Will Our Democracy Survive Obama?

A woman goes to the doctor, beaten black and Blue.

Doctor: "What the hell happened?"

Woman: "Doctor, I don't know what to do. Every time my husband comes home drunk he beats me to a pulp."

Doctor: "I have a real good medicine for that. When your husband comes home drunk, just take a glass of sweet tea and start gargling with it. Just gargle and gargle."

Two weeks later the woman comes back to the doctor looking fresh and reborn.

Woman: "Doctor, that was a brilliant idea! Every time my husband came home drunk, I gargled with sweet tea. I gargled and gargled, and nothing happened!"

Doctor: "You see how much keeping your mouth shut helps?"
---


My next speaker is David Lowe - Vice President for Governmental and External Relations at The National Endowment for Democracy.

His topic is: " Was Churchill Right about Democracy?"

David speaks at 7:30, May 9th.

I cannot think of a more timely topic in view of the fact that Western nations have seemingly abdicated their culture, their political rationale and raison detre.

They cower in the face of their enemies and even our own president no longer even refers to them as such.

I guess Obama believes we live in a world where there are no lions only lambs.

The award winning author, Melanie Phillips, has written a new book: "The World Turned Upside Down" that exposes the current fraudulent trends in thinking. I have not, as yet, read it but intend to do so.

When I was a youth growing up I had heroes that I could look up to and even model myself after. Today we have idols. The problem is these idols have clay feet. Our idols make no pretense at trying to be heroes. They are mostly narcissistic, self indulged and on drugs of some sort. Our values have been 'rapped' in vulgarity and our culture is in decline. No civilization can destroy its culture and survive.

Obama personifies so much of what is wrong with our values, our attitudes and our judgment. (See 1 below.)
----
A little commentary on working with bureaucrats. (See 2 below.)
---
Lloyd Marcus and his participation with and observations of the liberal media's efforts to paint the Tea Party crowd as racists.

Because Marcus is black it is assumed he is also stupid enough to allowhimself to be used as the Tea Party token. (See 3 below.)
---
Henninger see Democrats falling off a cliff based on polling attitudes and results.

Perhaps Henninger is right and the current polls tell the actual story but Americans are fickle and if the economy is showing signs of improvement, albeit below the standard type recovery, attitudes could shift.(See 4 below.)
---
Our president's words are deciphered. The view of this editorial is that he is a devisive and arrogant president, who has contempt for large segments of our populace who disgree with him and challenge his actions.

In truth Obama is a thin skinned bully.(See 5 below.)
---
Every once in a while an intelligent and calm assessment appears. A worthy read. (See 6 below.)
---
Obama is tryng to buy time off a fast moving clock. I suspect Obama will fail because Iran remains relentless in their pursuit of their goal and its leaders believe Obama is an empty suit.

In the end Obama could be racing against himself. (See 7 below.)
---

DUH! (See 8 below.)

Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1)Exposing hypocrisy, cant, falsehood
By Isi Leibler

Award-winning columnist Melanie Phillips, recipient of the Orwell prize for journalism in 1996 and author of acclaimed Londonistan, has written an explosive new book systematically exposing chapter and verse of the hypocrisy, cant and blatant falsehoods which currently dominate much of contemporary Western thought. The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power will leave readers breathless as they follow her perceptive and ferocious exposé of the strains of insanity inherent in the "correct" attitudes currently being promoted by politicians, pseudo-academics and much of the Western media.

The book encompasses an extraordinarily wide range of prevailing public perceptions, which Phillips methodically demonstrates as not merely being utterly false but frequently deliberately fabricated as a vehicle to promote bizarre agendas. In addition to the author's commendable writing skills, what makes this book particularly impressive is her almost renaissance mastery of a multitude of complex issues - combined with a knack for communicating them in a form that most readers are able to comprehend.

In addition, she substantiates her assertions with research backed by meticulous documentation.

Phillips strongly repudiates the commonly accepted view that faith and reason are incompatible, persuasively demonstrating that in many cases the opposite is true. Her central thesis is that the trivialization of religious belief, rejection of the Judeo-Christian heritage and post-modernism, have all combined to erode the foundations upon which our civilization is based. This in turn created a vacuum which opened the floodgates for the emergence of a host of irrational cults and weird, even insane conspiracy theories.

