Has Obama Suckered Liberals? Sounds like McCain!

Ne'eman does not see major shift in Obama's policies towards the Middle East.

In fact with the passing of every day and each appointment it appears Obama ran and said what he did to win and will govern entirely unlike what those who voted for him thought when they did so. Is Obama the ultimate and crafy pragmatist? Or is Obama turning out to be what I said all along - Wilson's "Music Man?" Did he sucker enough liberals to elect him and now is going to govern somewhat in a conservative vein? I doubt he will go that far in all respects but "appeasing liberals" must be scratching their head over Obama's appointment of a 6'5" Marine general. Semper Fi!

After today's National Security team announcement, liberals must be choking. Obama left enough wiggle room, vis a vis our troop withdrawals from Iraq,that one could argue Obama-elect is the opposite twin who ran for president. Obama realizes if he screws up in Iraq after GW, Petraeus and our forces finally "won" the war it will not go down well with future voters. Has Obama decided it would be wise to sound like McCain?

As I wrote earlier we sort of know "what" Obama is we just do not know "who" he is. It will be interesting finding out. (See 1 and 9 below.)

Louis Gerstner is someone who should be listened to and it would have behooved Obama to appoint him to a Cabinet post and/or taken this man's cogent advice but apparently Obama is too obligated to the NEA to help school children. (See 2 below.)

The Wall Street Journal's lead editorial Monday, did not reveal anything we did not already know, even if intuitively. It is, however, a worthwhile reminder that many jobs we have lost left for valid reasons - unsupportable union demands which resulted in compensation that was equal to self-inflicted wounds. Watch out WalMart, the unions are coming and they will cripple you if they get a toe hold and eventually themselves. (See 3 below)

Probably a bit overblown but you never know. (See 4 below.)

Lone captured terrorist says Israelis were specifically targeted. (See 5 below.)

I listen to Limbaugh sometimes when my wife and I are taking a long car ride.

I have a host of friends who cannot stand him but I doubt many have ever really listened to him. They just have a knee jerk reaction to his name.

Rush is theatre but he also is a keen observer and when he is on the mark he is very on the mark. He has a marvelous sense of humor which does not square with many colorless and humorless liberals who find nothing funny about their own hypocrisies. I believe Lewis' article merits reading. (See 6 below.)

Big of this Scottish judge regarding bigamy! (See 7 below.)

Geroge Will senses a raw deal in the New New Deal and well he should! (See 8 below.)

Sirota believes Obama owes nothing to the Left and we should not be surprised when he does what he does because, if I read Sirota correctly, he expects Obama will govern largely by "winging it." (See 9 below.)

Read 10 and 11 below and ask yourself is there any hope that Bargisi's suggestion to Western institutions, that they adopt a cold shoulder approach to haters, has any chance? (See 10 an 11 below.)

NOTE: If you enjoy unusual and colorful art I urge you check out this web search -Anicaonline.com You will find an array of art by our son's mother-in-law who is having a major show Sat. Dec 6 from 7 - 11PM, at Elite Art Editions: 151 NW 36th Street in Miami's Wynward Art District

Dick


1) Obama and the Mideast, a Return to Clinton
By Yisrael Ne'eman

Two months from now with the Obama Administration taking office one can expect a change in US Middle East policy, but much less drastic than many would expect. The president-elect is already shifting centrist and moving back to the Clinton years as will be noted by his advisors and candidates for cabinet positions. Hillary may even become secretary of state, but there will be one major difference, this is the world after 9/11. Any radical reappraisal of the Israeli-American relationship does not appear to be in the offering.

Barak Obama's first order of business will be the American and world economy, not Israel and the Palestinians (or Syrians). Like everyone else he wants to know where the bottom of the financial abyss lies (how many lost trillions?) so the federal government will be able to plan its massive bailouts, economic programs and in the end decide "who will live and who will die." To stimulate the world economy, oil prices must be held steady and kept low, meaning the Saudis must be in the loop in quite a bit of decision making.

The major foreign policy challenge will be in the Middle East but Israel will not take first place. A secure and phased withdrawal of American troops from Iraq over the next three years is and will continue to be once Obama takes office, the first priority. Winning the war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan is next with the re-stabilization of Pakistan coming in a close third. Halting the Iranian nuclear program hovers over all the above and depending on developments can at any time be catapulted into the #1 slot.

As with all US administrations foreign policy will revolve around strengthening the nation state players. In particular the Arab secular states need to be reinforced in their battle against the Islamists as represented by Al-Qaeda, the Moslem Brotherhood and the Khomeinists. The situation is much more critical now than it was in the 1990s. Egypt, Jordan and possibly even Syria are being subjected to the Moslem Brotherhood threat more than anyone realizes. The Fatah led Palestinian Authority which supposedly rules in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) would collapse entirely were it not for western aid and Israeli help in security matters.

Media access to the upcoming Israeli elections and the hype spawned as a result will put the Israel/Palestinian issue on the front pages despite the real priorities mentioned above. According to the most recent public opinion polls Benyamin Netanyahu and the Likud can be expected to win the February elections and will form either a right wing or right of center government.

Netanyahu should not be expected to form a right wing government but rather right of center. It may very well be back to the days of Ariel Sharon. True, Barak Obama is not George W. but if Bibi has matured in the past ten years he should be able to hold his administration together while lining up with the old/new American policies. In particular he can emphasize the 2003 Roadmap and April 2004 Bush-Sharon exchange of letters whereby Israel begins implementing a two-state solution with the Palestinians, accompanied by security guarantees.

