If Jerusalem a Settlement D.C. Is A Village!

Some cogent thoughts from military training manuals and other rational advice. (See 1below.)
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Anther thought on debt and its relationship to GDP. A new metric, according to this author, is that supply is a better determinant of borrowing costs.(See 2 below.)
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Obama the healer or ward heeler. You decide. (See 3 below.)
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Abolition of the family? (See 4 below.)
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Middle East game changers? (See 5 and 5a below.)
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Israel retaliates against Gaza launched rockets. Hamas fires back. (See 6 and 6a below.)
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The Arab League, which Obama insists Israel must negotiate with, defer to and meet their demands, just met and said if Israel meets all of the League's requirements Israel would then have the right to exist but, then they added, not as a Jewish State.

The constitutions of the member states in the Arab League all explicitly state Islam is their official state religion - as is also the case with the draft Palestinian constitution.

If Jerusalem is a settlement instead of Israel's capital then I would argue D.C. is a village. Why? Because we know from the current Secretary of State it takes a village to raise an idiot.

It's that goose and gander thing again but this time with an Arab twist. (See 7 below.)
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If Michael Steele can't control his Party's spending then how can voters have confidence his Party can control Democrat spending. In truth, spending is out of control and always will be when left to politicians who are not subject to their own laws.(See 8 and 8a below.)
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Dissing friends - a foreign policy that is unexplainable unless it is intended to offend former Allies. (See 9 below.)
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Dick
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1) WISDOM FROM TRAINING MANUALS


'If the enemy is in range, so are you.'
- Infantry Journal-

'It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.'
- US.Air Force Manual –

'Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword, obviously never encountered automatic weapons.'
- General MacArthur –


'You, you, and you ... Panic. The rest of you, come with me.'
- Infantry Sgt.-


'Tracers work both ways.'
- Army Ordnance Manual-


'Five second fuses last about three seconds.'
- Infantry Journal –


'Any ship can be a minesweeper. Once.'
- Naval Ops Manual -



'Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do.'
- Unknown Infantry Recruit-



'If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up to him.'
- Infantry Journal-


'Yea, Though I Fly Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 50,000 Feet and Climbing.'
- Sign over SR71 Wing Ops-


'You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.'
-Paul F. Crickmore (SR71 test pilot)-


'The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.'
-Unknown Author-


'When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.'
-Multi-Engine Training Manual-



'What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots?
If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies; but If ATC screws up, .... the pilot dies.'
-Sign over Control Tower Door-


'Never trade luck for skill.'
-Author Unknown-

'The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you.'
- Attributed to Max Stanley (Northrop test pilot) -


'There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime.'
-Sign over Squadron Ops Desk at Davis-Montham AFB, AZ-
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2)What's More Important, Debt To GDP Or Supply?
By: Bruce Krasting

There may be a flaw in the thinking our economists, financial leaders, the MSM and (even) the bloggers. Everyone is looking at the debt issue based on some ratio of total debt to GDP or debt service to GDP. This is the way it has always been done and is both right and appropriate. How much debt you can be afforded is a ratio of one's income whether it is an individual, a company, a State or a Sovereign. But there is (to me) evidence of a new metric developing. Supply is quickly becoming the determinant for the cost of borrowing, not debt to GDP levels.

Consider California. They have a monster GDP. Their debt to GDP is one of the best in the country. They have debt equal to only 6% of GDP. Massachusetts and Rhode Island are north of 20%.

But California is the official junk borrower. They just paid 5.8% for ten-year money. On a taxable equivalent yield that comes to 9%. Cali's CDS spreads are also in the tank. Their spreads are trading even up to Bulgaria. It is not their GDP that is the problem it is their visible supply of paper.

The inversion of the ten-year swap spread is completely crazy. It is almost impossible to think that this could happen. But it has. This is all about supply folks. $200b a month of new IOUs is the issue. The Debt to GDP ratio for the US is a disgrace. It is still favorable to most other sovereigns. But we're now trading to a AA.

The US has $8+T in federal paper outstanding to the public. That will increase by 50% or more in the next five years. The Agency paper in public hands is an additional rollover problem. It is likely that Social Security will be a net seller during this period. They used to fund 50% of our deficits.

Will someone please tell me who is going to take this on? Consider the list of existing big holders. I will give you an argument against any of them solving this supply problem. Please don't tell me that US households are going to pony up for this. And don't tell me that I shouldn't worry about supply because Ben B. will buy what ever is necessary. We would be destroyed in less than three years if he did that. And he knows it.

At every step of the way over the past twenty-four months the "markets" have forced the policy makers hands. From Bear to Lehman, to AIG, TARP, ZIRP, QE, Bizzaro Budgets, Clunkers, HAMP and all the rest. The objective was always to blunt the markets. The Stock, Treasury bond, Real Estate, Corporate bond, MBS, ST/LT interest rates, currency, swaps and derivatives markets have all been manipulated for some time now. The question is, "who has been manipulating whom?" More important is, "who is winning?"