Some of the bizarre examples cited by Phillips include the wacky belief that Princess Diana was assassinated to prevent her from marrying a Muslim; Tony Blair's wife's belief in the transcendent properties of stones and the utilization of her and her husband's hair and toenails to detect signs of "poisons and blockages" in their bodies; the allegation that AIDS was created in a CIA laboratory; the pagan practices of the "Kabbala" followers of Madonna, the icon of Western modernity, who wear red threads on their wrists to ward off the evil spirit and meditate on stem cells to achieve immortality of the body; the allegations that the 9/11 attacks were either created by the Mossad or were an inside job by the Bush administration; and the "post religious mythology" inherent in the hubris and narcissism employed in the Obama election campaign.

THE MORE significant practical implications of these trends are reviewed as separate sections of the book. The opening chapter titled "The Myth of Environmental Armageddon" deals with global warming which has swept the planet. Phillips ruthlessly dissects the lies and distortions employed to promote what she regards as one of the greatest scientific scams of the modern age, "reminiscent of a medieval witch-hunt," with dissenting scientists being hounded from their posts by the equivalent of a secular inquisition.

In relation to the Iraq war, she alleges that irrespective of the rights and wrongs of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein, the chattering classes have concocted bogus conspiracy theories in which legitimate differences over a divisive war have been reduced into accusations of a plot by neoconservatives to promote the interests of Israel. She claims that the UN and its Human Rights Council, which most Western progressives regard as the arbiter of acceptable behavior, exemplify the reversal of reason by "putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse."

She explains why the United Kingdom has emerged among the vanguard of countries which have repudiated rationality and reason.

A number of chapters are devoted to the most extreme example of the denial of reality - the double standards and shameless bias reflected in the attempts to demonize and delegitimize the embattled Jewish state. In the chapter titled "The Jihad against Western Freedom," Phillips highlights the double talk and refusal to relate to reality in the Middle East. She concludes that it is a byproduct of the lack of determination by the West to resisting new forms of "soft totalitarianism" in which the onward march of Islamic aggression is compromised, with the US becoming marginalized and the war on terror vilified.

Phillips points to the bizarre linkages and alliances forged between these irrational elements with conflicting agendas. They include veteran leftists, purported campaigners for human rights, neo-fascists and Islamists who have merged to form "the red-black-green-Islamic axis."

The World Turned Upside Down is a courageous expose of many of the myths and fallacies which are being imposed on us and which our society has absorbed.
One is not obliged to endorse each of the extraordinary individual case studies selected to recognize that Phillips makes a highly convincing case to substantiate her broad thesis about the corruption of rationality which now dominates much of liberal society. She is effectively sounding a clarion call for reversing the tidal waves threatening to overwhelm Western civilization by the collapse of modernity and rationalism in which verifiably false statements are continuously reiterated, while truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor are all reversed. Phillips warns that this brainwashing is threatening to lead us into a new anti-rational dark age.

In a concluding chapter summarizing her findings, Phillips observes that today as during the Middle Ages, if universalism has become the accepted dogma, Jews (substituted by Zionists and Israelis) have again become the contemporary heretics to be burned. "It was the Jews who gave the world the concepts of an orderly universe, reason and progress - the keys to science and our modern age. In repudiating Jewish teaching and its moral codes, the West has turned upon the modern world itself. The power of reason offers no protection against bigotry... Today it is once again among the most progressive and enlightened people... the secular rationalists and the most liberal Christians, who march behind the banners of human rights and high minded conscience, that one finds the most virulent hatred of Israel and medieval prejudice against Jews... In turning upon the State of Israel - the front line of the defense of the free world against Islamist assault on modernity - the West is undermining its defense against the enemies of modernity and the Western civilization that produced it. The great question is whether it actually wants to defend reason and moderation anymore, or whether Western civilization has now reached a point where it has stopped trying to survive."

This cri de coeur is a stunning and thought-provoking book that should be read by all who seek to understand the sources of the malaise of this generation in Western society.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) Working with bureaucrats!!!!


Part of rebuilding New Orleans caused residents often to be challenged with the task of tracing home titles back potentially hundreds of years.. With a community rich with history stretching back over two centuries, houses have been passed along through generations of family, sometimes making it quite difficult to establish ownership. Here's a great letter an attorney wrote to the FHA on behalf of a client:

You have to love this lawyer........


A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply.