Netanyahu will be expected to evacuate the army and Jewish settlements from the central mountain region of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) to continue implementing these understandings. The security fence will continue its transformation into a political border (with possible minor changes) and the division of Jerusalem will be put on the table. Besides dealing with economics, Bibi wants to be remembered as a statesman and a peacemaker. He also knows which way the wind blows and realizes that all American administrations and Congress demand a two-state solution. He negotiated both the Hebron Agreement (1997) and Wye Accords (1998), relinquishing land to the Palestinians. The only real political opposition can be expected from the right wing Jewish Home party – AKA: warmed over members of the National Religious and National Union parties.

Many people both right and left, expect that Netanyahu and Obama will not necessarily get along. John McCain was seen as much more Israel friendly but Obama is taking the Clinton route, consulting centrist Democratic advisors and returning to the direction of the Clinton Outline (Dec. 2000). None of this can be viewed as anti-Israel.

Bibi can be expected to take his cue from Arik. When faced with the option of one state for two peoples or the two-state solution, he will opt for the latter. For sure he will demand Palestinian Authority security cooperation and American guarantees just as he did in the Hebron and Wye Accords. Does he trust the Palestinians? Probably not. But more importantly Bibi certainly has not forgotten that the right wing toppled his government over the issue of the Wye Accords, bringing Ehud Barak and Labor to power in 1999. Assuming his learning curve is anything than flat (or negative) he will begin with a more comfortable partner such as Kadima despite his lack of respect for Tzipy Livni and pick up where he left off. And if his starting line is an alliance with the Right he will either find himself with Kadima later on or in the opposition after the next election. Betting is that he is too bright to mortgage himself to the Right a second time.

And do not be surprised if he considers another disengagement, this time in parts of Judea and Samaria.

2) Lessons From 40 Years of Education 'Reform': Let's abolish local school districts and finally adopt national standards.
By LOUIS V. GERSTNER JR.Article

While the economic news has most Americans in a state of near depression, hope abounds today that the country may use the current economic crisis as leverage to address some longstanding problems. Nowhere is that prospect for progress more worthy than the crisis in our public education system.


Martin KozlowskiSo, from someone who realized rather glumly last week that he has been working at school reform for 40 years, here is a prescription for leadership from the Obama administration.

We must start with the recognition that, despite decade after decade of reform efforts, our public K-12 schools have not improved. We can point to individual schools and some entire districts that have advanced, but the system as a whole is still failing. High school and college graduation rates, test scores, the number of graduates majoring in science and engineering all are flat or down over the past two decades. Disappointingly, the relative performance of our students has suffered compared to those of other nations. As a former CEO, I am worried about what this will mean for our future workforce.

It is most crucial for our political leaders to ask why we are at this point -- why after millions of pages, in thousands of reports, from hundreds of commissions and task forces, financed by billions of dollars, have we failed to achieve any significant progress?

Answering this question correctly is the key to finally remaking our public schools.

This is a complex problem, but countless experiments and analyses have clearly indicated we need to do four straightforward things to bring fundamental changes to K-12 education:

1) Set high academic standards for all of our kids, supported by a rigorous curriculum.

2) Greatly improve the quality of teaching in our classrooms, supported by substantially higher compensation for our best teachers.

3) Measure student and teacher performance on a systematic basis, supported by tests and assessments.

4) Increase "time on task" for all students; this means more time in school each day, and a longer school year.

Everything else either does not matter (e.g., smaller class sizes) or is supportive of these four steps (e.g., vastly improve schools of education).

Lack of effort is not the cause of our 30-year inability to solve our education problem. Not only have we had all those thousands of studies and task forces, but we have seen many courageous and talented individuals pushing hard to move the system. Leaders such as Joel Klein (New York City), Michelle Rhee (Washington, D.C.) and Paul Vallas (New Orleans) have challenged the system, and elected officials from both sides of the political spectrum have also fought valiantly for change.

So where does that leave us? If the problem isn't "what to do," nor is it a failure of commitment, what is stopping us?

I believe the problem lies with the structure and corporate governance of our public schools. We have over 15,000 school districts in America; each of them, in its own way, is involved in standards, curriculum, teacher selection, classroom rules and so on. This unbelievably unwieldy structure is incapable of executing a program of fundamental change. While we have islands of excellence as a result of great reform programs, we continually fail to scale up systemic change.

Therefore, I recommend that President-elect Barack Obama convene a meeting of our nation's governors and seek agreement to the following:

- Abolish all local school districts, save 70 (50 states; 20 largest cities). Some states may choose to leave some of the rest as community service organizations, but they would have no direct involvement in the critical task of establishing standards, selecting teachers, and developing curricula.

- Establish a set of national standards for a core curriculum. I would suggest we start with four subjects: reading, math, science and social studies.

- Establish a National Skills Day on which every third, sixth, ninth and 12th-grader would be tested against the national standards. Results would be published nationwide for every school in America.

- Establish national standards for teacher certification and require regular re-evaluations of teacher skills. Increase teacher compensation to permit the best teachers (as measured by advances in student learning) to earn well in excess of $100,000 per year, and allow school leaders to remove underperforming teachers.

- Extend the school day and the school year to effectively add 20 more days of schooling for all K-12 students.

I can predict that three questions will be raised about these measures:

First, how can we set national standards when we have a strong tradition of local school autonomy? The answer is that the American people are way ahead of our politicians here: Poll after poll shows they support national standards.

Second, won't this take many years to implement? No, if we follow a focused, pragmatic approach. While ideally we want all 50 states to participate, we can get started with 30. The rest will be driven to abandon their "see no evil" blinders by their citizens as the original group achieves momentum and success. Moreover, we do not have to start from scratch on the national standards. Experts can quickly develop an initial set just by drawing on existing domestic and foreign programs.

