My God, I'm Melting and Individualism Comes First!

The Darwin Awards are out so have a good laugh, we need one. (See 1 below.)

What I find disengenuous is when a politician pronounces figures with certainty. Obama started out telling us his stimulus plan would employ 5 million now we are at 3 1/2 million and at a cost of almost a trillion. Who knows how many might have gotten jobs when the economy begins to improve without spending.

When has any government estimate been correct? Why do politicians undercut their effectiveness by spouting figures no one believes? They do so because there is no other way to sell ideologue.

We know all weapon system estimates are never correct because Congress seldom allocates enough initial money thus thwarting 'long run' manufacturing ability. This approach radically increases per item costs. Then, when changes are made along the way to upgrade systems that adds further cost increases.

Therefore, as Obama seeks to alter the landscape in education, energy and health care any estimate he makes has to be deemed unreliable. My rule of thumb is to double any estimate I hear and I am usually far more likely to be right and closer to the truth.

Don't even think about holding onto your wallet because this Congress is going to pick us clean.

Finally, for Obama to have stated last night there were no earmarks in his $780 billion stimulus bill is incredulous unless you assume all the spending is essential to the nation's welfare. If you buy that there are a whole host of bridges I would love to sell you.

Like the fisherman who cometh home late at night, sans fish, smelling of booze and telling about the one that got away - the truth is a commodity politicians are not long on - why must this generally be the case? Do untruths naturally live in their blood stream?

Again, I am reminded of the joke Sam Nunn loved to tell about the politician who was campaigning on a farm and as he approached the podium he stepped on some cow chips. As he began his remarks he smelled something foul, looked down at his shoes and said 'Oh my God I am melting.'

Two views: Bob Reich says forget the deficit - keep on spending. Robert Samuelson writes: 'the stimulus bill is a colossal waste.' You decide! (See 2 and 2a below.)

Some advice for Eric Holder - individualism comes first.. (See 3 below.)

The cost of health care will go up, its quality will go down but we will all benefit by sleight of hand mnaipulation? (See 4 below.)

Israeli technology keep improving. (See 5 below.)

Now that Russia has helped Iran get to the point of testing their nuclear facility the wake up call for Obama grows closer and the more he diddles the more pressure it will place on Netanyahu to act unilaterally. (See 5 and 5a.)

Charles Krauthammer continues to seek Obama's spine. He lists a host of provocations but Obama is too busy spending money to pay attention or does not understand their implications. It may take a 'green' mushroom cloud to finally grab our ecologically driven president. You decide. (See 6 below.)

An excellent article suggesting Obama's trillion dollar liberal 'enchalada' is wrapped in conservative 'flour' or 'flowery' language. Eventually the nation will pay for heartburn.

Meanwhile The Econmist gets it - a 'bright' but outlandishly costly future brought to us by 'Demwits.' (See 7 and 7a below.)


Dick



1)The 2008 Darwin Awards

Yes, it's that magical time of year again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us.

Here is the glorious winner:

1.When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.

And now, the honorable mentions:

2.The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and, after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.

3.A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

4.After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.

5.. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

6.A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change.When the clerk opened the cash drawer,the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer... $15.[If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

8.As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, 'Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from.

9.The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.[*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]

10.When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his siphon hose into the motor home's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.


*** Remember... They walk among us!!! ***

2) Forget the deficit: Don't make FDR's mistake and spend too little -- because we're probably going to need a second stimulus no matter what.
By Robert Reich

President Obama takes a question at the Fiscal Responsibility Summit at the White House in Washington on February 23, 2009.

The president's message on fiscal responsibility -- that he'll cut the current deficit by half by the end of his first term -- is smart politics right now, but it may be dumb politics by November of 2012, and doesn't make much economic sense regardless.

We're in a deepening recession, in case you hadn't noticed. The biggest challenge is to ramp up aggregate demand. Yes, we have to borrow lots from the Chinese and Japanese to do this, and, yes, it's costly in terms of additional interest payments to them. But there's no choice. In fact, if the slump gets worse -- and I have every reason to fear it will because that's the direction we're heading in as fast as you can imagine -- we'll probably have to have a second stimulus. And if the second isn't enough, a third. And so on. FDR's biggest mistake was doing too little until World War II. (No one should interpret this as a recommendation for more military spending -- I'm just saying Obama will probably have to think and do much bigger than the $787 billion stimulus so far.)

Can we continue to borrow and borrow and borrow? Yes, but eventually we'll have to pay higher interest rates to continue to attract global savings, mostly from the Chinese and Japanese. But that's not any time soon. The Chinese and Japanese are not going to yank their money out of Treasury bills because the slump is worldwide and T-bills are about the best and safest place to park savings. Besides, the Chinese don't want the dollar to plunge. They'd be stuck with a lot of paper worth far less than they got it for, and their exports would be in even worse shape than now.

Blue-dog Democrats, Washington insiders who love to prattle on about the dangers of too much debt, Wall Street bond traders, and most of the Republican Party (including, notably, John McCain and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the two "front-runners" for the Republican presidency in 2012, at least in terms of media attention) will continue to fuss about the skyrocketing debt. The very word "trillions" when juxtaposed with the word "dollars" is enough to send most people into paroxisms of shock and awe. So it makes political sense to talk now about fiscal responsibility, especially with Obama's first budget emerging this week, along with the likelihood that Geithner will soon ask for additional money for Wall Street.

