Bill Gross' Prescription to Obama - Spend!

Obama once said words do matter and Paul Greenberg reminds him that knowledge of history also matters.

It would appear Obama is still psychologically challenged with past "haints" from his youth. Most who seek the power of the president are suspect in my own mind. Obama, perhaps more than most(See 1 and 2 below.)

Bill Gross, the bond guru, in an open letter to Obama suggested, should Obama become president, he raise the anticipated deficit to $1 trillion. In other words add another $500MM in order to stimulate beyond the current fiscal drag. Gross noted this make Obama vulnerable to political charges of profligacy. Nowhere does anyone suggest a curb on bloated spending because doing so is seen as possibly reinforcing the recession, I believe, we are soon to be in - so spend yourself out of a decline seems the path most likely to be taken. Of course the consequences of all of this, as Gross recognizes, is a weaker dollar and more inflation.

Spending your way out of trouble, of course, can result in lender demands making it more difficult and costly to raise money at lower interest rates. But that is tomorrow's worry and economic triage often dictates economic policy.

With interest rates rather low relative to inflation the government, I would think, would be wise to borrow now and replace existing higher interest debt thus reducing borrowing costs but speculating in the government bond market is not something most Treasury Secretaries ever consider.

Time and sensible policies are the best ally to cure our current economic ills but politicians cannot be seen as failing to respond to frantic demands for fear of being termed Hooverites so they will eventually do something akin to Gross' suggestion and ameliorate the near term making the longer term problems we face more intractable.

One thing for sure our standard of living is going to suffer more than it has.

As I have said before, a nation's people experiencing wrenching declines in their economic fortunes, prospects and their standard of living sinking are increasingly vulnerable to poor advice, wrongheaded responses. During an election year it becomes even probable as they may embrace candidates with hopeful but empty feel good messages and particularly when the opposition is not overly exciting and seemingly incapable of countering with an equally stylized, glitzy campaign.

Quite a sad situation we find ourselves in and then there is Afghanistan, Pakistan, N Korea, Iran and Islamic Fascism and assorted terrorists and once again the pressure to paste something together, for appearance sake, can drive a lame duck president to make additional poor policy choices. I submit sending food to N Korea, because they destroyed an old nuclear facility, is one in view of their continued tactics of delay and obfuscation. Unless N Korea comes clean we should not come with laden hands.

Political appearances undercut playing hard ball. Biting the bullet is always politically unappealing and with time growing short even more so. Thus,I suspect, GW may well default regarding Iran and toss the ball to Israel.

Comment from Marshall Goldman as he returned to Boston. (See 2 below.)

More comic opera from Olmert? (See 3 below.)

More factors driving Israel's decision making process vis a vis a possible attack on Iran and ABC report denied by our State Department (See 4 and 4a below.)

Is the UN ducking and weaving again regarding Hezballah build-up? (See 5 below.)

Dick

1)From Dreams of My Father: 'I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.'

From Dreams of My Father : 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa , that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself , the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.'



And FINALLY the Most Damming one of ALL of them!!!

From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'

2) A President who is history deficient?
By Paul Greenberg



Barack Obama now has cited the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War as a model of the way Osama bin Laden should be tried in the (unlikely) event he's ever taken alive. He recommends Nuremberg as an example to follow because, he says, those trials embodied universal legal principles.


The Nuremberg trials a model of international law? Those stone-faced judges in Red Army uniforms peering down from the bench at Nuremberg, shoulder boards in place and guilty verdicts at the ready, must have been there as representatives of Comrade Stalin's well-known devotion to universally accepted legal principles.


This is not to say that the judges at Nuremberg couldn't demonstrate exquisite tact. For example, not a one noted the Soviets' responsibility for the Katyn Massacre, a war crime none dared accuse them of at the time.


In 1946, the Soviets were still Our Fighting Russian Allies. And so the mass execution of the Polish army's officer corps in the Katyn forest was pinned on the Nazis, who were conveniently at hand. What would one more war crime matter in a record already so monstrous?


Nor did any of the judges at Nuremberg make much of the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact that precipitated the whole, bloody cataclysm that was the Second World War. That alliance between fellow dictators was simply tossed down the memory hole. It became a non-event.


At Nuremberg, the Soviet Union was invited to sit in judgment of its old partner in aggression — on a charge of waging aggressive war. To wit, the war of aggression that the Soviet Union joined with Nazi Germany to ignite in September of 1939. Barack Obama would have been on sounder ground if he had cited the proceedings at Nuremberg not as an example of justice but irony.


You have to wonder if anybody remembers any history any more. Barack Obama doesn't seem to. The unthinking simply assume, as Sen. Obama does, that Nuremberg was some kind of model of justice. Hey, the Nazi leaders were hanged, weren't they?