Third, how do we pay for all of this? In three ways: We will save billions by consolidating the operations of 15,000 school districts. The U.S. Department of Education can direct all of its discretionary funds to this effort. And we need to drive into the consciousness of every American politician that education is not an expense. It is, rather, the most important investment we can make as a country.

H.G. Wells remarked that "history is a race between education and catastrophe." For the first time in America's history, we may be losing that race. We can win, but we have to act quickly and decisively.

Mr. Gerstner, a former CEO of IBM, was chairman of the Teaching Commission (2003-2006), which reported on ways to improve the quality of public school teaching.

3) America's Other Auto Industry

There is such a thing as a profitable car maker in this country. more in

The men from Detroit will jet into Washington tomorrow -- presumably going commercial this time -- to make another pitch for a taxpayer rescue. Meanwhile, in the other American auto industry you rarely read about, car makers are gaining market share and adjusting amid the sales slump, without seeking a cent from the government.


Some car makers in America still have reason to celebrate.
These are the 12 "foreign," or so-called transplant, producers making cars across America's South and Midwest. Toyota, BMW, Kia and others now make 54% of the cars Americans buy. The internationals also employ some 113,000 Americans, compared with 239,000 at U.S.-owned carmakers, and several times that number indirectly.

The international car makers aren't cheering for Detroit's collapse. Their own production would be hit if such large suppliers as the automotive interior maker Lear were to go down with a GM or Chrysler. They fear, as well, a protectionist backlash. But by the same token, a government lifeline for Detroit punishes these other companies and their American employees for making better business decisions.

The root of this other industry's success is no secret. In fact, Detroit has already adopted some of its efficiency and employment strategies, though not yet enough. To put it concisely, the transplants operate under conditions imposed by the free market. Detroit lives on Fantasy Island.

Consider labor costs. Take-home wages at the U.S. car makers average $28.42 an hour, according to the Center for Automotive Research. That's on par with $26 at Toyota, $24 at Honda and $21 at Hyundai. But include benefits, and the picture changes. Hourly labor costs are $44.20 on average for the non-Detroit producers, in line with most manufacturing jobs, but are $73.21 for Detroit.

This $29 cost gap reflects the way Big Three management and unions have conspired to make themselves uncompetitive -- increasingly so as their market share has collapsed (see the nearby chart). Over the decades the United Auto Workers won pension and health-care benefits far more generous than in almost any other American industry. As a result, for every UAW member working at a U.S. car maker today, three retirees collect benefits; at GM, the ratio is 4.6 to one.

The international producers' relatively recent arrival has spared them these legacy burdens. But they also made sure not to get saddled with them in the first place. One way was to locate in investment-friendly states. The South proved especially attractive, offering tax breaks and a low-cost, nonunion labor pool. Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina -- which accounted for a quarter of U.S. car production last year -- are "right-to-work" states where employees can't be forced to join a union.

The absence of the UAW also gives car producers the flexibility to deploy employees as needed. Work rules vary across company and plant, but foreign rules are generally less restrictive. At Detroit's plants, electricians or mechanics tend to perform certain narrow tasks and often sit idle. That rarely happens outside Michigan. In the nonunionized plants, temporary workers can also be hired, and let go, as market conditions dictate.

All the same, Mitsubishi Eclipses and Toyota Corollas are made by UAW workers at plants in Illinois and California. In each case, unions have made concessions to ensure the jobs stay put. Honda makes the Civic and Accord in two plants in Ohio, which isn't a right-to-work state. But attempts to unionize foreign-owned factories have generally been unsuccessful, most recently at Nissan; their workers know too well what that has meant for their UAW peers. Since 1992, the Big Three's labor force declined 4.5% on average every year; the international grew 4.3%. According to the Center for Automotive Research, for every job created by the transplant producers, Detroit shed 6.1 jobs in the U.S., 2.8 of them in Michigan.

Another transplant advantage: Their factories are newer and production process simpler. As a result, they can switch their assembly lines to different models in minutes. In response to the economic downturn, Hyundai decided to make more fuel-efficient Sonata sedans and fewer of the larger Santa Fe model at its Montgomery, Alabama plant, sparing steeper production cuts. Such a change would take weeks at UAW plants.


It's true that at the foreign companies, strategic decisions are taken and much of the value-added design and engineering is done back home. But both U.S. and the Japanese and European companies have tended to move operations closer to large markets. The expansion of manufacturing in the U.S. has brought research and development. Honda stands out for designing some cars from the ground up in the U.S. The foreigners account for a small but growing chunk of the $18 billion in yearly development spending. And while headquartered overseas, the companies have millions of American shareholders -- either directly or through pension funds. Is Honda a Japanese or an American company nowadays? It really is both.

As GM CEO Rick Wagoner recently wrote on these pages, the Detroit companies have finally begun to adapt to this real economic world. Last year Detroit struck a deal with the unions to unload retiree health obligations by 2010 to a trust fund set up by the UAW. The trio's productivity has improved as well. In 1995, a GM car took 46 hours to make, Chrysler 43 and Toyota 29.4. By 2006, according to Harbour Consulting, GM had moved it to 32.4 hours per vehicle and Chrysler 32.9. Toyota stayed at 29.9.

Yet these moves born of desperation have come so late that the companies are still in jeopardy. Both management and unions chose to sign contracts that let them live better and work less efficiently in the short-term while condemning the companies to their current pass over time. It is deeply unfair for government now to ask taxpayers who have never earned such wages or benefits to shield the UAW and Detroit from the consequences of those contracts.