At his point I see that the ‘markets' have successfully forced the global policy makers to absorb the absolute giant share of the credit losses of the bubble. A monumental cost will come from the D.C. lenders. They are hobbled with bad debts, while the remaining private financials have earned a bundle on the ZIRP. The market has forced the socialization of total debt/bad debt to a point where the remaining nut is manageable.

With the end of QE the cycle is now complete. The maximum amount of risk in the form of credit exposure and aggregate debt has now been passed to the public sectors around the world. As markets are wont to do, they are likely to turn on their benefactors now that they have succeeded. If total supply and visible supply are going to become more powerful forces than traditional metrics of determining debt pricing, it will have to end up at America's doorstep. We are the ‘category killer' when it comes to supply.
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3)Obama in Rude Denial
By The Prowler

IT'S ALL A GOP PLOT
The White House political and legislative operations were said to be livid with the announcement by several large U.S. companies that they were taking multi-million or as much as a billion dollar charges because of the new health-care law, the issue was front-and-center with key lawmakers. By last Friday, AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co., and AK Steel Holding Corp. had all announced that they were taking the one-time charges on their first-quarter balance sheets. More companies were expected to make similar announcements this week.

"These are Republican CEOs who are trying to embarrass the President and Democrats in general," says a White House legislative affairs staffer. "Where do you hear about this stuff? The Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative websites. No one else picked up on this but you guys. It's BS."

On Friday White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett were calling the CEOs and Washington office heads of the companies that took the financial hits and attacked them for doing so. One Washington office head said that the White House calls were accusatory and "downright rude."

The companies are taking the charges because in 2013 they will lose a tax deduction on tax-free government subsidies they have had when they give retirees a Medicare Part D prescription-drug reimbursement. Many of these companies have more than 100,000 retirees each. AT&T may have more than three-quarters of a million retirees to cover.

"Most of these people [in the Administration] have never had a real job in their lives. They don't understand a thing about business, and that includes the President," says a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge. "My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn't understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn't know what was in the bill."
It isn't just the President who didn't understand his own proposal. Late Friday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel, announced that they would hold hearings in late April to investigate "claims by Caterpillar, Verizon, and Deere that provisions in the new health care reform law could adversely affect their company's ability to provide health insurance to their employees."

Neither Waxman or Stupak -- who betrayed the pro-life community by negotiating for more than a week with the White House to ensure his vote on the health care bill -- had anything more than a cursory understanding of how the many sections of the bill would impact business or even individual citizens before they voted on the bill, says House Energy Democrat staff. "We had memos on these issues, but none of our people, we think, looked at them," says a staffer. "When they saw the stories last week about the charges some of the companies were taking, they were genuinely surprised and assumed that the companies were just doing this to embarrass them. They really believed this bill would immediately lower costs. They just didn't understand what they were voting on."

NOT WHAT THEY EXPECTED
So much for President Obama's promises to build better relations with America's friends and allies overseas. Just 15 months into his administration, Obama has managed to alienate most of the major European allies, this time having a State Department functionary announcing in Brussels that U.S.-EU summits will no longer be held annually, and only when there are particular issues to be decided.
State Department officials, some of whom were holdovers from the Bush Administration, say the reasoning for the U.S. to end the annual summits, which had been held since 1991, was in part due to Obama and his team's feeling " slighted" by European leaders and their staffs, such as French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both of whom have come away less than impressed
with Obama's style and substance.

During Obama's much heralded European visits last year, he and his team were met with lukewarm enthusiasm by his fellow leaders. Obama responded by, as host last November, meeting with his counterparts for only three hours and sending Vice President Joe Biden to spend the rest of the time in the summit, including the official lunch. Other than a 15-minute meeting in the morning with Merkel (which on the schedule was supposed to be a half-hour), the summit meeting, Obama had an almost open schedule on that day, with only a late-afternoon meeting with Sen. Blanche Lincoln on the agenda.

Then in February Obama announced that he would not attend a U.S.-EU Summit in Madrid, Spain, scheduled to take place in May, thus ensuring the meeting would be canceled.

The Obama Administration got off to a rocky start diplomatically when it embarrassed British Prime Minister Gordon Brown by giving him official White House presents -- U.S. formatted DVDs that could not played in Great Britain due to different formatting, for example -- that created the impression Obama didn't seem to care much for Brown. He later, in meeting Queen Elizabeth II gave her an iPod, loaded with podcasts of his major speeches.

"People may not have liked some of the Bush Administration's style, but at least President Bush came to meetings and was gracious," says a current State Department staffer. " I won't say that the Europeans are missing Bush, but they feel that President Obama just doesn't care about the 'special relationship' that has existed between American and Europe. He's made it worse, not better.
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4)The Abolition of the Family
By Larrey Anderson

America is headed down an extremely dangerous path to a potential catastrophe that is rarely discussed. It is the eradication of the family.