But what happens when and if it's 2012 and the economy continues to need boosting? That promise could be a huge liability.

As to the economics, remember that when it comes to deficits and debt, the real issues over the long term are 1) the ratio of debt to GDP (we're still under 50 percent, which ain't bad, considering all the spending that's been going on; at the end of World War II it was substantially above 120 percent). And 2) whether and when we're back to growing the GDP, which is the most reliable way of improving the ratio.

If and when the stimulus package is big enough to get us back to full capacity, and if and when we make the public investments necessary to enlarge that capacity -- including the health and the education of our kids and our workforce, including a sustainable energy infrastructure, including public health and the environment -- we'll be in fine shape.

Halving the budget deficit by 2012 is a nice goal but it has little to do with the economic challenge we now face.

2a) Stimulus: A Colossal Waste?
By Robert Samuelson

Judged by his own standards, President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program is deeply disappointing. For weeks, Obama has described the economy in grim terms. "This is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill recession," he said at his Feb. 9 news conference. It's "the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression." Given these dire warnings, you'd expect the stimulus package to focus almost exclusively on reviving the economy. It doesn't, and for that, Obama bears much of the blame.

The case for a huge stimulus -- which I support -- is to prevent a devastating downward economic spiral. Spending is tumbling worldwide. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the U.S. economy contracted at a nearly 4 percent annual rate. In Japan, the economy fell at a nearly 13 percent rate; in Europe, the rate was about 6 percent. These are gruesome declines. If the economic outlook is as bleak as Obama says, there's no reason to dilute the upfront power of the stimulus. But that's what he's done.

His politics compromise the program's economics. Look at the numbers. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that about $200 billion will be spent in 2011 or later -- after it would do the most good. For starters, there's $8 billion for high-speed rail. "Everyone is saying this is (for) high-speed rail between Los Angeles and Las Vegas -- I don't know," says Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association. Whatever's done, the design and construction will occupy many years. It's not a quick stimulus.

Then there's $20.8 billion for improved health information technology -- more electronic records and the like. Probably most people regard this as desirable, but here, too, changes occur slowly. The CBO expects only 3 percent of the money ($595 million) to be spent in fiscal 2009 and 2010. The peak year of projected spending is 2014 at $14.2 billion.

Big projects take time. They're included in the stimulus because Obama and Democratic congressional leaders are using the legislation to advance many political priorities instead of just spurring the economy. At his news conference, Obama argued (inaccurately) that the two goals don't conflict. Consider, he said, the retrofitting of federal buildings to make them more energy efficient. "We're creating jobs immediately," he said.

Yes -- but not many. The stimulus package includes $5.5 billion for overhauling federal buildings. The CBO estimates that only 23 percent of that would be spent in 2009 and 2010.

Worse, the economic impact of the stimulus is already smaller than advertised. The package includes an obscure tax provision: a "patch" for the alternative minimum tax (AMT). This protects many middle-class Americans against higher taxes and, on paper, adds $85 billion of "stimulus" in 2009 and 2010. One problem: "It's not stimulus," says Len Burman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "(Congress was) going to do it anyway. They do it every year." Strip out the AMT patch, and the stimulus drops to about $700 billion, with almost 30 percent spent after 2010.

The purpose of the stimulus is to minimize declines in one part of the economy from dragging other sectors down. The next big vulnerable sector seems to be state and local governments. Weakening tax payments create massive budget shortfalls. From now until the end of fiscal 2011, these may total $350 billion, says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a liberal advocacy group. Required to balance their budgets, states face huge pressures to cut spending and jobs or to raise taxes. All would worsen the recession and deepen pessimism.

Yet, the stimulus package offers only modest relief. Using funds from the stimulus, states might offset 40 percent of their looming deficits, says the CBPP's Nicholas Johnson. The effect on localities would probably be less. Congress might have done more by providing large, temporary block grants to states and localities and letting them decide how to spend the money. Instead, the stimulus provides most funds through specific programs. There's $90 billion more for Medicaid, $12 billion for special education, $2.8 billion for various policing programs. More power is being centralized in Washington.

No one knows the economic effects of all this; estimates vary. But Obama's political strategy stunts the impact from what it might have been. By using the stimulus for unrelated policy goals, spending will be delayed and diluted. There's another downside: "Temporary" spending increases for specific programs, as opposed to block grants, will be harder to undo, worsening the long-term budget outlook.

Politics cannot be removed from the political process. But here, partisan politics ran roughshod over pragmatic economic policy. Token concessions (including the AMT provision) to some Republicans weakened the package. Obama is gambling that his flawed stimulus will seem to work well enough that he'll receive credit for restarting the economy -- and not blamed for engineering a colossal waste.

3) Holder's Tragic Prison
By Ed Kaitz

Some years ago at a major university out west I was hired to teach minority students courses in expository writing. Most of my students were African-American. They were part of a "bridge program" at the university that allowed "provisional" students (those whose entrance scores were sub par) to demonstrate within a year that they could handle the academic regimen at the school.