There's no natural law that America must have a Detroit automotive industry, any more than steel had to be made for all time in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania or textiles in New England. Britain sold off all its car plants to foreigners and was no less an advanced economy as a result, though it was a healthier one. Detroit may yet adjust to avoid destruction in the best spirit of American capitalism. The other American car industry is a model for how to do it.


4)Indian air and missile forces on war footing, Pakistani armored units diverted from Afghan border


Military sources report that on Sunday, Nov. 30, Asia's two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, took their first steps towards a conventional war. India, claiming evidence of Pakistan's involvement in the Islamist terrorist assault on Mumbai, placed its air and missile units on war preparedness, while Pakistan, disclaiming the charge, diverted its armed divisions from the Afghan border to its frontier with India.

Military experts fear a full-blown war could spill over into combat with tactical nuclear weapons.

For the Indian government, the last straw was the admission by Azam Amir Kasab, aged 21, the only terrorist known to have been captured by Indian forces, that Lashkar e-Taiba was behind the assault which claimed 174 lives, injured hundreds and devastated India's financial capital.

This Kashmiri group has links to both al Qaeda and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

From its outset on Wednesday, Nov. 26, the scale, coordination and clockwork targeting of the assault clearly betrayed the hand of a major national intelligence agency. Evidence also mounted that the attackers had reached Mumbai by boat from Karachi.

Five months ago, Taliban suicide killers attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul, claiming 60 lives including that of the Indian military attaché. The New Delhi government then found leads to Pakistan's clandestine service as the prime mover behind the outrage. Washington came up with the same proofs.

The Manmohan Singh government sees the Mumbai assault as a second, escalated Pakistani act of war-by-terror and cannot afford to avoid a strong, immediate response - particularly with a general election around the corner next May. If Singh braves the media and public howls for Pakistani blood and shows the same restraint as he did after the Kabul attack, he will lose his seat.

Domestic opinion is goading the New Delhi to act tough after what is perceived as the poor, slow and unprofessional performance of the police and special forces in quelling the terrorists. Indian commandoes were brought in 10 hours after the terrorists took over and it took them 60 hours to finally gain control of the three hostage sites Saturday, Nov. 29. Sunday, home minister Shivraj Patil resigned in response to the clamor followed by national security advisor MK Narayanan.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars and barely avoided a fourth in 2001.

President George Bush and his successor Barack Obama cannot hope for much headway in defusing Indian-Pakistan tension. With only a few weeks left in the White House, Bush does not have much leverage and Obama even less for pulling the two adversaries apart. While campaigning, the president-elect pledged to work to mend the fences between India and Pakistan and broker their Kashmir conflict. In the present climate, neither is looking for a mediator.

5)Captured terrorist says Israelis were specifically targeted in Mumbai

Islamist terrorist Azzam Amir Kassab, 21: A brutal killing machine captured alive
The captured terrorist, Azam Amir Kasab told police his group was sent with a specific mission to target Israelis to avenge the Palestinians. That is why they targeted Nariman House (Chabad Center), the Times of India reports. Kasab said his comrades stayed there posing as Malaysian students.

The nine Jewish victims, including 7 Israelis, represent the largest group of foreign hostages murdered by the Islamist terrorists who held Mumbai under siege from Wednesday, Nov. 29 to Saturday.

The name of Ms Yocheved Harpaz, 59, mother of four from Givitayim joined the four victims from Chabad Center so far identified: Rabbi Gavriel, 29, and Rivka, 28, Holzman, taken hostage in the Chabad Center during their assault on Mumbai Wednesday, Nov. 26.

Their 2-year old son, Moshe, was brought to safety by his Indian nanny.

Two more victims identified were Betzion Chroman, 28, father of three, who held dual US-Israeli citizenship, and Leibisch Teitelbaum, an American from Brooklyn. Forensic pathologists from Israel were flown to India Sunday by an Israeli Air Force plane to help identify the others. With them were defense experts and officials to arrange the return of the remains to Israel and their burial.

Chabad Center was seized together with two big hotels and attacks on other high-profile targets across the city.

The Indian government estimates that some 610 hostages were rescued at the ravaged Oberoi and Taj Mahal Palace hotels and 174 were killed by the terrorists, most of them Indians

Indian fingers are pointing at Pakistan as investigators begin probing for the hand behind the uniquely pre-planned, orderly, commando-style assault by an estimated 30 terrorists. The singling out of foreign sites and US, British and Jewish victims is seen by many experts as a hallmark of an al Qaeda-led operation possibly in association with other groups.

Indian TV claims the gunmen traveled to Mumbai by sea from Karachi. A recurring name is that of Maulana Abdul Bari, an Indian based in Saudi Arabia who is the suspected bankroller of the assault. The Foreign Office in London denies the "British connection" highlighted by UK media, some of which say seven of the terrorists were Pakistan British citizens.

All counter-terror agencies stress the importance of long and exhaustive reconnaissance by the attackers. Some suggest "advance control rooms" may have been set up at the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels for prior reconnaissance and even to cache arms and ammunition.

Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak also estimated the assault was carried out by 30 gunmen working in groups of seven who were in touch with additional elements in the city and linked to a command base, possibly of al Qaeda, in neighboring countries. The FBI has sent a team to join the Indian probe. The US and Israeli governments stress the need for more global cooperation and intelligence-sharing to help predict where the Islamist terrorists will strike next.

