability and Transparency

Newly elected Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), one of the brightest and most creative people in public life, began his governorship with an executive order making state spending transparent and ordering it to be posted on the Internet so every citizen could see how their tax money is being spent.

For a Louisiana governor, this was an enormous step toward reform.

Transparency in government spending is a growing movement among the states and, like so much of the innovation on the state level in America, it's an idea the President would do well to make his own.

Publishing all non-classified federal spending on the Internet would put the power to unearth fraud and abuse in the hands of the American people.

It would be a step toward real accountability in government.

In other words, it would be real change, just what we need in Washington right now.

2) How Clinton Will Win the Nomination by Losing S.C.
By Dick Morris

Hillary Clinton will undoubtedly lose the South Carolina primary as African-Americans line up to vote for Barack Obama. And that defeat will power her drive to the nomination.

The Clintons are encouraging the national media to disregard the whites who vote in South Carolina's Democratic primary and focus on the black turnout, which is expected to be quite large. They have transformed South Carolina into Washington, D.C. -- an all-black primary that tells us how the African-American vote is going to go.

By saying he will go door to door in black neighborhoods in South Carolina matching his civil rights record against Obama's, Bill Clinton emphasizes the pivotal role the black vote will play in the contest. And by openly matching his record on race with that of the black candidate, he invites more and more scrutiny focused on the race issue.

Of course, Clinton is going to lose that battle. Blacks in Nevada overwhelmingly backed Obama and will obviously do so again in South Carolina, no matter how loudly former President Clinton protests. So why is he making such a fuss over a contest he knows he's going to lose?

Precisely because he is going to lose it. If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama's ability to attract a bloc vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight. It's one thing for polls to show, as they now do, that Obama beats Hillary among African-Americans by better than 4-to-1 and Hillary carries whites by almost 2-to-1. But most people don't read the fine print on the polls. But if blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton.

Obama has done everything he possibly could to keep race out of this election. And the Clintons attracted national scorn when they tried to bring it back in by attempting to minimize the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in the civil rights movement. But here they have a way of appearing to seek the black vote, losing it, and getting their white backlash, all without any fingerprints showing. The more President Clinton begs black voters to back his wife, and the more they spurn her, the more the election becomes about race -- and Obama ultimately loses.

Because they have such plans for South Carolina, the Clintons were desperate to win in Nevada. They dared not lose two primaries in a row leading up to Florida. But now they can lose South Carolina with impunity, having won in Nevada.

But don't look for them to walk away from South Carolina. Their love needs to appear to have been unrequited by the black community for their rejection to seem so unfair that it triggers a white backlash. In this kind of ricochet politics, you have to lose openly and publicly in order to win the next round. And since the next round consists of all the important and big states, polarizing the contest into whites versus blacks will work just fine for Hillary.

Of course, this begs the question of how she will be able to attract blacks after beating Obama. Here the South Carolina strategy also serves its purpose. If she loses blacks and wins whites by attacking Obama, it will look dirty and underhanded to blacks. She'll develop a real problem in the minority community. But if she is seen as being rejected by minority voters in favor of Obama after going hat in hand to them and trying to out-civil rights Obama, blacks will even likely feel guilty about rejecting Hillary and will be more than willing to support her in the general election.

3)Mubarak says the 350,000 Gazan Palestinians who crossed the broken border fence to Sinai will not be expelled



They continued to stream across Thursday, Jan. 24, as Egyptian forces redeployed from the border south of the N. Sinai town of El Arish.

Senior military sources state the strategic feat achieved by Hamas Tuesday night, in capturing a section of Sinai from Egyptian forces, is irreversible. The blockade Israel continues to impose on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip - but for fuel and other necessities – is futile.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak reached his decision after tense crisis talks with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert Wednesday night.

By demolishing the 10-km concrete barrier dividing the Gaza Strip from Egyptian Sinai, Hamas, backed by a Palestinian horde surging across Wednesday, has broken out of the siege and acquired a new stronghold outside Israel’s military reach while their missiles and guns retain access to Israeli targets from the Gaza Strip. US and Israeli intelligence sources report that Hamas laid the ground for its coup well in advance and timed it deliberately for the opening Wednesday of the Palestinian National Congress in Damascus. This event was organized by Tehran and Damascus to counter the US-promoted Annapolis conference and discredit Mahmoud Abbas’ diplomatic track with Israel under the US aegis.

Tehran and Damascus brought to the congress some 900 Palestinian delegates of 17 radical Palestinian opposition groups and 300 “special guests” from across the Arab world. It was opened by hard-line Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal with a speech which glorified his Gazan brothers’ feat in breaking down the Gaza-Egyptian border as the greatest Palestinian achievement for years.

