Double Dip - Not Referring To Ice Cream!

I get an awful lot of e mails because I send an awful lot of e mails. I have over 730people on my e mail list. Below are some unsolicited responses to my most recent memo.

The last from a long time friend and sound investor.(See 1 below.)
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This time silence is not golden. (See 2 below.)
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Robin bears her breast and beats up on Michelle. (See 3 below.)
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Critique of Obama's West Point Commencement speech as well as what he said regarding Daniel Pearl.

I caught snippets of the West Point talk as I awoke and dressed. It was the first time in 24 days I had heard Obama's voice. It was like someone had thrown cold water in my face because I knew I was back home after 24 blissful days away on European travels.

I did not hear Obama's speech about Daniel Pearl but my son called my attention to Steyn's review.

Then there is this matter of oil spewing out of the floor of the Gulf. The Administration blamed BP, then acknowledged the supervising department had some responsibility for failing their oversight duties and finally the blame game has deteriorated to the point where everyone is dumping more verbal oil on the troubled waters.

Obama certainly does not know what to do and wants to duck this 'tar baby.' BP has engaged in a variety of activities trying to plug the leak but the oil still gushes and today Chicago's Sen. Durbin added his two inane cents. A plug nickel would have been more appropriate.

Sarah P said the obvious and no doubt will be chastised for pointing out the press has gone weak kneed because it is their favorite son who is up to his arm pits in oil. However, these same defenders of the truth quickly attacked his predecessor for failing to respond to Katrina in a timely fashion.

Hypocrisy has become commonplace and voters anger is rising with the bubbling oil.

With proper equipment and responsible management offshore drilling can be effectively pursued but this spill serves the emotional cry of those who oppose everything related to such drilling. Sad set back for off shore exploration. Even sadder for those whose economic fortunes and livelihood may be virtually ruined and the beautiful wildlife drowning in oil muck.(See 4 and 4a below.)
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Obama would like for Lebanon to play a constructive role in the Middle East but with Hezballah in control of the country that could prove wishful thinking. (See 5 below.
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So goes the Palestinian and Israeli negotiations and with the EURO's plight, so goes possible aid. (See 6 below.)
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I did not agree but I understand why a dreamy president might want to downplay America's role in the world. I even understand why that same dreamy president might believe our omnipotent presence left little room for other nations.

Obama's public criticism of our nation could even be interpreted as a good will gesture to foreign leaders that he would be a kinder and softer president with whom they would be dealing after 'prickly' GW.


Has it gained Obama or our nation any points? Has Obama's projection of weakness proven successful? Are we better off diplomatically? Has Obama's contrite display reduced the threat from Iran and/or N Korea?

Just in the last few days the president of Mexico came before Congress and lectured us while spitting in our face Chavez style and Turkey and Brazil decided to play shill for Irtan. Not what I would call evidence of their respect for our diplomatic efforts.

Krauthammer gives his view. (See 7 below.)
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It has become vapidly fashionable for politicians to bend the truth their way, torture facts in their behalf and when exposed to offer a mea culpa and repeat that meaningless phrase: "I take full responsibility." What does taking responsibility for lying really mean? What are the actual consequences? If words have meaning then 'I take full responsibility' are empty ones at best.

Voters are the ones who will ultimately determine what responsibility politicians have as they recently did when they rejected Arlen Spector for his duplicity. (See 8 and 8a below.)
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Does any of the above explain why the market is behaving as it is? You betcha it does. When the Oval Office is seen as dysfunctioning it has market implications. When it is becoming evident that debt has reached significant levels as a percent of various nation's GDP that has market implications. When rogue nations are permitted to go unleashed that has market implications. When government ineptness and political corruption become commonplace that too carries market implications. When a nation flirts with bankruptcy that is a wake up call that cannot be denied.


Finally, as I have often written and now am joined by Christopher Wood, don't rule up a Double Dip and we are not referring to ice cream. (See 9 below.)
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Dick
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1)Liberalism is a sort of a contamination like an oil spill which does not wash off easily (particularly when droplets penetrate the brain...)
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"I have gone to several Tea Parties including the one in DC. There are millions who think as you do and worry about the fate of this country. I have talked to people who were never involved politically but are now awakened and see where BHO and his minions are taking us. They are ready to fight.

I was talking to my doctor {he likes to shoot} and he and others he knows feel that violent uprisings will be next. Not a good time for the country. It is amazing the electorate voted an avowed socialist into office and then are surprised when he has a socialist agenda. Stupidity will kill us all."
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SNOPES SAYS IT'S TRUE!!!