Atrocities from the 60-hour ordeal began coming to light Friday night, when Israeli defense minister said in a Channel 1 TV interview that some of the bodies bore signs that they had been bound hand and foot and two Israeli women had been killed hours before the men. The dramatic Indian helicopter-borne commando raid of Chabad Center, which caters to Israeli and Jewish visitors to the city, failed to save anyone in the building.

The outrage may not be over. Mumbai, India's financial capital, was shut down Saturday - schools, shops, traffic - against a second wave of terror as police armed with machine guns patrolled the streets. Friday, Islamist gunmen returned to their first target, the city's main rail station for a second attack. DEBKAfile reported earlier that some of the terrorists had remained on the loose away their first targets to continue their "mission."

In New York, Friday night, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky voiced the outrage of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and conveyed condolences to the families of everyone murdered in Mumbai. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said the atrocity reminds us of how connected the world is in the face of terror.

Indian investigators are examining a satellite phone and GPS map recovered from a trawler, the Kubar, floating in the Arabian Sea. The crew was missing from the vessel except for its master whose body was found beheaded with bound limbs.

6) Why Rush Limbaugh is a leading American intellectual
By James Lewis

I have a bone to pick with Rush Limbaugh about the word "intellectual." He says he isn't one. But Rush is the sharpest political commentator we have today. He is a public intellectual in the old sense: A fine, original thinker who constantly reveals new truths that slip past the mindless media. He can communicate with whoever bothers to listen, as tens of millions of people do every week, throwing a sharp light on the biggest questions we face. And he's entertaining and funny.


Rush has a well-thought-out political philosophy, with deep roots in European and American history. He constantly collects real evidence, and is better at explaining it to millions of listeners than anybody else today. Limbaugh has a twenty year track record of sifting truths from lies; that is not an accident, any more than Tiger Woods is an accident. It comes from great talent and lifelong practice.


In the upshot, Rush is a voice for rationality and sanity in a world awash in madness and propaganda. If that's not the proper role of an intellectual, what is?


The words "intellect" and "intellectual" deserve to be rescued from the myth-makers of the Left, which has decided in its amazing arrogance that it really owns those words. But that is just another sign of its narrow-minded cultism. The Left shuts out competing voices, like any other cult, and then becomes outraged when independent thinkers don't agree with its "smelly little orthodoxies" --- as George Orwell famously called them. (Orwell started as a Leftist and then figured out the scam.)


An intellectual is just a thinker, somebody who uses the intellect and does it well. An athlete is somebody who uses physical talent and does it well. Those words stand for excellence.


Rush Limbaugh listens to hundreds of competing voices and finds ways to make sense of them. That is what good intellectuals do -- a lot of listening, a lot of dialogue, a lot of clarification. Talk show hosts have the perfect job for it.


By far the majority of the great intellectuals in history have been conservatives, going back to the two main wellsprings of Western thought, the Greeks and the Bible. It is also true in ancient India and China. Confucius was one of the world's great conservative thinkers, emphasizing personal and governmental morality, correct social relationships, justice and sincerity.


(Which is why that Leftist hero Mao Zedong murdered tens of millions of people trying to uproot Confucian traditions in China. In the end, Confucius won.)


Plato was a great conservative. Cicero was a great conservative. The American Founders were conservatives, with rare exceptions. The wisdom books of the Bible are full of conservative sayings. That's what the Ten Commandments are about. "Honor your father and mother" is a profoundly conservative idea.


All high civilizations have been built by conservatives. You can't accumulate the cultural capital needed to build any high civilization if you try to destroy the past, as the Left constantly tries to do. You can't build a chariot if you have to reinvent the wheel every generation. The batty idea that kids have the real answers in life is just a modern delusion. It is just ignorant.


Conservatism builds. Leftism overthrows. That is the meaning of that pop word "revolution." The all-destroying revolution is an adolescent fantasy, and the Left hangs on to those fantasies a lot longer than conservatives do.


The idea of a "revolutionary" intellectual class is also a modern invention, made up to prop up the cult ego of the scribbling classes -- the teachers, newspaper writers and bureaucrats. Doctor Johnson called them the ink-stained drudges, and he was one himself. (A conservative, needless to say.) Professional word merchants only go back to 1800 or so.


Most prominent thinkers in history were talented amateurs, and didn't need to ride the wild horse of social revolution to gain control over other people. They kept their powerlust in check.


Socrates didn't have a college degree. He became an intellectual through constant dialogue. The Socratic dialogue is the origin of Western thought. Aristotle, the pupil of Plato, who in turn was the pupil of Socrates, founded the original "college" -- Aristotle's academy, which met in an Athenian grove. Mathematics goes back to Pythagoras and Euclid and many others, 25 centuries of cumulative thinking by talented amateurs. Almost nobody got paid for doing advanced mathematics until the 19th century. All from amateurs -- "lovers" -- of knowledge.


The same is true for the sciences and the other "departments" of human thought. But even the idea of "departments of thought" is a modern invention: As Alfred North Whitehead pointed out, "Nature has no departments." Neither does the human intellect. All that is just a bunch of paid professors trying to divide up the loot.


Intellectual creativity arose in thousands of places in the ancient world. We just happen to know more about Greece and the Hebrew and Christian sources than about the others. But they existed. Good thinkers are found all over, like good athletes and musicians. When they find other, they start to learn from each other, and then you see a spurt of creativity. It only takes a few to get it started.


But let me get back to Rush: Rush Limbaugh is far closer to the great tradition of Western intellectuals than anybody in the celebrity freak-show of the Left. It is the Rush Limbaughs who became Socrates and Plato in the ancient world. They composed the Psalms and the Book of Proverbs. They were not professional scribblers. They did not found a revolutionary cult designed to overthrow all the good traditions. They were talented talkers, and even better listeners. All good thinking starts from dialogue.