Abolition of the family! ... The bourgeois family will disappear, in the course [of history] as its supplement [private property] disappears, and both will vanish with the destruction of capital.
- The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels. (My translation.)


The top priority of Marxism was the abolition of the family; Marx laid down the strategy for its destruction. His thesis was simple: Eliminate capital -- exterminate the family [i]. More and more empirical evidence is piling up to show that this is exactly what is happening in America.


Whether or not it is being done intentionally, the federal government, using money from the TARP and Stimulus bills, has taken precise steps to undermine the family. An article titled "How a New Jobless Era will Transform America" in the March 2010 edition of The Atlantic says this:


The weight of this recession has fallen most heavily upon men, who've suffered roughly three quarters of the 8 million job losses since the beginning of 2008. Male dominated industries (construction, finance, manufacturing) have been particularly hard-hit, while sectors that disproportionately employ women (education, health care) have held up relatively well. ... [It] looks possible that within the next few months, for the first time in U.S. history, women will hold a majority of the country's jobs.


Yet very little of the stimulus money has been funneled into the male-dominated industries. Contrary to the popular impression, only a small fraction of the stimulus money has gone into shovel-ready constructions projects (where more men are employed). Outside of the initial tax breaks ($250 billion of $850 billion in the first stimulus bill), the vast majority of the money has been distributed to local and state governments, education, and the health care industries. Almost none of the funds have gone to support small businesses, where the majority of start-up jobs are created in America.


The distribution of the stimulus money is part of the reason why the unemployment rate of young black men in America is nearing a staggering 50%. There are very few shovel-ready construction, manufacturing, or other private enterprise jobs for young men (of any race) in this country. The bulk of the federal money is going into the service industries. The spending strategy of the Obama administration and the current Congress seems intended to ensure that private-sector jobs for men do not appear.


Marx stated that the family would cease to exist with the disappearance of capital. He meant that the family, private businesses, and private property were intimately entwined. And he was right.


Well over a hundred banks have closed their doors in the last two years. Young men (or women) wanting to start and grow a new business have less and less opportunity to borrow capital for such an enterprise. No new businesses means no new jobs.


That economic recessions and depressions destroy the careers of more male than female workers has been long known and often studied. Mirra Komarovsky, in her groundbreaking work The Unemployed Man and His Family (1940), showed that during the Great Depression,


The economic crisis hit blue-collar occupations harder than service jobs; as a consequence, working-class men often found it harder to find work than did their wives. And yet, traditional views of masculinity prevented many men from sharing bread-winning responsibilities: "I'd rather turn on the gas than let my wife work!" one man told her (76).


In my forthcoming book, The Idea of the Family, I demonstrate that it is not "the traditional view" of masculinity that instills in a man the desire to provide for his family. I prove, rather, that work for the male is a biological, psychological, and even philosophical necessity for the preservation of the family.


Once his participation in coitus is over, the man plays no biological part in the creation of his offspring. Unlike the woman, who carries her baby to term and then nourishes the newborn infant at her breast, the man's role in the family is necessarily ideal. He is biologically and psychologically separated from the procreative process. The man needs a reason to stay with his wife and family. If he is to remain with his family, his role (at least initially) can only be that of provider and protector [ii].


The surest and quickest way to eliminate the family is to make certain that a young man (who might wish to marry and start a family) does not have access to a job. This ensures that the young man has no reason to remain with an impregnated female.


It is not by accident that over 70% of black children in America are born out of wedlock. Almost 50% of young black men in America are unemployed. And without a job, a man has no incentive to start or remain with his family.


The Obama administration has done next to nothing to stimulate those parts of the economy that provide employment for young men and, therefore, protect and strengthen the family. This is the dirtiest and nastiest of not-so-secret secrets that no one seems to want to address.


Meanwhile, Karl Marx is laughing in his grave.


Larrey Anderson is a writer, a philosopher, and submissions editor for American Thinker. He is the author of the novel The Order of the Beloved and the memoir Underground. His next book, The Idea of the Family, examines the role of procreation in human self-awareness.
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5)Middle East game-changer: US nuclear shield for Saudis, Gulf emirates


A submarine-launched US ballistic Trident missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads was test-fired from Saudi territory during a joint military exercise last week - the first time a nuclear-capable missile was fired from the oil kingdom toward the Persian Gulf and Iranian shores. A US defense spokesman denied the Trident's launch Wednesday, April 1, but Saudi security sources stand by the report.

5a)Israeli unveils tank-defense system of the future
By JOSEF FEDERMAN

HAIFA, Israel – On a dusty, wind-swept field overlooking the Mediterranean, a small team of researchers is putting the final touches on what Israel says is a major game changer in tank defense: a miniature anti-missile system that detects incoming projectiles and shoots them down before they reach the armored vehicles.