DEVOUT MUSLIMS-- HEADING HOME LAND SECURITY????

Well, boys and girls, today we are letting the fox guard the hen house. The wolves will be herding the sheep!Obama appoints two devout Muslims to Homeland Security posts. Doesn't this make you feel safer already?

Obama and Janet Napolitano appointed Arif Alikhan, a devout Muslim, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano swore-in Kareem Shora, a devout Muslim, who was born in Damascus, Syria, as ADC National Executive Director as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council

Has anyone ever heard a new government official being identified as a devout Catholic, a devout Jew or a devout Protestant...?
Just wondering.
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...I think the bubble/debt overhang problems are going to be with us a long time, and that growth prospects are mediocre even on optimistic assumptions. Of course it doesn’t help that the present US government is resolutely anti-business and anti-investor, but I expect the real-world consequences of their incompetence and ideological blindness to result in some righting (pun intended) of the political balance.

I believe Western civilization is declining fast (the deeper meaning of Obama is that he embraces and promotes this decline), and that the future of humanity, like most of its past, is in the East. So, in a sense, ALL rallies are bear market rallies as long as the deep foundations of American and Western strength and vitality are eroding.
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2) Is This Just a Nightmare, or Did It Really Happen?
By Jared E. Peterson

Over the past week we witnessed presidential and congressional disloyalty without precedent in American history, events that should be indelibly imprinted on the American electorate's collective memory. For the first time (at least to this writer's knowledge), a foreign head of state who is promoting an ongoing, aggressive, illegal, and often violent invasion of America came to our country, met with our president, and, from the White House itself, received our president's implicit but obvious public support for that invasion; and that same foreign leader spoke to Congress and received a standing ovation from its Democrat members' for his country's war on America's borders.


Is this just a nightmare, or did it really happen?


During Barrack Hussein Obama's May 19, 2010 joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderón, our president -- constitutionally charged with the duty to defend America from all enemies, foreign and domestic -- earned the scarlet "D": By silence he aligned himself with the invaders of our country and their leader against the citizens of America's own state of Arizona who have been forced by his dereliction to defend themselves.


Nearly as amazing, on Thursday, May 20, 2010, that same foreign president, speaking from where Churchill stood during World War II, received a standing ovation from the Democrat members of Congress when he reviled the citizens of Arizona for daring to try to fashion a defense of their part of the American-Mexican border. And the Republicans did not walk out or offer any other visible, dramatic objection.


An aside: The feckless Republican non-response to the Mexican President's May 20 congressional rant is probably the least astounding of the week's events. Our stodgy Republican opposition, with a few exceptions (e.g., see Congressman Tom McClintock's superlative speech) is notable for its lack of leadership, courage, eloquence, timing, and political prescience. That a foreign head of state who insults the overwhelming majority of America's citizens from a congressional podium might require a dramatic response from them, and at the same time might present a perfect opportunity to make clear which party is aligned with the American people on illegal immigration, would not occur to most of the timid and unimaginative mediocrities in this bunch.


But to return to the point: Consider carefully the stain of disloyalty that President Obama indelibly affixed to himself during the week just past.


On Wednesday, May 19, 2010, Felipe Calderón, President of politically and economically failed Mexico, stood on the South Lawn of the White House as a guest of America. He proceeded to claim that Arizona's recently enacted immigration law "is forcing our people there to face discrimination," and thereby he publicly trashed the State of Arizona, its legislators and governor, and, if polls are accurate, about 70% of its residents (and probably nearly the same percentage of all Americans) who unambiguously want the border sealed and support Arizona's benign efforts to accomplish that goal. He said more, but that was enough.


Standing next to this boor, the President of the United States (sic) responded to the tirade against America with silence. Or as the rest of the world will interpret Obama's muteness, "I agree with everything you just said." Can anyone imagine similar complicit disloyalty from Lincoln, Roosevelt (T. or F.D.), Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan?


Rather than defend the reasonable actions of his countrymen, our president joined in the foreigner's indictment of them. Later, on television, while the offensive Mexican president was still in the country, Obama added his own condemnation of those vile Americans he risibly claims to lead and protect: Of the Arizona statute, he said, "The Justice Department is looking at the legislation to make sure it's consistent with 'our core values' and 'existing legal precedent.'" Again, code-speak for "I agree with El Presedente. The people of Arizona, their legislators and governor, and all those who support them are despicable bigots."