That's what the Doctor of Democracy does best today.

7) Westerners Welcome Harems
by Daniel Pipes

The Ottoman harem in Western imagination.

A Scottish judge recently bent the law to benefit a polygamous household. The case involved a Muslim male who drove 64 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone – usually grounds for an automatic loss of one's driving license. The defendant's lawyer explained his client's need to speed: "He has one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow and sleeps with one one night and stays with the other the next on an alternate basis. Without his driving licence he would be unable to do this on a regular basis." Sympathetic to the polygamist's plight, the judge permitted him to retain his license.

Monogamy, this ruling suggests, long a foundation of Western civilization, is silently eroding under the challenge of Islamic law. Should current trends continue, polygamy could soon be commonplace.

Since the 1950s, Muslim populations have grown in Western Europe and North America via immigration and conversion; with their presence has grown the Islamic form of polygyny (one man married to more than one woman). Estimates find 2,000 or more British polygamous men, 14,000 or 15,000-20,000 harems in Italy, 30,000 harems in France, and 50,000-100,000 polygamists in the United States.

Some imams openly acknowledge conducting polygamous marriage ceremonies: Khalil Chami reports that he is asked almost weekly to conduct such ceremonies in Sydney. Aly Hindy reports having "blessed" more than 30 such nuptials in Toronto.

Social acceptance is also growing. Academics justify it, while politicians blithely meet with polygamists or declare that Westerners should "find a way to live with it" and journalists describe polygamy with empathy, sympathy, and compassion. Islamists argue polygamy's virtues and call for its official recognition.


The Iranian harem as depicted by an Iranian.

Polygamy has made key legal advances in 2008. (For fuller details, see my blog, "Harems Accepted in the West.") At least six Western jurisdictions now permit harems on the condition that these were contracted in jurisdictions where polygamy is legal, including India and Muslim-majority countries from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to Morocco.

United Kingdom: Bigamy is punishable by up to seven years in jail but the law recognizes harems already formed in polygamy-tolerant countries. The Department of Work and Pensions pays couples up to £92.80 (US$140) a week in social benefits, and each multiculturally-named "additional spouse" receives £33.65. The Treasury states that "Where a man and a woman are married under a law which permits polygamy, and either of them has an additional spouse, the Tax Credits (Polygamous Marriages) Regulations 2003 allow them to claim tax credits as a polygamous unit." Additionally, harems may be eligible for additional housing benefits to reflect their need for larger properties.

The Netherlands: The Dutch justice minister, Ernst Hirsch Ballin, has announced that polygamous Muslim marriages should not be dealt with through the legal system but via dialogue.

Belgium: The Constitutional Court took steps to ease the reunification of harems formed outside the country.

Italy: A court in Bologna allowed a Muslim male immigrant to bring the mothers of his two children into the country on the grounds that the polygamous marriages had been legally contracted.
Australia: The Australian newspaper reports "it is illegal to enter into a polygamous marriage. But the federal government, like Britain, recognises relationships that have been legally recognised overseas, including polygamous marriages. This allows second wives and children to claim welfare and benefits."

Ontario, Canada: Canadian law calls for polygamy to be punished by a prison term but the Ontario Family Law Act accepts "a marriage that is actually or potentially polygamous, if it was celebrated in a jurisdiction whose system of law recognizes it as valid."

Thus, for the cost of two airplane tickets, Muslims potentially can evade Western laws. (One wonders when Mormons will also wake to this gambit.) Rare countries (such as Ireland) still reject harems; generally, as David Rusin of Islamist Watch notes, "governments tend to look the other way as the conjugal mores of seventh-century Arabia … take root in our backyards."

At a time when Western marriage norms are already under challenge, Muslims are testing legal loopholes and even seeking taxpayer support for multiple brides. This development has vast significance: just as the concept of one man, one woman marriage has shaped the West's economic, cultural, and political development, the advance of Islamic law (Shari‘a) will profoundly change life as we know it.


8) New New Deal Won't Help the Economy
By George Will

WASHINGTON -- Early in what became the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes was asked if anything similar had ever happened. "Yes," he replied, "it was called the Dark Ages and it lasted 400 years." It did take 25 years, until November 1954, for the Dow to return to the peak it reached in September 1929. So caution is sensible concerning calls for a new New Deal.

The assumption is that the New Deal vanquished the Depression. Intelligent, informed people differ about why the Depression lasted so long. But people whose recipe for recovery today is another New Deal should remember that America's biggest industrial collapse occurred in 1937, eight years after the 1929 stock market crash and nearly five years into the New Deal. In 1939, after a decade of frantic federal spending -- President Herbert Hoover increased it more than 50 percent between 1929 and the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt -- unemployment was 17.2 percent.

"I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started," lamented Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury secretary. Unemployment declined when America began selling materials to nations engaged in a war America would soon join.

In "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Amity Shlaes of the Council on Foreign Relations and Bloomberg News argues that government policies, beyond the Federal Reserve's tight money, deepened and prolonged the Depression. The policies included encouraging strong unions and wages higher than lagging productivity justified, on the theory that workers' spending would be stimulative. Instead, corporate profits -- prerequisites for job-creating investments -- were excessively drained into labor expenses that left many workers priced out of the market.