He declared that an “end to the occupation” in all parts of Palestine must take precedence over Palestinian statehood – a direct challenge to the Bush administration’s two-state thesis.

Rice and David Welch, assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, made a point of warning Mubarak that he must act expeditiously to restore border security because the entire Washington Palestinian strategy hinging on Abbas and the Annapolis declarations hangs in the balance.

But the Egyptian president replied that his main worry is not the Palestinian issue but concern that his own opposition, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, may adopt Hamas tactics and stir up trouble in his cities. Mubarak said he would leave the situation in northern Sinai as it is for the time being. In other words, his troops would not force the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who swarmed out of Gaza to return home.

Such an effort would be a tall order, anyway. According to information reaching Cairo, Hamas has instructed large numbers of Palestinians who fled Gaza to stay where they are. Their assignment is to create a bridge between Gaza and the 40,000 Palestinians living in North Sinai. This population ballooned fivefold on Jan. 23 in the space of a few hours.

Furthermore, the Palestinian department of Egypt’s security services is on high alert after learning that the 130,000 Palestinians living in communities in Cairo, Alexandria and the Suez Canal cities are preparing to help their Gazan brothers steal into Egypt.

4) ANALYSIS: Gaza border breach shows Israel that Hamas is in charge
By Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel


A few Israel Defense Forces Engineering Corps officers surely shed a tear yesterday while viewing the television reports from Rafah: The barrier built by the IDF with blood and sweat along the Philadelphi Route, on the Gaza Strip border with Egypt, was coming down.

It was, apparently, the final remnant of Israel's years of occupying the Strip. But Israel has better reasons to be worried by what happened yesterday. In destroying the wall separating the Palestinian and Egyptian sides of Rafah, Hamas chalked up a real coup. Not only did the organization demonstrate once again that it is a disciplined, determined entity, and an opponent that is exponentially more sophisticated than the Palestine Liberation Organization. It also took the sting out of the economic blockade plan devised by Israel's military establishment, an idea whose effectiveness was doubtful from the beginning but whose potential for international damage was not.

Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority are now forced to find a new joint border control arrangement, one that will probably depend on the good graces of Hamas. If the PA is indeed interested in taking responsibility for the border crossings, as Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has declared, it will have to negotiate with Hamas even though President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to avoid that at any cost. The other option - to leave the border untended - is even worse.

The Hamas action yesterday was anything but spontaneous. It was another stage in the campaign that began in Gaza's night of darkness on Sunday. As Gaza was plunged into widely televised blackness, Palestinian children armed with candles were brought out on a protest march and organized into prime-time demonstrations in support of the Egyptian and Jordanian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood.

On Tuesday, Hamas put together a violent demonstration that ended in a confrontation with Egyptian police officers at the border, and, as usual, broadcast live on Al-Jazeera. Apparently it was enough to make Egypt lose its appetite for confrontation.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of people burst through to the west. President Hosni Mubarak explained that he instructed his police officers not to block the hungry on their way to grocery stores in El-Arish and the Egyptian side of Rafah.

Mubarak also had to contend with domestic politics. The violent suppression of the Palestinian masses would have turned up the tension between him and the Muslim Brotherhood, or Al-Jazeera. More than a few Arab commentators now see the Qatar-based satellite channel as the superpower of the Arab world. In many cases its broadcasts clearly promote an Islamic agenda.

Explosions were set at 20 points along the border fence, clear evidence of a campaign that was planned and coordinated well in advance. Israeli intelligence officials will have to explain, to themselves and the country's leaders, whether and how the preparations took place without their knowledge - another Gaza goof, in the wake of the Hamas election victory in January 2006 and the rapid military drubbing it gave Fatah in the Strip last June.

Most of the Gazans who crossed into Egypt are expected to return home within a few days, after stocking up on staples and meeting with relatives they have not seen for years. Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces set up dozens of checkpoints to prevent the Gazans from spreading into other areas of Sinai.

5) Sowing war



Here's how UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe described the situation to the Security Council on Tuesday, as summarized on the UN Web site:

"The crisis in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel had escalated dramatically since 15 January, due to daily rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian residential areas by several militant groups from Gaza, and regular military attacks by the IDF on and into Gaza. There were also tight Israeli restrictions on crossings into Gaza to end rocket fire. IDF entered the Gaza Strip on 15 January and had been engaged in heavy battle by Hamas militants, including IDF air and tank operations. Hamas claimed responsibility for sniper and rocket attacks against Israel. Since then, more than 150 rocket and mortar attacks had been launched at Israel by militants, injuring 11 Israelis, and a sniper attack killed an Ecuadorian national on a kibbutz. Forty-two Palestinians had been killed and 117 injured by the IDF, which had launched eight ground incursions, 15 air strikes and 10 missiles this past week. Several Palestinian civilians had been killed in ground battles between IDF and militants, and in Israeli air strikes and targeted killing operations."