(Actual reply from FHA):
"Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by anAbstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin." Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows:

(Actual response):

"Your letter regarding title in Case No.189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 206 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France , in 1803 the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France , which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain . The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella. The good Queen Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus's expedition...Now the Pope, as I'm sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world.Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana . God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it, and the FHA. I hope you find God's original claim to be satisfactory.Now, may we have our damn loan?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)Blacks, the Media, & the Tea Parties
By Lloyd Marcus

I am exhausted. I returned home after performing at tea parties in 42 cities, from Searchlight, NV to Washington, D.C., in nineteen days while on the Tea Party Express III tour. I'm black conservative singer/songwriter, entertainer, author, and spokesperson Lloyd Marcus.

I wish to share with you how the liberal mainstream media has dealt with my participation on the Tea Party Express III tour.

Liberal mainstream media all but call me an Uncle Tom. Their reports imply that I am a token black too stupid to realize that I am being used by the tea party movement. In typical liberal mainstream media arrogance, they are totally blind to the blatant racism of their reporting.

Because I do not fit the liberal mainstream media's "all blacks must vote Democrat and believe that America is racist and unjust" template, I must be an idiot. As a matter of fact, because I am a black man who loves his country and proclaims that America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to go for it, much of the liberal media consider me dangerous and even wish me harm.

The liberal mainstream media are relentless in their quest to portray the tea party patriots as racist. And yet, I have performed my song, "American Tea Party Anthem," at over 150 tea parties, been treated like a rock star, and have even seen signs which read, "Lloyd Marcus for President!" Not one tea party attendee has ever called me the N-word.

Meanwhile, a Google search will reveal numerous liberal websites and blogs which freely and excessively call me a f-ing stupid N-word. The reason for their over-the-top anger and outrage against me: I express love for my country and refuse to be a hyphenated American.

The same liberals who accuse white conservative Republicans of being mean-spirited, racist, and intolerant are the hate-filled black and white Democrats who use the N-word every other word when writing about me and have even threatened me with physical harm.

After my performance at a tea party in Traverse City, Michigan, a white reporter approached me for an interview. The upbeat, mostly white audience loved me and my patriotic performance. Smiles were everywhere. With a stony face, the snooty female reporter asked me a series of annoying questions straight out of the liberal playbook.

But what really got my blood boiling was when she asked me the following question with the trademark liberal condescending edge: "Mr. Marcus, don't you think by calling yourself an unhyphenated American, you are encouraging white people to feel comfortable with their racism?"

I wanted to say, "Lady, what the heck are you talking about? You are obviously one miserable, bitter, and unhappy human being. Get away from me." Instead, I replied, "With all due respect, I strongly disagree." I turned and walked away from her, abruptly ending the interview.

Perhaps I should have stayed and argued my point of view. But I have lost patience with arrogant liberal reporters who think that they are so much smarter than us. This negative-spirited reporter had decided the spin of her story before interviewing me. My answers to her questions would not have made a difference.

At our Tea Party Express III tour rally in Buffalo, NY, four TV channels covering the rally had cameras in front of the stage. In the finale of each rally, we sing "God Bless The USA." Emotions were high in Buffalo as the audience waved U.S. flags, sang along, and many wept. All four camera techs had looks on their faces as if they were vampires who had just been shown a cross. They were not happy campers. What is with these folks in the media? Why such disdain for their country?

At the April 15th Tea Party in Washington, D.C., a reporter for Ebony (a prominent national black magazine) approached me for an interview after my performance. The reporter asked me the same two questions every other reporter has asked: Are the tea parties racist? Why are blacks not attending?

Without going into great detail in this article, I explained to the reporter the tea party movement is not about race, but about stopping an out-of-control administration from pushing our country towards socialism.

Frustratingly, the Ebony magazine reporter replied, "So why do you hate Barack Obama?" Then, outrageously, he asked me again, "Are these rallies racist?" It was as if he did not hear a word I said.

The liberal mainstream media obviously have an agenda and a paradigm to maintain. They say that the tea party movement is racist, and the facts will not change their reporting.

At the Traverse City, Michigan rally on the Tea Party Express III tour, a white woman approached me in a wheelchair. Extremely excited, she said, "Oh my gosh, it's Lloyd Marcus. May I have a picture with you? Thank you so much for all you are doing for our country. I love you!"

After a picture and hugs, I chatted with other fans.

