Settlements Cause Global Warming!

Are we witnessing good cop, bad cop foreign policy? We can tell Israelis where to live but we can't tell them not to attack Iran?

In the last week a host of events have occured - an Israeli sub with nuclear armed weapon capability has surfaced off India, rumored the Saudis have granted Israel fly over rights, the Israeli Ambassador acknowledged Iran could wipe Israel out with one nuclear launch and the list does not stop there.

Is this simply a host of meaningless warnings or are these a series of intended prelude warnings about something more serious to come? (See 1 below.)

Plan B? and Iran responds. (See 1a and 1b below.)

Needed change in cutting health care waste as a result of defensive medicine. (See 2 below.)
And if we are going to save the world, lets do it all the way! (See 2a below.)

Maureen Dowd extracts her Palin pound of flesh so as not to be outdone by Atlantic Magazine.

We now have two national politicians who, according to Dowd's view, would seem narcissistic -Palin and Obama. And then there is another view.(See 3 and 3a below.)

Orator or demagogue? You decide. (See 4 below.)

Lieberman has become Israel's Palin? (See 5 below.)

EC has a new theory - Palestinian dependency is because of Israeli settlements. Soon global warming will be attributed to the settlements. (See 6 below.)

Melanie Phillips responds to Dershowitz' article, which I previously posted, and says he does not get it. I alluded to the same thought - in order to stick to his liberal roots Dershowitz had to make all kind of tortuous theoretical adjustments. (See 7 below.)

Obama has a plan according to Fred Hiatt but it is not change - politicians have been doing it since politicians were first born. (See 8 below.)

Dick


1)Biden: US will not stand in Israel's way on Iranian issue


The US will not stand in Israel's way if Israel believes military action is needed to eliminate Iran's nuclear threat, Vice President Joe Biden said on Sunday, during an interview with ABC's 'This Week.'

Biden opined that the US "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do."

Speaking to interviewer George Stephanopolous during a three-day visit to Iraq, the US vice president said that Israel can determine for itself "what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else."

When questioned if Israel could make that decision "whether [the US] agrees or not," Biden answered in the affirmative, noting, "Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that."

He went on to say that the interests of the US are also the interests of Israel and "the whole world."

"If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice," he added.

When pushed to comment on whether or not the US would grant "over-fly rights … in Iraq," Biden responded, "I'm not going to speculate, George, on those issues, other than to say Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests, and we have a right and we will determine what's in our interests."

The Israeli government had no immediate comment on Biden's remarks, but said a statement might come later.

On the issue of recent North Korean test-fires, which have coincided with US Memorial Day commemorations and Fourth of July celebrations, Biden backed his country's current policy, saying, "We have succeeded in uniting the most important and critical countries to North Korea on a common path of further isolating North Korea."

He also spoke of US President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq, stressing
that the main aim was to "leave behind a stable and secure country."

He reiterated that by 2011, all US troops will be out of Iraq, by which point Iraqis will be "fully capable of maintaining their own security."

Speaking to CBS News political analyst John Dickerson on 'Face the Nation,' on Sunday meanwhile, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen evaluated that both a US strike on Iran, and the Islamic republic attaining nuclear weapons would be "very destabilizing."

He said called both situations "really, really bad outcomes," and urged appropriate actions to prevent either eventuality.

Mullen said that the US has a "very narrow window" of options which would be appropriate to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat.

1a) Israel seeks 'Plan B' if U.S.-Iran talks fail
By Barak Ravid

Israel is urging the United States and other countries to start preparing now for the possibility that Washington's proposed dialogue with Iran will fail, by readying a "Plan B" that includes "paralyzing sanctions" and other measures against Tehran.

The U.S. has resisted this idea so far.

The Israeli messages - sent against the background of the recent unrest in Iran - have been delivered to the White House, the State Department and senior officials in the U.S. intelligence community by senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office and the Foreign Ministry. Similar messages have been sent to senior officials in Germany, Russia, France and Japan.
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Israel's argument is that if the Americans are indeed committed to imposing "paralyzing sanctions" on Iran should the dialogue fail - as both U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said in the past - the work of drafting these sanctions must begin now.

"Israel is adjusting its messages to the new circumstances created by the unrest in Iran," a senior government official said. "These things must be stated clearly now so that there is no confusion about our position."

Before the protests in Iran began, the official explained, Israel's assessment was that the planned American-Iranian dialogue had little chance of succeeding. But in light of the protests, and the need of Iranian hard-liners to shore up their rule, Israel's intelligence community believes the chances of the dialogue even beginning, much less succeeding, are near zero.

"In the situation that has arisen following the protests in Iran, there is much greater international readiness for harsh steps against the regime in Tehran," the official noted.

However, Washington has so far rejected the "Plan B" idea.

American officials involved in the Iranian issue have told their Israeli counterparts that they are aware of the frustration in Israel, Europe and the Gulf states over Washington's insistence on going ahead with the dialogue with Iran, and that they also do not believe the chances of success are high.

Nevertheless, they said, were the U.S. to start laying the groundwork for stiffer sanctions now, this would signal to the Iranians that Obama is not serious about dialogue with Tehran, which would foil any chances of success that the dialogue might have.

This exchange of messages has a positive side: The two countries have at least resumed serious conversation on the Iranian issue, after a hiatus of almost six months.

On the negative side, however, Israel's concern about Washington's lack of alternative plan should the dialogue fail remains unassuaged. Germany, Britain and France are all thought to share this concern.

Israeli officials dealing with the Iranian issue said cooperation with Germany, Britain and France has been very fruitful, and that the three European powers have been working with Israel to achieve two goals: getting the U.S. to assess the progress of the dialogue with Iran during the UN General Assembly meeting in September, rather than waiting another few months, and securing publication of the military appendix to the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran due to be submitted in September.