I realized that most of the students had been accepted through an affirmative action policy, but I was committed to helping them make the grade. My strategy was simple: hitch their sense of self-respect and self-confidence to their performance in the class. In other words, help them to understand that self-esteem is a product of achievement.


There was one major problem with my strategy. Every one of my colleagues teaching in the same writing program was convinced that race, not achievement, was the basis for a minority student's self-esteem. This ideology pervaded the mentality of the entire staff -- black and white -- from the lowliest tutors to the director of the writing program. Students were persuaded by their progressive instructors to explore only one topic in their writing: white oppression. In fact, of the hundreds of essays and drafts that I read I cannot remember one essay that managed to stray from the central theme: minority = oppressed, white = oppressor.


There was one class period that I will never forget. During a break in my lecture I asked several of the students what they intended to choose as a major. Some of the students said "sociology" while others said "ethnic studies" or "communications." When I asked if anyone wanted to choose "engineering" as a major a student in the back of the room loudly declared that engineering was a "white" profession. When my jaw nearly hit the floor most of the students burst out in laughter. I had never heard anything like this. I quickly recovered however and quietly told myself that for the remainder of the class I was now going to play the student. I wanted to let these black kids teach me something I'd probably never forget.


For the next twenty minutes I stood at the chalkboard writing down the names of common professions. Next to the profession I let the students direct me to writing either "white" or "black" based on their perception of "correct" life choices for people of color. There was raucous laughter and the students were at the edge of their seats proclaiming their judgments in near unison. Mathematician? White. Architect? White. Athlete? Black. Musician? Black. Engineer? White. Chemist? White. Physicist? White. Journalist? (this one caused some confusion) Teacher? Black. Economist? White. Business? White.


After we had covered the board with our list, I asked the students to consider the possibility of crossing over to one of the "white" professions. The response was unanimous: such a compromise would render the student an "Oreo." The students believed that a black engineer, for example, was black on the outside but unfortunately white on the inside.


During the several years I taught in the minority writing program, foreign students would often be allowed to join the writing course in order to improve their English and composition skills. Of these the Nigerian students were by far my favorites. Their respect for scholarship, learning, and academic achievement was unmatched. Their essays ranged in interest from international affairs to advertising -- and the quality of their work was excellent.


What fascinated me was how the classroom dynamic changed with the addition of the students from Nigeria. The African-American students looked at the coal black Nigerians like they had landed from Mars. For their part, the Nigerians rarely showed any interest in the culture of the black students on campus.


After leaving the minority writing program and later graduate school with a doctorate in philosophy, I spent years at several other universities teaching courses that were attended by Hindus, Arabs, Persians, Chinese, Japanese and yes, more of the excellent Nigerians. Their majors ranged from economics to foreign languages. In fact, I cannot remember a sociology or ethnic studies major among any of them. The difference? The word "Oreo," for these non African American minorities, really meant a cookie. Race never threatened the freedom they enjoyed to be individuals.


The philosopher Eric Hoffer once wrote that "the plight of the Negro in America is that he is a Negro first and only secondly an individual." When Attorney General Eric Holder recently called us a "nation of cowards" he was looking through a prism unknown to his Nigerian brothers. Holder, like Mr. Obama, is the product of an education system and a movement for black liberation that is blind to the virtues of individualism. These men and women are coddled products of an inexhaustible grievance industry that has the unfortunate effect of trapping eager and aspiring young black kids into severely limited life choices. Simply put, by saturating their worldview with color, men like Holder and Obama end up closing doors rather than opening them.


Eric Hoffer understood however that there was an advantage to the kind of race hysteria fanned by the grievance industry. Hoffer argued that individualism is a frightening proposition to many. Those who choose freedom and self-reliance must "grope for a purpose in life" and they are often condemned to "eating their hearts out over wasted opportunities." In short, when you're free, there's no one to blame but yourself. Success is built on the more mundane virtues of patience and perseverance. As for the race hustling elites however Hoffer had this to say:


"Grievance and extravagant hope are meat and drink to their souls, and there is a hero's garment to fit any size, and an imperishable alibi to justify individual failure."


Citizens of all colors are about to witness on a national scale what has been quietly fermenting for decades within the Ivory Tower: a crystallization of ethnic identity so rigid that dialogue becomes virtually impossible. This isn't the fault of those who have championed the philosophy of identity through achievement. It's the product of selfish elite race hustlers who rarely if ever had the patience and determination to grind away and "grope for a purpose in life" like many of their lower and middle class black brothers. Of all the evaluations I received from the black students at the writing program there is one I'll never forget: "Ed makes me want to succeed."


Instead of a dialogue on race Mr. Holder, why don't we discuss some of these topics: personal finance, starting a business, sports, history, philosophy, art, fishing, raising children, God, or one of my favorite topics, music.