If successful, the "Trophy" system could radically alter the balance of power if the country goes to war again against Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon or Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Its performance could also have much wider implications as American troops and their Western allies battle insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I think people will be watching the Israelis roll this thing out and see if they can get the hang of it," said John Pike, director of the military information Web site GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Virginia. "The future of the United States army is riding on the proposition that something like this can work."

The Trophy is believed to be the first of a series of so-called "active defense" systems to become operational. Such systems aim to neutralize threats before they strike the tank. In the past, tanks have relied on increasingly thick layers of armor or "reactive" technology that weakens an incoming rocket upon impact by setting off a small explosion.

Israeli weapons maker Rafael, the developer of the Trophy, says the system has been in the works for years, but the bitter experience of Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon gave the project an extra push.

Developers say the Trophy can stop any anti-tank rocket in the formidable Hezbollah arsenal, which struck dozens of Israeli tanks and killed at least 19 Israeli tank crewmen during their monthlong war.

"We can cope with any threat in our neighborhood, and more," said Gil, the Trophy's program manager at Rafael. Citing security considerations, the company would not permit publication of his last name.

Israeli analyst Yiftah Shapir said it is premature to tell whether the Trophy can make a major difference, however. He said the army must cope with the high costs of the system and determine exactly how it will be used.

"When everyone knows that it works properly, it will change the battlefield," he said.

Israeli media have said the cost is about $200,000 per tank. Rafael refused to divulge the price of the system, saying only that it's a "small fraction" of the cost of a tank.

Gil and his small team of scientists conduct tests at a site in the outer reaches of Rafael's sprawling headquarters in northern Israel — firing rocket-propelled grenades, Sager rockets, and TOW and Cornet missiles at a lone tank set up in front of a massive fortified wall. The results are analyzed in a concrete hut loaded with laptops and flat-screen monitors.

The tiny Trophy system, lodged behind small rectangular plates on both sides of the tank, uses radar to detect the incoming projectiles and fires a small charge to intercept them, said Gil.

After firing, the system quickly reloads. The entire process is automated, holds fire if the rocket is going to miss the tank, and causes such a small explosion that the chances of unintentionally hurting friendly soldiers through collateral damage is only 1 percent, the company says.

Pike, the military analyst, said systems like the Trophy are considered the way of the future for ground warfare. The technology is a key component of the U.S. "Future Combat System," the master plan for the American military, he said. The U.S. and Russia are developing similar systems.

If the technology works, he said it will reduce the need for heavy armor on tanks — resulting in lighter vehicles that are easier to transport and deploy and are more nimble on the battlefield. But, he noted, "it's a lot easier to get it to work on a test range than it is to get it to work on a battlefield."

Lova Drori, Rafael's executive vice president for marketing, said "there is a lot of interest" internationally in the Trophy and he expects "quite a few customers" in the coming years.

Rafael officials said the Trophy has passed more than 700 live tests, and already has been installed in some Israeli Merkava 4 tanks in a pilot project.

In a statement, the army said "dozens of tanks should be outfitted with the new system" by the end of the year, adding that Trophy contributes to "maintaining a strategic advantage over enemy forces."

More than three years later, the 2006 war continues to shake Israel's defense establishment. Upward of 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the fighting, according to tallies by the Lebanese government, humanitarian groups and The Associated Press. In all, 159 Israelis were killed. The war ended in a stalemate and is largely viewed in Israel as a defeat.

The Trophy is the latest in a series of new systems. State-owned Israel Military Industries is producing "Iron Fist," an anti-missile defense that is expected to be installed on Israeli armored personnel carriers next year.

That system takes a different approach from Trophy, first using jamming technology that can make the missile veer off course, and if that fails, creating a "shock wave" to blow it up, said Eyal Ben-Haim, vice president of the company's land-system division.

State-run Rafael is also developing "Iron Dome," which can shoot down the short-range Katyusha rockets that rained down on Israel in 2006, as well as Hamas rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. Iron Dome is expected to be deployed by this summer near Gaza.

The Israeli air force recently unveiled a squadron of unmanned airplanes capable of reaching Iran, the key backer of Hezbollah and Hamas militants.

Rafael has also developed an unmanned naval boat called the Protector, which it says is already prowling the waters off the Gaza coast. The Israeli navy confirmed the Protector is being tested, but gave no further details
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6) Israeli planes carry out several attacks on Gaza
By Reuters


Israeli planes and helicopters mounted at least seven missile attacks on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Friday, destroying what an Israel Defense Forces spokesman described as Palestinian munitions sites.

Four air strikes blew up two caravans near the town of Khan Younis, witnesses and Hamas officials said. There were no casualties.

A fifth missile hit a cheese factory in Gaza City, setting it on fire, witnesses and Hamas officials said. Hospital officials said two children were slightly wounded by flying debris.

Helicopters struck twice in the central refugee camp of Nusseirat, destroying a metal foundry. There were no casualties.

An IDF spokesman confirmed the attacks, saying they had targeted two weapons-manufacturing plants and two arms caches.

