A Goose and Gander Thing-Just Goose Israelis!

George Friedman on Obama, Netanyahu, Jerusalem and the two main issues raised.

Friedman discusses Arab anger over U.S. support of Israel and points out Arabs were angry at the U.S. long before America ever gave aid to Israel so that dog does not hunt very well. Friedman argues that:"... eliminating support for Israel would cause anti-Americanism to decline must first explain the origins of anti-Americanism, which substantially predated American support for Israel. In fact, it is not clear that Arab anti-Americanism was greater after the initiation of major aid to Israel than before..."

The second facet of the conflict between Obama and Netanyahu is caused by the fact that: "... America's goal is to maintain three intrinsic regional balances. One is the Arab-Israeli balance of power. The second is the Iran-Iraq balance. The third is the Indo-Pakistani balance of power. The American goal in each balance is not so much stability as it is the mutual neutralization of local powers by other local powers..."

The problem, according to Friedman, is that the U.S. does not need any further challenges or stresses in view of the fact that: "Two of the three regional balances of power are collapsed or in jeopardy. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the failure to quickly put a strong, anti-Iranian government in place in Baghdad, has led to the collapse of the central balance of power — with little hope of resurrection. The eastern balance of power between Pakistan and India is also in danger of toppling. The Afghan war has caused profound stresses in Pakistan, and there are scenarios in which we can imagine Pakistan’s power dramatically weakening or even cracking. It is unclear how this will evolve, but what is clear is that it is not in the interest of the United States because it would destroy the native balance of power with India..."

Though Friedman writes: " The western balance of power, Israel and the surrounding states, is relatively stable... But in the broader picture, where the United States is dealing with the collapse of the central balance of power and with the destabilization of the eastern balance of power, Washington does not want or need the destabilization of the western balance — between the Israelis and Arabs — at this time."

Friedman argues Netanyahu is causing problems by his demands regarding Jerusalem construction while the U.S. is stretched. This might work to Netanyahu and Israel's short term advantage but is not in its long term interest because Obama could put Turkey in Israel's place from a strategic partner standpoint.

I can understand Friedman's argument about Obama feeling Netanyahu is not being accommodating in view of America's regional problems but to think Turkey is a democracy comparable to Israel is a bit far fetched. Only yesterday it was announced there is a move afoot on the part of Turkey's increasingly Muslim leaning government to exercise greater control over its military.

Friedman is far more brilliant than I would ever hope to be but playing into Palestinian hands at the expense of Israel, in my humble opinion, is not going to achieve stability or solve the thorny disputes between Palestinians and Israelis.

Perhaps Netayahu and members of his right wing coalition are making life difficult for Obama at this time but calling Israel's hand on construction within its own capital created an issue which Abbas and Arabs have seized upon and are using as bargaining leverage. It was never a seriously contentious matter in the past until we and the West got suckered into allowing it to become an issue. (See 1 below.)

Leo Rennert on the U.S. Israeli relationship and who is trying to sabotage it with false reporting. (See 1a below.)

Netanyahu flies home. (See 1b below.)


Will Obama accomplish his apparent goal - bringing down Netanyahu's government and forcing it to bring in the more pliable Livni? (See 1c below.)


It is a goose and gander thing and once again solve the problem by getting rid of the Jewish goose. (See 1d below.)
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Karl Rove offers advice to Republicans after House passes health care legislation . Will Rove prove right in his thinking and forecast? Time will tell. I would not bet against him or the anger and betrayal Americans feel. Stay tuned. (See 2 below.)
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Maybe your medical records are not secure after all! (See 3 below.)
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I posted my response to Ne'eman's article which I also posted several memos ago and here is his rejoinder. (See 4 below.)
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A little Scottish humor! (See 5 below.)
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I tend to be pessimistic for sure and perhaps it is inevitable that our standard of living will suffer due to our fiscal and personal profligacy but I am not the only one who believes this. Obama's what me worry philosophically oriented spending and flaky projections will simply accelerate the pace of our decline.

Lloyd Marcus, who is black, offers some dark thoughts as well! (See 6, 6a and 6b below.)
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Dick
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1)The Netanyahu-Obama Meeting in Strategic Context
By George Friedman

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama on March 23. The meeting follows the explosion in U.S.-Israeli relations after Israel announced it was licensing construction of homes in East Jerusalem while U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel. The United States wants Israel to stop all construction of new Jewish settlements. The Israelis argue that East Jerusalem is not part of the occupied territories, and hence, the U.S. demand doesn’t apply there. The Americans are not parsing their demand so finely and regard the announcement — timed as it was — as a direct affront and challenge. Israel’s response is that it is a sovereign state and so must be permitted to do as it wishes. The implicit American response is that the United States is also a sovereign state and will respond as it wishes.

The polemics in this case are not the point. The issue is more fundamental: namely, the degree to which U.S. and Israeli relations converge and diverge. This is not a matter of friendship but, as in all things geopolitical, of national interest. It is difficult to discuss U.S. and Israeli interests objectively, as the relationship is clouded with endless rhetoric and simplistic formulations. It is thus difficult to know where to start, but two points of entry into this controversy come to mind.

The first is the idea that anti-Americanism in the Middle East has its roots in U.S. support for Israel, a point made by those in the United States and abroad who want the United States to distance itself from Israel. The second is that the United States has a special strategic relationship with Israel and a mutual dependency. Both statements have elements of truth, but neither is simply true — and both require much more substantial analysis. In analyzing them, we begin the process of trying to disentangle national interests from rhetoric.

Anti-Americanism in the Middle East

Begin with the claim that U.S. support for Israel generates anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world. While such support undoubtedly contributes to the phenomenon, it hardly explains it. The fundamental problem with the theory is that Arab anti-Americanism predates significant U.S. support for Israel. Until 1967, the United States gave very little aid to Israel. What aid Washington gave was in the form of very limited loans to purchase agricultural products from the United States —a program that many countries in the world participated in. It was France, not the United States, which was the primary supplier of weapons to Israeli.

In 1956, Israel invaded the Sinai while Britain and France seized the Suez Canal, which the Egyptian government of Gamal Abdul Nasser had nationalized. The Eisenhower administration intervened — against Israel and on the side of Egypt. Under U.S. pressure, the British, French and Israelis were forced to withdraw. There were widespread charges that the Eisenhower administration was pro-Arab and anti-Israeli; certainly no one could argue that Eisenhower was significantly pro-Israel.

