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I was asked by a tennis friend, who is very far to the left, to post this article by Norman Ornstein, so I am.
Ornstein sees Obama as mainstream. That suggests to me Obama is very shallow!(See 2 below.)
Meanwhile, Mike Adams fails to see what Ornstein sees.(See 2a below.)
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VAT's a taxpayer to do? Rove says vote Republican. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Woolsey one of the brighter and better CIA Chiefs advises us on how to eliminate our oil dependency with four doable suggestions. No one is listening because we are not faced with an energy crisis.
Even the body can adjust to poison when administered in gradual doses over an extended period of time.(See 4 below.)
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We need another Curtis LeMay at the Pentagon to offset what we have in the White House. You avoid war through strength not weakness. You avoid war by broadcasting clearly what you will do, convincing your enemy you mean what you say and having the wherewithal to do it. You do not avoid war by eliminating negative descriptions of your enemy and constantly issuing repeated meaningless warnings.(See 5 and 5a below.)
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Attorney General Eric Holder is a dogged embarrassment both to the Administration and the nation.
If you want to clear your head of this Administration's fuzzy thinking on who our enemy is then you must listen to this presentation by Ret Col. West: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WReJgvOBXa8 (See 6 and 6a below.)
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Finally a few peeps from the perfume man.
But Obama continues to make sure that the anger of the American public rises and is directed at Israel. The fact that The Saudis still finance terrorism world wide through their madrases is ignored. The fact that Islamist radial want to destroy our civilization is ignored. The fact that Iran wants to deputize the region under their nuclear boot is ignored. The fact that Israel has sought to make peace from the beginning of its history is ignored.
Obama needs an enemy to press his case and he has decided Israel is the pinata to beat. (See 7 below.)
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Tomorrow is Tax Filing Time and the annual insincere ritual of political complaints about tax complexity is heard throughout the land. The hue and cry from Congress is audible but in several months special interests will buy off and mute these voices and matters will revert to normalcy, ie. - out sized rates, confusing and endless rules and regulations which cripple our economy and destroy incentives.
Public inertia is the bet Obama is making and history is on his side because the tax code has a life of its own and tax payers feel trapped and helpless because our Representatives do not feel beholden.
Therefore, get ready for more taxes Joe Plumber! (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1).AP-GfK Poll: Obama slips, other Dems slide, too
By LIZ SIDOTI
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's national standing has slipped to a new low after his victory on the historic health care overhaul, even in the face of growing signs of economic revival, according to the latest Associated Press-GfK poll.
The survey shows the political terrain growing rockier for Obama and congressional Democrats heading into midterm elections, boosting Republican hopes for a return to power this fall.
Just 49 percent of people now approve of the job Obama's doing overall, and less than that — 44 percent — like the way he's handled health care and the economy. Last September, Obama hit a low of 50 percent in job approval before ticking a bit higher. His high-water mark as president was 67 percent in February of last year, just after he took office.
The news is worse for other Democrats. For the first time this year, about as many Americans approve of congressional Republicans as Democrats — 38 percent to 41 percent — and neither has an edge when it comes to the party voters want controlling Congress. Democrats also have lost their advantage on the economy; people now trust both parties equally on that, another first in 2010.
Roughly half want to fire their own congressman.
Adding to Democratic woes, people have grown increasingly opposed to the health care overhaul in the weeks since it became law; 50 percent now oppose it, the most negative measure all year. People also have a dim view of the economy though employers have begun to add jobs, including 162,000 in March. Just as many people rated the economy poor this month — 76 percent — as did last July.
And it could get worse for Democrats: One-third of those surveyed consider themselves tea party supporters, and three-quarters of those people are overwhelmingly Republicans or right-leaning independents. That means they are more likely to vote with the GOP in this fall's midterms, when energized base voters will be crucial amid the typical low turnout of a non-presidential election year.
With the electorate angry, Republicans enthusiastic and Democrats seemingly less so, Obama's party increasingly fears it could lose control of the House, if not the Senate, in his first midterms. The GOP, conversely, is emboldened as voters warm to its opposition to much of the president's agenda.
On the minds of Democrats and Republicans alike: the Democratic bloodletting in
1994, when the GOP seized control of Congress two years after Bill Clinton was elected president. But the less-dispiriting news for Democrats is that it's only April — a long way to November in politics.
Still, persuading change-minded voters to keep the status quo will be no easy task given that most people call details of the health care overhaul murky and that the unemployment rate is unlikely to fall below 9 percent by November.
The key for Obama and his party: firing up moribund Democratic voters while appealing to independents who are splitting their support after back-to-back national elections in which they tilted heavily toward Democrats and caused the power shift.
None of that will be easy.
Just listen to independent voters who typically decide elections.
"He's moving the country into a socialized country," Jim Fall, 73, of Wrightwood, Calif., said of the president. He worries that Obama is too "radical left wing" and that government has grown too big, saying: "He is constantly in our lives more and more and more and more."
Fall was just as down on the Democratic-controlled Congress: "They're horrible. I think all they do is talk," he said, adding that Republicans acted no differently when they had power: "Just spend and spend and spend."
In Spokane, Wash., Angela Hardin, 43, was just as disapproving.
"I don't like what's going on," the small business owner said. "He is just making a huge mess out of everything. ... He's all over the map. It's like, 'Slow down! Breathe! Think!'"
As for Democrats in Congress, she said: "I'm not happy with them." Republicans, she said, may be better. But she's really ambivalent toward any of them: "It's just beyond me how they can sit up there with all of their college degrees and fight like they were in middle school."
The new poll findings also show:
• Equal percentages of Democrats — 87 percent — approve of Obama's job performance as Republicans — 88 percent — disapprove. Independents are about split, 50 percent disapprove to 47 percent approve. And, when it comes to Congress, 91 percent of Republicans, 65 percent of independents and even 51 percent of Democrats disapprove.
• The tea party coalition remains fuzzy to most people; only 16 percent say they know a great deal or a lot about this political phenomenon born a year ago.
Obama remains a polarizing figure, as does Congress.
"He's trying to do what he said we was going to do," said David Jeter of Los Angeles, 51, who votes Democratic and co-owns a lighting business. Jeter credits Congress with passing health care but wonders: "Now what will they do? ... I watch Congress with bated breath, but I don't expect that anything is going to radically alter my life."
The AP-GfK Poll was conducted April 7-12, 2010 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media. It involved interviews with 1,001 adults nationwide on both landline and cellular telephones. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
Associated Press Polling Director Trevor Tompson, AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and AP Writers Alan Fram, Ann Sanner and Natasha Metzler contributed to this report.