In other words, when the Security Council met to consider the situation in Gaza, it had the basic facts. Each country's representative knew a) Israel was responding to "daily rocket and mortar attacks on civilian residential areas," and b) Hamas "claimed responsibility" for at least some of these attacks, and must be held responsible for the rest. Furthermore, every ambassador representing a non-Muslim state had a similar reaction to that of the British ambassador, who said he "shared Israel's frustration and anger at continued rocket attacks and mortars... Israel had the right to defend itself."

Yet these same ambassadors joined their colleagues from Muslim states in condemning Israel for employing "collective punishment" against Palestinians in Gaza.

Much of this condemnation was based on a lie propagated by Hamas and repeated at the UN. The South African ambassador claimed, for example, "1.5 million people had been left without water, electricity and basic sewage" in Gaza. In fact, the supply of electricity to Gaza from the Israeli and Egyptian power grids (124 megawatts and 17 megawatts, respectively) has continued uninterrupted. This supply represents about 75 percent of Gaza's electricity needs. The remaining 25% is from a power plant in Gaza that is run by fuel supplied by Israel. Since only some of Gaza's fuel supply was cut by Israel, Hamas could have kept running that plant as well, but chose to shut it down as a propaganda stunt.

But the more fundamental problem is that the Security Council chose to meet not on January 15, in response to the major barrage of rockets attacks against Israeli civilians, but on January 22, in response to Hamas's staging of a "humanitarian crisis." The backwards sequencing of the international response serves to vitiate the supposedly balanced statements of the Western ambassadors. Hamas doesn't care about being condemned along with Israel, because it knows these condemnations are lip service. The timing says it all.

It is telling that the one country that could have prevented this "cycle of violence" - that is both Hamas's aggression and Israel's measures to defend itself - was not mentioned in the debate. That country was Egypt, which even had the temerity to join the chorus against what it called Israel's "brutal punitive measures."

The moment Hamas took over Gaza in June, Egypt could have tightly controlled its border and prevented tons of weaponry, including sophisticated rockets, from entering the Strip. It could have closed the revolving door for terrorists leaving for training and returning to join Hamas's increasingly dangerous army. It did not.

Now, as a result of its propaganda victory, Hamas has allowed itself to blow up the Egyptian border fence, while Egypt ignores its signed deals with Israel and does nothing to close or even monitor the border. Among the ordinary Palestinians streaming through to buy cheaper goods on the Egyptian side, we can be sure Hamas is bringing in more weapons, money and terrorists. By playing into Hamas's hands, failing to punish aggression, and refusing to hold Egypt responsible for stopping the weapons buildup, the UN is sowing the seeds of the next war and strengthening the forces it claims to wish to isolate. And it is doing this in the name of peace and humanitarian law - while producing the exact opposite.

6) Slick Willie Rides Again
By William Greider



The Clintons play dirty when they feel threatened. But we knew that, didn't we?

The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmly duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four more years. The thought makes me queasy.

The problem is not Hillary Clinton per se or the sharp exchanges and personal accusations that squeamish political reporters deplore. That's what politics is always about. Tough, even nasty conflict is educational, also entertaining. Politics ain't beanbag, as Mark Shields likes to say.

The one-two style of Clintons, however, is as informative as low-life street fighters. Mr. Bill punches Obama in the kidney and from the rear. When Obama whirls around to strike back, there stands Mrs. Clinton, looking like a prim Sunday School teacher and citing goody-goody lessons she learned from her 135 years in government.

I thought Obama did quite well in response, looked strong and stayed in character. But we shall see. He was compelled to play defense and to hope the audience recognized foul play. It's possible the Clintons won on points, simply by making Obama look like a confused young man who had to keep repeating what he had actually said.

The style is very familiar to official Washington, not just among the Clintons' partisan adversaries, but among their supporters. The man lied to his friends. All the time. They got used to it. They came expect it. I observe a good many old hands among the Senate Democrats are getting behind Obama. It would be good to know more about why they declined to make the more obvious choice of endorsing the power couple.

We are sure to see more of Mr. Bill's intrusions because the former president is pathological about preserving his own place in the spotlight. He can't stand it when he is not the story and, one way or another, he will make himself the story. I used to be sympathetic toward Mrs. Clinton on this point. No longer.

She is using her egocentric husband to do the low-road hits for her campaign. He is good at it--a real charmer if you've never seen his act before. Or is Mrs. Clinton's husband using her? People can ask that question without disturbing the principles of feminism.

Evidently, many of the mainstream party faithful want the Clinton team as their presidential nominee. It's their choice, of course. But does the rest of the country really deserve this?