"Music Man" Hits Sour Notes,Change Not Always Pleasant!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any "earmark" request made by Sen. Obama and I am sure the abuses of other Senators and Congress(persons)is more egregious. What it does demonstrate is a continuing waste of money, how government has become a cow with endless udders and we, the tax payers, condone this obscene foolishness. Politicians are buying their return to office with tax revenue thus making it harder,if not impossible, for competitive races and voting our Representative and Senators out of office because money speaks - and loudly. Yes indeed, we have the best government money can buy.

Now that the "Music Man" is hitting sour notes, I suspect we will begin to witness a cascade of revelations. I wrote earlier this could be the unraveling of his surge for the presidency. Perhaps Obama will now begin to experience that experience does count and change is not always pleasant.

I just concluded David Frum's "Comeback." The book is about his views of how Conservatism can rise again. I want to briefly review his concluding chapter because I believe it is both relevant and insightful.

Frum discusses, in some detail, how GW's administration came to trash the intellectual basis of Conservative thinking. Though Conservatives were outnumbered and dominated by Liberalism for decades, they eventually won the idea battle. Why? Because Conservatives out-researched, out thought, out argued and out-smarted their opponents. Lamentably, "Compassionate Conservatism" overtook thoughtful and thought provoking Conservatism and left in its place grand slogans, petty words divorced from reality - smoke and mirrors.

Fund argues that when you argue stupid, you campaign stupid and when you campaign stupid, you win stupid and when you win stupid, you govern stupid. Not so stupid an argument!

Frum cites a number of Conservatives who drew people to their cause such as Milton Friedman, who offered better answers on inflation than James Tobin, George Stigler, who described the modern economy better than John Galbraith, James Wilson, whose ideas about controlling crime proved better than the Kerner Commission's, Richard Pipes, who explained Russian behavior better than Jerry Hough, Tom Sowell's route to racial reconciliation bested that of Jesse Jackson's and finally William Buckley, who outwitted and out argued Arthur Schlesinger.

Successful politics delivers results and President Clinton and Bob Rubin learned that Liberalism delivers results when it is rooted in and borrows from the best of Conservatism. What concerns Frum, is why so many bright people are drawn to Liberalism's destructive solutions. He acknowledges they are enthused, a characteristic often lacking among Conservatives. My response to Frum, is that most Conservatives do not enjoy the dirtiness of politics. They do not want to be around observing how sausage is made. They are more laissez-faire both in their political views as well as their desire to get involved.

I am often asked why I never got involved in politics and my response is always twofold:

a) I could not live a life of compromising my values and being part of watching so many others do so in perhaps an honest but often mistaken belief they were serving the masses and I do not mean to impugn the motives of so many decent and sincere people who enter politics. I also realize life is often a compromise. I just don't want to make my living from it, and

b) I do not believe my ideas are superior and/or suitable for others and I am not willing to play G-d with their future. I seek no determinant control over the life of another being. I care not about power and am repulsed by those who seek it for its own rewards.

So I continue to write my memos, get what is on my chest off of it and when my knee heals I will get back to playing some tennis. I did some interesting things along the way, met some interesting people as well but those days of peripheral political involvement are past. I will always treasure the opportunity to be a little involved and I admit it can be enticing. Drinking Potomac water can be dangerous.

Incoming Chief of IAF has his feet on the ground. (See 2 below.)

Know your enemy. Something this administration may still not have learned. (See 3 below.)

Caroline Glick poses the correct answer and I suggest David Frum supplied the answer in the last chapter of his book - it turns out the administration is more bluster than brains. (See 4 below.)

Dick


1) Obama's Earmarks: $1 Million for Wife's Hospital
By: Jim Meyers

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has released a list of $740 million in earmark requests he made in the past three years, and it includes $1 million for the hospital where his wife Michelle is a vice president.

The request for $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to help pay for construction of a new pavilion.

“I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Michelle Obama was not part of our lobbying over the request, not in any way,” Kelly Sullivan, another vice president at the medical center, told the New York Times.