The air strikes were Israel's response to a Palestinian short-range rocket that was fired across the border into Israel on Thursday, the spokesman said. The attack, which went unclaimed by any Palestinian faction, caused no damage.

Last Friday, Major Eliraz Peretz and Staff Sergeant Ilan Sviatkovsky were killed while pursuing a group of Palestinian militants trying to lay mines near the border fence. Two other soldiers were wounded in the incident, and two militants were killed.

6a)Qassam strikes south Israel, hours after IDF attacks Gaza
By Reuters and Haaretz Service



A Qassam rocket fire by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip struck southern Israel on Friday, hours after the Israel Defense Forces fired at least seven missiles at the coastal territory in response to a rocket strike a day earlier.

There were no casualties or damages reported in the rocket attack. At least 35 rockets were fired at Israel over the course of March.

Also Thursday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on the international community must intervene in the latest cycle of violence between Gaza and Israel in order to avoid a possible escalation.


Haniyeh urged the world must stop "the escalation and aggression," according to a Channel 10 report. He was likely referring to the Israel Air Force strikes, which destroyed what an Israel Defense Forces spokesman described as Palestinian munitions sites.

"We are contacting the other factions in order to reach an internal consensus as to the measures we may take in order to protect our people and strengthen our unity," Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza.


Friday's IAF air strikes were Israel's response to a Palestinian short-range rocket that was fired across the border into Israel on Thursday, an IDF spokesman said. The attack, which went unclaimed by any Palestinian faction, caused no damage.

Four air strikes blew up two caravans near the town of Khan Younis, witnesses and Hamas officials said. There were no casualties.

A fifth missile hit a cheese factory in Gaza City, setting it on fire, witnesses and Hamas officials said. Hospital officials said two children were slightly wounded by flying debris.

Helicopters struck twice in the central refugee camp of Nusseirat, destroying a metal foundry. There were no casualties.

An IDF spokesman confirmed the attacks, saying they had targeted two weapons-manufacturing plants and two arms caches.

Last Friday, Major Eliraz Peretz and Staff Sergeant Ilan Sviatkovsky were killed while pursuing a group of Palestinian militants trying to lay mines near the border fence. Two other soldiers were wounded in the incident, and two militants were killed




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7)Weekly Commentary: Arab League Rejects Israel's Right To Survive
By Dr. Aaron Lerner

The most generous interpretation of the position of the Arab League is that
if Israel meets all Arab demands that the member states would recognize
Israel's existence at that point in time but not its right to survive.

There is a critical difference between recognizing Israel's temporary
existence and its right to survive.

The former is no more than a form of the traditional "hudna". A temporary
ceasefire until such time that conditions make possible the defeat of the
enemy

The 28 March Arab League Sirte Declaration rejecting the recognition of
Israel as a Jewish state is a rejection of Israel's right to survive.

The Arab states should have no problem with the idea that a country is
associated with a religion. After all, the constitutions of the member
states in the Arab League all explicitly state that Islam is their official
state religion - as is also the case with the draft Palestinian
constitution.

But when the Arabs - including the Israeli Arabs - oppose Israel's
designation as being a "Jewish State" the issue goes far beyond Judaism
being reflected in Israel's national calendar and other facets of the State.
The core feature of Israel as a Jewish State that they find unacceptable is
that Jews around the world have the right to immigrate to Israeli and become
citizens.

If the Arabs recognized Israel's right to survive then it would not be so
critical to them to want to stop Jewish immigration.

Instead they press for an end to Jewish immigration along with the right of
Arabs with family ties to Israel to flood the country.
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8)Michael Steele's Job: Why the Republican Party chairman's spending is now an issue.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL.

Gentlemen, this is a football.
– Vince Lombardi


Lombardi famously began each pre-season with that quote, to remind his team that success begins with fundamentals. That includes a clear understanding of each player's job on the team. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, politics is your football.

Mr. Steele is having a bad week. After a string of unfortunate months, news broke that the RNC has been spending like credit-card addicts on everything from limos to private aircraft. Singled out for attention was a $1,946 bar tab run up by young Republicans at Voyeur, a sex-themed night club in West Hollywood. Donors, hide your checkbooks.

The press is treating Voyeur as a political mini-scandal, but that misses the bigger point. The freewheeling spending and lack of internal controls are, to many in the party, the latest evidence that Mr. Steele has yet to figure out his role. That confusion could mean the difference between a decent GOP midterm victory and a big one.

Mr. Steele won the RNC slot last year and immediately anointed himself GOP quarterback. Democrats had the bully pulpits of the White House and Congress; Mr. Steele chose himself to be the official voice of the opposition. He's the go-to media guy to respond to every Democratic action. He's tasked himself with publicly defining a new GOP, even publishing a book, "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda."

With this "shadow president" mentality (as one Republican bigwig described it) has come the private aircraft, and the swollen entourages and glitzy events now in the public eye. Mr. Steele's response to attempts to rein him in has been to complain that staffers are undermining his effort to drag the party into the 21st century.