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2)Obama: A pragmatic moderate faces the 'socialist' smear
By Norman J. Ornstein
In the 1950s, Democratic senators from the solidly Democratic South uniformly supported segregation and opposed civil rights and voting rights bills. They dutifully spent long hours on the Senate floor filibustering such efforts. Legend has it that during one marathon filibuster, after Olin Johnston of South Carolina, a populist liberal on economic matters, handed off the baton to Strom Thurmond, Johnston went into the cloakroom where many of his colleagues were seated, gestured back toward the Senate floor, and said, "Old Strom, he really believes that [expletive]."
This story came to mind with the recent blizzard of attacks on Barack Obama by Republican presidential wannabes and other office-seekers, along with their allies on cable television and talk radio. The most extravagant rhetoric has come out of the gathering of Southern Republicans in New Orleans, led by former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who called Obama "the most radical president in American history" and urged his partisan audience to stop Obama's "secular, socialist machine."
At the same conference, Liz Cheney, the former vice president's daughter who is often mentioned as a possible Senate candidate from Virginia, fiercely attacked Obama's foreign policy as "apologize for America, abandon our allies and appease our enemies." And last week the ubiquitous Sarah Palin said of the arms-control treaty Obama signed with Russia, "No administration in America's history would, I think, ever have considered such a step," likening it to a kid telling others in a playground fight, "Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate."
On talk radio, Rush Limbaugh accused Obama of administering "statist-assisted suicide." Talk show hostMichael Savage called Obama's health-care plan "socialized medicine" and described the nuclear treaty as "insane." These are not isolated comments; the terms "radical," "socialist" and even "totalitarian" are bandied about frequently by Obama opponents, including congressional and other GOP leaders.
To one outside the partisan and ideological wars, charges of radicalism, socialism, retreat and surrender are, frankly, bizarre. The Democrats' health-reform plan includes no public option and relies on managed competition through exchanges set up much like those for federal employees. The individual mandate in the plan sprang from a Heritage Foundation idea that was endorsed years ago by a range of conservatives and provided the backbone of the Massachusetts plan that was crafted and, until recently, heartily defended by Mitt Romney. It would be fair to describe the new act as Romneycare crossed with the managed-competition bill proposed in 1994 by Republican Sens. John Chafee, David Durenberger, Charles Grassley and Bob Dole -- in other words, as a moderate Republican plan. Among its supporters is Durenberger, no one's idea of a radical socialist.
What about Obama's other domestic initiatives? The stimulus was anything but radical -- indeed, many mainstream observers, me included, thought it was too timid in size and scope given the enormity of the problems. The plan could have been more focused on swift and directed stimulus. It included such diversions as a fix for the alternative minimum tax -- at the insistence of Grassley. And it excluded some "shovel-ready" ideas such as school construction -- at the insistence of Republican Sen. Susan Collins. It did not include the kind of public works jobs program employed by Franklin Roosevelt. Nonetheless, it has been widely credited with ameliorating the worst effects of the downturn and helping to move us back toward economic growth. The widely criticized Troubled Assets Relief Program -- initiated by Obama's predecessor -- is now returning to the Treasury most of the taxpayer money laid out to keep us from depression and deflation.
It is true that, in an attempt to head off a meltdown stemming from a collapse of the automobile industry, Obama engineered a temporary takeover of two of the Big Three auto companies. But nothing suggests that this is anything but temporary, and Obama has resisted many calls to take over major banks and other financial institutions.
The nuclear treaty with Russia excoriated by Palin, Savage and others was endorsed by Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the GOP's resident foreign policy expert, and it was crafted under Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was first appointed to that post by George W. Bush. Obama's approach to terrorism has been similar to Bush's, while more aggressively targeting leaders of terrorist groups; his larger foreign policy has received the seal of approval from James Baker, former chief of staff to Ronald Reagan and secretary of state to George H.W. Bush. Obama's energy policies include more nuclear power and more offshore drilling. Obama's education policies have received wide acclaim across the political spectrum. The "secular" president has shored up and supported federal faith-based initiatives, to the dismay of many in his base.
Looking at the range of Obama domestic and foreign policies, and his agency and diplomatic appointments, my conclusion is clear: This president is a mainstream, pragmatic moderate, operating in the center of American politics; center-left, perhaps, but not left of center. The most radical president in American history? Does Newt Gingrich, a PhD in history, really believe that [expletive]?
The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
2a) The Defense of Self and Nations
by Mike Adams
Whom would you rather have protecting your family and nation? Rambo? Or Bambi? – Jason Mattera, author of Obama Zombies.
With each passing day it's become easier and easier to doubt the depth of Barack Obama's Christian faith. If we put aside his outright hostility towards Israel there is another glaring clue that reveals his personal worldview as one fundamentally at odds with the Judeo-Christian worldview. Obama revealed that clue with an announcement regarding a new defensive strategy for dealing with non-nuclear nations.
The notion of stating up front that the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons in response to a biological or chemical attack at the hands of a non-nuclear nation is predicated upon the liberal assumption that making nice promises assures that others will reciprocate by behaving nicely. But those with a realistic view of human nature realize such a strategy makes about as much sense as promising to levy a petty fine in response to grand larceny. It also makes as much sense as reserving the punishment of death for the taking of a life and withdrawing it for “lesser” crimes like rape.
Of course, it isn’t enough to criticize the president for his naiveté without offering clear instructions on how to deal with dangerous enemies. So I would like to offer some advice based on my experiences in dealing with unhinged liberals who read my columns and mistakenly assume that threats of violence will deter me from exercising my constitutional rights.
1. A man must always make his enemies aware of his defensive capabilities.
Several months ago, a man whom we will call Steve – because that is, in fact, his name – emailed me in response to one of my columns, which dealt with bi-polar disorder. I argued that a lot of people who claim to be bi-polar use the illness to excuse behaviors that arise from a simple lack of self-control. Steve, who suffers from bi-polar disorder, responded by saying “I will kill you.” I responded by listing the full range of guns in my arsenal and then asking him which gun he would like me to point at him when he attempted to kill me.
2. A man must always make his enemies aware of his willingness to use his defensive capabilities.
After I emailed Steve – a 41-year old who resides in Topeka, Kansas – with a detailed list of my defensive capabilities I asked him a very polite question. Specifically, I asked him how he would prefer to be incapacitated in the event that he made an attempt on my life. I politely offered him the choice between a quick shot to the cranium or a shot to the midsection, which might prove to be a slower and more painful way of incapacitating him. I noted, of course, that the latter option would reduce the chances of collateral damage. That’s an important liberal consideration I wished to accommodate fully.
3. A man must always communicate to his enemy the course of action required to avoid a potentially lethal confrontation.
After Steve was given the choice of a head shot and a body shot (in defensive response to an attempt on my life) he wisely responded with the following: “I let my anger get the best of me. I am sorry.”
That really proved my point about people with bi-polar disorder. There is no excuse for making threats on people’s lives – even if you suffer from such an illness. And medication is not the only thing that can be used to check the behavior of someone suffering from mental illness. That should provide “hope” for a president wishing to “change” the behavior of the presidents of Iran and North Korea.