In any case, the 2006 request for the hospital was not approved by the Senate, as was about $7 out of every $10 the Illinois senator asked for in earmarks.

Bud he did manage to secure $1.3 million for a high-explosive technology program for the Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The program was overseen by General Dynamics, and one of Obama’s top supporters, James Crown — a member of Obama’s national finance committee — serves on the board of General Dynamics.

Obama also secured a $750,000 earmark for renovation of a space center named for Crown’s grandfather, Henry Crown, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

And Obama secured several million dollars for a project at Chicago State University. Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones Jr., a close personal friend of Obama and one of his benefactors, has been a strong supporter of Chicago State, according to the Times.

Other earmarks sought and secured by Obama include more than $10 million for a military arsenal in Rock Island, several million dollars for research on soybean disease and livestock genes, and $100,000 for after-school programs at the Chicago Jesuit Academy.

Michelle Obama is on leave from her job while her husband campaigns for president, but after Barack was elected to congress, she received a big raise.

USA Today reports that officials at the University of Chicago Hospitals told the Chicago Tribune that Michelle is "worth her weight in gold."

"She's terrific," added Michael Riordan, who was president of the hospital in March 2005, when Michelle Obama was promoted to vice president for external affairs and had her annual salary increased from $121,910 to $316,962.

Hospitals spokesman John Easton told the Tribune that Michelle Obama's salary is in line with those of the 16 other vice presidents at the not-for-profit medical center.

2) Next IAF chief: Presence of IDF in Gaza will stop rocket manufacture
By Amos Harel, Yuval Azoulay

The commander-designate of the Israel Air Force, Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, says that the presence of Israeli forces on the ground in the Gaza Strip could prevent the manufacture of rockets and the smuggling of arms into the Strip.

"Professionally speaking," he said, "if Israel wants to prevent any high-trajectory rocket or mortar fire, it must establish good control on the ground."

At the same time, Israel is examing anew the possibility of purchasing one of two overseas anti-rocket weapons systems to combat the Qassams, according to defense officials, because the Israeli-made Iron Dome system, currently under development at Rafael, the Armaments Development Authority, will not be operational before 2010.

In a lecture at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs delivered two months ago, and made public Sunday, Nehushtan, the current head of the IDF Planning Directorate, said: "Compare Lebanon and Gaza to the West Bank, where Israel has control over the external perimeter and can control the entrance of weapons inside the area. In Lebanon,
well-organized shipments of weapons flow across an open border with Syria. Gaza is open along the Egyptian border. The West Bank is not open and the weapons don't flow in with the same freedom."

According to Nehushtan, who will take command of the IAF on May 14, while "local arms production is a matter of know-how ... if Israeli forces are present on the ground, as they are in the West Bank, then we can stop the development and manufacture of rockets and other weapons in time."

Asked whether the Gaza problem could be solved militarily, he referred to Israel's Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank in April 2002. "It took a few years [after the operation  A.H.], but we managed to establish a different kind of control. The motivation of suicide bombers in the West Bank did not recede, but their capabilities did." The decision as to the role of the army, Nehushtan added, is in the hands of the country's political echelon: "In Gaza, as well, the IDF will do what it is instructed to do."

Nehushtan noted that the Gaza Strip represents the first example in the world "of a regime affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood," which began in Egypt.

"Hamas is building up its power and building its military capabilities ... Even if we build better shelters, this is no way to raise children," he noted, referring to the "constant shelling that really makes life impossible" for people living in Sderot and nearby communities.

He acknowledged "the difficulties of an open, modern, sensitive, Western society such as Israel's in operating against terrorists who operate from within civilian territory against civilians on the Israeli side," adding: "It was not like this in World War II ... We have to operate within this environment and under these constraints. At the same time, we still have to provide security for our people.

"Now that civilians are part of the equation," he continued, "anti-terror operations become much more difficult. When we have to operate against forces that operate within a civilian environment, we have to be pinpoint precise and very sensitive to collateral damage. We are much more limited in what we can do."