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday that Israel will decide for itself whether to attack Iran.

In an interview with ABC television, Biden said: "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else. Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that."

Biden insisted that pressure from Israel or other countries would not affect American's planned dialogue with Iran. "There is no pressure from any nation that is going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed," he said, adding that Washington believes this dialogue serves America's interests, as well as those of Israel and the rest of the world.

But "if the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that," he continued. "That is not our choice."

The U.S., he stressed, "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do."

1b) 'Iran's response will be real, decisive'

Iran is ready to take "real and decisive" action if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities, a senior Iranian parliamentary official said Monday.

The remarks by Alaeddin Broujerdi, the head of Iran's parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, came after US Vice President Joe Biden signaled that Washington would not try to prevent any such Israeli assault.

"Both the US and Israel are aware of the consequence of an erroneous decision," Broujerdi told reporters at the Iranian Embassy in Tokyo.

"I believe our response will be real and decisive," Broujerdi said. He declined to elaborate.

Biden was asked on ABC's This Week whether the US would stand in the way militarily if the Israelis decided they needed to take out Iran's nuclear program.

"Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said in an interview broadcast Sunday, thus seeming to give Israel a green light for military action to eliminate Iran's nuclear threat

Broujerdi also defended a recent crackdown on protesters following Iran's presidential election, saying that Iranian police had merely acted to restore order, and accusing Mousavi of instigating the protests.

"There is no confusion. It is (now) a totally peaceful situation in Iran," he said. Broujerdi is currently visiting Japan as chairman of the Iran-Japan Parliamentary Friendship League.




2) Obama Plan Calls for Making the Health Care System More Efficient by Having Trial Lawyers Provide Medical Services More Directly


Last week, President Obama gave a speech to the American Medical Association in which he made clear that while frivolous lawsuits are major drivers of excessive health care costs, he would oppose any efforts to restrict potentially unlimited “jackpot” damage awards.

Yesterday, Obama addressed another group, the American Trial Lawyers Association, and further defined his plan to reform the health care system.

“We all know the threat of bankrupting lawsuits in our ‘jackpot justice’ system causes doctors to engage in wasteful ‘defensive medicine’ in which they prescribe drugs and order extra medical tests that aren’t necessary in order to reduce their risks of liability,” said the President. “That’s why I’m proposing that medical services and operations be performed right in the courtroom, where lawyers can provide advice to doctors and patients in real-time, limiting litigation transaction costs.”

Obama said his plan would free up hospital beds and produce savings that could be used to help cover the high costs of defensive medicine.

“Under my plan,” said Obama, “medical records could be accessed instantly by both doctors and lawyers for both sides in the inevitable litigation,” avoiding duplication costs. “And already-empaneled juries could immediately render verdicts that reflect the emotions of the moment following an adverse health event, regardless of any fault on the part of the doctor.”

Administration officials added that trial lawyers could collect their one-third contingency fees from damage awards right there in the courtroom, while doctors would only have to walk a short distance to bankruptcy court down the hall.

“It’s time to put the ‘Doctor’ back in ‘Juris Doctor’,” said Obama, concluding his remarks to thunderous applause.

2a) Let's cap and trade oxygen!
By James Lewis

Enough already with carbon cap and trade. I say let's cap oxygen, and then tax any family that can't achieve the Average Family Oxygen Target of 80% BOOTS (Before Obama Oxygen Trading Scheme). Remember, if you weren't inhaling all that O2 you wouldn't be belching out clouds of noxious CO2. Yuck. Yes, I know oil refineries smell bad and coal looks dirty. But none of that carbon would ever see the light of day if it weren't for all the oxygen you suck in, you greed bucket. So let's get down to root causes.


Here's the goal. If we can only get five billion people around the world to breathe 20% less oxygen per person, we would Save the Planet from Global Warming. Just like that!


Twenty percent less O2 going into your body means 20% less CO2 out-gassing, atom-for-atom. It's just like cutting down the world population by a billion polluting oxygen hogs.


Capping oxygen is actually the hardest part. Once you learn to cut down your intake, we just set up a market to trade official credits for the unbreathed O2 that you could have inhaled but didn't. Let's assume for the sake of planetary computer modeling that you can personally cut down your breathing by 20%. Try it! Just hold your nose and breathe through a straw. And when you get that strangled feeling, just remember you're Saving the Planet. Lay back and think of Paul Krugman.


Did you ever want to lose weight? This is the ecologically responsible way to do it. It's the Oxygen Sparing Diet. If you breathe just one-fifth less oxygen you'll be eating one-fifth less food, because your body uses all that oxygen to metabolize your French fries and fat-burgers. The benefits are out of this world.


Now here's the free market angle. Congress can pass a law stating that if you achieve more than the mandated National O2 Reduction of 20% you will receive an official US Government Oxygen Trading Credit for all the oxygen you did not breathe beyond 20%. It's like price supports for farmers, except that everybody can play. For instance, if you cut your O2 down by 25% you receive a 5% Oxygen Trading Credit, to sell to your huffing and puffing neighbors on a free market basis. If you breathe 30% less, you get a 10% OTC. It's supply and demand!


Or consider this option: For the average family of five --- two adults, two kids and a dog --- just get rid of a family member. You can start by getting rid of your dog. Do you have any idea how much oxygen a running dog breathes? Do your Planet a favor, please. And once you get the hang of it...


Even cars breathe oxygen to burn gasoline. Cut your driving by 20% --- after all, you won't need to drive now that you're breathing less --- and not only will you cut carbon pollution, but you can slice even more off your greedy Oxygen Excess. And don't forget that you can sell all your Oxygen Trading Credits to your O2-hogging neighbors.