I concluded my discussion with Steve by telling him, not asking him, that he would never under any circumstances communicate with me again – now that I had employed the services of an internet security expert to identify his name, date of birth, and the precise location from which he issued his threat of violence.
For nearly six months, Steve and I have been at peace. I predict the peace will be long-lasting.
Barack Obama’s father did not stay around to raise him. Instead, the president was raised by a woman who taught him that misunderstandings, being the root of all conflict, can be cured by mere negotiation. The president needs the advice of men with experience in conflict resolution – men who recognize that the world is full of those not interested in peaceful negotiation. I offer this column in the hopes of fulfilling that need.
Let us hope the president takes my advice, which is guaranteed to preserve the peace. Jesus would not have it any other way. He was the Prince of Peace, not the Prince of Appeasement. The two are not the same and should never be confused.
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3)Europe's VAT Lessons:Rates start low and increase, while income tax rates stay high
As Americans rush to complete their annual tax returns today, there is still some consolation in knowing that it could be worse: Like Europeans, we could pay both income taxes and a value-added tax, or VAT. And maybe we soon will. Paul Volcker, Nancy Pelosi, John Podesta and other allies of the Obama Administration have already floated the idea of an American VAT, so we thought you might like to know how it has worked in Europe.
A VAT is essentially a national sales tax that is assessed at each stage of production, with the bill passed along to consumers at the cash register. In Europe the average rate is a little under 20%. (See the nearby chart.) In the U.S., a federal VAT would presumably be levied on top of state and local sales taxes that range as high as 10%. Some nations also exempt food, medicine and certain other goods from the tax.
VATs were sold in Europe as a way to tax consumption, which in principle does less economic harm than taxing income, savings or investment. This sounds good, but in practice the VAT has rarely replaced the income tax, or even resulted in a lower income-tax rate. The top individual income tax rate remains very high in Europe despite the VAT, with an average on the continent of about 46%.
Europe's individual income tax rates have fallen since the 1980s, following the U.S. lead in the Reagan era, and European corporate tax rates have come down even more sharply. But the drive of this decline has been global tax competition, not the offsetting burden of the VAT.
In the U.S., VAT proponents aren't calling for a repeal of the 16th Amendment that allowed the income tax—and, in fact, they want income tax rates to rise. The White House has promised to let the top individual rate increase in January to 39.6% from 35% as the Bush tax cuts expire, while the dividend rate will go to 39.6% from 15% and the capital gains rate to 20% next year and 23.8% in 2013 under the health bill, from 15% today. Even with these higher rates, or because of them, revenues won't come close to paying for the Obama Administration's new spending—which is why it is also eyeing a VAT.
One trait of European VATs is that while their rates often start low, they rarely stay that way. Of the 10 major OECD nations with VATs or national sales taxes, only Canada has lowered its rate. Denmark has gone to 25% from 9%, Germany to 19% from 10%, and Italy to 20% from 12%. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation recently calculated that to balance the U.S. federal budget with a VAT would require a rate of at least 18%.
Proponents also argue that a VAT would result in less federal government borrowing. But that, too, has rarely been true in Europe. From the 1980s through 2005, deficits were by and large higher in Europe than in the U.S. By 2005, debt averaged 50% of GDP in Europe, according to OECD data, compared to under 40% in the U.S.
Thanks to the recession and the stimulus, U.S. federal debt held by the public has now reached about 63% of GDP and is headed higher, but the OECD forecasts that the 30wealthiest nations will see debt burdens "exceed 100% of gross domestic product in 2011." Debt levels in France, Germany, Spain and Italy are expected to have increased by 30 percentage points of GDP from 2008 to 2011. Greece has a VAT rate of 21%, but its debt as a share of GDP is 113%.
The very efficiency of the VAT means that it throws off huge amounts of revenue that politicians eagerly spend. The VAT thus becomes an engine of even greater public spending. In Europe, average government spending was about 30.2% of GDP when VATs began to spread in the late 1960s. Today, those governments are more than 50% larger, with spending of 47.1% of GDP on average. By contrast, U.S. government spending (federal and state) rose to 35.3% from 28.3% as a share of GDP in the same period.
It is precisely this revenue-generating ability that makes the VAT so appealing to liberal intellectuals and politicians. Even liberals understand that at some point high income tax rates stop yielding much more revenue as the rich change their behavior or exploit loopholes. The middle-class is where the real money is, and the only way to get more of it with the least political pain is through a broad-based consumption tax such as a VAT.
And one more point: In Europe, this heavier spending and tax burden has also meant lower levels of income growth and job creation. From 1982 to 2007, the U.S. created 45 million new jobs, compared to fewer than 10 million in Europe, and U.S. economic growth was more than one-third faster over the last two decades, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In 2008, the average resident of West Virginia, one of the poorest American states, had an income $2,000 a year higher than the average resident of the European Union, according to economist Mark Perry of the University of Michigan, Flint. The price of a much higher tax burden to finance a cradle-to-grave entitlement state in Europe has been a lower standard of living. VAT supporters should explain why the same won't be true in America.
3a)Why Republicans Are Winning on the Tax Issue. Americans understand what Obama spending means for their pocketbooks
By KARL ROVE
Today's last-minute trip to the post office to mail in your return is a reminder of one of life's unpleasant realities: paying taxes. Always important in politics, the tax issue is likely to play a larger role this year than in any midterm election since 1994.
A recent Rasmussen survey reported that 66% of Americans believe the nation is over-taxed. There's a reason. Under President Barack Obama taxes are going up—a lot.
House Ways and Means Committee Republicans have issued a summary of the 25 tax increases signed into law by Mr. Obama so far. They total $670 billion over the next 10 years, including 14 tax hikes (including an annual tax on every insurance policy and an annual tax on brand-name drugs) that break Mr. Obama's solemn 2008 campaign pledge never to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.
Many of these taxes are part of the ObamaCare monstrosity. New levies on investment, drugs, medical devices and insurance policies eventually will hit ordinary Americans, and the public knows it. A late March Fox News poll asked, "If major health care reform legislation is passed, do you think your taxes will increase, decrease or stay about the same?" Seventy-five percent think their taxes will increase.
Tax concerns will hurt congressional Democrats. In rural areas, their opposition to repeal of the death tax antagonizes farmers and ranchers. Then there are America's 32 million small-business owners, who feel put upon by the administration's tax everyone-and-everything philosophy.
Families, especially in the suburbs, are pressed by rising property, sales and state income taxes in addition to the federal tax increases. And don't forget the 53 million investors whose battered accounts are only now recovering. There's a new 3.8%surtax on certain kinds of investment income for high earners, but it is not indexed for inflation, so it will bite an increasing number of people over time.