In spite of this, Nasser entered into a series of major agreements with the Soviet Union. Egypt effectively became a Soviet ally, the recipient of massive Soviet aid and a center of anti-American rhetoric. Whatever his reasons — and they had to do with U.S. unwillingness to give Egypt massive aid — Egypt’s anti-American attitude had nothing to do with the Israelis, save perhaps that the United States was not prepared to join Egypt in trying to destroy Israel.

Two major political events took place in 1963: left-wing political coups in Syria and Iraq that brought the Baathist Party to power in both countries. Note that this took place pre-1967, i.e., before the United States became closely aligned with Israel. Both regimes were pro-Soviet and anti-American, but neither could have been responding to U.S. support for Israel because there wasn’t much.

In 1964, Washington gave Cairo the first significant U.S. military aid in the form of Hawk missiles, but it gave those to other Arab countries, too, in response to the coups in Iraq and Syria. The United States feared the Soviets would base fighters in those two countries, so it began installing anti-air systems to try to block potential Soviet airstrikes on Saudi Arabia.

In 1967, France broke with Israel over the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. The United States began significant aid to Israel. In 1973, after the Syrian and Egyptian attack on Israel, the U.S. began massive assistance. In 1974 this amounted to about 25 percent of Israeli gross domestic product (GDP). The aid has continued at roughly the same level, but given the massive growth of the Israeli economy, it now amounts to about 2.5 percent of Israeli GDP.

The point here is that the United States was not actively involved in supporting Israel prior to 1967, yet anti-Americanism in the Arab world was rampant. The Arabs might have blamed the United States for Israel, but there was little empirical basis for this claim. Certainly, U.S. aid commenced in 1967 and surged in 1974, but the argument that eliminating support for Israel would cause anti-Americanism to decline must first explain the origins of anti-Americanism, which substantially predated American support for Israel. In fact, it is not clear that Arab anti-Americanism was greater after the initiation of major aid to Israel than before. Indeed, Egypt, the most important Arab country, shifted its position to a pro-American stance after the 1973 war in the face of U.S. aid.

Israel’s Importance to the United States

Let’s now consider the assumption that Israel is a critical U.S. asset. American grand strategy has always been derived from British grand strategy. The United States seeks to maintain regional balances of power in order to avoid the emergence of larger powers that can threaten U.S. interests. The Cold War was a massive exercise in the balance of power, pitting an American-sponsored worldwide alliance system against one formed by the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has acted a number of times against regional hegemons: Iraq in
1990-91, Serbia in 1999 and so on.

In the area called generally the Middle East, but which we prefer to think of as the area between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush, there are three intrinsic regional balances. One is the Arab-Israeli balance of power. The second is the Iran-Iraq balance. The third is the Indo-Pakistani balance of power. The American goal in each balance is not so much stability as it is the mutual neutralization of local powers by other local powers.

Two of the three regional balances of power are collapsed or in jeopardy. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the failure to quickly put a strong, anti-Iranian government in place in Baghdad, has led to the collapse of the central balance of power — with little hope of resurrection. The eastern balance of power between Pakistan and India is also in danger of toppling. The Afghan war has caused profound stresses in Pakistan, and there are scenarios in which we can imagine Pakistan’s power dramatically weakening or even cracking. It is unclear how this will evolve, but what is clear is that it is not in the interest of the United States because it would destroy the native balance of power with India. The United States does not want to see India as the unchallenged power in the subcontinent any more than it wants to see Pakistan in that position. The United States needs a strong Pakistan to balance India, and its problem now is how to manage the Afghan war — a side issue strategically — without undermining the strategic interest of the United States, an Indo-Pakistani balance of power.

The western balance of power, Israel and the surrounding states, is relatively stable. What is most important to the United States at this point is that this balance of power also not destabilize. In this sense, Israel is an important strategic asset. But in the broader picture, where the United States is dealing with the collapse of the central balance of power and with the destabilization of the eastern balance of power, Washington does not want or need the destabilization of the western balance — between the Israelis and Arabs — at this time.

U.S. “bandwidth” is already stretched to the limit. Washington does not need another problem. Nor does it need instability in this region complicating things in the other regions.

Note that the United States is interested in maintaining the balance of power. This means that the U.S. interest is in a stable set of relations, with no one power becoming excessively powerful and therefore unmanageable by the United States. Israel is already the dominant power in the region, and the degree to which Syria, Jordan and Egypt contain Israel is limited. Israel is moving from the position of an American ally maintaining a balance of power to a regional hegemon in its own right operating outside the framework of American interests.

The United States above all wants to ensure continuity after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dies. It wants to ensure that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan remains stable. And in its attempts to manage the situation in the center and east, it wants to ensure that nothing happens in the west to further complicate an already-enormously complex situation.

There is very little Israel can do to help the United States in the center and eastern balances. On the other hand, if the western balance of power were to collapse — due to anything from a collapse of the Egyptian regime to a new Israeli war with Hezbollah — the United States might find itself drawn into that conflict, while a new intifada in the Palestinian territories would not help matters either. It is unknown what effect this would have in the other balances of power, but the United States is operating at the limits of its power to try to manage these situations. Israel cannot help there, but it could hurt, for example by initiating an attack on Iran outside the framework of American planning. Therefore, the United States wants one thing from Israel now: for Israel to do nothing that could possibly destabilize the western balance of power or make America’s task more difficult in the other regions.

Israel sees the American preoccupation in these other regions, along with the current favorable alignment of forces in its region, as an opportunity both to consolidate and expand its power and to create new realities on the ground. One of these is building in East Jerusalem, or more precisely, using the moment to reshape the demographics and geography of its immediate region. The Israeli position is that it has rights in East Jerusalem that the United States cannot intrude on. The U.S. position is that it has interests in the broader region that are potentially weakened by this construction at this time.

Israel’s desire to do so is understandable, but it runs counter to American interests. The United States, given its overwhelming challenges, is neither interested in Israel’s desire to reshape its region, nor can it tolerate any more risk deriving from Israel’s actions. However small the risks might be, the United States is maxed out on risk. Therefore, Israel’s interests and that of the United States diverge. Israel sees an opportunity; the United States sees more risk.