Once you get used to cutting down your O2 you'll like yourself a lot better. The Planet will thank you. So will your neighbors.


Try it if you don't believe it. Breathe in just a little bit less every single day, until you're down 10%, then 15%, 20% ... and more? You could actually build your income from the Oxygen Trading Credits if you manage to cut down by 30% or even 40%. Just breathe through that straw and hold your nose.


Remember, Oxygen is Poison!


3) Now, Sarah’s Folly
By MAUREEN DOWD


Sarah Palin showed on Friday that in one respect at least, she is qualified to be president.
Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.

Usually we don’t find that exquisite battiness in our leaders until they’ve been battered by sordid scandals like Watergate (Nixon), gnawing problems like Vietnam (L.B.J.), or scary threats like biological terrorism (Cheney).

When Lyndon Johnson was president, some of his staff began to think of him as “a sick man,” as Bill Moyers told Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Moyers and his fellow Johnson aide Dick Goodwin even began reading up on mental illness — Bill on manic depression and Dick on paranoia.

And so it was, Todd Purdum learned, as he traveled Alaska reporting on Palin for Vanity Fair, that the governor’s erratic and egoistic behavior has been a source of concern for people there. “Several told me, independently of one another,” Purdum writes, “that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy’ — and thought it fit her perfectly.”
The White House can drive its inhabitants loopy. So at least Sarah Palin is ahead of the curve on that one.

As Alaskans settled in to enjoy holiday salmon bakes and the post-solstice thaw, their governor had a solipsistic meltdown so strange it made Sparky Sanford look like a model of stability.

On the shore of Lake Lucille, with wild fowl honking and the First Dude smiling, with Piper in the foreground and their Piper Cub in the background, the woman who took the Republican Party by storm only 10 months ago gave an incoherent, breathless and prickly stream of consciousness to a small group in her Wasilla yard. Gobsmacked Alaska politicians, Republican big shots, the national press, her brother, the D.C. lawyer who helped create her political action committee and yes, even Fox News, played catch-up.

What looked like a secret wedding turned out to be a public unraveling as the G.O.P. implosion continued: Sarah wanted everyone to know that she’s not having fun and people are being mean to her and she doesn’t feel like finishing her first term as governor.
She can hunt wolves from the air and field-dress a moose, but she fears being a lame duck? Some brickbats over her ethics and diva turns as John McCain’s running mate, and that dewy skin turns awfully thin.

Maybe there’s another red Naughty Monkey high heel to drop — there’s often a hidden twist in Sarah’s country-music melodramas. Or is this a reckless high-speed escape from small-pond Alaska, where her popularity is dropping, to the big time Below?

Even some conservative analysts admitted that the governor’s move seemed ga-ga before venturing the spin that Palin might be “crazy like a fox,” as Sarah’s original cheerleader, Bill Kristol, put it.Maybe, Kristol mused, she could use the 18 months she would have spent finishing her term to write her book and study up on the issues for 2012.
Why not? Palin/Sanford in 2012, with the slogan: “Save time — we’re already in Crazy Town.”
Palin’s speech is classic casuistry.

After girlish burbling about how “progressing our state” and serving Alaska “is the greatest honor that I could imagine,” and raving about how much she loves her job, she abruptly announced that she was making the ultimate sacrifice: dumping the state on her lieutenant.
Why “milk it,” as she put it, when you can quit it? “Only dead fish go with the flow,” she said, while cold fish can blow out of town. Leaving Alaska in the lurch is best for Alaska. She can better “effect change” in government from outside government. She can fulfill her promise of “efficiencies and effectiveness” by deserting Juneau midway through her term — and taking her tanning bed with her.

“We need those who will respect our Constitution,” said Palin, who swore on the Bible to uphold the Constitution. She said she can’t fulfill that silly old oath of office in the usual way because she’s not “wired to operate under the same old politics as usual.”
Naturally, she dragged the troops in, saying that her trip to see wounded soldiers overseas “fortified” her decision to give up because “they don’t give up.”
She refuses to succumb to the “politics of personal destruction.” It’s no fun unless she’s the one aiming those poison darts, as she did when she accused Barack Obama of associating “with terrorists who targeted their own country.”


Sometimes, she explained, if you’re the star, you have to “call an audible and pass the ball” and leave at halftime, “so the team can win” somehow without you.
The maverick must run free when greener pastures beckon. The musher must jump out of the dogsled when warmer climes call. As Palin’s spokeswoman, Meg Stapleton, says, “The world is literally her oyster.”

But just remember, beloved Alaska, it’s all about you.

3a) Sarah Palin: The Best is Yet to Come
By J.R. Dunn

The response to Sarah Palin's surprise resignation last Friday clearly reveals the limitations of the American political class, right, left, or what have you.


There's an old academic joke, probably apocryphal, about Count Metternich, Austria's foreign minister during the Napoleonic era. While attending the Congress of Vienna, Metternich is sleeping off a banquet when one of his aides bursts in at three in the morning. "Your excellency! Count Nesselrode, the Russian ambassador, just died."


Metternich jerks awake. "Died, you say? What a terrible thing! I was speaking to him only tonight... Uhh... send a message to the Tsar -- Austria regrets, and so forth..."


The aide leaves. Metternich gets up and paces the floor. After a moment he stops and rubs his chin. "So... Why did Nesselrode decide to do that now..."