In the long tradition of politicized law, Nuremberg was as clear an example of victor's justice as any other show trial. Sen. Obama, however, seems to think it a dandy precedent. Mainly because of its propaganda value: He argues that a Nuremberg-style trial of Osama bin Laden would demonstrate the evil nature of our enemy to the whole world. The proceedings at Nuremberg did indeed preserve the outward forms of justice — while sacrificing its essence. The universal principle that Nuremberg represented was propaganda.


It would take someone who cared more about principle than popularity to point out that, whatever Nuremberg was, it wasn't an exercise in ideal justice. Someone like the late Robert A. Taft, who had a way of offending popular opinion for no better reason than adherence to principle.


In 1946, as he prepared to run for president yet again, Sen. Taft was invited to give a talk at little Kenyon College in Ohio. He used the occasion to say the obvious — that the court assembled at Nuremberg was anything but an exercise in universally accepted principles of law. "The trial of the vanquished by the victors," he warned, "cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice."


Robert A. Taft was promptly rewarded for his honesty by being branded a Nazi sympathizer by his critics — on both sides of the aisle. Yet his warning against staging a trial to make a political point still holds. Or it would if anyone remembered it.


Instead, Nuremberg is now cited as an example to emulate by a presidential candidate who, whatever his faults, has demonstrated an almost unfailing ability to please the crowd.


It may be justified to take vengeance for the unspeakable wrongs inflicted on the world's innocents, but to do so under color of law isn't.


Given my druthers, I'd rather see Osama bin Laden hanged from a sour apple tree than have him languish indefinitely, like his confederates at Guantanamo, under the aegis of the Supreme Court of the United States. Not that his summary execution should be confused with enlightened jurisprudence. Like any act of vengeance, it would be the rawest form of justice, but at least it wouldn't be the exercise in hypocrisy that Nuremberg was.


However much various defendants at Nuremberg richly deserved hanging, or maybe drawing and quartering, to cite those trials as the embodiment of universal legal principles is ... well, an historical. We all know Sen. Obama is a young man, but there are times when he sounds as if he'd been born yesterday.


At his best, which is when he is speaking, Barack Obama is an impressive figure. This isn't some John Kerry or Hillary Clinton going down a list of talking points hoping that one will strike a chord. Sen. Obama usually responds directly to the question he's asked rather than riding off in all directions. He pays his interlocutor the courtesy of careful attention and a respectful answer. In that regard, he reminds one of Bill Clinton when that former president still had his touch, and could establish a personal bond with a questioner.


But once Barack Obama is no longer trading in some staple of his party's appeal — identity politics, say, or class warfare — and starts messing with history, he demonstrates only the most tenuous hold on his subject. And he winds up, again like Bill Clinton, sounding profoundly superficial.

2) As you can see, I am back in Boston - thanks for putting me up,
for arranging the talk and the plug for the book. It all
worked our very well and I got to Charleston and Atlanta with a
minimum of trouble-- the Atlanta talk should be on C-Span soon since
they taped it there.

I think you caught the essence of what I was trying to say-- so thanks again.

3) Israeli PM pays secret visit to Dimona nuclear center

The unusual publicity given to prime minister Ehud Olmert’s visit to Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona, in the southern Negev region, on July 1 - albeit after the fact - is a more than gentle hint to Iran of Israel’s determination to pre-empt a nuclear-armed Iran.

It further intensifies the ongoing war of words and signals flying between Tehran, Washington and Jerusalem in recent weeks over the nuclear issue. A rejoinder from the Islamic Republic may be expected.

4) The identity of Israel’s post-Olmert prime minister will determine its war options on Iran


Moscow has frozen SA-20B air defense system sales to Iran and Syria

According to military and intelligence sources, the overriding considerations that will determine if and when Israel attacks Iran are these: whether to strike before George W. Bush’s exit, whether Iran’s strategic ties with Syria and the Palestinian Hamas can be severed in advance and what prime minister is chosen to manage the war.

These are the determinants, rather than “the red lines” cited by senior Pentagon officials to ABC News Monday as triggers for an Israeli offensive, namely when Natanz nuclear facility produces enough weapons-grade uranium – some time in 2009 or this year - and when Iran acquires SA-20 air defense systems from Russia

Intelligence sources as negating those triggers:

1. Contrary to most reports, including those put out by Teheran, Iran is lagging behind its target date for producing a sufficiency of weapons-grade uranium. It is held up by the technical hitches dogging the smooth, continuous activation of its high-grade centrifuges.

2. Moscow has suspended all sales of sophisticated air defense systems to Iran and Syria alike – so that Israel has no cause for haste on that score.