Later, with tears in his eyes, Don, a Tea Party Express staff member, told me more about the woman in the wheelchair. The woman's daughter told Don that her mom was dying. The daughter said that her mom told her that all she wanted to do before dying was "to meet Lloyd Marcus."

Wow! I was blown away and humbled. Then I became extremely angry at the liberal mainstream media's and Democrats' vicious, shameful attempts to portray the tea party patriots as racist.

Just the other day, after my performance at a tea party in St Augustine, FL, an elderly white veteran thanked me and broke down in tears for our country. We embraced for several moments.

The liberal mainstream media and Democrats are attempting to racially divide and conquer our country. They are evil. As long as God gives me strength, I will continue to defend my fellow patriots who are white and fight to take back America.


- Lloyd Marcus, (black) Unhyphenated American
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)Democrats at the Edge of the Cliff Democrats are spending trillions at the worst possible moment, with a new poll showing public trust in government at a historic low of 22%.
By DANIEL HENNINGER

There was always something eerie about the way the Democrats said their health-care legislation was what the American people had waited "70 years" for. Invoking the ghosts of 1939 was kind of creepy. Then when the moment in history finally arrived, history got no votes from the other party. Whatever the politics, there was something ominous about all this. One felt something else was going on.

A Pew Research Center report just out, the one that says trust in government is at an "historic low" of only 22%, looks like the something else.

Dig past the headline of the Pew study and one discovers why Bill Clinton is insinuating that "demonizing" government could cause another Oklahoma City bombing. If these numbers are at all close to reality, something one can hardly doubt just now, the American people have issued a no-confidence vote in government, at both the national and state level. To the extent one believes in the "consent of the governed," consent is being eroded.


Daniel Henninger says that the American people have issued a no-confidence vote in government.
.Podcast: Listen to the audio of Wonder Land. .This report isn't bad news for the Democrats. It's Armageddon.

The survey compares views sampled in 1997 with now. The "now" is the Democrats' problem. The survey took place this mid-March. After one year of the charismatic, ever-present Barack Obama, after passage of the party's totemic health-care bill, after spending zillions on Keynesian pump-priming, the American people—well beyond the tea partiers—have the lowest opinion ever of national government.

A year ago, 54% said government should exert more control over the economy; a year later it's 40%.

Some 58% say Uncle Sam is interfering too much in state and local affairs; 53% want "very major reform" of the federal government. After health care passed in March, Pew re-sampled in early April: Trust in government rose—to 25% from 22%. Inspector Clouseau would call that a "bmp."

Pew concludes: "A desire for smaller government is particularly evident since Barack Obama took office." That's pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey without blindfolds.

Democrats could cite one passage in Pew to mitigate this dire portrait. Historically, the report notes, whichever incumbent party is standing next to a big disaster gets pulled down in the undertow. Thus Bush and the Iraq war and Katrina. They can argue that Mr. Obama and the Democrats are getting hit with the legacy of the Bush downdraft and the after-shocks of the financial meltdown of September 2008. Once that passes, and after the inevitable November losses, the economy will stabilize and by 2012 the playing field will reset to normal.

.I don't buy this. Something unique happened in the first Obama year, about the last thing the Democratic Party needed: The veil was ripped from the true cost of government. This is the ghastly nightmare Democrats have always needed to keep locked in a crypt.

Before the Internet, that was easy. Washington, California, New York, New Jersey—who knew what the pols were spending? The Democrats (and their Republican pilot fish) could get away with this. Not now. Email lists, 24/7 newspapers, blogs, TV and talk radio—the spending beast is running naked.

When the financial crisis piled in atop a recession, the Democrats' academic/pundit economists blandly convinced the party to wave a $787 billion stimulus at the problem in early 2009. Then, on April 30, the Democrats passed an FY 2010 budget of $3.5 trillion. This year the FY 2011 budget hit $3.8 trillion, reaching a post-World War II high of 25% of GDP. In March, they passed the trillion-dollar health-care bill. Total headline spending commitments in one year: about $9 trillion. That's a lot of "trust" to ask for during a recession with 9% unemployment. And now a sense is building of some broad middle-class tax grab. After soaking the rich, comes the deluge.

Demonization? No need. They did it to themselves.

Barack Obama's speeches are filled with the Democrats' core claim to legitimacy: Government must and will do good. It must "act." But in a crucial period when voters across the political spectrum were losing faith in that core claim, the Democrats lost any self-protective sense of what they were doing with public budgets. Barack Obama took a rising reservoir of public trust for his party (62% said they liked the Democrats in January 2009), and emptied it. Since he took office, the percentage of people who want smaller government and fewer services has risen, to 50% from 42%.