Between the March 2009 CNN poll and the March 2010 Associated Press survey, Mr. Obama's approval rating on taxes dropped to 44% from 62% while his disapproval rating rose to 43% from 37%. Similarly, the Rasmussen poll of March 31-April 1 found 46% of voters believe today their taxes will increase under Mr. Obama, compared to 36% who think they will stay the same and 8% who think they will decrease.
It's somewhat unusual that so many believe themselves over-taxed when half of all Americans don't pay federal income taxes. But many of them shell out for payroll and property taxes, and virtually everyone pays sales taxes. Plenty of Americans understand higher business taxes are eventually paid by those who buy goods and services.
Politicians would be wise to remember that high taxes also are a matter of principle. The Rasmussen poll of March 31-April 1 found three-quarters of Americans believe that no one should pay more than 20% of their income in taxes—a figure we are well beyond. This makes taxation a moral issue as well as an economic one.
The public isn't stupid. They understand, like night follows day, that Mr. Obama's blizzard of spending is generating a much larger national debt, and that debt, in turn, will create enormous pressure to raise taxes.
Mr. Obama will use more spending and bigger deficits as justification for additional taxes—perhaps even a European-style value-added tax (VAT), an idea already floated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Obama economic adviser Paul Volcker. At the heart of Mr. Obama's agenda is the further empowerment of Washington, which Americans will not easily accept.
Jobs remain the No. 1 political issue, understandable when unemployment presses near double digits. Taxation as a stand-alone issue falls way below that according to most polls. But some issues are connected, and I'm convinced that Americans increasingly understand that rising spending and deficits and large tax increases will hurt the nation's ability to create jobs. This will help the GOP and hurt Democrats.
In this week's George Washington University Battleground Poll, for example, congressional Republicans lead their Democratic counterparts on which party is better able to hold down taxes (56% to 28%), control wasteful spending (44% to 32%), and control the deficit (45% to 36%). This puts the GOP within striking distance of catching the Democrats on who can turn the economy around (currently 41% to 47%) and create jobs (38% to 46%)—both issues that Democrats dominated not long ago. Historically, Republicans win—and win big—when they are within six points or less of the Democrats on the economy and jobs.
Things look bleak for Democrats right now. And if Republicans connect the dots among record spending, skyrocketing deficits, rising taxes and a weak recovery, Democrats will suffer a midterm loss from which the Obama presidency may never fully recover.
Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions, 2010).
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4)How to End America's Addiction to Oil. By using more electricity, natural gas and biofuels in our transportation fleet, we can quickly reduce our dependence on OPEC.
By R. JAMES WOOLSEY
At the end of March, oil posted its fifth consecutive quarterly price increase: It's now solidly above $80 per barrel. If it reaches $125 a barrel again, as it did in 2008, then approximately half the wealth in the world—above and below ground—will be controlled by OPEC nations.
Oil dominates transportation: About 95% of transportation fuel in the U.S. is derived from petroleum. And over three-quarters of the world's reserves of conventional oil are in OPEC nations. But OPEC is pumping less than it did in the 1970s, despite a doubling in global demand, because it's a cartel maximizing its income. OPEC sets oil's price at a level that exploits our addiction but is generally not high enough for long enough that we go cold turkey.
Oil profits enhance the ability of dictators and autocrats to dominate their people. This is one reason that eight of the top nine oil exporters (Norway is the exception) are dictatorships or autocratic kingdoms, as are virtually all of the 22 states that depend on oil and gas for at least two-thirds of their exports.
Saudi Arabia's oil wealth enables it to control around 90% of the world's Islamic institutions even though it has less than 2% of the world's Muslims. So the teaching in most Islamic schools is not the tolerant form of Islam associated with the late Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid. These schools teach Saudi Wahhabi doctrine—fundamental hostility to Shiites, Jews, homosexuals and apostates; oppression of women; and the pursuit of a global caliphate, or theocratic dictatorship. This doctrine bears startling resemblance to the substantive teachings of the Taliban and al Qaeda (although of course they and the Wahhabis disagree passionately about who should have power). The effect is that we now are financing both sides in our war with radical Islam.
Yet so far every national policy we've tried to end our oil addiction has failed, including picking winners. Neither the Synfuels Corporation (the early 1980s drive for coal-to-liquid fuel) nor the hydrogen highway (the push early in this decade to get Americans to drive hydrogen-powered cars long before the technology was ready) had a chance of succeeding. It was too easy for OPEC to drive prices down and crush such costly competition.
Supporters of cap-and-trade legislation have argued that putting a price on carbon would help us get off oil. But the effect of this would be negligible. Twenty dollars a ton of CO2 equates to about 20 cents a gallon at the gasoline pump.
Drill, baby, drill? Some suggest that if we replace foreign with domestic oil our problems will be solved. Domestic drilling does help reduce oil's share—a billion dollars a day—of our huge balance of payments deficit, and it adds some domestic employment.
But that's it. OPEC has very large reserves and cheap extraction costs, while domestic drilling costs for new oil will be many times that of the Saudis. We can't drill our way out of the cartel's control of the global oil market.
Shifting the way we produce electricity also has essentially nothing to do with oil dependence; less than 2% of U.S. electricity comes from burning oil. We may decide to shift from coal-fired electricity to wind or nuclear for environmental reasons, or not do so for cost reasons, but these issues are not at all central to the oil debate.
We urgently need to reduce oil dependence in the short term. This means lowering demand and utilizing substitutes as cheaply and quickly as possible. Here are four strategies we can implement beginning today:
First, we should take advantage of electronic modifications that are being developed for internal combustion engines in existing vehicles. Innovations in computer chips and valves hold an early promise of substantial improvements in mileage by regulating combustion much better than current engines can.
Second, we should pay attention to T. Boone Pickens's recommendations to switch to natural gas for fleet vehicles such as buses, and for interstate trucking. Buses and trucks are easily modified to run on natural gas and would only require new pumps at a few central locations and interstate truck stops.
Third, we should force petroleum products to compete with other fuels as soon as possible. There are many ways to do this, and we should use them all. For example, we should deploy "drop-in" fuels produced from waste and algae. These fuels can mix freely with gasoline and diesel in existing vehicles.
We should also require all new gasoline-using vehicles to be "flexible fuel, open standard." What this means is that these vehicles would use a type of plastic in their fuel lines that tolerates nongasoline fuels such as ethanol and methanol. This is a cheap and simple change: Brazil accomplished it easily several years ago. Methanol made from natural gas can be produced for around $1.20 a gallon (of gasoline equivalent) today.
Fourth, we should move to electrify automotive transportation. Plug-in hybrids are on the road now (I drive one), and production models such as the Chevy Volt, due out this autumn, can drive electrically for roughly 40 miles before needing to plug in or to use on-board liquid fuel. Three out of four days an average car in the U.S. travels fewer than 40 miles.