That might be a legit complaint if anyone had actually hired Mr. Steele to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan. But committee chairmen are not elected to be public quarterbacks. They are elected to do the Lombardi basics: blocking and tackling. They create the circumstances on the field so that the rest of the team can score. It is hard work in the trenches. It is not glamorous. But it wins games.

Chief among those jobs is fund raising. In fairness, Mr. Steele has been doing that. The RNC last year outraised the DNC seven out of 12 months, which is relevant given Democratic enthusiasm after 2008. It's tapped into average-voter frustration over the Obama agenda, adding some 556,000 first-time donors to the rolls. It's engaged in some cheap and creative Web fund raising, such as its recent "Fire Nancy Pelosi" campaign, which quickly netted it $1.5 million.

Then again, with the base and independents fired up, this shouldn't be a hard financial lift. And GOP insiders are concerned that the final 2009 tallies showed the RNC had only $8.4 million in the bank. True, Mr. Steele invested some $12 million in winning Virginia and New Jersey (crucial for raising enthusiasm) and has doled out money to Senate and House campaign committees. Yet the challenge for any committee chairman is to both invest in off-year elections and amass a war-chest for midterms. The war chest has yet to bulge.

The luxury spending is a problem not just because it is burning up vital money, but because it threatens the RNC's ability to capitalize on donors in the crucial months ahead. The vision of fat-cat Republicans laying out $1,946 for Hollywood martinis is totally at odds with the GOP message about out-of-touch Washington. Cash-strapped Americans will think twice before writing a $50 check to cover Mr. Steele's limo. The same applies to bigger donors, who are concerned about RNC mission drift, and who have other political bodies to which they can give their money.

That's a problem, as it touches on the rest of Mr. Steele's actual job. It is true that restrictions on soft money have made party committees less crucial than they once were. Yet it is just as true the RNC remains the backbone of a successful Election Day operation. It is the one body able to coordinate everyone—House and Senate committees, state organizations—to ensure the sum is greater than the parts. And it is the nerve center of the all-important, get-out-the-vote operations.

Republicans are worried the money for those RNC-only tasks won't be there. They are worried about focus. "I don't need Michael Steele on TV to say what is wrong with Barack Obama," says one GOP operative. "We have an entire party to do that. I need him compiling micro-targeted voter information." They are worried all this could have huge consequences.

The fundamentals are currently in place for a wave election. The president's approval ratings are flagging. Voters are angry over Mr. Obama's agenda and the economy. An anti-incumbent fever ought to further benefit the out-of-power party. How the RNC performs could be the difference between a 20-seat House pickup and a switch to a Republican majority.

Some Republicans are grumbling about tossing Mr. Steele out, but that brings its own problems. It isn't too late, however, to show Mr. Steele the football.


8a)The Fate of the Republican Party
By Steve McGregor

The Republican Party is a minority, a supposedly insignificant force. Abhorrent legislation seems destined to remain law. The country is riven by disagreement over our basic civil rights. The Democratic Party labels us an "opposition party" or "the party of no." I'm talking about 1854.


The similarity to the present day doesn't end there. That year, Democrats used their own form of parliamentary chicanery to pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act in order to expand slavery to new states. As Bill Bennett writes in volume one of his American history text, "Democrats argued that the 'sacred principle' of democracy was that the people of any territory could decide whether or not to permit slavery." Ironically, this was known as "popular sovereignty." It was a bizarre attempt to claim an interest in civil rights while trampling the rights of others. And there was no one to oppose this bill.


That is, until a new alliance formed in Ripon, Wisconsin stood up and said, "No." They called themselves Republicans.


But they were still a minority, fractured by competing interests and relatively leaderless. Then several things changed. First, the American electorate had a say in the matter, voting 73 of 157 Democrats out of the House of Representatives. They also elected 43 Republicans from scratch, providing a base. Second, the newly-elected Republicans stood firm. Instead of compromising with Democrats, they committed themselves to the idea that all men are created equal. Nowhere is this resolve better-expressed than in the man who emerged as the Republican leader: Abraham Lincoln. But it was six years before Lincoln ascended to the presidency, and he earned his election through public debate with the former sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Senator Stephen Douglas.


Given this proud history, I cannot understand some of the recent Republican gripes. One commenter argues that we should forsake the "Republican" moniker because another noun is more popular. She quotes one poll of adults where 24% identify as "Republican" versus 40% as "conservative." This is a bit like trying to convince Catholics to change to "Christians" to increase church attendance. Yet political parties, like religions, are more than just a brand. And have we become so arrogant that we assume a name change would suffice to achieve popularity? The American people are self-professed conservatives not because of the word itself, but because of their values.


Or take another complaint that Republicans never attempted to reach a deal. We decided that there would be "No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles...and ended with none." Exactly right! We did not compromise like Representative Stupak or engage in backroom deals with unions or accept bribes like the Louisiana Purchase or lie to the American people like President Obama.