We're seeing the same thing today. Obsessive figures confronted with a simple human contingency and, unable to comprehend what's right in front of their eyes, retreating instead into irrelevant speculation about whatever they know best. Simply put, in resigning her governorship and stepping away from active politics, Sarah Palin is not pulling any tricks, carrying out any maneuvers, or putting in motion any long-range plans. She is doing exactly what any normal, rational, un-driven human being would do under the same circumstances.


What are those circumstances? Consider her situation at the moment. By which we mean, her situation. Not the country's situation, not the GOP's situation, not the political situation in any sense at all.


Her eldest son is serving in the military, in the war zone, at a particularly dangerous and violent moment, when the U.S. is transferring responsibility to the new and still untried Iraqi army.


Her eldest daughter is dealing with the twin burdens of a failed marriage and single motherhood, while also serving as a national joke for the same type of people who insisted that Chelsea Clinton and the Obama girls are off limits. This is a state of affairs that undoubtedly requires much in the way of TLC from Palin.


Her youngest daughter has recently come under the gun thanks to that epitome of class, David Letterman. All excuses aside, the A-Rod joke was a transparent attempt at seeing if it was now safe to go after Willow, the rest of the Palin family having been run through the mill one after the other. It occurred at an awkward age for a girl, when events such as this can leave a serious mark. Another instance where mom must be available.


And lastly, Palin has a disabled infant child, one who has already been victimized by the left-wing blogosphere and the mass media. Downs children are very high-functioning. It's easily possible for Trig to have a golden life as long as close attention is paid to his upbringing and education. His mother will be the crucial figure here.


So what does a woman do under such circumstances? A real woman, not a pol in a skirt. A wife and a mother, someone with a clear hierarchy of values. Why, she steps out. She removes herself from the firing line. Returns to what matters. She retreats from the public world for the verities of family and community.


There's nothing difficult to understand here. All the comments we've heard from the mass media, from the political experts, and from the operatives, merely reveal the limitations of the commentators.


But what about her greater obligations? To that of conservatism as a movement, for instance? It happens to have been the movement conservatives -- at least those of the Northeast Corridor, who on the basis of tradition consider themselves to be the core of the movement -- who led the charge against Palin on her selection as vice-presidential candidate. Not the left. Not the mass media. But conservatives (I won't add quotes -- not yet, anyway) such as Frum, Parker, and Brooks, who found her to be just the slightest touch déclassé. She did not understand the Modern Dance. Her taste in claret was undependable. Her reading of the Federalist No. 63 was, shall we say, idiosyncratic? These people have no call on her whatsoever.


And the GOP? Doesn't she owe her party anything? Just a few short days after her youngest daughter was humiliated on one of the most widely-watched late-night shows in the country, an obvious hit piece appeared in that balanced journal of the higher intellect, Vanity Fair, in which certain unnamed GOP officials revealed the true Sarah Palin: Sarah as Michael Jackson, Sarah the narcissist, who lived in a dream world and was overwhelmed by "demons". The fact that GOP figures would cooperate with a rag like Vanity Fair in the first place puts a period to any talk of a party connection. The GOP obviously has an agenda. It is not Sarah Palin's agenda. Nor, more than likely, ours either.


And what about Alaska? Palin is one of the outstanding governors of our time, possibly surpassed only by Rick Perry, infinitely superior to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jennifer Granholm, or Mitt Romney, to mention only a few members of a large crowd. She went a long way toward cleaning up the Anchorage cesspool, wound up the negotiations for a gas pipeline that had been languishing for decades, and put her state on the national radar screen for the first time since 1958. But her usefulness as governor was probably drawing to an end. If she were to show interest in a 2012 run, she could depend on Obama's crew doing everything possible to drag her down -- and going through her state to do it.


Chicago would put Alaska through the grinder, a very easy thing to accomplish from Washington. In fact, it could be argued that this campaign has already begun, with the slow death-by-cuts action against the National Missile Defense center at Fort Greeley. Even as the ballistic missile threat from North Korea and Iran grows more urgent, Obama is dismantling the sole serious defense against it. (Am I implying that O would jeopardize the country's safety to assure his political career? Well, what do you think?) In a real sense, Palin's resignation at this time can be viewed as yet another service to her state.


So Sarah Palin has left the stage, for perfectly justifiable reasons, and taken her family with her. The mob still waits, unfamiliar with normal behavior from a public figure, eager for more cheap laughs. But there will be no encore. Not right away.


She will be back. Not for 2012. The GOP has its plans already worked out. Very clever ones, too. The Republicans will do what they always do when they're up against it: grab an empty suit and run around shaking it in people's faces while shouting, "Here's the man!" By 2012, after his policies really hit home, as gas and home fuel prices triple and quadruple, as medical rationing begins, as the renewed Axis of Evil runs wild across Eurasia, Obama will be ready to drop. At that point he could be defeated by a ticket consisting of Charley Manson and Jojo the Dogface Boy. But the GOP will blow it all the same. Exactly as the party did in '96, following the same script to the letter. They will, to coin a phrase, Mitt it up.


That moment will mark the start of a new phase for Sarah Palin. The exquisite branch of conservatism will drift away, assuring each other that "It's still possible to live well in a dying civilization." The GOP operatives will, as always, be blaming the "legacy of Reagan" and looking for a RINO who can somehow fool the backwoods rubes. Obama will spend his entire second term racing back and forth trying to put out forest fires using buckets with holes in them. Palin's enemies will have destroyed themselves, and her moment will come at last.


Democracies never stop halfway, no matter what it is: good or bad, intelligent or stupid, harmful or beneficial, they have to go the whole route before at last changing course. The U.S. could not abandon Great Society liberalism in 1976, it had to wait until 1980. The UK could not put aside postwar Labour policies until they were ground down to the last (the Brits went so far as to elect Harold Wilson to two nonconsecutive terms -- something similar to re-electing Jimmy Carter in 1984. Talk about desperation moves!)