This was not the first time that Nehushtan, a former combat pilot, has spoken about the need for ground operations to prevent rocket fire. In meetings at the IDF General Command in late July 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, Nehushtan and another pilot Military Intelligence head Amos Yadlin were among the first senior officers to tell then chief of staff Dan Halutz that his plan to continue the aerial attacks on Hezbollah
was not working.

"You must bring this before the government," Nehushtan told Halutz, according to the protocol of the meeting as published in Haaretz over a year ago. "You need to tell them straight that without a major ground operation, we cannot remove the Katyusha threat. If the government does not approve it, we should tell them that they must stop the campaign
now."

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is reviewing two potential substitutes for Iron Dome to counter the Qassam rockets. One is Nautilus, a joint Israeli-American invention that uses lasers to blow up rockets and mortar bombs mid-flight. The other is Phalanx, an automated machinegun produced by U.S. firm Raytheon whose heavy bullets shred
incoming shells.

Defense Ministry director general Pinchas Buchris flew Sunday to the U.S. state of New Mexico to watch Nautilus now being upgraded under a new name, Skyguard in action. The mission is significant as Israeli experts long wrote off Nautilus's performance as inadequate. A Defence Ministry delegation visited Raytheon earlier this month to inspect the Phalanx.

Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror confirmed that Israel is examining the Phalanx and Nautilus systems, if only to assess their core technologies as potential complements for Iron Dome. "I think the future will be a combination of laser and missile systems," he said.

Dror denied that protectionism had motivated Iron Dome's initial selection, saying its slated performance was deemed to be more reliable than that of Nautilus or Phalanx.

Palestinians fired five Qassam rockets at Israel Sunday, but no one was injured and no damage was caused

3) MEMRI: Saudi Scholar, Dr Walid Al-Rashudi, on Al-Aqsa TV: By Allah, We Won't Be Satisfied Even If All Jews are Killed


To view this video please click here
www.memritv.org/clip/en/1711.htm
.No. 1711 | February 29, 2008

Saudi Scholar Dr. Walid Al-Rashudi: 50-60 People Perished in Jewish
Holocaust. The Killing of All the Jews Will Not Be Satisfactory Compensation
for the "Real Holocaust" in Gaza

Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Dr. Walid Al-Rashudi, head
of the Department of Islamic Studies at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia,
which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 29, 2008.

Walid Al-Rashudi: One of the important things that we must tell people is
that what is going on in Palestine today is a real holocaust. This is the
real holocaust. A holocaust is not the burning of 50-60 Jews in Germany or
Switzerland, but the Jews continue to call it the Holocaust. In case you
don't know, let me tell you that more than 90% of the Muslims in the world
do not know that the Jews receive reparations from Germany and Switzerland
for the so-called Holocaust affair. We believe that there was indeed a
holocaust, but how many died? 50-60 people? Afterwards, they used it to
blackmail these two countries.

So what are we supposed to say in the face of the Gaza holocaust? What
compensation will satisfy us? By Allah, we will not be satisfied even if all
the Jews are killed.

4) Why is ‘Israel's best friend’ pressuring the Jewish State to act recklessly?
By Caroline B. Glick

To understand the strange twists that Hamas's war against Israel has taken over the past week, it is instructive to cast a glance at the current situation in Pakistan. For in their dealings with Hamas, the Bush administration and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government have apparently been operating in accordance with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's playbook.

In a radio interview this week, Michael Leiter, the Director of the US National Counter-Terrorism Center noted that Al Qaida today is stronger than it was two years ago. This development, he explained is the consequence of Musharraf's decision to sign peace accords with the Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas [FATA] along the Afghan border.

The first agreements in North and South Waziristan were signed in September 2006. They involved the removal of Pakistani military forces from the areas, and the release of 2,500 Taliban and al Qaida prisoners from Pakistani prisons. The Waziristan accords rendered the areas the Taliban's and al Qaida's first safe havens since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Freed from the need to defend themselves against the Pakistani army, al Qaida and the Taliban immediately turned their attention to Afghanistan. Within weeks of the signing ceremony, cross-border raids from Pakistan increased threefold.