Already voters are responding. Public approval for Congress is in the tank. Politicians must have noticed too, because 34 Democrats voted with Republicans on ObamaCare. This is not the time to back down or reconfigure.


Maintaining ongoing opposition to ObamaCare is a tough challenge -- but no tougher than our fight against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Now, just as then, Republicans are uncertain about the future of our families, our party, and our country. As President Lincoln said, "The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred, defeats." To succeed, we must raise voter turnout, refuse to compromise our principles, support emerging leaders, and engage in public debate.


"Life and liberty since 1854." That sounds like a clarion call to me.


Steve McGregor is Special Adviser on defense issues to a peer in the British House of Lords and a post-graduate student in Social Anthropology at University College London. Previously he served as a captain in the Rakkasans.

8b)Economics in 1.5 Days
By Randall Hoven

I recently attended an economics conference. I know you're dying to know how it went. Don't laugh. No one at the conference did.


Are we headed for a double-dip recession, or even a Great Depression? How will the U.S. and most of the developed world face their debt problems? How bad is all that debt, and where will it lead? What exactly happened that caused our recent financial crisis, and how can we prevent such a thing in the future? As our lawmakers and political leaders craft new fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies, what should they do?


Good questions. Too bad they weren't answered at the conference I attended. Then again, economists are only human and must rely on data, mathematics, and the principles of sound statistical inference. Apparently, predicting the future is still a tricky enterprise.


But they did what they could. Here, for example, are a few tidbits from their studies.


The optimal tax rate for a flat (marginal) income tax is 19.5%. That tax would raise the same amount of money as our current income tax, with everyone having the exact same marginal rate as each other and everyone feeling better off for it. This system would include a negative income tax for low earners.
About one half to two-thirds of the cars sold under Cash for Clunkers would have sold in about the same time period even without the program. So the cost to taxpayers for each car sold due to the program was about $15,000. Some studies put it at $24,000 per clunker.
The math textbook your kid uses in grades 1-3 can influence his math test scores in later years (at least up to grade 6). The amount of influence? About 0.11 standard deviations (maybe one to two percentile points), while it lasts.
Banks really do achieve economies of scale (efficiency) by getting bigger, even already big banks.


There was one inconsequential paper that showed that just about anyone could date recessions as well as the National Bureau of Economic Research yet provide more consistent calls than the NBER's dating committee. (That was the paper I presented. You might have read its precursors here and here.)


However, there was a theme to a few of the presentations, especially the one given by Nobel Prize-winner Finn Kydland.

Dr. Kydland called it an "anomaly," or something not explained by current economic theory.

And that anomaly is this: While developed countries are largely coordinated in their monetary policies, their economic outcomes in terms of real growth are all over the map. That is, why don't countries with similar monetary policies experience similar economic growth?


Another paper examined much the same thing with price levels, or inflation. If monetary policy dictates inflation, why don't countries with the same monetary policies have the same inflation rates, more or less? Yet they don't, or at least the connection is weak. Another anomaly.


Yet another paper noted that a government's budget deficits (or surpluses) are not totally influenced that government's fiscal policy. In fact, about 40% of a government's deficit is explained by some "global" influence. Developed economies seem to experience similarly timed ups and downs in government deficits.


All these papers have in common the discovery (and the dilemma, if you are an economist) that the big tools of government economic policy, namely monetary and fiscal policy, have little influence on real economic outcomes.


Dr. Kydland was effectively telling a room full of monetary economists that monetary policy seems to have almost no effect on the real economy. That's as close to calling their baby ugly as it gets. Dr. Kydland gave them the news with enough mathematics that maybe they didn't notice.


This "anomaly" is a really big deal to economists. They take it to mean that global influences are as important as, or even more important than, domestic economic policy on a country's real economy. The Dallas Federal Reserve, in fact, split its monetary research group into two parts; one part is now devoted to global monetary analysis.


I have a simpler interpretation: Government can't really do much for an economy, other than screw it up.


It seems to be accepted knowledge, especially among Democrats, that a government stimulus produces jobs and "fixes" a recession. Yet there is plenty of evidence that shows that fiscal policy in general, much less a stimulus in particular, does nothing of the kind.


I would like to cite two academic economic papers written in 1992 and 1994 (bear with me on this). The papers are titled "What Ended the Great Depression?" and "What Ends Recessions?" The author concluded that



[p]lausible estimates of the effects of fiscal and monetary changes indicate that nearly all the observed recovery of the U.S. economy prior to 1942 was due to monetary expansion... That monetary developments were crucial to the recovery implies that self-correction played little role in the growth of real output between 1933 and 1942.


We find that the Federal Reserve typically responds to downturns with prompt and large reductions in interest rates. Discretionary fiscal policy, in contrast, rarely reacts before the trough in economic activity, and even then the responses are usually small.