A Quinnipiac poll released yesterday has the Obama presidential approval rating down to 44%—after health care, after the arms treaty with Russia, after the 47-nation, anti-proliferation convocation in Washington.

He insists on more government. People want less, and don't trust what they've got. They want reform. Here's the Pew blowout data:

In 1994 when the Democrats lost over 50 House seats at mid-term, the party's favorable rating was 62%, and for the Congress they controlled it was 53%. They still got killed. Now the party's favorable is 38% and Congress's approval is 25%. The Republicans' numbers are low, too, but they're not in charge.

The Democratic Party is on the edge of an electoral cliff with a long fall to the bottom. No wonder they're seeing a demon under every bed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)On Presidential Rhetoric:Obama's ad hominem method and the politics of polarization

President Obama came to office promising an era of political comity, but even he has had to concede that his first 15 months in office haven't lived up to his campaign hope of transcending partisan divisions. While it takes two to tangle, we think the hyper-polarization owes more than a little to Mr. Obama's own rhetorical habits. More than any President in memory, Mr. Obama has a tendency to vilify his opponents in personal terms and assail their arguments as dishonest, illegitimate or motivated by bad faith.

A notable instance is Mr. Obama's ad hominem attack on Mitch McConnell at a California fundraiser for Barbara Boxer on Monday. The Senate Minority Leader "paid a visit to Wall Street a week or two ago," Mr. Obama said, and "met with some of the movers and shakers up there. I don't know exactly what was discussed. All I can tell you is when he came back, he promptly announced he would oppose the financial regulatory reform."

In other words, the Kentucky Republican is merely a mouthpiece for the bankers. Mr. Obama added that Mr. McConnell's objections to the bill were not merely "just plain false" but also "cynical"—and then he repeated the attack on motives at another event the following evening.

We can't recall anything close to this kind of language from, say, Ronald Reagan toward House Speaker Tip O'Neill, or even George W. Bush after Harry Reid called him a "liar." But it is an Obama staple.

A few hours after the Supreme Court's vindication of political speech last year in Citizens United, Mr. Obama called the decision "a major victory for Big Oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."

He later personalized his criticism by rebuking the Justices as they sat in front of him during the January State of the Union, accusing them of reversing "a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections." So the Justices, too, are mere tools of corporate interests. Don't expect many of them at next year's SOTU.

The President is especially fond of employing this blunt rhetorical force against business. In a December interview, Mr. Obama said he "did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street. . . . They're still puzzled why it is that people are mad at banks. Well, let's see," he continued. "You guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in—in decades, and you guys caused the problem."

Amid the Beltway panic during the AIG bonus bonfire in March 2009, Mr. Obama played directly to the public anger. "This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," said the President, and asked, "How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping this company afloat?"

He did the same with the Chrysler bondholders who had initially resisted the White House's bankruptcy terms that squeezed them in favor of the United Auto Workers. Mr. Obama characterized these investors in April 2009 as "a small group of speculators" who "were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none." They quickly caved.

Likewise, in his September address to Congress on health care, Mr. Obama did not merely disagree with opponents but accused them of being "cynical and irresponsible," spreading "misinformation," and making "bogus," "wild" or "false" claims through "demagoguery and distortion."

He added that "If you misrepresent what's in this plan, we will call you out." He later singled out Anthem Blue Cross by name, describing the California insurer's behavior "jaw-dropping" in February after it attempted to raise consumer premiums.

Politics ain't beanbag, but most Presidents leave this kind of political attack to surrogates or Vice Presidents. Mr. Obama seems to enjoy being his own Spiro Agnew. A President may reap a short-term legislative gain from this kind of rhetoric, but he also pays a longer-term price in ill-will and needless polarization.

Presidents speak to all of America and they best build consensus through argument and persuasion—not by singling out political targets, cultivating resentment, questioning motives and mocking differences of principle or political philosophy. Mr. Obama's bellicosity is no more attractive than Sarah Palin's attempts to pit "the real America" against the big-city slickers. And his rhetorical method seems especially discordant coming from a President who still insists, in between these assaults, that he is striving mightily to change the negative tone of American politics.