While that process unfolded, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan served long apprenticeships, learning all they had to know. Sarah Palin is embarking on the same course now.


Sarah Palin is not ready, they insist. It's just as apt to say that we -- the GOP, the conservative establishment, the country -- are not ready for her. An electorate will always fall for the professional pol, slick, convincing, and empty, before turning in desperation to the truly human candidate. But the time will come.


In a few years her children will be settled, she will no longer have hostages to fortune, and the laughter will have long died away. That is when the lady will start shuffling the cards. We will all have further opportunity to wonder what Sarah Palin is up to.

J.R. Dunn is contributing editor of American Thinker.


4) Obama's Demagoguery
By Vel Nirtist

"Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell lasted only while the voice spoke to them, and when it spoke to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler's trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will..."

- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book Tree, Chapter X, "The Voice of Saruman"
It has always been assumed that we humans are rational creatures, and can therefore be swayed only by a rational argument -- that is, an argument firmly rooted in facts, utilizing solid logic to link those facts to the conclusion. And I think this is still the case. Rhetoric, oratory, and demagoguery -- these dramatic tricks of presentation -- will carry you only so far, but will cost you and your enthusiasts dearly if the facts you are relying on in your well-crafted speeches are not really facts, or if logic is lost in the gorgeous flow of words. Hitler -- an orator second to none, but given too much to seeing differences amongst human "races" where there were none -- caused Germany plenty of grief.


Today, the best political orations come out of the change-bent America. Our president keeps the world, and a huge number of Americans, enthralled by his superb oratorical skills. His address to the Moslems sent more than one writer of newspaper editorials to swoon in sweet ecstasy; his pronouncements explaining America's strategic inaction vis-à-vis Iranians battling their clerical overlords, or regarding the threat from the North Korea, are being lauded by the press as precious examples of thoughtful statesmanship, of wise self-restraint.


But are Obama's pronouncements indeed solid pieces of political wisdom, or just tricks of a glib tongue? Does he see better and farther the rest of us, or is his leadership but a case of the blind leading the blind? Is he a first-rate statesman, or a mere top-class demagogue?


The link between words "Obama" and "demagoguery" popped in my mind in a rather round-about way, while reading the recent news item called "Report: U.S. to block Iran sanctions at G8 summit". The title sounded more than a little counter-intuitive, not to say bizarre, given our previous experience of the US being in the vanguard of attempts to slow down Iran's drive toward the bomb, and appealing to other nations to implement sanctions. America found but little support from the likes of Austria and Germany who were too eager to grow their economy by trading with Iran to notice that that very same trade supports Iran's nuclear effort -- which in the long run will turn against them.


So why the sudden role reversal? Why this change of heart on the part of the US administration? Why the decision to oppose the gradually emerging "general leaning [among G8 leaders] ...toward sanctions"? Why putting a brake on the outburst of sanity from the previously reluctant allies? What is going on here? The article explained it thus:


"American officials expressed concern that a decision to enact harsh steps against Iran during the G8 meeting could badly hurt the prospect of Tehran agreeing to renew negotiations with the permanent Security Council members."


Well, isn't that the continuation of the policy of playing it safe in not vocally (or materially) supporting Iranian's "election" protests? Remember Obama's "strongest" reaction?


"The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days... I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost...The United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran's affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society."


Being appalled by unjust actions and bearing witness to them are of course all fine and good and laudable -- but are passive activities with rather limited practical outcome for those actually subjected to the actions being witnessed. Notorious Nuremberg Laws which deprived Jews of German citizenship and severely curtailed their rights were enacted in 1935, years before the enactment of the "final solution." One suspects that at the time the world at large was dutifully "appalled and outraged" by them and that many leaders "condemned these unjust actions," and "bore witness" to them. Yet those condemning and bearing witness did not help one bit in preventing sellout of Czechoslovakia and the start of World War II with its attending horrors of mass murder and the Holocaust. Iran's mullahs are clearly as little deterred from proceeding as they wish by Obama's words as were the Nazis back in 1935, and it is highly unlikely that Obama and his advisors are so lacking in common sense that they think otherwise. So, President's reaction at its strongest was, deliberately, but a token one. Why?


The President himself provided an answer:


"The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for -- those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States."


In other words, Obama is so afraid that ayatollahs will present the protestors as American agents and thus whip up the hate of America, that he is perfectly willing to leave them to the gentle mercies of the regime. While fearing Iranian demagoguery, Obama employs the same tactic by demagoguing the Iran issue himself.


This piece of outright demagoguery is not the first foray by our President into the fine art of, as H. L. Mencken put it when describing a generic demagogue, "preach[ing] doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."


His celebrated address to the Moslem world (which was so much advertised in advance and so deeply infused with America's desperate desire to get into good graces of Moslems that it may well have given the ayatollahs an idea that there was nothing to fear from America no matter what) was itself a grand piece of demagoguery, with all its hallmarks in place: inconvenient facts omitted, supporting facts blown out of proportion, friends disparaged, adversaries patted on the back, and the whole package couched in smoothly flowing words delivered in a steady, powerful, confident voice.


Or another, though related, sample of Obama's skill in demagoguery: loudly lauding as "unbreakable" America's ties to Israel while at the same time dismantling them by denying validity to understandings made with previous US administrations, both oral and written.


Of course, there might be plenty of perfectly rational and, from Obama's perspective, sensible reasons why Iranian protestors are deserving of being deserted, or given not more than token support, grudgingly at that.