3. That Iran is heading for a nuclear weapon is no longer in doubt. What Israel must decide very soon is whether to strike Iran’s production facilities before Bush leaves the White House or wait for his successor to move in, in 2009.

There is a preference in Jerusalem for a date straight after the America’s November 4 presidential election - except that military experts warn that weather and lunar conditions at that time of the year are unfavorable.

If Israel does opt for an attack, August and September would be better, they say - or else hold off until March-April 2009.

Israel’s political volatility is another major factor in the uncertainty surrounding an attack. Towards the end of September, the ruling Kadima party is committed to a leadership primary. The party’s choice of prime minister and the factors that determine how he (or she) reaches a decision on attacking Iran can only be guessed at.

4. A final consideration must be Israel’s ability to prevent Syria and Hamas opening war fronts at the time of Israel’s attack on Iran. In other words, the IDF needs to know it must contend with two fronts, Iran and the Lebanese Hizballah, not four.

Notwithstanding these major deterrents, the weight of opinion in Israel’s decision-making community at this time is in favor of an early military strike. There is an international consensus that Iran cannot be allowed to attain a nuclear bomb, but no sanctions or incentives are proving effective as preventatives. Therefore, it is felt, the sooner Israel pre-empts a nuclear-armed Iran, the better, because the longer it delays, the more dangerous the Islamic Republic’s retaliatory capabilities will become.

4a) State Dept. denies report Israel likely to attack Iran this year


The U.S. State Department on Tuesday criticized reported comments by a senior U.S. defense official who said there was an increasing likelihood Israel would attack Iran over its nuclear program.

The unidentified defense official told ABC News that it was increasingly likely Israel would attack Iran, and that Washington was concerned Iran would strike both the United States and Israel in retaliation.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in response to the report: "I have no information that would substantiate that, and I think it's rather foolish of people who often have no clue what they're talking about to assert things and not even have the courtesy to do so on the basis of their name."

Meanwhile Tuesday, an Israeli official said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert secretly visited the site of Israel's main nuclear reactor, against the backdrop of speculation that Israel may soon attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

The official would not say what the purpose of Olmert's visit was.

Earlier Tuesday, ABC News quoted a U.S. defense official as saying that two "red lines" would prompt Israel to strike Iran. The first trigger would be once enough highly enriched uranium is produced at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility to create a nuclear bomb, which U.S. and Israeli assessments predict to occur will the end of this year or next.

"The red line is not when they get to that point, but before they get to that point," the official was quoted as saying. "We are in the window of vulnerability."

The second trigger, according to the official, would be linked to Iran's acquisition of the SA-20 air defense system it is purchasing from Russia.

The official said Israel may be likely to attack Iran before the system is put into place and Tehran's deterrence bolstered.


Washington is also concerned that Israel may carry out an attack before the next U.S. president is sworn in, according to the report.

The Israel Air Force carried out a mass drill over the Mediterranean last month, reported in the New York Times as a rehearsal for a possible attack on Iran.

A senior American defense official called the exercise "not a rehearsal, but basic, fundamental training" required for operation against Iran, ABC reported.

"The Israeli air force has already conducted the basic exercise necessary to tell their senior leadership, 'We have the fundamentals down.' Might they need some more training and rehearsals? Yes. But have they done the fundamentals? I think that is what we saw," the official told ABC News.

5) UN: Hizbullah isn't rearming
By Yitzhak Benhorin


WASHINGTON – Israel's claims that the Hizbullah is rearming and building new military infrastructure in the areas north and south of the Litani River have been found to be unsubstantiated, a United Nations report says.



The report, complied by the UN commission tasked with monitoring the implementation of UN Resolution 1701, which effectively ended the Second Lebanon War, did state that for the first time in the last few years, the UN forces inspecting the area were interrupted by gunmen.



The report made no mention of Hizbullah's systematic disruptions to the routine operation of UNIFIL forces present in Southern Lebanon.



Sources in UN headquarters said Tuesday that the members of the UN Security Council were aware of the real situation on the ground, but noted that the Security Council has to act in line with the reports submitted to it.



The UNIFIL forces stationed in Lebanon, under the command of Italy's Major-General Claudio Graziano, have yet to report any Hizbullah efforts to arm itself, thus preventing the UN Security Council from taking any action.



Moreover, several Security Council members are also part of the UNIFIL force currently deployed in Lebanon – and therefore are unable to rate their performance on the ground.



A UN source told Ynet in response to the report that several incidents which have taken place in recent weeks prove that southern Lebanon is not free of arms. The source said everyone is aware of this reality, yet the UN cannot admit that Israel's claims are true, as this would show the UN has failed.