When America is being invaded by a foreign power, one expects the President of the United States to be on America's side. That's how it's worked in the past, anyway. If that's too steep a demand, could we ask that our president not publicly endorse the enemy's characterization of modest defensive efforts as "discriminatory"? If even that decent silence is too much, could our president at least not provide the invaders' leader with a White House venue to denounce our people and our laws?


Note to those Americans who have not yet noticed: Barrack Hussein Obama does not like or sympathize with this country.


His instinctual affinities are with others, particularly if they come from the southern hemisphere or call themselves Muslims, and especially if they vote Democrat when they get here. For a long time, some have known this about America's first anti-American president. Many have not yet perceived it. Had most Republican members of Congress not been asleep, confused, or afraid, the events of last week could have cast a brilliant light on this awful truth.


But exposing the charlatan when he allows the truth to spill out, as he did last week, requires a courageous, clear-thinking, and articulate opposition. Other than Representative McClintock and a few more, who among key GOP officeholders possesses these traits?


An effective, courageous, and astute opposition lacking, the only course for loyal Americans is never to let last week's outrages be forgotten.


Any Republican candidate who fails to remind the November electorate that Barrack Hussein Obama, and the congressional Democrats en masse, endorsed and applauded America's invaders and condemned its defenders, does not have the requisite qualities of intellect and courage to be helpful in the struggle to reclaim our country.


Jared E. Peterson graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in Political Philosophy, and from the Harvard Law School. He has been a practicing lawyer for more than thirty-five years.
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3)Commencement Address Hell
By Robin of Berkeley

This is the season of college commencement speeches. The only thing I recall about mine was commencement speaker, Sen. Robert Byrd, who seemed ancient even back then, and who put us all to sleep.


Michelle Obama recently gave a speech to graduates at George Washington University. The underlying message? Do as I say, not as I do.


Also: Life sucks, and then you die. There's war and famine and an overcooked planet. Become global citizens and fix the mess! Clean the feet of lepers in Calcutta, eradicate malaria in the Sudan, and live like a monk with no personal needs.


Of course, Michelle's own personal journey has been a tad different. After she graduated from racist-infested Princeton University, Michelle made big bucks as a corporate lawyer. Working as a vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center, she saved the hospital a bundle through patient-dumping -- sending those unable to pay to other hospitals.


Michelle, who as First Lady requires 22 personal assistants, apparently helped Barack make millions by helping convince unrepentant domestic terrorist and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers to ghostwrite his long-overdue autobiography.


Not wanting to live in one of those dreary third-world shacks, Barack and Michelle entered into a shady land deal with corrupt businessman Tony Rezko, who helped the couple buy million-dollar-plus digs that were a financial stretch.


Now, if I were ever invited to give a commencement speech, my theme would be similar to Michelle's. Except instead of "Do as I say, not as I do," I'd preach, "Don't do as I say, and don't do as I do." Because after all, why should some grizzled old commencement speaker force his or her opinions on the young?


My speech would go something like this:


Dear Graduate,


Stop listening to other people. This society has been telling you how to think and what to believe for far too long.


Remember when your 9th-grade teacher said that the U.S. was the root of all evil? She was lying. It took me forty-something years to realize this. Take the time to do what I never did: Read, analyze, and figure things out on your own.


I think you'd all do better without people like Obama and Bill Ayers and that 9th-grade teacher yakking at you all the time. Many of you are doing amazingly well in spite of the Left's mind games.


For instance, there's the lovely Carrie Prejean, a former Miss California-USA, who had the guts to articulate her support for traditional marriage. And then there's the equally lovely Miss Oklahoma, Elizabeth Morgan Woolard, who stood up to the liberal media by supporting states' rights in Arizona.


And I want you to meet my latest, greatest young person: 18-year-old, Celeste Finkenbine.



Celeste's teacher humiliated her in front of the class by smearing her with that vile slang word used for tea-partiers. The teacher also based the final exam on an analysis of Michael Moore's movie Sicko without administrative approval. Celeste walked herself right over to the principal's office to register a complaint.


I'm sure that there are innumerable Celestes out there. You observe the law and expect your leaders to do the same. Remarkably, you maintain personal integrity amidst the constant pressure to shut up, hook up, and tune out.


You offer us all hope -- real hope, not the manufactured kind. Your incandescent spirit helps to illuminate these dark times. Perhaps you had the strong hands of parents and grandparents to guide you. Maybe a connection with God has inoculated you from the propaganda.


