First they protect, then eat thier own!

Some observations and predictions:

Observations:



a) By the time housing prices have stabilized, the overhang of unsold homes has largely been absorbed, unemployment has leveled and the consumer is back to spending this could be discounted. Thus, one must enter the lion cage while the lion is still roaring and that is not emotionally easy and can prove temporarily costly.

c) McCain, should he lose and I expect he will, can attribute most of his campaign problems to poor timing, American impatience, his party's incompetence and a press and media that attacked his candidacy and VP choice and gave his opponent and VP choice a pass. Running a campaign during a severe economic downturn is not conducive to winning. Alas, most of the basis for our economic problems are now known, steps have been taken to address them and the patient is moving towards stabilization. All of this did not play to McCain's advantage because Obama was able to connect McCain to GW, Obama projects a youthful image McCain that of a grandfather, Americans are dispirited and impatient and seek change, even though they have no clue as to the change they are likely to get. American's are risk takers. They went West, built Las Vegas and established a state named California so you know they are gutsy unorthodox folk.

Also, Obama has run a well oiled and financed campaign, is articulate but says nothing of substance and, by contrast, McCain has been a flop though he has demonstrated flashes of coherence. Alas,image and style will most likely trump! (See 1 below.)

So I predict:

a) The press and media will eventually throw Obama to the wolves, as they did the Clinton's, when he starts striking out as he most surely will - partly because of the tough road ahead and partly because of his philosophy, policies and Pelosi and Reid's political avarice and the zanies who helped cause the problem who are now Chairing various Congressional Committees - Frank, Dodd, Schumer, Conyers to name a few.

b) The press and media helped elect Obama and they do not want the stigma or blame of doing so when he starts running out of gas. They will distance themselves and wipe away any former hand prints. If you think this is far out have a chat with Hillary and Bill. They were the media and press darlings of yesteryear. They were given more protection than the Secret Service was able to provide them. Certainly John Kennedy could make that claim were he alive today. The press and media knew of his amours, they bought into and helped create Camelot. They covered for him and the Secret Service lamentably did not protect him. (Some conspirators believe the Secret Service were behind Kennedy's assassination - read the recent biography of Sammy Davis Jr. and his connection with Sinatra etc.)

c) The media and press folk need hero change in order to remain fresh, have something new to talk and write about in order to sell their wares. Though predominantly liberal in their political leanings they will protect their own for a while but then they will also eat their own.

GW a day late and a dollar short. Why now? (See 2 and 3 below.)

Livni probably helped herself when she concluded that she would not sell out to Shas but she will still be in a pickle of a fight for the top spot. Natanyahu vs. Livni and the question remains will Israel be the winner? (See 4 below.)

Dick

1) How John McCain ran against himself
By Walter Shapiro

The maverick of days past might be deadlocked with Obama now if he hadn't let the Republican right hijack the Straight Talk Express.


Just over the horizon lies an alternate universe in which John McCain is locked in a tense nail-biter of a presidential race with Barack Obama, one in which the polls gyrate daily and "too close to call" describes most of the contested political landscape. To create this what-if Republican fantasy, only one thing needs to be changed -- and that mystery element has nothing to do with a mythical Barack Obama scandal or an inexplicable surge in George W. Bush's approval ratings. All that would have been required to achieve electoral parity and a plausible road map to the White House would have been for the Republican nominee to have transformed himself into ... (Warning: Mind-bending content ahead) ... the John McCain of the 2000 primaries.

That was the fabled McCain who wooed reporters with nonstop rolling press conferences about the Straight Talk Express, who electrified independent voters in the New Hampshire primary with his clarion call for political reform and who late in the campaign denounced Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance." Make no mistake, McCain 2000 was an unabashed hawk ("rogue-state rollback" was his bellicose mantra) who never deviated from conservative orthodoxy on abortion (though he did give off the impression that rolling back Roe v. Wade was about 993rd on his list of life ambitions). Whether that candidate was the authentic McCain or an impromptu confection whipped up for a gullible press corps, the result was one of the most beguiling losing campaigns in modern political history.