The problem Israel has is that, in the long run, its relationship to the United States is its insurance policy. Netanyahu appears to be calculating that given the U.S. need for a western balance of power, whatever Israel does now will be allowed because in the end the United States needs Israel to maintain that balance of power. Therefore, he is probing aggressively. Netanyahu also has domestic political reasons for proceeding with this construction. For him, this construction is a prudent and necessary step.

Obama’s task is to convince Netanyahu that Israel has strategic value for the United States, but only in the context of broader U.S. interests in the region. If Israel becomes part of the American problem rather than the solution, the United States will seek other solutions. That is a hard case to make but not an impossible one. The balance of power is in the eastern Mediterranean, and there is another democracy the United States could turn to: Turkey — which is more than eager to fulfill that role and exploit Israeli tensions with the United States.

It may not be the most persuasive threat, but the fact is that Israel cannot afford any threat from the United States, such as an end to the intense U.S.-Israeli bilateral relationship. While this relationship might not be essential to Israel at the moment, it is one of the foundations of Israeli grand strategy in the long run. Just as the United States cannot afford any more instability in the region at the moment, so Israel cannot afford any threat, however remote, to its relationship with the United States.

A More Complicated Relationship

What is clear in all this is that the statement that Israel and the United States are strategic partners is not untrue, it is just vastly more complicated than it appears. Similarly, the claim that American support for Israel fuels anti-Americans is both a true and insufficient statement.

Netanyahu is betting on Congress and political pressures to restrain U.S. responses to Israel. One of the arguments of geopolitics is that political advantage is insufficient in the face of geopolitical necessity. Pressure on Congress from Israel in order to build houses in Jerusalem while the United States is dealing with crises in the region could easily backfire.

The fact is that while the argument that U.S. Israel policy caused anti-Americanism in the region may not be altogether true, the United States does not need any further challenges or stresses. Nations overwhelmed by challenges can behave in unpredictable ways. Netanyahu’s decision to confront the United States at this time on this issue creates an unpredictability that would seem excessive to Israel’s long term interests. Expecting the American political process to protect Israel from the consequences is not necessarily gauging the American mood at the moment.

The national interest of both countries is to maximize their freedom to maneuver. The Israelis have a temporary advantage because of American interests elsewhere in the region. But that creates a long-term threat. With two wars going on and two regional balances in shambles or tottering, the United States does not need a new crisis in the third. Israel has an interest in housing in East Jerusalem. The United States does not. This frames the conversation between Netanyahu and Obama. The rest is rhetoric.

1a)Sabotaging the US-Israel relationship
By Leo Rennert

Two weeks ago, President Obama and his foreign-policy team went bananas over Israeli plans, still awaiting final approval, to build more housing units in a nearly two-decade-old Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. It didn't matter that Prime Minister Netanyahu wasn't even aware of what turned out to be action by a low-level bureaucracy in the Interior Ministry that merely advanced the project to the next planning-review level. Netanyahu immediately was charged with a provocative move, an insult to the U.S. -- and worse.


Now comes another crisis-in-the-making, this time manufactured and exquisitely timed by Peace Now, an Israeli group heavily financed by European governments to advance the Palestinian agenda against Israel.


As Netanyahu made his way to the White House for a summit with Obama, Peace Now leaked a fabricated report that the Israeli government had just given final approval to a project for 20 Jewish housing units in the Shepherd Hotel area of East Jerusalem -- the former residence of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hitler's No. 1 Arab ally who instigated lethal pogroms against Jews in the 1930s.


Peace Now timed the leak to cause maximum PR damage to Israel. As the U.S.-Israel summit got under way in Washington, it planted its report about more housing for Jews in East Jerusalem to Yedioth Ahronot, the biggest-circulation daily in Israel, whose coverage is distinctly unfriendly to the government.


From Yedioth Ahronnot's website, the story immediately bounced to the wires and triggered headlines across the world that Israel again had yanked Obama's chain in thwarting progress toward a two-state solution.


The White House predictably demanded a "clarification" from Israel, while again huffing and puffing that Israeli building in Jerusalem is "destructive" to the peace process.


Except, the story was concocted as a tissue of gross distortions and falsehoods.


The Israeli government didn't give final approval to the 20 housing units as an accompaniment to the Obama-Netanyahu summit. The project received final approval from the Jerusalem municipality -- after years of legal and planning reviews -- in July, 2009. And it was so widely reported at the time.


From that moment on, all that was needed was payment to the Jerusalem Municipality of a requisite construction fee for an automatic go-ahead for building the new units. That payment of the fee took place on March 15 -- eight days before the U.S.-Israel summit.


Except that Peace Now injected a couple of falsehoods in its leak to make it appear that this final, automatic pre-construction step occurred on March 23 and converted the payment of the fee into an official green light for the project -- something that occurred eight months ago.


Mainstream media, however, had another anti-Israel feast with the false Peace Now report and the U.S. administration took another swing at Netanyahu.


There's a particular irony in this entire affair for anyone with a sense of history. As Lanny Ben-David, a former Israeli diplomat noted, the new units may eventually be occupied by descendants of Jews who escaped the Grand Mufti's pogroms that were orchestrated from the site of their new homes or by descendants of Jews who survived the Holocaust. "Maybe, just maybe," he observed, "there are consequences to aggression."


While mainstream media zero in piecemeal on Jewish housing projects in Israel's capital, they mislead viewers and readers by failing to provide the full historical context and demographic projections for Israel's capital.


Here's what they are determined NOT to report:


1. Since Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, the Arab population of Israel's undivided capital has grown appreciably faster than the Jewish population -- a result of an outflow of Jews to other parts of the country, coupled with a sizeable inflow of Arabs from the Palestinian territories. By mid-century, the number of Arab residents of the city is expected to reach parity with the number of Jewish inhabitants. That hardly accords with the misleading media-generated impression that there's a campaign to "Judaize" Jerusalem.


2. Jerusalem Mayor Barkat's long-range plans for more housing in the next 20 years envisages construction of 50,000 housing units -- with Jerusalem's total population expected to rise from 800,000 to 1 million by 2030. Barkat has set aside one third of these new units -- about 17,000 -- for Arabs, in conformity with the current two-thirds Jewish ratio to one-third Arab. A measly 20 housing units for Jews grabs headlines, but 17,000 new homes for Jerusalem Arabs remains carefully censored by mainstream media.