Fortunately, you have many adult counterparts, like those strong conservative women, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Malkin, and Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona. But this country doesn't need just bold women. We need you young males too -- desperately, actually. But don't be like the females; be real men instead.


Because this nation doesn't need any more feminized males. Our country is suffering from a paucity of strong men.


My final words are directed toward the adults who are yapping at you all day long. This is for the teachers and politicians and media talking heads who tell you whom to vote for, what to believe, and what you should do with your one precious life.


To them I say: Unless you are the parents, grandparents, or favorite aunt, back off. Leave these kids alone. Stop the indoctrination. Rather than controlling them, start making this country a safe place for them to spread their wings.


Allow these youths to have their dreams, even if among them lies the one you discredit: the American dream. Stop turning their dreams into Kafkaesque nightmares.


Heed the wise words of the poet Kahlil Gibran. Though he wrote them almost a hundred years ago, he could have been preaching to you, Michelle and Barack, and to you, Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings, and to most of the teachers in the land:


Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's
longing for itself. . .
You may give them your love but not
your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not
their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even
in your dreams.


A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley.
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4)Obama Speaks His Mind at West Point
By Jonathan F. Keiler

President Obama used a teleprompter for his West Point commencement address, which means that he took the occasion seriously. What he said, however dull and clichéd, represents not just the sometimes-flighty emanations from his remarkable brain, but also United States policy at large.


Obama's West Point speech was bland, but it is doubtful that the president was simply being lazy. Rather, given the solemn setting of a graduating class of Second Lieutenants setting off for war, presumably Obama was in his most serious mode.


The speech, marked by Obama's frequent slouching into the passive voice, may reflect the fact that the president had little intellectual or emotional sympathy for the ranks of cadets in front of him. Still, his words, however prosaic, matter.


Right off, by way of a lame joke about cadets on restriction, Obama claims "absolute power" as commander-in-chief to "absolve" them, managing in a single phrase to mangle the Constitution (nobody in this country has absolute power over anything) while also going into full messianic mode (who but God can truly absolve?).



For an address to a group of young warrior leaders, Obama focuses mainly on ideas of harmony and cooperation. Accordingly Obama tells them that "understanding of the cultures and traditions of the place where you serve" is just as important as "performance on the battlefield." Nor does Obama call for victory. Rather, in Afghanistan, "with our Afghan and international partners[,] we will succeed." It sounds like he is calling on the cadets to establish a new international foundation, or to fund his presidential library.


He praises the cadets' "international experience" at foreign academies and the "new friendships" forged with visiting cadets. That's all well and good, but in a nearly four-thousand word speech, Obama only once uses the word enemy, and that in the context of the "common enemies" of the American and Afghan peoples. Instead in discussing attacks on the homeland, Obama refers to "violent extremists" from a "distant place." Where? The stars?


Obama spends plenty of time and energy extolling the "diversity of race and ethnicity" within the Corps, from the fact that the top two graduates are women to "all the great religions" represented by the cadets. Fine again, but this is the only part of the speech that is really direct and at all sings -- it is the only point where Obama appears invested. And of course, along the same lines, Obama could not omit a comment rejecting "al Qaeda's gross distortion of Islam[.]"


Of course, there was plenty of pie-in-the-sky new ageism, as in the pursuit of "clean energy" and "research that unlocks wonders" to solve all our problems. Perhaps this rings true with some cadets or their parents. A shame Obama can't just wave his wand and make it happen -- though he often acts like he just might.


More importantly, the speech embodies Obama's core discounting of American exceptionalism in favor of policies that "build new partnerships and shape stronger international standards and institutions." This is predictable from Obama, but asserting it at West Point reinforces the depth of the president's internationalist disposition.


The speech also reeks of the president's insulated moral blindness and hypocrisy. Obama implicitly rejects America's special place among nations, but he is not above wrapping himself in the mantle of historic American moral leadership, at least as he would like it to be. Thus, we have succeeded not by "stepping out of the current of cooperation, but by steering those in the direction of liberty and justice." This is arguably true of our nation's history, but not of Obama's presidency. When has Obama steered a course in the direction of international liberty? Rather, he has coddled the cruelest and most autocratic regimes and turned a deaf ear to those within them fighting for liberty and justice, all the while pressuring, insulting, and betraying our democratic allies.


But perhaps most disturbing of all is Obama's deceptively fine-sounding reference to "universal rights" at the end of the speech. After noting the "inalienable rights" asserted by our founding fathers and embodied in our foundational documents, Obama goes on to assert that these same rights are indeed "claimed by people of every race and religion in every region of the world."