In fact, one of America's greatest and most precious dialogues between black and white took place in a sound studio in New York City back in 1959. That was when the immortal jazz great Miles Davis defied some serious criticism coming from the black community and chose the white Bill Evans to accompany the famed group on piano. Why, the black community wondered, when there were so many great black jazz pianists, did Davis pick Evans? The answer is quite simple: Bill Evans was the best (sorry Art Tatum fans). The result? The best selling and most beautiful jazz album of all time: Kind of Blue.


Here's some advice for the Attorney General: Do you want Americans to make some great music together? Forget about skin color.

4) Paying for Government Health care, Madoff style
By Douglas O'Brien

You have to hand it to the new administration: when they promised change, they meant it. Unfortunately, the change they promised is not the change they are focused on implementing. In his appeal to voters, candidate Obama promised to change the way business was done in Washington. But in their first month in office his team has shown itself devoted to hardball, insider and partisan politics, assembling an administration thick with veteran insiders, including several of the lobbyists they claimed had to be driven from the temple. But as we know, this is the quintessential end justifies the means crowd. The empty promises were merely the means to effect the change that Democrats have sought for generations.


In their drive to swiftly make changes in the health care sector that will accelerate the move towards a complete government takeover, the administration has already, in four weeks, used political sleight of hand to move its agenda. Instead of introducing stand-alone legislation to expand government control of health care and allowing an open and transparent debate on the issue, the administration inserted major structural components of the socialized medicine system in the stimulus bill. This week, they will raise the curtain on their first budget bill which will have the accounting mechanisms for their takeover tucked away in the minutiae.


Looking at the snippets that administration officials are running up flagpoles it appears that they are going to attempt a time-honored fiscal sleight of hand to rationalize spending billions more to put people into government health care programs.


Unnamed administration officials told the Washington Post that they need to create "running room for health reform," which means cutting costs so they can appear to be able to afford to enroll more people into Medicare and expand the population's reliance on the government to cover their medical care. This is where the smoke and mirrors get set up.


There are two ways to cut costs in government. The first is to actually not spend money on something. The example here is to cut reimbursements for Medicare Advantage plans. Under these plans, beneficiaries enroll in a comprehensive program that includes drugs and supplemental coverage. The previous administration believed that getting seniors into a Medicare plan that covered all their needs would simplify care, streamline the system, improve service and enhance consumer satisfaction, so they created financial incentives to increase enrollment in these plans. Democrats groused that it was a Republican ploy to boost revenues for insurance companies, not to mention that it could prove popular and make nationalizing care more difficult. It has thus become one of the few targets of Democrats for cost cutting. By eliminating the incentives for Medicare Advantage, (in which about a quarter of beneficiaries enrolled) they will effectively destroy this innovation, returning beneficiaries to the disjointed and inefficient fee-for-service model.


You can calculate in black and white exactly how much less money you are going to spend by destroying Medicare Advantage and you can then use that money to enroll more people in standard Medicare by lowering eligibility requirements. Now while this is pretty straightforward from an accounting standpoint, the Democrats' trick is that if you add a few people here and there to Medicare, eventually everyone is eligible and, lo and behold, you have a national health care system!


The second cost cutting idea is much more of an illusion and much more fiscally irresponsible. Killing Medicare Advantage is a policy decision-a bad one-but it represents a shift in actual spending based on policy differences. The administration is also claiming that it is going to expand health care for the uninsured and everyone else partly by saving vast sums of money through other policy changes. The problem is no one can credibly predict how much, if any, actual savings will occur and when. It is also ironic that the Obama administration is touting policy changes that originated in the Bush administration as the keys to these huge savings.


Former Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt made it his cause to promote "value driven health care," which relied partly on improving the use of information technology to improve efficiency and capture the data necessary for enhancing cost effectiveness. He also was a strong advocate of pay for performance initiatives which would boost provider payments for good results, not just more procedures. Democrat complaints back then ranged from privacy intrusion to micro-managing the doctor patient relationship. But now, they are the key to the Democrats' policy objectives.


Democrats will cobble together predictions and estimates of how much money these new policies will save. The problem is, they can not be effectively quantified and could be wildly inaccurate. But they will spend real dollars in direct proportion to the theoretical dollars being "saved." Illinois' disgraced former governor Rod Blagojevich used this exact technique to try and expand children's health care in 2005. By moving Medicaid patients into a primary care case management (PCCM) system (a politically acceptable form of managed care), the state would save $57 million per year in Medicaid costs. And by some supreme good fortune, that was exactly the amount of money he needed to spend to enroll thousands of middle class kids into Medicaid.


Quite predictably, (if anyone had listened to actual health care experts), Medicaid patients did not flock to the voluntary PCCM. The state did not make it mandatory due to political considerations. There was little hard evidence generated that showed quantifiable savings on beneficiaries that did sign up. Physicians who were sick and tired of the dysfunctional Medicaid system in Illinois already refused to participate in the new PCCM system. In short, the predicted savings did not materialize. So the state postponed the enrollment of the new beneficiaries in Medicaid. Ha, ha! Just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Of course they didn't. The state still spent the tens of millions they predicted they would save, but never did. Now the federal government is trying to sell the same bill of goods on a much larger scale.