The most common theory is that he may have concluded that ayatollahs need the bomb only to protect their regime, so America's promise that she is not seeking regime change would cause them to abandon that goal; that millions of human beings would be forever enslaved, is to him a sensible trade-off.


Or perhaps he sees no real difference between one candidate and the other, and therefore sees no reason to get involved in a quarrel between the thugs.


Or he does not believe that the "reformers" have enough power to succeed, and would be suppressed anyways.


Or, as a true multi-culturalist, he simply does not see individual freedom as something absolute, lacking which people aren't really human, but sees it rather as a cultural phenomenon -- while ok for America, it does not fit into Iranian "culture," and so there is simply nothing wrong with ayatollahs' suppressing it.


Likewise, the President may see solid realpolitik reasons for moving away from Israel and realigning America with Moslem regimes.


But whether it be Israel or Iran, he chooses not to state his actual reasons for his stated policy, sensing that doing so might well be politically disastrous to him. Unable to use rational argument, he has no choice but to "justify" his policies through demagoguery. Like Tolkien's Saruman, Obama cannot be open about his views and goals. Like Saruman, to achieve his goals he has to rely only on the sweet persuasiveness of his voice.


Will Obama's demagoguery succeed? For a time, perhaps, it will; but there are several reasons why demagoguery tends to fail in the long run. For one, demagoguery is a sign of weakness, betraying as it does the fact that the speaker lacks the real argument, and is forced to resort to less-than-respectable means of underhanded trickery. Secondly, it ultimately winds up either unmasking the speaker, or bringing the disaster to his followers. And thirdly, there are many whom it fails to convince in the first place. Anyone who read Lord of the Rings knows that Saruman's seductive voice failed in convincing others to surrender to him -- besides the smooth delivery, his words conveyed nothing that a rational being would accept as a solidly convincing argument; after a while, they were recognized for pure demagoguery that they were. And it can backfire in yet another way, by eroding trust. When Obama makes a speech on a subject in which I have no expertise whatsoever, be it the economy or the environment, how am I to know that he is not being a demagogue this time, too?


Many a regime had been fostered by demagoguery, be it Soviet Union or the Nazi Germany of the past, or today's Iran or North Korea. If we are to deflate the deadly ambitions of such regimes, we should first unmask the falsehood of their ideologies by peeling off the smoothness of the words in which they are expressed. And looking beyond smooth words of our own leaders is a wholesome exercise, too. There will be no stopping the ayatollahs, the North Koreans, and their ilk if our own President is to keep coming up with mellifluously expressed, demagogic excuses for why America should passively stand by while they continue to carry on.


Vel Nirtist writes on the role of religion in fostering terrorism. He is author of "The Pitfall of Truth: Holy War, its Rationale and Folly."

5) Lieberman has become irrelevant
By Barak Ravid


It's been 100 days since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government was
sworn-in, and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's impact on foreign policy
has been negligible. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have been
handling ties with the U.S.; President Shimon Peres has been in charge of
dealing with the Arab world and Lieberman and his office have faded into
irrelevance.

Whereas, in the coalition agreement, Lieberman demanded to be made
responsible for ties with the U.S., Barak is in fact in charge of
negotiations over construction in West Bank settlements. Meanwhile, there's
no end in sight to Egypt's and Jordan's boycott of Lieberman. In an effort
to fill the void, Peres will travel to Jordan's capital Amman to meet with
King Abdullah on Tuesday. And Lieberman? In two weeks' time he will tour
Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Colombia to counter Iran's influence in Latin
America.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's critical remarks about Israel's hawkish
foreign minister, during his recent meeting with Netanyahu, are just the tip
of the iceberg. Many diplomats who have met Lieberman got the feeling that
there was no one to talk to and that he has no influence over the Israeli
decision-making process.

The fact that Lieberman has left a bad impression is evident from a story he
himself told Moscow's Jewish community about his meeting with French Foreign
Minister Bernard Kouchner. Lieberman told his counterpart that the "natural
growth" of West Bank settlements required continued construction, citing the
shortage of kindergartens in his hometown of Nokdim as an example. Kouchner
cynically retorted that faced with a shortage, the children of Nokdim could
always attend Palestinian kindergartens. "I'm not sure they have
kindergartens," was what Lieberman told his Moscow audience he replied. "And
even if they did, our kids wouldn't make it back alive."

The French foreign minister was not amused.

Lieberman's visit to Washington constitutes further evidence of his
problematic image. Ahead of his arrival, Israeli diplomats had tried to
present him as someone pragmatic and reasonable. When he arrived in the U.S.
capital, he was not given an audience with U.S. President Barack Obama -
even though Peres, Barak and Netanyahu, who had visited before him, had met
with the president. Lieberman's aides said in response that they had not
asked to meet with Obama.

But the worst was still to come. His meeting with Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton was described as a disaster. Clinton was reportedly offended by
Lieberman's comments during the press conference and when she later
accidently fell and hurt her hand, Washington diplomatic circles joked that
"she was pushed down the stairs by Yvet," according to a senior U.S.
official, who referred to Lieberman by his nickname.

Surprisingly, none other than Barak has come to Lieberman's aid. He tells
every foreign leader he meets that he has to run any policy issue past the
foreign minister.

Meanwhile, Lieberman's vision of closer cooperation with Moscow is at an
impasse. The Kremlin isn't particularly enthused by the idea and Russia's
policies toward Israel have stiffened.

Foreign Ministry officials are trying their utmost to protect Lieberman and
say every foreign policy decision is made jointly by him, Deputy Foreign
Minister Danny Ayalon and the ministry's director general, Yossi Gal. "It's
all coordinated," Lieberman's office insists. "Any attempt to portray a
different picture is false."