This time around, the septuagenarian Arizona senator shrewdly (or cynically) decided from the outset that he would get right -- very right-wing -- with the Republican base. In mid-2006, when he still dreamed of replicating the front-runner juggernaut of the Bush campaigns, McCain paid homage to Falwell himself by giving the commencement address at Liberty University. Even though McCain was one of only two Republican senators to oppose the Bush tax cuts (liberal Lincoln Chafee was the other), he implausibly championed the cause of making them permanent.


McCain presumably believed that these sharp policy reversals were necessary to win the GOP nomination. But, in truth, McCain triumphed because fortune looked his way with a broad grin. (Never underestimate luck in politics -- think where Obama might be if, say, Hillary Clinton had aggressively contested the caucus states after Iowa.) McCain narrowly edged Mitt Romney in the 2008 New Hampshire primary because, according to exit polls, he was strongly favored by Republicans and independents who felt "dissatisfied" or "angry" with Bush. Where South Carolina had been McCain's primary of broken dreams, it became in 2008 his political land of enchantment: Fred Thompson lured just enough social conservative votes away from Mike Huckabee that McCain squeaked to victory.

While alternative history is inherently speculative, a reasonable case can be made that McCain could have won the 2008 Republican nomination even if he had not pandered to Falwell and had not abandoned his fiscal conservatism to compete with Romney on taxes. The victory formula would have been built around McCain's biography, his unorthodox style, his unstinting support for the surge in Iraq and the general feeling that eight years earlier the GOP made a tragic mistake with Bush. In short, McCain could have come out of the GOP primaries prepared to run against Obama as a true maverick rather than a generic Republican railing against socialism. All it probably would have taken are these four steps.

Run as a deficit hawk

A major reason why McCain has appeared so inept in the face of the financial meltdown is that he lacks a coherent economic philosophy. It defies logic that McCain could simultaneously be so outraged by congressional earmarks and so cavalier about giveaways in the tax code. Green eyeshade budget arithmetic may not make economic sense on the cusp of a deep recession, but it does appeal to traditional conservatives alarmed that the national debt has doubled under Bush. Remember McCain was a candidate who said during the 2000 Republican primaries, "I won't take every dime of the surplus and spend it on tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy." The Arizona senator also opposed the Medicare prescription drug bill because there was no way to finance it. A McCain tough on tax cuts and frugal about unfunded domestic programs might have had the credibility to turn his crusade against pork-barrel spending into a true test of political character.

Remember that Karl Rove drove the GOP to ruin

The Rovian philosophy that presidential politics revolves around mobilizing the conservative base in 2004 came within 120,000 votes in Ohio of costing Bush the White House. And that was when the Republican brand and Bush himself were comparatively popular. From the Falwell folly to the Sarah Palin pyrotechnics, McCain (the Sequel) has been far too politically obsessed with worrying about what social conservatives think of him. The answer should have been obvious -- the evangelicals and home-schoolers prefer McCain to Obama, if unenthusiastically. Rather than trying to arouse the base with ominous references to Bill Ayers, McCain should have realized early on that such shrill tactics do not play well with independents and moderates who were his original presidential constituency. As far as declaring war on the New York Times and shunning the reporters who once lionized him, that tactic only makes political sense if McCain's ultimate goal is to win an anchor job on Fox News when the campaign is over.

Risk a convention walkout over the V.P.

Behind-the-scenes reports hint that McCain picked Palin in pique over warnings that the GOP delegates would rebel over the selection of apostate Democrat Joe Lieberman or even pro-choice Pennsylvania Republican Tom Ridge. Campaign strategists are so afraid of televised controversy that they never considered that the best way to demonstrate political independence is to actually do something bold when the entire nation is watching. Had McCain taken on the social conservatives in a convention floor fight, voters would still be talking about the GOP nominee's maverick moxie. At the 1948 Democratic convention Harry Truman (aka McCain's patron saint) stared down a Dixiecrat walkout over the party's civil rights plank. At a time when Palin's picture will soon appear next to the metaphorical definition of albatross, it is clear that McCain should have taken his lumps with Lieberman or risked a ruckus over Ridge. Even Romney would have allowed McCain to argue that Obama is not ready for the rigors of the Oval Office without triggering derisive laughter.

Repeat and repeat: "I am not George Bush."