If the President and his advisers are wondering why his approval ratings are falling even as the economy is recovering, they might look to his own divisive conduct and the contempt he too often shows for anyone who disagrees with him.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6)Professor Finds Many Fault Lines in Crisis
By DAVID WESSEL

The left has figured out who to blame for the financial crisis: Greedy Wall Street bankers, especially at Goldman Sachs. The right has figured it out, too: It was government's fault, especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business says it's more complicated: Fault lines along the tectonic plates of the global economy pushed big government and big finance to a financial earthquake.

One lesson from the crisis: When nine of 10 experts say everything is fine, the press should devote more than 10% of its coverage to those who say it isn't fine. I should have paid more attention to Mr. Rajan, who famously ruined a 2005 Federal Reserve celebration of Alan Greenspan's career by suggesting that big banks might be steering the world economy off the cliff. ("I felt like an early Christian who had wandered into a convention of half-starved lions," he says.)

Mr. Rajan, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D., sees the crisis through an unusual lens. He spent his childhood in India, studied electrical engineering there and still advises its government. He later did a few years as chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. More than most economists, he sees ways in which rich countries behave similarly to poorer ones and sees the roots of the crisis as global.

In a conversation a few days after the government pointed the finger of blame at Goldman Sachs, Mr. Rajan previewed arguments he'll make in a book ("Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy") to be published in July.

"We miss the point if we find a scapegoat in the financial sector. It was doing what so many people wanted. And not many people were asking questions," he says.

To him, this was a Greek tragedy in which traders and bankers, congressmen and subprime borrowers all played their parts until the drama reached the inevitably painful end. (Mr. Rajan plays Cassandra, of course.) But just when you're about to cast him as a University of Chicago free-market stereotype, he surprises by identifying the widening gap between rich and poor as a big cause of the calamity.

The first Rajan fault line lies in the U.S. As incomes at the top soared, politicians responded to middle-class angst about stagnant wages and insecurity over jobs and health insurance. Since they couldn't easily raise incomes—Mr. Rajan is in the camp that sees better education as the only cure and that takes time—politicians of both parties gave constituents more to spend by fostering an explosion of credit, especially for housing.

This has happened before: Farmers' grievances led to a U.S. government-backed expansion of bank credit in the 1920s; India's state-owned banks pump credit into poor constituencies in election years. But one thing was different: "When easy money pushed by a deep pocketed government comes into contact with the profit motive of a sophisticated, amoral financial sector, a deep fault line develops," Mr. Rajan writes. House prices shot up, banks borrowed cheaply and heavily to build leveraged mountains of ever more risky mortgage-linked securities.


When University of Chicago Professor Raghu Rajan warned of economic doom in 2005, it was roundly ignored. WSJ's David Wessel says next time, the media shouldn't be so quick to dismiss a dissenting voice.
.The second fault line lies in the relentless exporting of many countries. Germany and Japan grew rich by exporting. They built agile export sectors that compete with the world's best, but shielded or strangled domestic industries such as banking and retailing. These industries are uncompetitive and inefficient, and charge high prices that discourage consumer spending.

China and others got to a similar place by a different route. Financial crises in the 1990s showed them the dangers of relying on money flowing from rich countries through local banks to finance factories, office towers and other investment. So they switched strategies, borrowed less and turned to exporting more to fuel growth. This led them to hold down exchange rates (that makes exports more attractive to others). So doing meant building huge rainy day funds of U.S. dollars.

The result: A lot of money abroad looking for a place to go met a lot of demand for borrowing in U.S. A lot of foolish loans were made.

A third Rajan fault line spread the crisis. The U.S. approach to recession-fighting—unemployment insurance and the like—and its social safety net are geared for fast, quick recoveries of the past, not for jobless recoveries now the norm. That puts pressure on Washington to do something: tax cuts, spending increases and very low interest rates. This leads big finance to assume, consciously or unconsciously, that the government will keep the money flowing and will step in if catastrophe occurs.

Compounded by hubris, envy, greed, short-sighted compensation schemes and follow-the-herd habits, these expectations that the government will save us all leads big finance to borrow cheaply and take ever bigger risks. No democratic government can let ordinary folk suffer when the harshness of the market brings the party to an end, as it inevitable does. Big finance exploits what Mr. Rajan calls this "government decency" and bets accordingly.

If he's right, changing the rules, incentives and innards of major economies to reduce the risks of repeating the recent crisis is not going to be easy.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7)U.S. Tries to Buy Time for Its Iran Strategy
By GERALD F. SEIB..