1b)Netanyahu flies home amid disagreement with Obama on key issues

US president Barack Obama kept on turning the screw on Israeli minister Binyamin Netanyahu Wednesday, March 24, after their harsh conversation in the White House Tuesday: Netanyahu was told bluntly to issue a White House-dictated public pledge before leaving Washington for home to eschew further construction in East Jerusalem, or else face a US presidential notice condemning Israel and holding its government responsible for the failure to restart indirect Israel-Palestinian talks.

Washington sources add that Netanyahu's public renunciation of Jerusalem construction was required to include also the large Jewish suburbs of the city and remain in force for the duration of negotiations. He must also pledge further concessions to the Palestinians.


As part of the ultimatum, the US president warned the Israeli prime minister that he also intended formulating in detail for the first time the settlement the US government sought for solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Netanyahu flew out of Wednesday night without reaching common ground with the president on the key points at issue. He and defense minister Ehud Barak spent their last hours in the US capital working on a statement that might satisfy the White House. Barak worked out of the Israel embassy with the president's special adviser Dennis Ross at the National Security Council's office at the White House. Middle East envoy George Mitchell shuttled between them in an effort to save his mission.
A high-ranking US official categorized the current crisis in US-Israeli relations as the most acute in 54 years, ever since 1956 when President Dwight Eisenhower gave David Ben-Gurion an ultimatum to pull Israeli forces out of Sinai - certainly more serious than the impasse over the Madrid conference between the first President Bush and Yitzhak Shamir in 1992.

A US presidential notice condemning Israel and predetermining the shape of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement would be tantamount to a US diktat and put the lid on negotiations, direct or indirect, because Israel would be dragged to the table in handcuffs to face an Arab partner who would accept nothing less than the terms Washington imposed in advance on Israel.

Such a notice would put a clamp on the close dialogue which has historically characterized US-Israeli ties - to the detriment of Israel's international standing.

The Washington Post laid the blame for the crisis squarely on President Obama, whom it accused of treating Netanyahu "as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length."
The WP went on to say: "Obama picked a fight over something that virtually all Israelis agree on, and before serious discussions have even begun.

"A new administration can be excused for making such a mistake in the treacherous and complex theater of Middle East diplomacy. That’s why Obama was given a pass by many when he made exactly the same mistake last year. The second time around, the president doesn’t look naive. He appears ideological -- and vindictive."


1c)Labor minister: Government in danger: Many believe diplomatic crisis with US will force Netanyahu to invite Kadima to join coalition
By Attila Somfalvi


Commentators said after an exceptionally chilly welcome received by the prime minister at the White House that Benjamin Netanyahu may be forced to alter the composition of his government, due to disagreements between his coalition and the US on construction in east Jerusalem.


A Labor minister said Thursday that "the government in its current state may be in danger". But a senior Likud minister disagreed, saying that it was "too soon to assume that the composition of the coalition will change".



Kadima Party members showed signs of agreeing to take part in the government, but only if their demands were met. "If Netanyahu kicks out Shas or Yisrael Beitenu we will join the government, but he must kick one of them out," one official said.



Sources say Netanyahu will have to hurry to get Kadima to join his coalition. However many believe the entire issue has been drummed up by the press.



"Netanyahu has no reason to alter the composition of the government. Neither Shas nor Yisrael Beitenu are preventing him from carrying out any policy he desires, including the freeze… In addition, the political price he will pay for betraying them will be high," one senior minister said.



Meanwhile the prime minister has received widespread support from his party members for refusing to give US President Barack Obama guarantees on a freeze in construction.



MK Ze'ev Elkin related construction to Israel's democratic values. "If the construction does not continue in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem it has no future as the capital of the State of Israel with a Jewish majority," he said.



"Those who demand or press the government of Israel to relinquish this position demand of it to go against the decree of the voter and the stance of the majority of the Israeli public."




MK Danny Danon (Likud) criticized the US president and the temporary freeze imposed on settlements. "Obama needs to know that Jerusalem will not be the price for the justification of his Nobel," he said.



"Today not a doubt remains that the decision to freeze construction was a mistake, and only drew more pressure from the Americans while failing to provide an opening for negotiations with the Palestinians."

1d)Let My People Stay
By David Suissa

Why does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem so intractable? Why do we hear the same ideas over and over again, even though they never work?


At her AIPAC speech this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of the need to find "a new path" to the two-state solution. But nowhere in her speech did she actually challenge a key tenet of the current path: We can never have Jews living in Palestine.


She's not alone. For decades now, the world's most brilliant political minds have worked with this same unimaginative and racist assumption: To have peace with the Palestinians, we must have ethnic cleansing of the Jews.


As a result, a peace vocabulary has developed that suggests anything but peace: words like "freezing" and "dismantling" rather than "warming" and "creating." The Jews themselves who live in the areas of a future Palestinian state have been globally demonized as the biggest obstacle to peace.


Sure, there may be terrorist entities like Hamas and Hezbollah that are sworn enemies of any peace agreement, but as far as the world is concerned, the soccer moms in Ariel and Efrat are bigger obstacles to peace.


Never mind that when Israel tried to cleanse Gaza of all Jews a few years ago, it got rewarded not with peace and quiet but with a few thousand rockets.


It's gotten so absurd, that the headlines around the world two weeks ago weren't about the terrorist rockets flying into Israel, but about interim zoning permits for apartments in East Jerusalem. Had those apartments been for Buddhists or Hindus or Hare Krishnas, no one would have flinched. But they were for Jews, which makes them obstacles to peace.


The Obama administration's obsession with freezing Jewish settlements - including Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem - has further demonized the settlements, made the Palestinians even more intransigent and pretty much frozen the peace process.


But what if the peace processors took a different view of these settlements and saw them not as obstacles to peace but as potential contributors to Palestinian society? What if, instead of forcing Jewish settlers to leave as part of a peace agreement, they were invited to stay?



In all these failed peace meetings over the years, has anyone considered that a Jewish minority in a future Palestine may actually be a good thing? That it would encourage mutual dependency and co-existence and democracy - and help the Palestinian economy? And that for Israel, it'd be good to have Jewish representatives in a Palestinian parliament - just like we have supporters in Diaspora communities throughout the world?


I know what you're thinking: How naive of you, Suissa! How many Jews would want to be part of a Palestinian state? Who would protect them? It'll never work!