Certainly there are individuals from Pyongyang to Beijing to Tehran who claim these rights, but that is not the point, and the statement is typical of Obama's obfuscation of reality. Obama flatly ignores these individuals while seeking to do business with governments that flatly reject the American creed. These governments control hundreds of millions of people for whom universal rights are meaningless formulation, whether because they cannot obtain them, are unaware of the concept, or are just not interested.


And why not interested? Because, heaven forbid, their political philosophy or religion (or both) just do not accommodate Western concepts of universal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These nations represent our rivals at best, our enemies at worst. One of them, as Obama effectively sits idle, is near to acquiring nuclear weapons with which to attack our democratic allies, and ultimately us, while others are already so armed. But you would never know that from Obama's West Point speech. Nor would the graduating cadets and their parents know from his words that someday we might well have to fight them. And that is why the speech, teleprompter and all, is important.


4a)Obama owed it to Daniel Pearl to speak the truth; Couldn't he have at least done that?
By Mark Steyn


Barack Obama's remarkable powers of oratory are well known: In support of Chicago's Olympic bid, he flew into Copenhagen to give a heartwarming speech about himself, and they gave the games to Rio. He flew into Boston to support Martha Coakley's bid for the U.S. Senate, and Massachusetts voters gave Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican. In the first year of his presidency, he gave a gazillion speeches on health care "reform" and drove support for his proposals to basement level, leaving Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to ram it down the throats of the American people through sheer parliamentary muscle.

Like a lot of guys who've been told they're brilliant one time too often, President Obama gets a little lazy, and doesn't always choose his words with care. And so it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl, upon signing the "Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act." Pearl was decapitated on video by jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That's how I'd put it. This is what the president of the United States said:


"Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world's imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is."
Now Obama's off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he's talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased's family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it's the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving and true. Indeed, for Obama, it's the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.

Instead, he delivered the one above, which in its clumsiness and insipidness is most revealing. First of all, note the passivity: "The loss of Daniel Pearl." He wasn't "lost." He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his "loss" merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none.

Even if Americans don't get the message, the rest of the world does. This week's pictures of the leaders of Brazil and Turkey clasping hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also monuments to American passivity.

But what did the "loss" of Daniel Pearl mean? Well, says the president, it was "one of those moments that captured the world's imagination." Really? Evidently it never captured Obama's imagination because, if it had, he could never have uttered anything so fatuous. He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl's fate, and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of therapeutic sedation: "one of those moments" — you know, like Princess Di's wedding, Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, whatever — "that captured the world's imagination."


Notice how reflexively Obama lapses into sentimental one-worldism: Despite our many zip codes, we are one people, with a single imagination. In fact, the murder of Daniel Pearl teaches just the opposite — that we are many worlds, and worlds within worlds. Some of them don't even need an "imagination." Across the planet, the video of an American getting his head sawed off did brisk business in the bazaars and madrassahs and Internet downloads. Excited young men e-mailed it to friends, from cell phone to cell phone, from Karachi to Jakarta to Khartoum to London to Toronto to Falls Church, Virginia. In the old days, you needed an "imagination" to conjure the juicy bits of a distant victory over the Great Satan. But in an age of high-tech barbarism the sight of Pearl's severed head is a mere click away.

And the rest of "the world"? Most gave a shrug of indifference. And far too many found the reality of Pearl's death too uncomfortable, and chose to take refuge in the same kind of delusional pap as Obama. The president is only the latest Western liberal to try to hammer Daniel Pearl's box into a round hole. Before him, it was Michael Winterbottom in his film "A Mighty Heart": As Pearl's longtime colleague Asra Nomani wrote, "Danny himself had been cut from his own story." Or as Paramount's promotional department put it, "Nominate the most inspiring ordinary hero. Win a trip to the Bahamas!" Where you're highly unlikely to be kidnapped and beheaded! (Although, in the event that you are, please check the liability-waiver box at the foot of the entry form.)

The latest appropriation that his "loss" "reminded us of how valuable a free press is." It was nothing to do with "freedom of the press." By the standards of the Muslim world, Pakistan has a free-ish and very lively press. The problem is that some 80 percent of its people wish to live under the most extreme form of Sharia, and many of its youth are exported around the world in advance of that aim. The man convicted of Pearl's murder was Omar Sheikh, a British subject, a London School of Economics student, and, like many jihadists from Osama to the Pantybomber, a monument to the peculiar burdens of a non-deprived childhood in the Muslim world. The man who actually did the deed was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed in March 2007: "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi." But Obama's not the kind to take "guilty" for an answer, so he's arranging a hugely expensive trial for KSM amid the bright lights of Broadway.