Other Foreign Ministry officials believe Lieberman isn't interested in being
involved in every decision the way former foreign minister Tzipi Livni was.
"Foreign policy issues just aren't his flesh and blood," they say. "Perhaps
he doesn't want the responsibility of making decisions on such charged
political issues as the settlements."

The Yisrael Beiteinu chairman keeps saying the Foreign Ministry needs to
return to its roots and focus on advocacy. But what exactly does that mean?
Last week Lieberman told a joke to Israeli diplomats being sent abroad - it
sheds light on his idea of diplomacy. "A tourist went to the Jerusalem
Biblical Zoo and saw a lamb and a wolf together in a cage," Lieberman said.
"He asked the zoo keeper, 'How do you get a lamb and a wolf to live together
peacefully?' The zoo keeper responded: 'We put a new lamb in the cage every
morning.'"

6) EC: European taxpayers paying price of settlements

European Commission says Israel's policy helping strangle Palestinian economy, making PA government more dependent on foreign aid


The European Commission says Israel's settlement policy helps strangle the Palestinian economy and makes the Palestinian government more dependent on foreign aid.


In an unusually harsh statement Monday, the commission said that "it is the European taxpayers who pay most of the price of this dependence."


The commission says expropriation of fertile land for Israeli settlements, roads that serve settlers only and West Bank checkpoints help constrain Palestinian economic growth and make the Palestinian government more dependent on aid.

The European Union is one of the largest donors to the Palestinian Authority.

The commission says this year alone it has paid more than 200 million euros ($280 million) to help cover the Palestinian budget deficit.

7) Dershowitz doesn't get it
By Melanie Phillips


A sobering view by one of Britain's most respected columnists

Alan Dershowitz is one of the most prolific, high-profile and indefatiguable defenders of Israel and the Jewish people against the tidal wave of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling currently coursing through the west. So a piece by him in the Wall Street Journal giving expression to the rising anxiety being felt about Obama by American Jews naturally arouses great interest.


But just like the majority of American Jews, getting on for 80 per cent of whom voted for Obama, he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President. For most American Jews, the horror of even entertaining the hypothetical possibility that they might ever in a million years have to vote for a Republican is so great they simply cannot see what is staring them in the face — that this Democratic President is lethal for both Israel and the free world. And in this article Dershowitz shows that he too is just as blind.


Acknowledging the anxiety among some American Jews about Obama's attitude to Israel, Dershowitz concludes uneasily that there isn't really a problem here because all Obama is doing is putting pressure on Israel over the settlements, which most American Jews don't support anyway. But this is totally to miss the point. The pressure over the settlements per se is not the reason for the intense concern.


It is instead, first and foremost, the fact that Obama is treating Israel as if it is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Obama thus inverts aggressor and victim, denying Israel's six-decade long victimisation and airbrushing out Arab aggression. The question remains: why has Obama chosen to pick a fight with Israel while soft-soaping Iran which is threatening it with genocide? The answer is obvious: Israel is to be used to buy off Iran just as Czechoslovakia was used at Munich. Indeed, I would say this is worse even than that, since I suspect that Obama — coming as he does from a radical leftist milieu, with vicious Israel-haters amongst his closest friends — would be doing this to Israel even if Iran was not the problem that it is.


In any event, the double standard is egregious. Obama has torn up his previous understandings with Israel over the settlements while putting no pressure at all on the Palestinians, even though since they are the regional aggressor there can be no peace unless they end their aggression and certainly not until they accept Israel as a Jewish state, which they have said explicitly they will never do. On this, Obama is totally silent. So too is Dershowitz. That's some omission.


Next, Obama is pressuring Israel to set up a Palestine state — within two years this will exist, swaggers Rahm Emanuel. But everyone knows that as soon as Israel leaves the West Bank, Hamas — or even worse — will take over. The only reason the (also appalling) Abbas is still in Ramallah, enabling Obama to pretend there is a Palestinian interlocutor for peace, is because the Israelis are keeping Hamas at bay. Yet Dershowitz writes:




There is no evidence of any weakening of American support for Israel's right to defend its children from the kind of rocket attacks candidate Obama commented on during his visit to Sderot.

So what exactly does he think would happen if Israel came out of the West Bank and the Hamas rockets were down the road from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (literally: many in the west have absolutely no idea how tiny Israel is). It's not a question of Israel's 'right to defend its children'. If Obama has his way, Israel would not be able to defend its children or anyone else, because Obama would have removed its defences by putting its enemies in charge of them. It is astounding that Dershowitz can't see this.


Then there was Obama's appalling Cairo speech in which he conspicuously refrained from committing himself to defending Zionism and the Jewish people from the attacks and incitement to genocide against them, but committed himself instead to defending their attackers against 'negative stereotyping'. On this, Dershowitz has nothing to say.


Worse still, by falsely asserting that the Jewish aspiration for Israel derived from the Holocaust, Obama effectively denied that the Jewish people were in Israel as of right and thus endorsed the core element of the Arab and Muslim propaganda of war and extermination. On this, Dershowitz has nothing to say.


Obama drew a vile — and telling — equivalence between the Nazi extermination camps and the Palestinian 'refugee' camps. On this, Dershowitz has nothing to say. Obama's statement that the Palestinians 'have suffered in pursuit of a homeland' was grossly and historically untrue, and again denied Arab aggression. On this, Dershowitz has nothing to say. Equally vilely, Obama equated genocidal terrorism by the Palestinians with the civil rights movement in America and the resistance against apartheid in South Africa. On all of this, Dershowitz has nothing to say.