Yes, McCain finally uttered those magic words during the final debate. And he ripped into Bush for his initial blundering conduct of the Iraq occupation, his doubling of the national debt and his neglect of climate change in an off-message post-debate interview with the conservative Washington Times. But this is pretty late in the game to break with a president whose performance in office is given a thumbs-down rating by three-quarters of the voters. McCain's belated criticisms are akin to Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence in 1815. As McCain knows well, there is a persuasive conservative case to be made against Bush for his free-spending big-government fiscal recklessness, for his trampling of constitutional norms (from vice-presidential sanctioned torture to White House signing statements) and for his record of incompetence from New Orleans to Baghdad. Instead of wasting time at the GOP convention on chants of "Drill, baby, drill," that was the moment to try out cries of "Bye, Bush, bye." If all the loyal Bushies stayed home in November in protest, McCain might lose as many as a dozen Texas votes in the greater Crawford metroplex.

The Bush stigma may be so indelible that it is possible that not even the return of Ronald Reagan could save the 2008 GOP nominee from voter backlash. But unlike, say, Adlai Stevenson or Barry Goldwater, McCain probably cannot even derive satisfaction from knowing that he ran an uplifting campaign in an impossible political climate. That is the apparent problem with McCain's Faustian bargain -- it has brought him neither honor nor votes. McCain (the Original) might not be winning right now, but the odds are that the race would be far closer in 2004 Democratic states like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota. If nothing else, the candidate who led the McCain Mutiny in 2000 might be going out as a Happy Warrior not as a political chameleon who has lost any sense of his true identity.


2) US-Syrian crisis intensifies, Damascus embassy may close


The American embassy in Syria has warned US nationals to remain alert, avoid demonstrations and prepare for the mission’s possible closure to the public.

The warning was posted Monday, Oct. 27, the day after US troops landing in helicopters raided a site near Abu Kemal in eastern Syria.

It followed a Syrian threat of “painful responses” for the American attack. The US embassy’s Web site warned that “unforeseen events could cause the embassy to close to the public.” The embassy is preparing for extreme events, such as possibly a Syrian military siege of the embassy, violent demonstrations or even a direct attack that would force the evacuation of staff.

Those sources believe that the Assad government’s closure of the American cultural and school Monday and protest to the UN Secretary General and Security Council Chairman were only the beginning and that more extreme steps are in store in Syria and Iraq.

Following pressure from Tehran, the Baghdad government denounced the American incursion into Syria after first accusing Damascus of cross-border terror against Iraq.

3) Why the West wants Syria to dump all its old friends
By David Blair

When Syria's portly foreign minister - who bears an uncanny resemblance to Israel's fallen strongman, Ariel Sharon - visited London this week, he used the splendour of a mansion beside St James's Park to denounce America's raid on his country as "terrorist aggression".

Walid al-Muallem's official visit for talks with David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, was the latest thread in the tangled web of contradiction forming Syria's relations with the outside world.

Only three years ago, Syrian intelligence agents helped bring yet more carnage to Beirut when a ton of high explosives killed Rafiq Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister, and 21 bystanders. Two years ago, Syria cheered on a key ally, Hizbollah, when it started a war against Israel that claimed at least 1,300 lives. Last year, Israeli jets destroyed a suspected nuclear facility, perhaps linked to North Korea's illicit weapons programme, concealed in the Syrian desert.
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All this might lead you to believe that Syria was a pariah state, sponsoring terrorists and dabbling in the supremely dangerous game of nuclear proliferation.

Yet only last week, Gordon Brown's foreign policy adviser, Simon McDonald, flew to Damascus to meet President Bashar al-Assad. This week, Mr Muallem had three hours of talks with Mr Miliband and invited him to Damascus. And President Nicolas Sarkozy of France recently invited the Syrian leader to Paris.

If the Foreign Secretary accepts, he will find himself in the same city as the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the radical Palestinian movements. As well as issuing invitations to British ministers, Syria also manages to be Iran's crucial ally - in fact, Iran's only real friend in the Middle East. Mr Assad's regime juggles all this and still manages to hold indirect peace talks with senior Israeli officials.

When you lead a poor country with hardly any oil, only 19 million people and a pitifully weak army, you cannot afford to burn your bridges with anybody. Mr Assad's foreign policy is to reach in all directions at once, play in every game and explore every possible alliance.