To which I reply: Maybe you're right! But nothing else has worked, so why not shake things up and try something new? Let's poll the Jews of the West Bank who'd be most likely to be evacuated and see how many would be interested in staying in a future Palestine, and under what conditions. Dual citizenship? Security guarantees? Equal voting rights? These are great questions for peace talks.


Even if you're a cynic who believes peace with the Palestinians is impossible in our lifetime, pushing for the right of settlers to stay in a future Palestine is a game changer. It disarms critics who claim that settlements are the main obstacle to peace and shines a light on fundamental issues, like whether the Palestinians are willing or even able to deliver peace, and how they would protect a Jewish minority in their midst.


Just like Soviet Jewry was about the Jews' "right to leave," this new cause is about the Jews' "right to stay." And if the world ends up opposing the idea, well, we'll finally have our PR homerun: An international movement fighting for "Human Rights for Palestinian Jews!" Our mantra: The Jews of Palestine deserve the same rights as the Muslims of Israel.


If you're not a cynic but a hopeless romantic who believes in the power of co-existence, you should have been with me the other night at the Levantine Cultural Center, a storefront salon on Pico Boulevard co-founded four years ago by local activist Jordan Elgrably to foster harmony between all peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. The guest speaker was author and journalist Rachel Shabi, who was talking about her new book, "We Look Like the Enemy: the Hidden Story of Israel's Jews From Arab Lands."


Shabi, a Jew of Iraqi descent who grew up in London and now lives in Tel Aviv, has had a lifelong fascination with the story of Jews who come from Arab lands like Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Algeria and Tunisia.


As she spoke about the long and complicated journey of these Jews of Arabia, she didn't sugarcoat their struggles, but you could feel her passion for the golden moments and possibilities of cultural co-existence.


Stuck between my cynical and romantic sides, and perhaps caught up in the moment, I couldn't help wondering whether there might be, one day, a Palestinian chapter to this Jewish-Arab odyssey - a chapter that wouldn't be about Jews being kicked out, but about Jews being asked to stay.

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2).What Republicans Should Do Now: Repeal and reform will be a winning issue this fall.
By KARL ROVE

Democrats are celebrating victory. The public outcry against what they've done doesn't seem to bother them. They take it as validation that they are succeeding at transforming America.

But we've seen this movie before and it won't end happily for Democrats. Their morale rose when the stimulus passed in February 2009. The press hailed it as a popular answer to joblessness and a sluggish economy. At the time, Democrats thought it brightened their chances in the 2009 gubernatorial elections.

But a flawed bill, bumbling implementation, and unfulfilled expectations turned the stimulus into a big drag on Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey. A CBS News/New York Times poll recently reported that only 6% of Americans believe the stimulus package created jobs.

Democratic hopes that passing health-care reform will help them politically will be unfulfilled because ObamaCare only benefits a small number of people in the short run. Until the massive subsidies to insurance companies fully ramp up in 2017, this bill will be more pain than gain for most Americans.

For example, changes in insurance regulations in 2011 and two new mandates in 2014 that force everyone to buy insurance and require everyone to be charged a similar price regardless of age or health will cause insurance premiums to rise more than they would have otherwise. The 10 million people who have a health savings account will also be hurt starting in 2011. With each passing year after that, they will be able to put less away tax free for medical expenses.

ObamaCare cuts $1.8 billion in support for Medicare Advantage this October, another $5.8 billion in October 2011, and an additional $9.2 billion right before the 2012 presidential election. This will increase premiums and reduce benefits for the 4.5 million people in the program.

Drug companies will start raising prices to pay billions in new taxes they will have to pay starting next year. New taxes on medical devices and insurance companies will show up in higher prices and premiums before long.

Polls may show a temporary increase in the president's popularity, but underlying public opinion about this law is not likely to change just because the president hits the trail to sell it. After all, he made 58 speeches before the measure passed, including two in prime time.


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Before that string of speeches the public was in favor of the concept of health-care reform by a ratio of 2 to 1. Afterward, about 60% of the public was opposed to the president's plan. Those who strongly opposed outnumbered those strongly in favor by 2to 1 or better in most polls.

Tens of millions of ordinary people watched the deliberations, studied the proposals, and made up their minds. Their concerns about spending, deficits and growing government power are not going away.

Nor is their opposition to ObamaCare. According to a new CNN poll, majorities of Americans believe that they will pay more for medical care, the federal deficit will increase, and that government will be too involved in health care under the president's plan.

Democrats claim they've rallied their left-wing base. But that base isn't big enough to carry the fall elections, particularly after the party alienated independents and seniors. The only way Democrats win a base election this year will be if opponents of this law stay home.

To keep that from happening, Republican candidates must focus on ObamaCare's weaknesses. It will cost $2.6 trillion in its first decade of operation and is built on Madoff-style financing. For example, it double counts Social Security payroll taxes, long-term care premiums, and Medicare savings in order to make it appear more fiscally responsible. In reality, ObamaCare isn't $143 billion in the black, as Democrats have claimed, but $618 billion in the red. And giving the IRS $10 billion to hire about 16,000 agents to enforce the new taxes and fees in ObamaCare will drive small business owners crazy.

Republicans have a powerful rallying cry in "repeal, replace and reform." Few voters will want to keep onerous mandates that hit individuals and taxes that hobble economic growth. Rather than spending a trillion dollars on subsidies for insurance companies and Medicaid expansion, as ObamaCare does, Republicans should push for giving individuals the same health-insurance tax break businesses get, which would cost less.

Republicans must also continue to press for curbing junk lawsuits, enabling people to buy insurance across state lines, increasing the amount of money they can sock away tax free for medical expenses, and permitting small businesses to pool risk.

Opponents of ObamaCare have decisively won the battle for public opinion. As voters start to feel the pain of this new program, Republicans will be in a stronger position if they stay in the fight, make a principled case, and lay out a competing vision.

Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of "Courage and Consequence," published this month by Threshold Editions.
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3) Your Medical Records Aren't Secure: The president says electronic systems will reduce costs and improve quality, but they could undermine good care if people are afraid to confide in their doctors.
By DEBORAH C. PEEL

I learned about the lack of health privacy when I hung out my shingle as a psychiatrist. Patients asked if I could keep their records private if they paid for care themselves. They had lost jobs or reputations because what they said in the doctor's office didn't always stay in the doctor's office. That was 35 years ago, in the age of paper. In today's digital world the problem has only grown worse.