All-electric vehicles now exist and their range will improve as battery technology does. Time-of-day pricing will encourage most people to charge their cars at night, when only a fraction of the electric grid is now utilized. And three major studies show that we do not need to build new power stations until well over half of cars on the road are plug-in hybrids or all-electric.
We can move quickly to strike a major blow at oil and OPEC's dominance if we'll adopt a portfolio approach and stop allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. We can get a long way using existing vehicles, existing technology and affordable natural gas. As other improvements become practical—like charging your electric car from solar panels on your roof—they can be adopted. In the meantime, we need Theodore Roosevelt's attitude. He decided to improve competition by taking on Standard Oil's cartel and breaking it into 30 parts.
President Obama, meet your cartel. It's called OPEC.
Mr. Woolsey is the chairman of Woolsey Partners and a former director of Central Intelligence
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5)'Peace Is Our Profession.' The Soviets knew Gen. Curtis LeMay wouldn't hesitate to bomb them if ordered. That may be why he never had to.
By WARREN KOZAK
In 1964, Hollywood mirrored the world's fears with two major motion pictures focused on nuclear nightmare scenarios—"Fail-Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove." That same year saw the famous Daisy TV commercial linking the Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, to reckless nuclear behavior. This was during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union would target thousands of nuclear weapons at each other. The fear of an exchange due to a breakdown in relations or a simple misunderstanding or malfunction was very real.
We have come a long way from that frightful era as President Obama hosted the first international summit this week to reduce the overall numbers and the spread of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union is no more. China's diplomatic and trade relationship with the U.S. has been strong for decades. The fear today, as Mr. Obama acknowledged at the close of the talks, comes not from a superpower standoff but from rogue states or even non-state sponsored terrorists.
Given our very changed world, the nuclear threat of a half-century ago can look as antiquated as a 1955 Buick. Yet there are still important lessons we can learn.
If one man embodies the fears of that bygone era, it is U.S. Air Force Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, who headed the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and later the entire Air Force. LeMay was the inspiration behind the Buck Turgidson character in "Dr. Strangelove," and for good reason. He believed in nuclear weapons and said so again and again, sometimes at the most inopportune moments. Today he is dismissed as some sort of troglodyte; in 1966 journalist I.F. Stone labeled him the "caveman in the jet bomber." In reality, LeMay was far more complex and, ironically, may have been one of the greatest reasons the world never witnessed a nuclear exchange.
LeMay believed that the real purpose of having nuclear weapons was not to use them but to threaten to use them. He wanted to so terrify adversaries that they would never even consider a move against the U.S.
He came to this conclusion the hard way. Forced to fight the far superior Luftwaffe in the early days of World War II with inadequate and untrained forces, LeMay watched the slaughter of thousands of American teenagers under his command. He vowed never to let his country be so ill-prepared again. Much as many of our recent military commanders were formed by the Vietnam experience, Pearl Harbor and our appalling state of readiness in 1941 deeply influenced the U.S. military of the Cold War.
In the Pacific theater during World War II, LeMay leveled scores of Japanese cities with incendiary bombs, and he finished the war by dropping two atomic bombs. The Soviets knew he wouldn't hesitate for a second to bomb them too if necessary. LeMay knew that they knew.
When LeMay took command of SAC in 1948, he transformed it into the most efficient and deadliest military organization the world had ever seen. Huge B-52 bombers were constantly in the air within striking distance of the Soviet Union. Each bomber carried a strike potential many times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima—but the real threat was that the man behind it all was Curtis LeMay.
The logic behind SAC and the entire U.S. nuclear strategy was straight out of the schoolyard—if you try to inflict pain on us, we will inflict 10 times the amount of pain on you. It fit perfectly with LeMay's world view: Always negotiate from a position of strength; do not bother anyone, but if bothered don't be bullied.
By the 1950s, that basic lesson became known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). It worked throughout the Cold War. But given the changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its replacement by a fanatic and suicidal enemy, is the old paradigm applicable today? If the U.S. reduces its nuclear weapons, will that make the world safer? Will it induce Islamic fundamentalists to cease their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons or a dirty bomb? For instruction, perhaps we have to go further back to 1939, when well-intentioned men tried to negotiate with extremists.
That is where Curtis LeMay learned his sustaining lesson. And that is why LeMay believed you should never take the threat of nuclear weapons off the table. The idea of limiting oneself or showing one's hand when elements around the world still clearly threaten us would have struck him as irresponsible. To LeMay, the U.S. nuclear arsenal was the sheriff that protected the small Western town. It was the cop on the beat. And he truly believed in SAC's motto, which he helped coin: "Peace is our profession."
Mr. Kozak is the author of "LeMay: The Life And Wars Of General Curtis LeMay" (Regnery, 2009)
5a)He's a Dreamer, He's a Realist In matters of national security, confusion is always dangerous.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
This week 36 heads of state gathered in Washington for President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit. On Tuesday the Washington Post printed on its front page individual photos of 11 of them with Mr. Obama. It looked like the Christmas line at Macy's for Santa Claus photos.
By Wednesday the invited leaders assented to a communiqué that said each would take "voluntary" measures to keep weapons-grade plutonium out of the hands of terrorists. Before the summit, when the Post conducted a poll asking how confident people were the event would achieve better controls on nuclear materials, 56% said not very.
What do these people know that three dozen nodding heads of state do not?
One lesson learned from the health-care odyssey is that when one enters the vortex of Mr. Obama's always-sweeping vision, the devil is in the details.
A week ago, Mr. Obama signed a new START treaty on nuclear-arms reduction with Russian President Dimitry Medvedev in Prague, where a year earlier he said "as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the U.S. has a moral responsibility to act."
That treaty must be ratified by the U.S. Senate. The ratification hearings need to pursue a broad mandate to learn more than we know now about the Obama administration's national security philosophy, which is something of a puzzle, though not all of it bad.
On Afghanistan, the expectation was that Mr. Obama would cut his losses and wind down the effort. He did not. His national-security team supported the McChrystal plan.
More intriguing was chief State Department legal adviser Harold Koh's recent, strong defense of the legality of the pilotless drone killings of Taliban and al Qaeda in northern Pakistan. In this there is an ironic and useful avenue of inquiry for senators ratifying START.
The irony of the Obama administration's embrace of the unmanned drones, which launch laser-guided Hellfire missiles, is that in the years of Ronald Reagan and his "Star Wars" program, they would have been on the front lines with Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and current Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, fighting to suppress these technologies as "destabilizing."
Amid those historic arms-control battles, those of us who supported missile defense and cruise missiles argued that the Russians' goal in these agreements was to shut down superior U.S. technologies. These weapon technologies would be more precise and reduce collateral damage to civilians. As Mr. Koh argued, the incredibly precise drone wars demonstrate that is true.