In other words, fiscal policy, or spending, had almost nothing to do with ending the Great Depression or other recessions, try as the government might.


Now here is the kicker: the author of those papers was none other than Christina Romer, who is now President Obama's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.


Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the economist who concluded that stimuli do not help end recessions was Obama's chief champion for a $787 billion "stimulus." (Aren't you glad that liberals don't "sell out"?)


And now, with so much global trade, economists are finding that even monetary policy is losing its kick.


Tell me, boys and girls: If monetary policy is largely powerless, and fiscal policy is powerless, then what should a government do to "run the economy"?


The answer is that a government can't run an economy. It cannot even influence an economy much, at least not for the better. What it can do that would be helpful is provide institutions that protect life, liberty, and property.


And that lesson is not new. In fact, it is what Adam Smith told us over two hundred years ago.


Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.


I get the feeling that a whole lot of wonderful mathematics is being wasted in failed attempts to find loopholes in that statement. But governments are willing to spend a lot of money on economists willing to try. That is in the government's self-interest. And self-interest is something economists do know a lot about.


Randall Hoven can be contacted at randall.hoven@gmail.com or via his website, randallhoven.com.
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9)Slapping Friends
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- What is it like to be a foreign ally of Barack Obama's America?

If you're a Brit, your head is spinning. It's not just the personal slights to Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- the ridiculous 25-DVD gift, the five refusals before Brown was granted a one-on-one with The One.


Nor is it just the symbolism of Obama returning the Churchill bust that was in the Oval Office. Query: If it absolutely had to be out of Obama's sight, could it not have been housed somewhere else on U.S. soil rather than ostentatiously repatriated?

Perhaps it was the State Department official who last year denied there even was a special relationship between the U.S. and Britain, a relationship cultivated by every U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt.

And then there was Hillary Clinton's astonishing, nearly unreported (in the U.S.) performance in Argentina last month. She called for Britain to negotiate with Argentina over the Falklands.

For those who know no history -- or who believe that it began on Jan. 20, 2009 -- and therefore don't know why this was an out-of-the-blue slap at Britain, here's the back story:

In 1982, Argentina's military junta invaded the (British) Falkland Islands. The generals thought the British, having long lost their taste for foreign lands, would let it pass. Besides, the Falklands have uncountably more sheep than people. They underestimated Margaret Thatcher (the Argentines, that is, not the sheep). She was not about to permit the conquest of a people whose political allegiance and ethnic ties are to Britain. She dispatched the navy. Britannia took it back.

Afterward, neither Thatcher nor her successors have countenanced negotiations. Britain doesn't covet foreign dominion and has no shortage of sheep. But it does believe in self-determination, and will negotiate nothing until and unless the Falkland Islanders indicate their desire to be ruled by a chronically unstable, endemically corrupt polity with a rich history of dictatorship, economic mismanagement and the occasional political lunacy (see: the Evita cult).

Not surprisingly, the Falkland Islanders have given no such indication. Yet inexplicably, Clinton sought to reopen a question that had been settled for almost 30 years, not just pointlessly stirring the embers but even taking the Argentine side (re: negotiations) against Britain -- a nation that has fought and bled with us for the last decade, and that today has about 10,000 troops, far more than any other ally, fighting alongside America in Afghanistan.

Of course, given how the administration has treated other allies, perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised.

-- Obama visits China and soon Indonesia, skipping India, our natural and rising ally in the region -- common language, common heritage, common democracy, common jihadist enemy. Indeed, in his enthusiasm for China, Obama suggests a Chinese interest in peace and stability in South Asia, a gratuitous denigration of Indian power and legitimacy in favor of a regional rival with hegemonic ambitions.

-- Poland and the Czech Republic have their legs cut out from under them when Obama unilaterally revokes a missile defense agreement, acquiescing to pressure from Russia with its dreams of regional hegemony over Eastern Europe.

-- The Hondurans still can't figure out why the United States supported a Hugo Chavez ally seeking illegal extension of his presidency against the pillars of civil society -- its Congress, Supreme Court, church and army -- that had deposed him consistent with Article 239 of their own constitution.

But the Brits, our most venerable, most reliable ally, are the most disoriented. "We British not only speak the same language. We tend to think in the same way. We are more likely than anyone else to provide tea, sympathy and troops," writes Bruce Anderson in London's Independent, summarizing with admirable concision the fundamental basis of the U.S.-British special relationship.

Well, said David Manning, a former British ambassador to the U.S., to a House of Commons committee reporting on that very relationship: "He (Obama) is an American who grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and who had a Kenyan father. The sentimental reflexes, if you like, are not there."

I'm not personally inclined to neuropsychiatric diagnoses, but Manning's guess is as good as anyone's. How can you explain a policy toward Britain that makes no strategic or moral sense? And even if you can, how do you explain the gratuitous slaps to the Czechs, Poles, Indians and others? Perhaps when an Obama Doctrine is finally worked out, we shall learn whether it was pique, principle or mere carelessness.

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