Some fine organizations, like Rand, have contributed to the body of research on cost savings through better use of information technology and disease prevention. But it must be emphasized that this is not the same as moving real dollars from one line item in the budget to another. It is a gamble, plain and simple. And basing the financial sustainability of an enormous expansion of government control over the economy on a prediction is unwise in boom times. It is blatantly irresponsible during times these same Democrats characterize as an economic catastrophe. It's the Bernie Madoff school of health care financing.


So by gutting an increasingly popular and efficient Medicare program that is not compatible with policy goals and cooking the books to create financial "running room," Democrats will miraculously find fictitious billions under the sofa cushions in Washington that they will use to pay for increasing government control over health care. And they will claim it isn't costing you a dime.

5) New Israel killer drone can take out Iran's S-300 anti-air missile

The Israeli air industries first unveiled its new Harop "loiter drone" for taking out ground-to-air missiles at the annual Aero-India 2009 air show which closed recently at Bangalore.

The Iranian media were first to disclose that this sophisticated Israeli drone is capable of targeting the Russian radar-equipped S-300 anti-air missile before it enters attack mode .

Military sources report that while Iran has contracted to buy from Russia five S-300 batteries worth $800 m to defend its nuclear sites against potential aerial attack, India and Turkey are interested in Israel's Harop killer-drone. Our sources report that the Tehran media made much of the new Israeli drone as a means of pushing Moscow to set the new batteries' delivery dates which the Russian suppliers have so far withheld.

The Harop is an upgraded version of the Harpy with more advanced features for taking out radar installations and anti-air missile installations. It can travel 1,000 km to patrol an assigned area and loiter there until a hostile target is exposed. Its 23-kilo warhead then strikes the target before it is activated in attack mode.

The Russian S-300 missile purchased by Tehran is one such target. It is classified in the West as a "game-changer" designed to rule out air attacks on its nuclear sites. This missile system is capable of engaging up to 100 targets at once, tracking targets with a mobile radar station which is immune to jamming.

The Harop is an expendable unmanned aerial vehicle which can sustain a mission of several hours over an assigned area. Operated by electro-optical sensors, Harop can detect weapons systems in inert mode, weapons on the move and radar installations switched off to avoid detection.

Our military experts maintain that once it penetrates Iranian airspace, this drone can silence surface-to-air batteries and open the skies to aerial and missile attack.

5) Iran's first nuclear reactor starts "pilot stage" at Bushehr Wednesday


Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr - ready to go by August

The preliminary phase of Iran's first reactor, built with Russian help at the southern town of Bushehr, was marked by a ceremony Wednesday, Feb. 25. Our sources report that Iranian nuclear teams will first activate the 1,000-MW reactor's sections in sequence with the help of advanced Russian computers flown in to monitor their progress. The head of Iran's nuclear commission, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, and the head of Russia's state Rosatom Atomic Corporation, Sergey Kiriyenko will be on hand.

Iranian and Western nuclear experts say this stage is a vital step forward to making the Bushehr reactor operational. Barring hitches, it will be ready for full operation by August 2009.

The announcement by the Iranian News Agency took Washington and Jerusalem by off-balance. Moscow has continually delayed meeting the deadlines in its $1 billion contract for completing the project. It was hoped that the reactor would never be finished - at least until the US and Russian presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev met for the first time on April 2, at the G-20 summit.

However, the Moscow and Tehran have clearly got together for moves ahead of that meeting: Bringing Iran's first nuclear reactor to preliminary operation and a contract for selling Iran advanced Russian S-300 air defense missile systems. Israeli officials point to Russian press reports maintaining that Moscow will not execute this contract. However that is not what the Iranian defense minister Gen. Mostafa Najar heard during his visit to the Russian capital last week. Our Moscow sources disclose that he was assured that the S-300 missile sale would be separated from the Moscow-Washington controversy over the deployment of US missile interceptors and radar in East. Europe and delivered by the end of the year.

The Iranian defense minister said Sunday, Feb. 21: "Russian officials are well aware that Moscow, rather than Iran is the target of Washington's missile plans." Just back from Moscow, Najar remarked: "The United States, mired in an all-out financial meltdown, will eventually avoid the unnecessary cost of a missile project" – a view he apparently picked up from his Russian hosts.

Military sources reported earlier that that defense minister Najar and his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov made good progress in their talks on the sale of advanced S-300 ground-to-air missiles to Iran. Both sides agreed it was essential to provide Iran's Bushehr reactor with an effective system against air and missile attack.

Western military sources say the Moscow talks are refining a formula to enable Iran to deploy the S-300 batteries guarding Bushehr at its other nuclear sites as well.


Iran's official news agency says the country's first nuclear power plant will begin preliminary phase


5a) Livni to Netanyahu: I'll back you on Iran threat


Kadima leader Tzipi Livni has promised prime minister-designate Benjamin
Netanyahu her party's support on the Iranian nuclear threat if she ends up
heading the opposition.

The commitment, made during talks between the two leaders Sunday, became
public as Netanyahu headed for his first day of formal coalition
negotiations today.

"I will use my many contacts in the United States, Europe and the Arab
world, along with my experience and that of other Kadima members, to win
support from the international community against Iran to the extent
necessary," Livni said.