This stems from his personal vulnerability. In a country that calls itself a republic, Mr Assad inherited the presidency from his father, Hafez, who died in 2000. This makes him the world's only example of a very odd species - an absolute monarch, with no throne, ruling a hereditary republic. When it comes to lacking any shred of popular legitimacy, no one can compete with Mr Assad. He cannot even claim the dubious standing that comes from having led a successful coup. As every Syrian knows, Mr Assad is their president only because his Dad ran a military coup 38 years ago.

As if this was not bad enough, the Assad family does not share the mainstream Shia faith of Iran nor the Sunni traditions of Saudi Arabia nor, in fact, the religious loyalty of any other regime in the Middle East. Instead, they are from the tiny Alawite sect, making them a minority in their own country.

The elder Mr Assad needed every ounce of his remarkable political skill to survive in power. He carefully divided authority within Syria, systematically depriving any possible opponent of a power base. Instead of having one intelligence agency, he created numerous rival outfits, whose energies were duly devoted to fighting one another instead of threatening the Assad clan.

In the Assad school of foreign policy, no one is alienated forever. But the West and Israel both want Syria to acquire the habit of spurning allies. The friends they want Mr Assad to shake off are, in ascending order of importance, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran.

In return for dumping all his allies, Mr Assad would get a normal relationship with the West, the lifting of US sanctions and, in the event of a peace agreement with Israel, the return of the Golan Heights. If this happened, the strategic balance of the Middle East would be transformed. At present, Syria forms the crucial supply route linking Hizbollah with its chief paymaster and arms dealer, Iran. Mr Assad's goodwill also saves Iran from near total diplomatic isolation in the Middle East.

By reaching an accommodation with Syria, the West could gravely weaken both Iran and Hizbollah with a single blow. Hence the importance that Britain attaches to sounding out Mr Assad. As it happens, his wife, Asma, is half-British and the couple met when Mr Assad was a doctor in London.

Even if he was willing to make this extraordinary leap, would Israel hand over the Golan Heights? At present, Israel sees the talks with the Palestinians as a higher priority.

"When you look at the Palestinian issue, there's a sense of urgency. There's no sense of urgency with Syria," said Professor Asher Susser, the head of Middle East Studies at Tel Aviv University. "I don't see any Israeli government handing over the Golan."

This would be doubly true if Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party wins Israel's forthcoming election. If so, this would let Mr Assad off the hook and allow him to continue his eternal game of keeping all doors open and every bridge unburnt.

4)Netanyahu aides: Shas in the Education Ministry would be a 'nightmare'


Associates of opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that the idea of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party taking over the education portfolio in next coalition government would be a "nightmare."

Shas Chairman Eli Yishai earlier Wednesday told Army Radio that the party woulf demand the education portfolio in order to ensure an increase in the state's Jewish curriculum.

Netanyahu's aides said following the announcement that should Likud be charged with forming the next government, it would hold onto the Education Ministry. They added that the possibility of the portfolio being given to Yishai "simply does not exist."

In the interview with Army Radio, Yishai rejected accusations that the current governmen was headed to dissolution of because of Shas' refusal to join a coalition led by Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni.

"It wasn't us that dismantled the government, but Kadima that could have put together a coalition without us," Yishai said.

Yishai said that Shas had stood firm during negotiations in its demand that Jerusalem should not be divided. He added that if his party would have given up its demands, it would have been a blow to the voting public.

MK Avshalom Vilan (Meretz) said Yishai's demand for the education ministry would be the equivalent of establishing a state based on halakha [Jewish Law] in Israel.

"Before Yishai sews for himself the suit of education minister, it would be good if he worried about the core issues in the Haredi schools, and maybe then he would prove the seriousness of his intentions," Vilan said.

Speaking at a special session of the Knesset to commemorate seven years since the murder of former government minister Rehavam Zee'vi, Netanyahu said that Likud would hold onto the education portfolio "in order to deal with the major challenges facing us".

"The love and appreciation for the IDF are a founding layer in the values of the State of Israel and in the education of values that Ghandi [Ze'evi] believed so much in," Netanyahu said.

"This education will be a central component in the education revolution that we are preparing to bring in the near future, which will include lessons on Israel's heritage along with lessons in science, mathematics and computers."