Iranian forces launched a big military exercise in the Persian Gulf Thursday, thereby underscoring a grim reality: The strategy for stopping Iran's nuclear program is turning into a race against time before options turn from mediocre to bad to worse.

The goal of American policy right now is to slow down the clock—that is, to stretch out the time Iran needs to become nuclear-arms capable. The hope is to buy time to give other kinds of pressure a better chance to work before military options move to the fore.

That's why the current foot-dragging in adopting new economic sanctions at the United Nations Security Council is so troublesome. In an ideal world, and in the Obama administration's original vision, a U.N. resolution imposing new economic penalties would have been passed two months ago.

So now, here's where things are headed: American officials say they hope a U.N. resolution will pass in the next few weeks. That would clear the way for step two, in which the U.S. and its European allies, with some help from Japan, would layer on additional sanctions of their own with more bite, clamping down on Iran's access to the international financial system and squeezing its Revolutionary Guards, the real power behind Iran's nuclear program.

Getting this economic squeeze in place is crucial. The hope is that when Iran's leaders see that economic pressure has moved from possibility to reality, they will return to negotiations over their nuclear program, which they contend is for producing energy, not weapons.

It's worth pausing here to note that having a credible military threat on the table is useful for both prongs of this strategy—getting biting sanctions, as well as getting Iran to take its predicament seriously. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while feuding with the Obama administration on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, is extremely useful on this front.

Already, informed sources say, the U.S. has essentially said to the recalcitrant Chinese: "Look, you'd better cooperate on sanctions, because if we don't do something, Netanyahu is just crazy enough to attack Iran." And if there's a silver lining to the military exercises Iran just launched, it's that they suggest Tehran is taking the military threat seriously.

If these combined pressures compel Iran's leaders back into negotiations, the goal would be to revive the kind of nuclear-swap deal Iran agreed to, then backed away from, last fall. Under that agreement, Iran was to ship about half of the low-enriched uranium it has accumulated to Russia and France for reprocessing into fuel for a nuclear reactor in Tehran.

The beauty of that deal was that, by taking potential nuclear-weapons material out of Iran's hands and turning it into something else, the world would know with confidence that it had slowed down Iran's march toward nuclear-weapons capability by a year or so. That would, in the words of one senior Obama administration official, "shift the timetable to the right," extending the time available to find a longer-term solution.

That breather would be crucial on several fronts. First, the U.S. would buy more time to build a real regional security arrangement under which it would help strengthen the defenses of friendly Persian Gulf states and work out a plan for a joint response to Iranian provocations. More time also would allow the U.S. to move ahead in building a defense system to knock out Iranian missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.

It's possible that the combination of a regional defense plan and a real American missile-defense shield would signal to Iran that acquiring nuclear arms wouldn't give it the power to intimidate its neighbors that it might envision, and help convince Tehran that developing nuclear weapons isn't worth the economic pain the world can inflict.

And if that doesn't work, slowing down the nuclear program would at least create more time to determine whether opposition forces within Iran have any hope of threatening the regime.

There's at least some reason to hope new pressure might pull Iran back into negotiations. U.S. officials suspect that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for all his bluster, actually wanted to do the nuclear-swap deal last fall, but was stopped by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

And in recent days, Iranian officials have been floating an alternative to last fall's deal, indicating they want to talk to other nations about it, perhaps at a meeting on nonproliferation in New York next month.

Meanwhile, though, nuclear centrifuges in Iran continue to spin out enriched uranium. Iran's ultimate goal may well be to leave the outside world paralyzed in a state of suspended animation by demonstrating it has developed the ability and material to make nuclear arms, while stopping just short of making the weapons themselves.

Even that nebulous outcome would compel the world to ponder two far less appealing options. One would be that military strike.

The second would be to accept that Iran has become a nuclear-capable state, and adopt a strategy of containing it while using economic pressure—perhaps even an economic blockade—to force a reversal or to bring down the regime. That's essentially what the West did to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It did, however, take 50 years.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8)When NASA first planned to send up astronauts, they
quickly discovered
that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity.

To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade
and $1.2 billion
to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside
down, underwater,
on almost any surface including glass, and at
temperatures ranging from
below freezing to 300 Celsius.

Confronted with the same problem, the Israelis used a
pencil.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------