Netanyahu had argued that Kadima should join the government despite the
differences between Kadima and Netanyahu's Likud because it is crucial that
Israel deal with the Iranian issue. However, Livni said her party does not
need to be in the coalition to support the government on the matter.

Netanyahu will continue to court Kadima and Labor in a bid to form a
broad-based coalition, even as Likud negotiators meet with the right-wing
parties, which he has said are Likud's natural partners.

Coalition talks, which will be held in the Kfar Hamaccabiah Hotel in Ramat
Gan, will begin this afternoon with Yisrael Beiteinu. Next comes Shas,
followed by United Torah Judaism.

Netanyahu is essentially trying to form two separate coalitions
simultaneously. He would prefer a unity government in which Kadima would be
Likud's primary partner, but Livni seems intent on leading the opposition,
making this option appear unlikely. The other possibility is a
rightist/ultra-Orthodox government of 65 MKs that would include Likud,
Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas, UTJ, Habayit Hayehudi and the National Union.

Shas and UTJ are prioritizing their demand to build thousands of new housing
units for the ultra-Orthodox. Both ultra-Orthodox parties want the housing
and construction portfolio, including control of the Israel Lands
Administration, although Netanyahu has said he wants the land administration
to become part of the Prime Minister's Office.

"What's more important [than getting the portfolio] is a government decision
to resolve the housing crisis of the ultra-Orthodox public," said MK Moshe
Gafni (UTJ). "People have no choice - they're living in shelters."

The ultra-Orthodox parties are also demanding control of religious affairs
and more funding for child supplements and yeshivas.

Netanyahu appointed his negotiation team yesterday, which will be
coordinated by Likud whip MK Gideon Sa'ar. The team will include prominent
attorney Yaakov Ne'eman, Cabinet Secretary-designate Eliezer Sandberg,
Netanyahu adviser Natan Eshel and MK Zeev Elkin.

6) Where's Obama's foreign policy spine?
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

The Biden prophecy has come to pass. Our wacky veep, momentarily inspired, had predicted last October that "it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama." Biden probably had in mind an eve-of-the-apocalypse drama like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Instead, Obama's challenges have come in smaller bites. Some are deliberate threats to US interests, others mere probes to ascertain whether the new president has any spine.


Consider the long list of brazen Russian provocations:

(a) Pressuring Kyrgyzstan to shut down the US air base in Manas, an absolutely crucial NATO conduit into Afghanistan.

(b) Announcing the formation of a "rapid reaction force" with six former Soviet republics, a regional Russian-led strike force meant to reassert Russian hegemony in the Muslim belt north of Afghanistan.

(c) Planning to establish a Black Sea naval base in Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia, conquered by Moscow last summer.

(d) Declaring Russia's intention to deploy offensive Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad if Poland and the Czech Republic go ahead with plans to station an American (anti-Iranian) missile defense system.

President bush's response to the Kaliningrad deployment - the threat was issued the day after Obama's election - was firm. He refused to back down because giving in to Russian threats would leave Poles and Czechs exposed and show the world that, contrary to post-Cold War assumptions, the US could not be trusted to protect Eastern Europe from Russian bullying.

The Obama response? "Biden Signals US Is Open to Russia Missile Deal," as The New York Times headlined Biden's February 7 Munich speech to a major international gathering. This followed strong messages from the Obama transition team even before the inauguration that Obama was not committed to the missile shield. And just to make sure everyone understood that the Bush policy no longer held, Biden in Munich said the US wanted to "press the reset button" on NATO-Russian relations.

Not surprisingly, the Obama wobble elicited a favorable reaction from Russia. (There are conflicting reports that Russia might suspend the Kaliningrad blackmail deployment.) The Kremlin must have been equally impressed that the other provocations - Abkhazia, Kyrgyzstan, the rapid reaction force - elicited barely a peep from Washington.

IRAN HAS been similarly charmed by Obama's overtures. A week after the new president went about sending sweet peace signals via al-Arabiya, Iran launched its first homemade Earth satellite. The message is clear. If you can put a satellite into orbit, you can hit any continent with a missile, North America included.

And for emphasis, after the roundhouse hook, came the poke in the eye.

A US women's badminton team had been invited to Iran. Here was a chance for "Ping-Pong diplomacy" with the accommodating new president, a sporting venture meant to suggest the possibility of warmer relations.

On February 4, Teheran denied the team entry into Iran.

Then, just in case Obama failed to get the message, Iran's parliament speaker rose in Munich to offer his response to Obama's olive branch.

Executive summary: Thank you very much. After you acknowledge 60 years of crimes against us, change not just your tone but your policies and abandon the Zionist criminal entity, we might deign to talk to you.

WITH A grinning Goliath staggering about sporting a "kick me" sign on his back, even reputed allies joined the fun. Pakistan freed from house arrest A.Q. Khan, the notorious proliferator who sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Ten days later, Islamabad capitulated to the Taliban, turning over to its tender mercies the Swat Valley, 100 miles from the capital. Not only will Shari'a law now reign there, but the democratically elected secular party will be hunted down as the Pakistani army stands down.