Dershowitz also grossly underplays the terrible harm Obama is doing to the security not just of Israel but the world through his reckless appeasement of Iran. In the last few weeks, this has actively undercut the Iranian democrats trying to oust their tyrannical regime, and has actually strengthened that regime. All the evidence suggests ever more strongly that Obama has decided America will 'live with' a nuclear Iran, whatever it does to its own people. Which leaves Israel hung out to dry.


But even here, where he is clearly most concerned, Dershowitz scuttles under his comfort blanket — Dennis Ross, who was originally supposed to have been the US special envoy to Iran but was recently announced senior director of the National Security Council and special assistant to the President for the region. It is not at all clear whether this ambiguous development represents a promotion or demotion for Ross. Either way, for Dershowitz to rest his optimism that Obama's Iran policy will be all right on the night entirely upon the figure of Dennis Ross is pathetic. Ross, a Jew who played Mr Nice to Robert Malley's Mr Nasty towards Israel in the Camp David debacle under President Clinton, is clearly being used by Obama as a human shield behind which he can bully Israel with impunity. American Jews assume that his proximity to Obama means the President's intentions towards Israel are benign. Dazzled by this vision of Ross as the guarantor of Obama's good faith, they thus ignore altogether the terrible import of the actual words coming out of the President's mouth.


The fact is that many American Jews are so ignorant of the history of the Jewish people, the centrality of Israel in its history and the legality and justice of its position that they probably saw nothing wrong in Obama saying that the Jewish aspiration for Israel came out of the Holocaust because they think this too. Nor do they see the appalling double standard in the bullying of Israel over the settlements and what that tells us about Obama's attitude towards Israel, because — as Dershowitz himself makes all too plain — they too think in much the same way, that the settlements are the principal obstacle to peace.


Many if not most American Jews have a highly sentimentalized view of Israel. They never go there, are deeply ignorant of its history and current realities, and are infinitely more concerned with their own view of themselves as social liberals, a view reflected back at themselves through voting for a Democrat President.


Whatever else he is, however, Dershowitz is certainly not ignorant. Which makes this lamentable article all the more revealing, and depressing.




JWR contributor Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author of, most recently, Londonistan. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. She was awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996.

8) Fattening the Beast:Obama's Twist on a GOP Budget Strategy
By Fred Hiatt



Since the Reagan era, some conservatives have hoped to shrink government by "starving the beast." Refuse to raise taxes, they figured, and eventually spending would have to fall.

It's beginning to look as though the new team may have a similar strategy, in reverse: Increase spending, and eventually taxes will have to be raised.

No official has articulated that to me as a strategy. But look at the evidence.

George Bush bequeathed to President Obama a nation heading slowly but surely toward fiscal disaster. Because of an aging population and rising health-care costs, spending -- primarily on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- will steadily rise in coming years, as the nonpartisan and authoritative Congressional Budget Office explained in a report last month. Revenue is not projected to rise nearly as quickly. The result, if the government does not alter course: crushing debt that could lead to hyperinflation, prolonged depression, or both. Poor people would suffer most, and there would be many more of them.

"The systematic widening of budget shortfalls projected under CBO's long-term scenarios has never been observed in U.S. history," the CBO pointed out in its usual dry style. And: "All in all, the U.S. economy could contract sharply for a long period."

Obama's response has been to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem -- and make it worse. I'm not talking about his record-breaking stimulus plan, which was essential (if not ideally shaped) given the recession he also inherited. Rather, it is Obama's long-term budget that would more than double the projected deficit over the next 10 years, to $9 trillion, by extending most of the Bush tax cuts and limiting the alternative minimum tax while creating new programs and entitlements (to college tuition scholarships, for example) and refusing to cut back on existing ones.

And that's not to mention his top priority, universal access to health care. Obama has said that reform must be paid for, and he hopes it will lead to a slowing in the growth of health-care costs. That would hugely improve the long-term budget outlook.

But the prospects of cost control are tenuous, experimental, distant and politically fraught; by comparison, creating an expensive new entitlement is easy. Obama has proposed to pay for part of universal access by collecting more income tax from the wealthy, which would make the existing deficit that much harder to close. The cost of the entitlement could rise more quickly than the revenue paying for it. There is a good chance, in other words, that whatever emerges from Congress this summer will worsen the budget prognosis.

The bottom line is this: You cannot run a progressive government of the kind Obama favors by collecting only 18 percent of the gross domestic product in taxes, which has been the norm over the past 40 years. Nor can you increase the tax take to 24.5 percent of GDP -- which is what Obama proposes to be spending in 2019 -- simply by making the rich pay more.

But rather than level with the American people about this, or lay out a plan to raise the needed taxes, the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are putting the spending pieces of progressive government in place and apparently counting on the tax piece to fall into place later.

Just to be clear: I support universal access to health care, and I don't think there's any natural law that says the U.S. economy couldn't function with higher taxes -- say, 22 percent of GDP. But you can't get there without wrenching changes -- abolishing the mortgage and charitable deductions, for example, or instituting a nationwide consumption tax. And unless you raise taxes so high that you risk choking economic growth, you also will have to trim Medicare and Social Security benefits.

It would be foolishly counterproductive to begin closing the gap in the midst of recession. But you could be setting long-term changes in motion -- adjusting rules for people who will retire five or 10 years from now, for example.

Obama and his economic team understand all this, and maybe they have a plan to get from here to there. Maybe they'll do the popular stuff first, and then next year, or next term -- as global investors become alarmed at the U.S. fiscal outlook and begin driving our interest rates higher -- persuade Congress to take its medicine and get the fiscal house in order.

But let's not forget how that starving-the-beast thing worked out. Conservatives were happy to cut taxes, but cutting spending didn't appeal all that much, and deficits soared. By postponing all the "hard choices" he warns of, Obama may be scripting a sequel.