Under Secretary of State Ellen Tauscher insists the new START treaty places no limits or constraints on what the U.S. can do with missile defense systems. That statement alone, from a Democratic administration, is nominally a sea change.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in his press conference, pointedly referred to the U.S.'s 2002 unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty (blessedly, George Bush really did do that). He argued that if there is a change in the parties' "existing levels of strategic defensive systems," Russia reserves the right to withdraw from future participation in this process, meaning the famous "reset," Iran sanctions, and all the rest. For the Russians, arms control is chess.
Notwithstanding Sec. Tauscher's commitment, the senators should ask whether under any circumstance U.S. missile defense programs could be used as a future bargaining chip in return for another Russian promise to keep the "reset" in place—a bad deal. Bluntly, what will Mr. Obama do if the Russian price for maintaining the "reset" is shutting down our missile defense technologies?
In 1985, the now-sainted former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev offered to "reduce" nuclear weapons by 50% if the U.S., among other things, froze development of the now invaluable Stealth bomber technology. Reagan refused.
American technology, our "smart" weapons, assures America's superpower status. Every U.S. enemy and competitor knows that if they can slow or close the technology gap, America's power and status erodes. That includes nuclear-warhead technology (upgrades are already underway by competitors and allies).
It would be nice to think this generation of Democrats has come to recognize the worth of offensive and defensive weapon technologies. It is not clear, though, that they are comfortable with an America whose superpower status is a function of military superiority. On nuclear issues and national security, Mr. Obama's policy thrust is emerging as an odd amalgam of starry-eyed Carterism (Iran, North Korea) and clear-eyed realpolitik (Afghanistan, the drone wars).
Mr. Obama by instinct is a man of feints. He finds value in seeming "open" to any point of view, proposal or fix. That may have its place in domestic policy, but in national security, coherence and clarity matter more.
Before ratifying START, senators should try to find out whether our national security is being run by a dreamer who hopes our good faith will breed a mullah's good faith, or a realist willing to kill enemies with laser-guided Hellfire missiles in the northern frontier. In national security, states of confusion are always dangerous.
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6)Holdering On :Eric Holder isn't fooling anyone except the anti-antiterror left
Eric Holder is nothing if not dogged, so in an appearance on Capitol Hill yesterday the Attorney General insisted that his plan to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists to New York City for a civilian criminal trial "is not off the table." Yes, and they haven't found Jimmy Hoffa's body either.
Mr. Holder's plans to try KSM in sight of Ground Zero has been repudiated by everyone to the right of the ACLU, not least by President Obama and White House aides who have whispered their displeasure to all and sundry. Mr. Holder had barely piled into his car to drive back to the Justice Department yesterday before New York Senator Chuck Schumer issued a press release declaring that there is an "overwhelming consensus" in New York that the trial "should not be held there." He added, "We know the administration is not going to hold the trial in New York. They should just say it already."
Mr. Schumer knows that Democrats running for re-election this year don't want to defend the spectacle of a mass murderer using such a trial as a propaganda exercise, or claiming the evidence against him is inadmissable because it was produced by "torture."
Yet such a spectacle is precisely the goal of many on the anti-antiterror left. They want to put Bush Administration policies on trial more than they want to convict and hang KSM. Mr. Holder's mistake has been populating his department with those kinds of lawyers, and the longer he indulges them the more he's embarrassing himself and his President.
6a)The Systematic Dismantling of a Secure America
By Janet Levy
The emotionally charged toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square on April 9, 2003 was an ephemeral moment of unity for Americans applauding the defeat of a tyrannical regime and an enemy of the free world. The rapid victory over Saddam by U.S. forces reinforced, for Americans and the world, America's military supremacy as a force for good against evil. At that time, our nation appeared to uphold Woodrow Wilson's pre-World War I proclamation to "make the world safe for democracy."
Fast-forward to April 6, 2010, when Barack Obama informed the world that the United States would no longer function as a global superpower buttressed by nuclear weapons as a deterrence to war. With one unanticipated public statement from the putative leader of the free world, the security held by the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction vanished from the American arsenal, and confidence in America's ability to defend its citizens vaporized. Obama's proclamation of unilateral nuclear disarmament nullified America's willingness and ability to defend itself and its allies at a critical juncture in history when worldwide nuclear proliferation abounds.
Americans are fully aware of the peril inherent in Obama's commitment "to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." With nuclear-armed rogue nations like North Korea starving and enslaving their own populations and Muslim countries encouraging and celebrating the martyrdom of their children, the implementation of a non-preemptive, nuclear-disarmed American security policy is pure folly.
While Obama's latest statement is certainly responsible for making the United States less secure, American security has been in jeopardy since before the 9/11 attacks. For quite some time, our nation's leaders have failed to properly identify the enemy and declined to prosecute acts of treason, meanwhile appeasing the enemy with special privileges and dispensations. Obama's recent actions have further jeopardized our security by his granting of constitutional rights to enemy combatants, imposing restrictive battlefield standards, placing budgetary restrictions on our military, and reaching out to America's enemies while abandoning its long-term allies.
The first step in any national security strategy is to clearly identify the enemy, study its ideology and tactics, and develop an appropriate strategy to target and destroy it. Basic military policy and common sense dictate that victory can be achieved only by first knowing your enemy. During World War II, the nation knew we were fighting Nazis and made no distinction between radical Nazis and moderate Nazis. Our responsibility was to kill the enemy, protect the country, and emerge victorious, not to ferret out any "good" Nazis or abide by stringent demands to protect the civilians of an enemy nation.
Today, Americans are not told that we are waging war against Islamic jihadists who want to destroy us, establish an Islamic government, and replace our Constitution with shari'ah law. Instead, we are told that we are fighting a war against "terrorism." Rather than focus on an enemy with a specific identity or characteristics, we are waging war against a strategy. The media reinforces this delusion with nebulous terminology that confuses and distracts us from a very real threat.
Actions taken by our leaders reinforce the delusion. Six days after 9/11, President George W. Bush spoke to a Muslim audience in Washington, D.C. about the "hijacking of a great religion" by "terrorists." He didn't connect for the public the ideology with the actions -- jihadists being the most devout followers of Allah's word, or Islam. Bush actually referred to "Islamofascism" once in his second term but confused the message by later appeasing Muslims with statements proclaiming that terrorist acts don't represent Islam.
"I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace," he affirmed in 2007. The statement signaled that six years after 9/11, government officials were still not intimately familiar with the Koran and unaware that over 63% of the Muslim holy book comprises hate speech toward non-Muslims. The Bush administration failed to educate the public about the enemy's ideology.
When Obama took office, his administration further obscured the problem and intensified the confusion about the enemy. No longer was the United States fighting a "Global War on Terror," but the very word "terrorism" was replaced with the absurd term "man-caused disaster." Words such as "jihad," "caliphate," "mujahedeen," and "Islamist" were banished from the official vernacular. Last week, the Obama administration announced that words such as "Islamic extremism" would be removed from the U.S. national security strategy documentation in consideration of the feelings of Muslim nations. This latest policy represents a dramatic shift from the Bush Doctrine, which referred to the "struggle against militant Islamic radicalism" as the greatest threat of the century.