These Pakistani capitulations may account for Obama's hastily announced 17,000 troop increase in Afghanistan even before his various heralded reviews of the mission have been completed. Hasty, unexplained, but at least something. Other than that, a month of pummeling has been met with utter passivity.

I would like to think the supine posture is attributable to a rookie leader otherwise preoccupied (i.e. domestically), leading a foreign policy team as yet unorganized if not disoriented. But when the State Department says that Hugo Chavez's president-for-life referendum, which was preceded by a sham government-controlled campaign featuring the tear-gassing of the opposition, was "for the most part... a process that was fully consistent with democratic process," you have to wonder if Month One is not a harbinger of things to come.

7) Conservative words for a liberal agenda
By JOHN F. HARRIS & JONATHAN MARTIN



In his programs and promises, President Barack Obama Tuesday night offered the nation by far the most expansive agenda for the national government in decades.

In his words and mood, however, Obama presented this breathtakingly ambitious vision in a way intended to convey caution, moderation, sobriety.

The 52-minute address outlined more commitments by the public sector, more intervention into the private economy, and more spending than anything Washington has undertaken at least since the Great Society and more likely the New Deal.

The substance reflected Obama’s bet that the country—alarmed by the economic crisis, repelled by the failures of the president who preceded him—is ready to move in a decisively more liberal direction.

The rhetoric, by contrast, reflected his apparent belief that most Americans remain instinctually conservative, leaving him and his agenda acutely vulnerable to backlash.

The result was a bold vision supported by defensive arguments. Repeatedly he made his case by stressing what he and his program—with its trillions of dollars to jump-start the economy, bail out distressed auto firms, banks, and homeowners, and launch major new initiatives on health care, clean energy, and education—were not.

Referring to the $790 billion he won to jump-start the economy, he said he backed the measure, “Not because I believe in bigger government — I don't. Not because I'm not mindful of the massive debt we've inherited — I am.”

Nodding to public anger about coming to the rescue of reckless bankers, he repeated twice that he was trying to help people not banks, and practically pleaded, “I promise you — I get it.”

He took the same tack with homeowners, singling out “speculators” and those who borrowed beyond their means and pledging—in an assertion that critics vigorously dispute—that they would not be helped by his plan.

And on taxes, which he wants to raise on the most affluent, he repeated with emphasis that “not one single dime” will come from families earning less than $250,000.

In many ways, Obama used his speech to practice the politics of “pre-buttal”—attempting to pre-empt the lines of argument that Republicans hope can revive their defeated and demoralized party.

It was as if he and his speechwriters had listened closely to both Bill Clinton and Rick Santelli. It was Santelli, the CNBC commentator, who rallied bail-out skeptics with an on-air rant that Obama was rewarding irresponsible behavior by careless banks and homeowners.

The former president, meanwhile, said recently that Obama needed more inspiration and hope mixed in with his bracing warnings about the anemic economy.

Obama closed his speech by telling lawmakers that if Washington rose to the occasion in meeting the crisis “then someday years from now our children can tell their children that this was the time when we performed, in the words that are carved into this very chamber, ‘something worthy to be remembered.’”

And, as Clinton and others recommended, he aimed to lift his speech above the particulars of the dire moment to tell a larger story about his own vision and how it relates to the country’s core values.

He did indeed rise above the particulars, often far above. The speech included broad-brush exhortations but little programmatic detail. There was scant elaboration on the cumulative costs of his agenda to save the auto industry, invest in better schools, or overhaul national policies on energy and health care. But there were repeated warnings that inaction would in the long run be more expensive.

Obama plainly saw the speech as less an opportunity for point-by-point persuasion and more as an occasion to address Americans from the secular equivalent of a national pulpit.

Although a young president at 47, Obama often enjoys striking a paternal note in his rhetoric. Tuesday night, he chided both Washington and at times the country on irresponsible behavior and presented himself as teacher, truth-teller, and, if necessary, head-knocker.

He bemoaned how the country has talked about energy independence for decades but not acted. He lectured that the country has “lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.”

The speech invoked the words “responsible” or “responsibility” on 14 occasions. He invoked the words “accountable” or “accountability” five times.

Sounding a bit like a high-school coach at half-time, Obama assured Americans, “We are not quitters.”

Before the speech, Obama aides had vowed that the speech would seek to resonate especially with young people, by emphasizing pragmatism and eschewing outdated political rhetoric and rituals. There were a couple nods to working with Republicans and trading partisanship for problem-solving.

But in many ways the speech was strikingly familiar. Like most of his predecessors, Obama used the nationally televised address—the equivalent of a state of the union address for a new president—to hop-scotch over a wide array of topics. And he employed the same ritual used by all presidents since Ronald Reagan of singling out noteworthy Americans seated as his guests in the gallery.

In Obama’s case, those people included “Leonard Abess, a bank president from Miami who reportedly cashed out of his company, took a $60 million bonus, and gave it out to all 399 people who worked for him, plus another 72 who used to work for him.”

It was a reflection of the moment, emphasizing sacrifice, and a starkly different than the real-life example cited by President Bush in 2001: a middle-class Pennsylvania family that stood to get $2,000 knocked off their tax bill.