A patient's sensitive information should not be shared without his consent. But this is not the case now, as the country moves toward a system of electronic medical records.

In 2002, under President George W. Bush, the right of a patient to control his most sensitive personal data—from prescriptions to DNA—was eliminated by federal regulators implementing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Those privacy notices you sign in doctors' offices do not actually give you any control over your personal data; they merely describe how the data will be used and disclosed.

In a January 2009 speech, President Barack Obama said that his administration wants every American to have an electronic health record by 2014, and last year's stimulus bill allocated over $36 billion to build electronic record systems. Meanwhile, the Senate health-care bill just approved by the House of Representatives on Sunday requires certain kinds of research and reporting to be done using electronic health records. Electronic records, Mr. Obama said in his 2009 speech, "will cut waste, eliminate red tape and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests [and] save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health-care system."

But electronic medical records won't accomplish any of these goals if patients fear sharing information with doctors because they know it isn't private. When patients realize they can't control who sees their electronic health records, they will be far less likely to tell their doctors about drinking problems, feelings of depression, sexual problems, or exposure to sexually transmitted diseases. In 2005, a California Healthcare Foundation poll found that one in eight Americans avoided seeing a regular doctor, asked a doctor to alter a diagnosis, paid privately for a test, or avoided tests altogether due to privacy concerns.

Today our lab test results are disclosed to insurance companies before we even know the results. Prescriptions are data-mined by pharmacies, pharmaceutical technology vendors, hospitals and are sold to insurers, drug companies, employers and others willing to pay for the information to use in making decisions about you, your job or your treatments, or for research. Self-insured employers can access employees' entire health records, including medications. And in the past five years, according to the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, more than 45 million electronic health records were either lost, stolen by insiders (hospital or government-agency employees, health IT vendors, etc.), or hacked from outside.

Electronic record systems that don't put patients in control of data or have inadequate security create huge opportunities for the theft, misuse and sale of personal health information. The public is aware of these problems. A 2009 poll conducted for National Public Radio, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health asked if people were confident their medical records would remain confidential if they were stored electronically and could be shared online. Fifty nine percent responded they were not confident.

The privacy of an electronic health record cannot be restored once the contents are sold or otherwise disclosed. Every person and family is only one expensive diagnosis, one prescription, or one lab test away from generations of discrimination.

The solution is to insist upon technologies that protect a patient's right to consent to share any personal data. A step in this direction is to demand that no federal stimulus dollars be used to develop electronic systems that do not have these technologies.

Some argue that consent and privacy controls are impractical or prohibitively costly. But consent is ubiquitous in health care. Ask any physician if she would operate on a patient without informed consent.

There is no need to choose between the benefits of technology and our rights to health privacy. Technologies already exist that enable each person to choose what information he is willing to share and what must remain private. Consent must be built into electronic systems up front so we can each choose the levels of privacy and sharing we prefer.

My organization, Patient Privacy Rights, is starting a "Do Not Disclose" petition so Americans can inform Congress and the president they want to control who can see and use their medical records. We believe Congress should pass a law to build an online registry where individuals can express their preferences for sharing their health information or keeping it private. Such a registry, plus safety technologies for online records, will mean Americans can trust electronic health systems.


Privacy has been essential to the ethical practice of medicine since the time of Hippocrates in fifth century B.C. The success of health-care reform and electronic record systems requires the same foundation of informed consent patients have always had with paper records systems. But if we squander billions on a health-care system no one trusts, millions will seek treatment outside the system or not at all. The resulting data, filled with errors and omissions, will be worth less than the paper it isn't written on.

Dr. Peel, a psychiatrist in private practice, is the founder of Patient Privacy Rights (www. patientprivacyrights.org) and leads the bipartisan Coalition for Patient Privacy.
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4)Dick, Shalom,

Thanks for your response. No doubt coalition politics as played in Israel is a disaster. I'll deal here with the Likud. Let's remember that Begin (during his first term), Shamir for the most part and Sharon would not let their leadership be undermined. Sharon even threw Shas out of the coalition when they did so (2003 if I recall).

As you know I am not a great Netanyahu fan but when he does well from my perspective I say so – such as when finance minister under Sharon or when he discusses a demilitarized Palestinian State for our own good.

However he is showing a terrible lack of leadership and this has nothing to do with the Americans. Everyone has built in Jerusalem during the last 40 years. But the above previous Likud PMs would never allow for their authority to be undercut by Eli Yishai (Shas) or Yaakov Litzmann (UTJ) or anyone else. They determined foreign policy whether one agreed or not and they did not throw out hard earned tax money (135 million shekel) because the haredi rabbis were having a fight and to prove who was stronger one faction decided to fleece the government for these unnecessary funds – and the PM agrees.

As for Obama we all know his world revolves around the Western (Christian) – Muslim seam line and does not follow the Judeo-Christian cultural understanding. I believe Jewish nationalism for him, under certain circumstances, is expendable and I wrote about that last June. Hence we need a leader who can express disagreements in private with the US administration and do the best job possible of holding on to the alliance in the hope of better days to come – 2012? Public blowouts only shift American public opinion against us – and I believe that is Obama's real objective. So of course he latched on to the housing announcement. Yishai is not afraid of Netanyahu like he learned to be in dealing with Sharon.

Everyone would have gotten the message had he told Litzmann (UTJ and 6 seats) that he refuses to waste the money and that he can resign and take his faction into the opposition. He would still have a coalition and he could reallocate some of UTJ's yeshiva funding just to drive the point home.

I am glad you responding to the point of the article, others only wrote to me about the housing project which in this case is not the issue.

Kol Tov, Yisrael
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)Voted Best Scottish Short Joke

A bloke walks into a Glasgow library and says to the prim librarian,

'Excuse me Miss, dey ye hiv ony books on suicide?'

To which she stops doing her tasks, looks at him over the top of her glasses and says,
'Fook off, ye'll no bring it back!'
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6)Downsizing America's Economy
By Steve McCann

You can thank President Obama for the lower standard of living coming your way. The numbers tell the story.