During World War II, Americans faced up to threats against this country with certainty. They knew that treason was a disloyal act toward one's government that sabotaged national security. Those who jeopardized the security of the country by aiding and abetting or consorting with the enemy were prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Today, acts of treason are tolerated and viewed in the context of political protest. In 2002, Hollywood actor Sean Penn visited U.S. enemy and al-Qaeda supporter Saddam Hussein. Penn later met with other vocal, anti-American leaders, traveling to Iran to interview Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro, and to Venezuela to confer with President Hugo Chávez. Penn even called for prison terms for those who criticize the Venezuelan dictator.
During the 2003 U.S.-led coalition forces invasion of Iraq, Americans served as human shields to prevent U.S. military action. Recently, the American Civil Liberties Union photographed CIA interrogators and placed them and their families in grave danger by showing the photos to senior al-Qaeda terrorists at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Lawyers on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's staff who previously defended GITMO detainees are now, incredibly, prosecuting detainees with no ethical alarms raised about potential conflict of interests. All these actions that place American security in jeopardy and sabotage our ability to defend American interests are viewed with insouciance rather than grave concern.
It would have been inconceivable during World War II to have invited Hitler or Mussolini to visit the United States. However, during the Bush presidency, Iranian leader Ahmadinejad, sworn enemy of the U.S. who has publicly called for "death to America," was permitted to speak at Columbia University and be a guest on a prime-time TV talk show. Such misguided actions continue in the Obama administration. This week, Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic supremacist organization, will be on a four-city speaking tour with the permission of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ramadan, who was prohibited from entering the country during the Bush administration, lionizes his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna; works for the Islamic Republic of Iran by hosting a weekly television show; and has donated to terrorist causes, including Hamas. This significant and perilous change in American policy signals that we are facilitating the stealth attempt to Islamicize and dominate our nation.
Following 9/11, several Muslim organizations, some linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, complained about being targeted by counter-terrorism efforts, charged that they were victims of "Islamophobia," and asserted that the War on Terror is really a "War against Islam." Imams at prominent mosques and leaders from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) -- an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial over illegal funding of at least $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas -- actively worked to repeal the Patriot Act and urged Muslims to refrain from cooperating with FBI investigations. In fact, Muslim cooperation with law enforcement was termed nonexistent by a ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Peter King, who noted that he knew of no investigations in which Muslims had been helpful.
The head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Salam Al-Marayati, told a conference of Muslims in 2005 that Muslim-Americans should be defining counter-terrorism policy in the U.S. He also urged Muslims to reject any effort to spy on each other, implying that the first allegiance of Muslims is to the Muslim community, not law enforcement. The response of law enforcement and government agencies to charges of anti-Muslim bias has been not to infiltrate the Muslim community with undercover operations and demand cooperation, but to increase Muslim recruitment for counterterrorist investigations, to institute Muslim sensitivity programs, and to establish community partnerships with Muslim community leaders.
A case in point is that immediately after 9/11, President Bush became the first American president to host a White House Iftar dinner, an evening meal when Muslims break their fast during the observance of Ramadan. The dinner became an annual event, and soon after, all U.S. embassies and the U.S. State Department began hosting Iftar dinners. In 2006, to the consternation and shock of customs agents, a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official gave CAIR officials a thorough behind-the-scenes tour of U.S. Customs screening and security operations at Chicago's O'Hare airport, the nation's second-busiest. This was in response to CAIR complaints that Muslim travelers were being "unfairly" targeted, even though the nineteen hijackers who flew planes into buildings on 9/11 were all Muslims. Recently, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration manual was mysteriously posted on the internet, while special scrutiny of individuals from fourteen previously targeted Muslim countries has been eliminated from TSA procedures.
When Obama took office, he made several well-publicized attempts at outreach to the Muslim world which included his first official speech, a conciliatory tribute to Muslims in Cairo blaming America for "strained" relations with the Muslim world; a first phone call to Abu Mazan, the head of the Palestinian Authority; and a much-publicized bow to Saudi President Abdullah. In January, instead of attending a scheduled congressional hearing by the House Committee on Homeland Security, Obama's DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano spent two days privately meeting with a select group of Muslims organizations, three of which are directly tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. In the meeting, Napolitano briefed members of the extremist Muslim organizations on DHS's counterterrorism programs and arranged for regularly scheduled information-sharing meetings in the future.
The military and judicial tools for fighting the war against Islamic terrorism on the battlefield were fairly restrictive during the Bush presidency and have become even more so since Obama took office. Official policy in Afghanistan and Iraq dictates that civilian casualties are to be avoided at all costs, and the stated goal is public support. Under Obama, soldiers face a number of restrictions. These include a proscription against firing in the direction of gunfire if a person is not visible, a prohibition against shooting unarmed individuals even if they are seen setting up an IED (improvised explosive device), a requirement to issue verbal warnings and warning shots before initiating a deadly shot, limited authorization to use heavy weapons and conduct air strikes, the necessity to determine if a shot aimed at them actually places them in danger, and other limitations on their effectiveness as soldiers. Obama has mandated that enemy combatants have the same legal protections under the U.S. Constitution as U.S. citizens. Terrorist detainees will now receive constitutional rights such as due process and the right to an attorney, be read their Miranda rights to counsel, be permitted to bar involuntary admissions, and they could be tried by juries as "innocent until proven guilty" defendants in U.S. federal courts. For the first time in our nation's history, those who committed acts of war against the United States and were captured on the battlefield are given rights under the U.S. Constitution rather than being tried by internal military commissions. Instead of war being about victory over an enemy, it is now about criminal litigation.
Further, Obama's recent policy of nuclear disarmament has placed the United States at considerable risk. By signing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, the largest nuclear arms reduction treaty in our history, Obama is significantly reducing our nuclear deterrence capability in the face of an increasingly dangerous world with threats from Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. Obama has committed to a perilous policy of not responding to biological and chemical attacks with nuclear weapons, reducing long-range nuclear weapons, and ruling out modernization of our nuclear arsenal while accepting a nuclear Iran under the guise of its fulfilling energy needs. Obama joined world leaders from 47 nations this week as they began a summit on nuclear terrorism and security, with the Iranian threat conspicuously absent from the agenda. Although Iran's leaders have publicly called for "death to America" and threatened to wipe Israel off the map, Obama has extended a hand and insists on dialogue with the tyrannical regime. He has been determined to work toward engagement while Iran continues to flout international law, provide support to terrorist groups abroad, enlarge its uranium-enrichment capabilities, and torture and kill its own citizens.