In a 2004 paper, Harold L. Cole of UCLA and Lee E. Ohanian of UCLA and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis argued that the Depression would have ended in 1936, rather than in 1943, were it not for policies that magnified the power of labor and encouraged the cartelization of industries. These policies expressed the New Deal premise that the Depression was caused by excessive competition that first reduced prices and wages, and then employment and consumer demand. In a forthcoming paper, Ohanian argues that "much of the depth of the Depression" is explained by Hoover's policy -- a precursor of the New Deal mentality -- of pressuring businesses to keep nominal wages fixed.

Furthermore, Hoover's 1932 increase in the top income tax rate, from 25 percent to 63 percent, was unhelpful. And FDR's hyperkinetic New Deal created uncertainties that paralyzed private-sector decision-making. Which sounds familiar.

Bear Stearns? Broker a merger. Lehman Brothers? Death sentence. The $700 billion is for cleaning up toxic assets? Maybe not. Writes Russell Roberts of George Mason University:

"By acting without rhyme or reason, politicians have destroyed the rules of the game. There is no reason to invest, no reason to take risk, no reason to be prudent, no reason to look for buyers if your firm is failing. Everything is up in the air and as a result, the only prudent policy is to wait and see what the government will do next. The frenetic efforts of FDR had the same impact: Net investment was negative through much of the 1930s."

Barack Obama says the next stimulus should deliver a "jolt." His adviser Austan Goolsbee says it must be big enough to "startle the thing into submission." Their theory is that the crisis is largely psychological, requiring shock treatment. But shocks from government have been plentiful.

Unfortunately, one thing government can do quickly and efficiently -- distribute checks -- could fail to stimulate because Americans might do with the money what they have been rightly criticized for not doing nearly enough: save it. Because individual consumption is 70 percent of economic activity, St. Augustine's prayer ("Give me chastity and continence, but not yet") is echoed today: Make Americans thrifty, but not now.

Obama's "rescue plan for the middle class" includes a tax credit for businesses "for each new employee they hire" in America over the next two years. The assumption is that businesses will create jobs that would not have been created without the subsidy. If so, the subsidy will suffuse the economy with inefficiencies -- labor costs not justified by value added.

Here we go again? A new New Deal would vindicate pessimists who say that history is not one damn thing after another, it is the same damn thing over and over.

9) In Barack we trust?
By David Sirota

Obama campaigned on his personality and judgment and won. Now, like it or not, he isn't beholden to anyone.

Judging by the proliferation of capital letters in the e-mail correspondence I receive, many seem worried that Barack Obama may not deliver the promised "change we can believe in."

After voters rejected the mantra of free trade and deregulation, some of those contacting me say they are upset that Obama is hiring so many free-trading deregulators who birthed today's economic mess.

With the president-elect having touted his opposition to the Iraq war, some are bothered "that Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views," as the Los Angeles Times reports.

Others recall Obama's insistence that "change doesn't come from Washington; change comes to Washington," and say they are dismayed that his government will be run by Washington insiders. And still others are confused that Obama championed a progressive platform but, as the Nation's Chris Hayes notes, "not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive" has been floated for a major Cabinet position.

To my fearful letter writers, I offer three responses.

First, I counsel not fretting too much yet. Although there is truth to the notion that "personnel is policy," crises can make radicals out of former establishmentarians, and the president-elect's initial declarations imply a boldly progressive agenda. "Remember, Franklin Roosevelt gave no evidence in his prior career that he would lead the dramatic sea change in American politics that he led," says historian Eric Rauchway.

Second, I tell e-mailers they are right to be somewhat distressed, right to ignore Obama loyalists who want them to shut up, and right to speak out. When President Bill Clinton rammed George H.W. Bush's NAFTA through Congress after candidate Clinton pledged not to, he provided ample reason to recollect the saying "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." And voicing concern is critical. As Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without demand."

Finally, I ask my pen pals if they really are shocked.

Despite the election's progressive mandate, Obama is not what Ronald Reagan was to conservatives -- he is not as much the product of a movement as he is a movement unto himself. He figured out that because many "progressive" institutions are merely Democratic Party appendages and not ideological movement forces, he could build his own movement. He succeeded in that endeavor thanks to the nation's Bush-inspired desire for change, his own skills and a celebrity-obsessed culture.

Though many Obama supporters feel strongly about particular issues, and though polling shows the country moving left, the Obama movement undeniably revolves around the president-elect's individual stardom -- and specifically, the faith that he will make good decisions, whatever those decisions are. With that kind of following, Obama likely feels little obligation to hire staff intimately involved in non-Obama movements -- especially those who might challenge a Washington ruling class he may not want to antagonize.

This is the mythic "independence" we're supposed to crave -- a czar who doesn't owe anyone. It is the foreseeable result of the Dear Leader-ism prevalent in foreign autocracies but never paramount in America until now -- and it will have its benefits and drawbacks.

Wielding his campaign's massive e-mail list, the new president could mobilize supporters to press Congress for a new New Deal. Or, he could mobilize that army to blunt pressure on his government for a new New Deal. The point is that Obama alone gets to choose -- that for all the talk of "bottom-up" politics, his movement's structure grants him a top-down power that no previous president had.

For better or worse, that leaves us relying more than ever on our Dear Leader's impulses. Sure, we should be thankful when Dear Leader's whims serve the people -- but also unsurprised when they don't.

10) Egypt's Jew Haters Deserve Ostracism in the West:More proof the prejudice has nothing to do with Israel.
By AMR BARGISIA

"But we are Semites ourselves!" That is what an urbane Egyptian journalist will likely reply to the charge that the Egyptian media is rife with anti-Semitism. But there are few places where Jews are blamed for so many of the world's ills, from carcinogenic pesticides to the war in Iraq.