While preaching an expansive agenda, Obama framed his goals in ways that give him wide latitude to later declare success.

He did not lay out policy specifics for health care, saying only that the goal must be to control costs and expand coverage. He said he would welcome ideas from all quarters and, as on the campaign trail, did not promise universal coverage but only “health care reform.”

On the stimulus package, he said his plan “will save or create 3.5 million jobs.” By including an essentially imponderable measurement—jobs that might have been cut if the government hadn’t acted—he can say the stimulus was effective even if unemployment continues to rise.

Similarly, on the ailing auto industry he only committed himself in general terms, saying he was committed to domestic car-makers "that can compete and win."

Though his address was focused squarely on the economy and other domestic challenges, Obama devoted six paragraphs to foreign policy, including nods to American power aimed at the broad middle and a reiteration of campaign pledges sure to please the base of his own party.

He renewed the country's commitment to defeating al Qaeda and paid tribute to American troops and veterans.

At the same time, he took direct aim at the policies of his predecessor by promising to end the war in Iraq, win the war in Afghanistan, and close down Guantanamo and pledging to not torture.

"We cannot shun the negotiating table, nor ignore the foes or forces that could do us harm," he said.

On Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama said, “Along with our outstanding national security team, I'm now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war.”

Stern in some passages, pleading in others, Obama’s address was infused with the spirit of admonishment. “None of this will come without cost, nor will it be easy. But this is America. We don’t do what’s easy. We do what is necessary to move this country forward.”

7a) A brighter future, but who pays?

Barack Obama, in his address to Congress, asks for sacrifice but skips the details

AS A new president, Barack Obama’s first speech to Congress was not, officially, a state-of-the-union address. That was just as well: its current state is awfully precarious. On Tuesday February 24th, a few hours before he spoke to the Senate and House of Representatives, a survey reported that consumers’ confidence in the future was at its lowest in 40 years of polling.

Mr Obama did not sugar-coat matters. The economic crisis “is the source of sleepless nights,” he said. His budget, to be delivered on Thursday, “reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited—a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis and a costly recession.”

He promised that beyond this grim present lies a brighter future of plug-in hybrid-energy cars, wind- and solar-powered cities, digital health records, vanquished disease, and the world’s highest college-graduation rates. And, with the inspirational flourish for which he is famous, he insisted that Americans would triumph because there exist “amid the most difficult circumstances”—his voice descending to a throaty growl—“a generosity, a resilience, a decency.”

Such speeches are typically meant to sketch a president’s broad agenda rather than deliver specifics. This one at times felt like an economics class with simple explanations of how credit markets work, and at others like a late-night cable TV commercial: “The average family who refinances today can save nearly $2,000 per year on their mortgage.”

Still, he did give clues to his priorities. Congress, he said, had to act soon to overhaul America’s multiplicity of financial regulators, which struggled to anticipate and cope with the financial crisis. He called for a cap-and-trade system to reduce the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions. He gave warning that the Treasury would probably need more than the $700 billion that Congress has already authorised for propping up the banking system (while studiously avoiding the debate over whether banks should be nationalised in the process). He strongly indicated that there would be more aid for General Motors and Chrysler, which are now contemplating whether to file for bankruptcy to shrink themselves more rapidly. “The nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it”, he said.

A theme that permeated the speech was rapidly rising national debt, following the budget-busting $787 billion stimulus that Mr Obama just signed. “Everyone in this chamber–Democrats and Republicans–will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me,” Mr Obama said. But he has yet to say what he is prepared to sacrifice. He still plans to expand publicly financed health care, make permanent tax credits to the majority of workers, expand college assistance and invest in alternative energy.

The budget on Thursday is expected to show that Mr Obama inherited a deficit of $1.3 trillion this fiscal year, and raised it to $1.5 trillion with the fiscal stimulus (a post-war high of some 10% of gross domestic product). Mr Obama will promise to get it down to $533 billion or 3% of GDP by fiscal year 2013. Most of that drop will come from the expiration of temporary stimulus measures, the cessation of capital injections and the hoped-for start of economic recovery. The rest will come from withdrawing troops from Iraq, trimming payments to privately-managed Medicare plans, letting George Bush’s tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2010 for the richest 2% of Americans, the taxation of foreign corporate income and the sale of permits for carbon-emissions trading. He promised, as every previous president has, to vet the budget “line by line” for waste; he will find it just as hard as his predecessors to kill programmes with powerful congressional backers.

At a Monday budget summit with congressional leaders and again on Tuesday Mr Obama rightly noted that the cost of old people’s health care and pensions are the country’s biggest long-term fiscal threats, but on neither occasion did he propose how to deal with them. In fairness it is early and stabilising the economy should be Mr Obama’s priority, not long-term fiscal discipline. Premature fiscal tightening could abort a recovery. The summit on Monday and the speech on Tuesday were part of the process of softening up the public for future pain.

Both events also demonstrated that despite being jilted on his quest for some Republican support during the debate on the fiscal stimulus, he is not giving up on his pursuit of bipartisanship. On Tuesday night, at least, Republicans were co-operative, rising in applause almost as often as Democrats.