And so began a devastating calculus. Systematic breaches of the accords by the Taliban were ignored. But any anti-Taliban operations launched by Pakistan or US forces in Waziristan or anywhere else in Pakistan were met by massive brutality.

Speaking recently to CNN, Michael McConnell, the Director of US National Intelligence concurred with Leiter's dim assessment. McConnell noted that from its safe havens in Pakistan, al Qaida has reconstituted itself as the central command post for global jihad. "They have the leadership that they had before. They've rebuilt the middle-management and the trainers. And they're recruiting very vigorously."

These American acknowledgements of the consequences of Musharraf's "peace process" with the Taliban come rather late in the game. When he first signed the accords, Musharraf pretended that the Taliban was not involved claiming that the accords were with "tribal leaders."

Musharraf's statements were obvious lies, and yet the US decided to pretend along with him. In September 2006, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said, "The [Waziristan] agreement really has potential to work."

Boucher added, "Talibanization will not be allowed, in the area of in the cities near the tribal region."

The reason that the State Department had no excuse for believing Musharraf is that by the time Boucher made the statement, Musharraf had already released the 2,500 al Qaida and Taliban prisoners.

But the US praise of the agreement didn't end with Boucher. President George W. Bush also endorsed it.

After the Waziristan accord, between March and August 2007, Musharraf's representatives signed similar surrender agreements in the Bajaur, Swat and Mohmand Agencies. Some commentators, like Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, have argued that US public support for the accords stemmed from the administration's unwillingness to criticize Musharraf lest he be ousted from power.

But now, with the Taliban and al Qaida in control of massive swathes of Pakistan, Musharraf is about to cede power. And the civilian coalition government set to replace him has made clear its desire to end all residual Pakistani military operations against the Taliban.

In a taste of things to come, Thursday Pakistan lodged a strong protest with the US over a US-airstrike in Waziristan which killed five civilians. According to AP, thousands of protesters rallied yesterday calling "Death to America," and "Anyone who is a friend of Musharraf is a traitor."

The spillover effect of the Talibanization of Pakistan's frontier in Afghanistan has been so dramatic that that even the UN is recognizing that NATO's military actions need to be stronger and more effective. Speaking before the Security Council on Wednesday, UN Undersecretary General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno said, "We face an insurgency that has proven to be much more resilient than we expected and more ruthless than we ever imagined."

As Pakistan-watchers like military analyst Bill Roggio warned at the time, the consequences Musharraf's "peace process" were eminently foreseeable. And yet, the Bush administration refused to see them. The administration, which based its entire strategy for contending with Pakistan on its complete support for Musharraf, preferred to allow the Taliban and al Qaida to reconstitute their strength than accept the fact that their Musharraf-based strategy had failed.

Today, the Bush administration's treatment of Hamas's control over Gaza follows the same pattern. Since the Iranian-sponsored jihadist group seized control of Gaza from Fatah last June, Hamas has transformed the area into a safe haven for local and global terrorists. In Gaza today, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah forces share space with al Qaida, Hizbullah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Syrian intelligence officials.

The only way to overthrow the Hamas regime and end Gaza's status as a hub for global jihad is for Israel to invade and conquer Gaza. But such an operation is antithetical to the administration's sole strategy for contending with the Palestinians and their war against Israel. That strategy, of course is to champion Palestinian statehood by backing Fatah and its leader Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Since enabling Hamas to take control of Gaza, Abbas has insisted that an Israeli takeover of the area would weaken his stranding with the Palestinians who overwhelmingly support Hamas. And since supporting Abbas is the only plan the administration has, it is willing to accept Hamas control over Gaza.

This was made clear this week when in the aftermath the latest round of Hamas's missile war against southern Israel, the US openly supported Egyptian efforts to negotiate a Waziristan-styled ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that would take the option of an Israeli invasion of Gaza off the table indefinitely and so safeguard Hamas's control over the area. At the same time, it is publicly pressuring Israel to make massive concessions to Fatah in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem in order to "strengthen Abbas" and facilitate the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem by the end of the year.