More distressing is that much of the pointing is being done by Egypt's self-described liberals -- the pro-democratic and anti-Islamist crowd on which the country's hopes for a more tolerant future supposedly rest.

The most recent episode began on Oct. 2, when the Anti-Defamation League issued a press release reporting "Surge in Anti-Semitic Messages on Online Finance Sites." An Egyptian journalist read about it in the Israeli daily "Maariv," and here is how the new, "liberal" Egyptian weekly Al-Youm As-Sabi headlined its report the next day: "Jews are the principal suspect in the financial crisis." The article ran alongside a photo of stock market readouts, captioned "why are cries against Jews growing louder in the U.S.?"

This was not the only instance in which Egypt's "liberal" intelligentsia found ways to blame Jews for the financial crisis. On Oct. 11, Abbas at-Tarabili, the editor in chief of the Al-Wafd daily -- the house organ of Egypt's leading "liberal" political party of the same name -- wrote a column purporting to show that Jews were merely manipulating the stock market as they had the price of gold in the late 1970s.
"The Jews played a filthy game," he wrote. "It is true that the Western countries -- the United States on top -- have a lot to lose, but all pours into the pockets of Jewish businessmen who control the stock markets of the world."

Two weeks later, Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt's largest independent newspaper and widely regarded as the country's only serious tribune for liberalism, ran a column baldly titled "The Jewish Conspiracy." The columnist, Khairi Ramadan, who also co-hosts one of the country's most successful talk shows, asked his readers not to ignore what is being said on the Internet "about a Jewish conspiracy in the end of Bush's term, in preparation for controlling the next president."

"The available information," wrote Mr. Ramadan, shows that "the Jews withdrew 400 billion dollars from Lehman Brothers a couple of weeks before it collapsed," adding that the collapse of the brokerage house was of a piece with the events of September 11, "when thousands of Jews did not go to the WTC."

These examples are especially notable because they have nothing to do with Israel or Zionism. They expose the falsehood -- popular with prominent scholars like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of last year's best-selling book "The Israel Lobby" -- that hatred of Jews is not one of the great motivating factors in the Arab world's overall objections to Israel.

But these examples also raise a serious question about what passes for liberalism in the Arab world. Why bother listening to these voices on matters of economics -- much less politics, democracy or human rights -- if they also propagate hateful conspiracy theories?

There's another question: Over the past eight years, the United States has invested huge resources in attempting to bring democracy to the Middle East. But it's not clear whether that project will succeed as long as America's natural allies in the region remain themselves so profoundly irrational and illiberal.
What can be done? Here's a modest suggestion. The Egyptian state and the country's newspapers go out of their way to make a leper of any author who expresses even remote sympathy with Israel. Perhaps Western institutions could adopt a similar practice, refusing to invite to their various functions any editors who allow their pages to become Jew-hatred platforms. The cold shoulder alone might get these lunch-eaters to change their tune.

Mr. Bargisi is a Cairo-based writer and a former Bartley Fellow at the Journal.


11) Israel alarmed by EU bid to reopen Orient House as part of peace plan
By Barak Ravid



Israeli officials are deeply concerned over an internal European Union document outlining the EU's plans for advancing an Israeli-Palestinian deal in 2009. Inter alia, it calls for increased pressure on Israel to reopen Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem, including Orient House, which formerly served as the Palestinian Authority's headquarters in the city.

The document, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz, was written by the French Foreign Ministry, as France currently occupies the EU's rotating presidency.

It is slated to be discussed next week at a meeting of the EU's foreign ministers, and Israel is trying to get various elements changed before then.


Titled "The EU Action Strategy for Peace in the Middle East: The Way Forward," the document proposes various steps the EU should take in 2009 on both the Palestinian and the Syrian tracks, with emphasis on the former. However, its proposals are liable to result in a clash with whatever new government Israelis elect in February, whether headed by Tzipi Livni or Benjamin Netanyahu.

The EU, it states, must encourage the newly elected American government to be actively engaged in Israeli-Palestinian talks.

In addition, the document states, the international community must closely monitor implementation of the first stage of the road map peace plan, which requires Israel to freeze settlement construction and remove West Bank roadblocks, and the PA to fight terror.

Regarding the so-called core issues of the conflict - borders, security, Jerusalem and refugees - the document proposes three main lines of action.

"A key part of building the Palestinian state involves resolving the status of Jerusalem, as the future capital of two states," it declares. Therefore, "the EU will work actively towards the re-opening of the Palestinian institutions, including the Orient House."

Orient House, which once served as the PA's de facto Foreign Ministry, was closed in August 2001 following the deadly terror attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant. Since then, successive Israeli governments have refused to reopen it, as it symbolized Palestinian claims to sovereignty in East Jerusalem.

On security, the document expresses EU willingness to play a role in Israeli-Palestinian security arrangements, mainly by sending policemen, soldiers or civilians to help train Palestinian security forces or to supervise implementation of a final-status agreement.

Regarding the refugees, the document says an "agreed, just, fair and realistic" solution must be found, adding that the EU would be willing to help establish and operate an international mechanism to compensate and rehabilitate Palestinian refugees.

The document praises the PA for having greatly improved security in the West Bank, and therefore concludes that Israel must transfer additional large swathes of this territory to Palestinian security control. "During the coming period, Palestinian security presence should be expanded beyond cities," it says.

In addition, it notes, the EU "expects a complete freeze of all settlement activities including natural growth, including in East Jerusalem ... The EU will continue to send clear messages to Israel and examine practical ways to exert more influence on these issues, including on goods from settlements."