In a little over a year, the Obama administration's pattern of reaching out to our Islamic enemies and shunning our allies has been extended in new directions. Obama sided against democratically elected Roberto Micheletti in Honduras in favor of Manuel Zelaya, the puppet of Venezuelan Communist tyrant Hugo Chávez, who had violated Honduran law and the constitution to set himself up as president for life. In a surprise move, the White House has ordered American troops to march in the Red Square to salute Lenin's tomb on Russia's Victory Day, commemorating their triumph against Nazi Germany. Obama has failed to confront the Kremlin about Russian bombers that have been buzzing Alaska and overflying the United Kingdom. The Obama administration has sent envoys to Syria and made overtures to Assad despite Syria's deep ties to Iran, their involvement in international terrorism, and their stonewalling of investigations into their nuclear program. In addition, the Obama administration has been negotiating with the Taliban to reestablish their power in Afghanistan and recently issued an apology to Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi for statements Gaddafi deemed offensive in support of Western ally Switzerland.
Meanwhile, the Obama White House policy toward U.S. allies has been marked by antipathy, slights, and censure. While Israel, America's long-time ally and the only democracy in the Middle East, was chastised by the administration for building apartment units in its capital city and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was snubbed, the continuous suicide and rocket attacks by Hamas and Arab-Palestinians escaped mention. Obama is determined to unilaterally create a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital despite Israel's objections. He has suspended U.S. military sales and proposed sanctions against Israel if the country targets Iran's nuclear reactors as part of a legitimate action to protect its citizens. Early in his term, Obama ungraciously returned a bust of Winston Churchill to the United Kingdom and gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod containing his political speeches. Recently, Hillary Clinton went so far as to interfere in Britain's policy as a sovereign nation by demanding that the United Kingdom negotiate with Argentina on the Falkland Islands dispute. Lately, Obama has been pressuring India, which has suffered from decades of Hindu persecution and death by Pakistani Muslims, to resolve its conflict with Pakistan while providing the terrorist haven with a $7.5-billion aid package.
We have come so far afield of the Reagan doctrine of "peace through strength" that our country is almost unrecognizable. The world has because less safe because of our failure to name the enemy and effectively prosecute a war against them, internationally and inside our own borders. We have downgraded our nuclear capabilities and our ability to respond to attacks and assist our allies. As American power recedes, the vacuum is filled by rogue totalitarian states that have no compunction about using weapons of mass destruction and mass genocide. The Pax Americana, a world peace enforced by American military power and the willingness to use it, may be precipitously coming to an end.
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7)American-Jewish leaders accuse Obama of abandoning Israeli security
The latest American Jewish leader to address a letter of deep concern over the public US feud with Israel is Ronald Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress. He voices the concern of Jews around the world not only about the nuclear ambitions of an Iranian regime with genocidal intentions toward Israel, but the deterioration of US-Israeli relations and the Jewish state's deliberate isolation.
The WJC president asks why this administration seems to blame Israel for the lack of movement on peace talks when it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who refuse to negotiate. Settlements were not the key issue when peace talks broke down before and they are not the key issue now.
Lauder then asks if it is true that America is no longer committed to a final status agreement that provides Israel with defensible borders. He goes on to ask if friction with Israel is part of the Administration's desire to improve relations with the Muslim world and warns that appeasement does not work.
Israel is not only America's closest ally in the Middle East, Lauder stresses. It is the one most committed to this administration's declared aim of ensuring Iran does not get nuclear weapons. This is the single biggest threat that confronts the world today.
Former New York Mayor Ed Koch condemned the Obama administration's attitude toward Israel in the strongest terms: "I weep today because my president, Barack Obama, in a few weeks has changed the relationship between the US and Israel from that of closest of allies to one in which there is an absence of trust." He goes on to say: "…our closest ally… has been demeaned and slandered, held responsible …for our problems in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East."
Ed Koch says he suspects the plan is "to so weaken the resolve of the of the Jewish state and its leaders so that it will be much easier to impose on Israel an American plan to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, leaving Israel's needs for security and defensible borders in the lurch."
He is most bothered by what he calls "the shameful silence and lack of action by community leaders - Jew and Christian" and asks: Where are the Jews who marched in defense of fellow American citizens in 1963 and heard Martin Luther King's memorable speech. "We have stood up for everyone else. When will we stand up for our brothers and sisters in the Jewish state of Israel?" Ed Koch asks.
7a Obama: Mid East conflict costs US "blood and treasure." Obama Stands by new Mid East direction.
The radical shift in US Middle East policies, marked by tough demands of Israel, was confirmed and highlighted by President Obama Tuesday, April 14, in his comment that conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up "costing significantly in terms of both blood and treasure." Reporting this, the New York Times noted that he echoed the recent suggestion by Gen. David Petraeus, OC Central Command, that American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan were imperiled by lack of progress in the Middle East implying Israel's policies on the Palestinians were responsible. (Petraeus later phoned Israel's chief of staff to say his remarks were misunderstood and taken out of context.)
US sources see in the US president's remark his rejoinder to the alarmed accusations coming from prominent American-Jewish leaders that the US president has turned his back on Israel's security, although he has repeatedly claimed it was the bedrock of his Middle East policy. Furthermore, AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobbying group publicized a letter to US secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed by 76 senators and 33 House members urging the administration to defuse tensions with Israel and voicing support for its security.
The World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder was to publish an open letter to President Obama in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal which asks: “Why does the thrust of this administration’s Middle East rhetoric seem to blame Israel for the lack of movement on peace talks when it is the Palestinians who refuse to negotiate?”
Former New York Mayor Ed Koch said he suspects the plan is "to so weaken the resolve of the of the Jewish state and its leaders so that it will be much easier to impose on Israel an American plan to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, leaving Israel's needs for security and defensible borders in the lurch."
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8)Gallup: 63% of Americans Expect Own Taxes to Increase
By Philip Klein
During the campaign, President Obama was able to neutralize the traditional Republican advantage on taxes by vowing to cut taxes on 95 percent of Americans, and not raise them on those earning less than $200,000. In fact, some polls taken before the election even suggested the public trusted Obama more than McCain to not raise their taxes. But just over a year into his presidency, Obama losing the tax argument.
According to a Gallup poll released today, 63 percent of Americans expect to pay higher taxes in the next year. While 74 percent of those making over $75,000 expect their taxes to go up, 64 percent of those making between $30,000 and $74,999 still expect to pay more. And a even a majority of 53 percent of those earning under $30,000 expect to pay more.
There's been a lot of debate over whether or not President Obama has violated his pledge, and I think there's ample evidence, from the cigarette tax hike to the individual mandate tax, that he has. But putting the policy debate aside for the moment and looking at things from a purely political perspective, if this poll is any indication, it looks like Obama is losing the argument. Unless the White House can change this perception, Republicans are likely to have a lot more success this fall's elections painting Democrats as tax hikers, than they did in 2006 or 2008.
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