It has been argued that Musharraf signed the accords with the Taliban because he feared his political opponents in Islamabad who demanded an end to his military dictatorship more than he feared ceding control over large swathes of Pakistan to the Taliban. It would seem that in negotiating with Hamas and Fatah, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is following a similar cost-benefit analysis. It fears its political opposition in the Likud and the prospects of elections it will surely lose more than it fears abandoning the security of southern Israel to the whims of Hamas and Iran and more than it fears pledging to surrender Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem to Fatah-Hamas.

Yet, since the Israeli public does not, by and large, share the government's view, the government is simply lying about its policies. On Monday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Barak both loudly denied that Israel was conducting ceasefire negotiations with Hamas. On Tuesday, an unnamed senior government official acknowledged that a ceasefire agreement with Hamas had been reached. Also on Tuesday, Olmert visited hospitalized Israelis, wounded by Hamas missiles and told that that it was impossible to defend them.

Tuesday, the Winnipeg Free Press's Israel correspondent Samuel Segev provided another reasonable explanation of the US-Israeli decision to abandon their rejection of Hamas. Segev reported that during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Egypt last week, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak relayed a joint Egyptian-Saudi threat to abandon the so-called Saudi peace initiative from 2002 unless the US and Israel agree to accept Hamas control over Gaza and negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas. The Saudis and Egyptians further dictated that this ceasefire agreement will pave the way for the reinstitution of the Hamas-Fatah unity government which was formed in Mecca in March 2006.

Perhaps in preparation for his reunification with Hamas, Abbas has recently issued a series of statements which make a mockery of his supposed commitment to peaceful coexistence with Israel. In his latest foray into anti-Israeli incitement, Abbas reacted to the IDF's counter-terror raid in Bethlehem on Wednesday in which four senior terror commanders were killed by calling the Israeli action, "a barbaric crime."

One of the targeted terrorists was Hizbullah-linked Muhammad Shahadeh who the Palestinians identified as the mastermind of last week's massacre of eight students in Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Abbas's office released his statement while Abbas himself was addressing the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Dakkar, Senegal. There, a week after Shahadeh sent Jerusalemite Alaa Abu D'heim to kill Jews studying Torah in Jerusalem, Abbas accused Israel of ethnically cleansing Jerusalem of Muslims.

For its part, Hamas is playing its cards wisely. It refers to its ceasefire with Israel as a "tahadia" which translates roughly into a temporary cessation of violence that can be ended at any time.

Hamas also demands control over the international border with Gaza. It claims that it will allow Fatah personnel to be stationed at the border crossing with Egypt but only Fatah forces that it approves. That is, it will only allow Hamas loyalists in Fatah uniforms to man the border. Moreover, Hamas announced that it would allow European monitors to return to the border crossing but only if they live in Gaza or in el Arish rather than in Israel as they did until they were withdrawn in June. That is, Hamas will allow EU monitors to return but only if they do so as Hamas hostages.

Finally, Hamas insists that it will only abide by the ceasefire if its supply lines with Egypt are opened and if Israel also opens its own land passages to Gaza for goods and persons. That is, Hamas also demands that Israel accept responsibility for Gaza's welfare.

Just as was the case when Musharraf began negotiating with the Taliban, so too, with Hamas in Gaza it is clear what the outcome will be. Hamas will continue to gain strength in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria. More and more Israelis - and Palestinians who don't want to live in a jihadist caliphate - will pay for the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Bush-Rice policies with their blood.

The US will seek to divert attention from its acceptance of a safe haven for global jihad in Gaza by changing the subject. Rice is doing so already by attacking Israel for permitting Jews to build homes in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and by pretending - as Rice did in testimony before the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday - that Abbas remains committed to peace and that peace is possible with an Iranian-controlled Hamas enclave in Gaza.

As Musharraf did in Pakistan, so in Israel, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government simply seeks to hide what it is doing by lying to the public. Like Musharraf, apparently Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Barak hope that their lies won't run out until after the next elections are held.

But of course, they will. Using lies to hide a strategy of surrender to jihad didn't work for Musharraf. It won't work for them.