The electorate in the United States is presently being bombarded from all sides with financial and economic statistics on health care and budget deficits. The scale and magnitude of the sums are incomprehensible. A calculation containing twelve or thirteen zeros causes the eye to glaze over. However, in their gut, the American people know that something is amiss and that the future very much in jeopardy.


The bleak tomorrows are no longer twenty-five, thirty, or fifty years out; in the next five to nine years, we will be noticeably poorer and on our way to third-world status. We will be like Brazil, only without the hope of wealth from vast offshore oil resources.


Ongoing annual budget shortfalls in the trillions of dollars will, by 2019, cause publicly held federal debt to exceed 100% of the gross domestic product. Together with all the trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, the United States will be, in essence, a bankrupt nation.


Deficit spending (program expenses exceeding dedicated revenue) began on Medicare (2008) and Social Security (2010). Social Security cash surpluses, which have been used to help finance other government activity, will no longer be available to supplement the rest of the federal budget. By 2019, these programs will require at least $160 to $200 billion a year in borrowing to keep up with promised benefits.


As a result of all the massive borrowing, the annual interest liability by 2019 will approach $900 billion annually. (2009: $187 billion.) Within nine years, spending on Medicare, Social Security, and interest will account for 97% of all federal revenue.


The quick and glib answer to all this is to reduce spending to cover the deficit expenditures. However, total spending between 2010 and 2019 will be $8.5 trillion (27%) more than revenues. Will the majority of the public stand for reducing a monthly social security check by 27% or cutting Medicare reimbursements, defense spending, welfare, and unemployment, et al by a similar 27%?


The obvious answer is no. There will have to be a combination of revenue growth to the government, which can only come from dramatically increased economic activity coupled with far-reaching elimination of agencies (and public-sector unions), cancellation of outdated programs, and slower growth and restructuring of the major entitlement programs.


However, the Obama administration's solution is to focus solely on raising taxes while proposing ever-expanding government spending. Beyond allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2011, the double-edged purpose of the Cap-and-Trade, Health Care Reform, and Financial Reform bills is to raise taxes and fees while furthering government interference into the day-to-day lives of all Americans. The end result of the current policy by this White House and the Democrats in Congress will be to stifle economic activity, further reducing revenues to the government and exacerbating the very real possibility of national bankruptcy.


The last period of major economic downturn in the United States was 1979-1982. Thanks to Ronald Reagan and policies the polar opposite of those being pursued by President Obama, the country made a dramatic recovery which lasted for nearly 25 years. However, there is a major factor that exists today that was not in play in 1980.


In 1980, the United States, Japan, and Western Europe (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) dominated the world economy accounting for 64% of the global Gross Domestic Product. By comparison, China, India, and South Korea accounted for 4% of the world GDP at the time. The relative lack of competition made it easier for those nations to more easily survive and come through a recessionary period.


By 2014, The United States, Japan, and Western Europe are projected to account for 36% of the global GDP (a decline of 44%). (In 1980, the United States was at 27%, by 2014 18% or less, a decline of 40%.) Meanwhile, China, India, and South Korea are estimated to control 24% of world GDP (China 16%), or an overall increase of 500%.


This is now a true global market in which the United States must be competitive. The ideal of a world economy is now a reality. Countries such as China and India have begun to develop a middle class and raise the overall standard of living for their populations. In order to compete and continue this growth, these nations must attract intellectual and investment capital to their shores. They can do so with lower taxes, fewer regulations, a benign legal environment, and lower labor costs.


Thanks to new technology and global communication, major financial firms and their activities can now headquarter in Shanghai, Singapore, or Dubai rather than New York and still serve their worldwide clients. Manufacturing companies can seek out the country with the most advantageous business factors and get their products to a global market as a result of the enormous advances in shipping capacities.


With the rise of the middle class in these once-third-world countries, the populace is better-educated and technologically savvy. Research and development, a United States strength, will accelerate its shift overseas.


By raising taxes, increasing regulations, giving unions (public and private) more power, passing more mandates onto business, and dramatically increasing spending and the power of bureaucrats, this administration will ensure a lack of competitiveness for American business and achieve more equal income distribution by making certain that the standard of living declines for everyone.



The consensus of economic forecasters reveals what may be an overly optimistic average GDP growth rate of 3.1% for the years 2010 to 2015. However, spending by government at all levels (federal, state, and local) will increase an average of 6% per year during this same period, resulting in government spending, for the first time since World War II, being 50% of GDP.


Factoring in the projected growth in population the net per person GDP (total GDP less all government spending) in 2009 made $26,537.00, by 2015 (in 2009 dollars), the net per person GDP will be $23,700.00. The American people will be worse off thanks to the Obama policies.


The United States can never solve its fiscal problems and make certain that the standard of living increases for future generations unless it undertakes to become the foremost haven for investment capital and business activity in the world.


Today, this country is still living off the residue of the economic tidal wave that was the Reagan revolution. But that wave will soon dissipate. Unless policies are put in place that will create the next wave of long-term, high economic growth, the bleak future so many fear will become a reality.


6a)The Progressives' Perfect Trojan Horse
By Lloyd Marcus

As millions of my fellow Americans, I am extremely angry, outraged, and devastated by the Democrats' unbelievable arrogance and disdain for We The People. Despite our screaming "no" from the rooftops, they forced ObamaCare down our throats. Please forgive me for using the following crude saying, but it is very appropriate to describe what has happened. "Don't urinate on me and tell me it's raining."


Democrats say that their mission is to give all Americans health care. The Democrats are lying. Signing ObamaCare into law against our will and the Constitution is tyranny and step one of their hideous goal of having as many Americans as possible dependent on government, thus controlling our lives and fulfilling Obama's promise to fundamentally transform America.


I keep asking myself: How did our government move so far from the normal procedures of getting things done? Could a white president have so successfully pulled off shredding the Constitution to further his agenda? I think not.


Ironically, proving that America is completely the opposite of the evil, racist country they relentlessly accuse her of being, progressives used America's goodness, guilt, and sense of fair play against her. In their quest to destroy America as we know it, progressives borrowed a brilliant scheme from Greek mythology. They offered America a modern-day Trojan Horse, a beautifully crafted, golden, shiny new black man as a presidential candidate. Democrat Joe Biden lauded Obama as the first clean and articulate African-American candidate. Democrat Harry Reid said that Obama uses a black dialect only when he wants to.


White America relished the opportunity to vote for a black man, naïvely believing that they would never suffer the pain of being called racist again. Black Americans viewed casting their vote for Obama as the ultimate Affirmative Action for America's sins of the past.


Then there were the entitlement loser voters who said, "I'm votin' for the black dude who promises to take from those rich SOBs and give to me."


Just as the deceived Trojans dragged the beautifully crafted Trojan Horse into Troy as a symbol of their victory, deceived Americans embraced the progressives' young, handsome, articulate, and so-called moderate black presidential candidate as a symbol of their liberation from accusations of being a racist nation. Also like the Trojan Horse, Obama was filled with the enemy hiding inside.


Sunday, March 21, 2010, a secret door opened in Obama, the shiny golden black man. A raging army of Democrats charged out. Without mercy, they began their vicious, bloody slaughter of every value, freedom, and institution we Americans hold dear, launching the end of America as we know it.


Wielding swords of votes reeking with the putrid odor of backdoor deals, the Democrats landed a severe blow to America and individual rights by passing ObamaCare.


The mainstream liberal media has been relentlessly badgering the Tea Party movement with accusations of racism. Because I am a black Tea Party patriot, I am bombarded with interviewers asking me the same veiled question: "Why are you siding with these white racists against America's first African-American president?" I defend my fellow patriots who are white, stating, "These patriots do not give a hoot about Obama's skin color. They simply love their country and oppose his radical agenda. Obama's race is not an issue."


Recently, I have come to believe that perhaps I am wrong about Obama's race not being an issue. In reality, Obama's presidency has everything to do with racism, but not from the Tea Party movement. Progressives and Obama have exploited his race from the rookie senator's virtually unchallenged presidential campaign to his unprecedented bullying of America into ObamaCare. Obama's race trumped all normal media scrutiny of him as a presidential candidate, and most recently, even the Constitution of the United States. ObamaCare forces all Americans to purchase health care, which is clearly unconstitutional.


No white president could get away with boldly and arrogantly thwarting the will of the American people and ignoring laws. President Clinton tried universal health care. Bush tried social security reform. The American people said "no" to both presidents' proposals, and that was the end of it. So how can Obama get away with giving the American people the finger? The answer: He is black.


The mainstream liberal media continues to portray all who oppose Obama in any way as racist. Despite a list of failed policies, overreaches into the private sector, violations of the Constitution, and planned, destructive pieces of legislation too numerous to mention in this article, many Americans are still fearful of criticizing our first black president. Incredible.


My fellow Americans, you must not continue to allow yourselves to be "played" and intimidated by Obama's race or the historical context of his presidency. If we are to save America, the greatest nation on the planet, then Obama's progressive agenda must be stopped.


-Lloyd Marcus, (black) unhyphenated American, singer/songwriter, entertainer, author, artist, and Tea Party patriot.

6b)The dollar's danger
By SCOTT S. POWELL


The ratings agency Fitch just cut Portugal's bond rating to AA- -- a clear sign that the insolvency crisis that began in Greece is far from over. And don't think it's merely a problem for the European Union. In fact, a debt-driven collapse of the dollar may be closer than most Americans realize.

Start by looking at the levels of deficits and debt that can trigger problems. The "tipping point" we see in Greece (and the "contagion countries" on the edges of Europe) occurs when debt exceeds 100 percent of the country's GDP. That's the signal that a nation will be unable to pay its bills -- jeopardizing financial stability.

Now look at the impact of the increases on US spending and borrowing over the last 18months: The Congressional Budget Office predicts that deficit spending will drive the federal debt to almost $19 trillion by 2015 -- nearly doubling US debt since the TARP bailout was rolled out in late 2008.

Pre-TARP, gross federal debt was 70 percent of GDP. It's now estimated at about 90 percent of GDP. Add in the $1.6 trillion debt liability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and we're already at that 100 percent debt-to-GDP tipping point.

No, the United States isn't Greece: For a host of reasons, we can probably get away with higher debt. But our problem is about to grow worse.

We've largely been financing our deficit spending with short-term debt -- and the Federal Reserve has been keeping short-term interest rates at or near zero. This makes federal borrowing seem cheaper than it really is -- because those interest rates won't stay at zero.

And when rates head back to normal, Uncle Sam's borrowing costs could easily double. We spend 11 percent of the current budget -- $382 billion -- on debt service; that could rise two- or three-fold to more than $800 billion, warns the CBO.

Worse, a crisis in confidence can lead to a sudden ("shock") increase in interest rates, and a much greater portion of the budget being pinned down with debt service. The sovereign debt crisis in Greece doubled its borrowing rates in just three months and brought riots to its streets.

The Greek crisis was triggered by news that government deficits were exceeding 12 percent of GDP. Here at home, this year's $1.6 trillion budget deficit is nearly 11 percent of projected US GDP.

Consider: To fund that deficit, the US Treasury must borrow another $1.6 trillion -- on top of $2 trillion of debt scheduled to roll over this year. That is, it must place a record $3.5 trillion-plus in debt in 2010.

Where will the money come from when our three largest foreign creditors -- China, Japan and Britain -- have little capacity or willingness to increase their Treasury holdings?

If no one else will bid at the desired rates, the Federal Reserve is likely to step in as the "lender of last resort" -- buying hundreds of billions of dollars of US government debt. But that is effectively printing money to pay our bills -- the classic alarm signal for a coming explosion in inflation.

Creating money out of the thin air of more debt issuance leads investors to demand higher offsetting interest rates in anticipation of the dollar's declining value. This weakens the dollar as the world's reserve currency and (since America imports more than it exports) leads to a broad range of higher domestic prices.

It is inconceivable that America would default on its debt outright. But a "perfect storm" of a spiraling debt and devaluation resulting in a "stealth" default looms on the horizon. A shocking thought for sure -- but inflating the currency has always been the easiest way for debtor nations to pay back creditors on cheaper terms.

What's likely to prevent such a crisis? Not the current leadership in Washington. But the public is already anxious about the skyrocketing of federal spending and debt -- with the Tea Party movement merely the most visible sign of a broader sentiment confirmed by every major poll.

We can at least hope that the voters have had enough of fiscal irresponsibility from Democrats and Republicans, and will elect politicians who realize that we can't borrow, tax and spend our way to prosperity.

We'll find out in November.

Scott S. Powell is a director of RemingtonRand and Alpha Quest LLC and a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.



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