Listen to his killer's words: "The American Jew Daniel Pearl." We hit the jackpot! And then we cut his head off. Before the body was found, The Independent's Robert Fisk offered a familiar argument to Pearl's kidnappers: Killing him would be "a major blunder… the best way of ensuring that the suffering" — of Kashmiris, Afghans, Palestinians — "goes unrecorded." Other journalists peddled a similar line: if you release Danny, he'll be able to tell your story, get your message out, "bridge the misconceptions." But the story did get out; the severed headis the message; the only misconception is that that's a misconception.

Daniel Pearl was the prototype for a new kind of terror. In his wake came other victims from Kenneth Bigley, whose last words were that "Tony Blair has not done enough for me," to Fabrizzio Quattrocchi, who yanked off his hood, yelled "I will show you how an Italian dies!" and ruined the movie for his jihadist videographers. By that time, both men understood what it meant to be in a windowless room with a camera and a man holding a scimitar. But Daniel Pearl was the first, and in his calm, coherent final words understood why he was there:

"My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California, USA …"

He didn't have a prompter. But he spoke the truth. That's all President Obama owed him — to do the same.

I mentioned last week the attorney general's peculiar insistence that "radical Islam" was nothing to do with the Times Square bomber, the Pantybomber, the Fort Hood killer. Just a lot of moments "capturing the world's imagination." For now, the jihadists seem to have ceased cutting our heads off. Listening to Obama and Eric Holder, perhaps they've figured out there's nothing much up there anyway.
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5)In Washington talks, U.S. voices hope that Lebanon will play a role in building peace in an 'increasingly volatile and dangerous' Middle East.
By Natasha Mozgovaya and News Agencies


U.S. President Barak Obama used talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Said Hariri in Washington on Monday night to warn of the growing danger of arms smuggling to Hezbollah militants.



"The President stressed [...] the threat posed by the transfer of weapons into Lebanon in violation of UNSCR 1701," the White House said in a statement following the meeting.



United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 was passed after a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 and calls for the disarmament of the Shi'a Muslim group – but despite the presence of a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, it has yet to be enforced.



Hariri's first official visit to the United States took place against a backdrop of tensions in the Middle East, U.S. efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and growing momentum toward new international sanctions on Iran, Hezbollah's major backer.



Lebanon and Syria have said they fear a possible attack by Israel after President Shimon Peres accused Syria in April of supplying Hezbollah with long-range Scud missiles capable of hitting major Israeli cities. Damascus has denied the charge and accused Israel of fomenting war.



Some U.S. officials have expressed doubt that any Scuds were actually handed over in full to Hezbollah, although they believe Syria might have transferred weapons parts.



"We obviously have grave concerns about the transfer of any missile capability to Hezbollah through Lebanon from Syria," a senior Obama administration official said on Friday, saying the issue would likely be raised in Monday's talks.



Hariri has also denied Israel's accusations, while his government has said it backs the right of the guerrilla group to keep its weapons to deter Israeli attacks. Israel has not signaled any imminent plans to strike.



Earlier Hariri met U.S. Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell, who made clear that the Obama administration hoped Lebanon would play a major role in an eventual regional peace deal with Israel.



"I told Prime Minister Hariri that I hope to renew our dialogue in Lebanon in the not-too-distant future," Mitchell said after the meeting. "I look forward to working closely with him and having the benefit of his counsel in our quest for comprehensive Middle East peace."



He said: "Over the past four decades Lebanon has struggled to survive as a beacon of pluralism and tolerance in a neighborhood that has grown increasingly volatile and dangerous."



Mitchell reassured Hariri that peace between Israel and the Palestinians would not force Lebanon to absorb Palestinian refugees, who form a large contingent of the country's population.



"We have made it clear - and I repeated to the Prime Minister today - that comprehensive peace cannot and must not include the forced naturalization of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon," Mitchell said.



Apparently trying to keep the spotlight off Middle East tensions, the White House limited press coverage of the meeting to letting news photographers into the Oval Office at the end of the session. There were no plans for the leaders to appear together for public statements.



Lebanon's changing role



Despite the recent war of words that has heightened tensions in the region, UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Michael Williams, noted on Friday "that recent tension is now diminishing."



Williams, who held talks with Hariri in Beirut, was quoted by the prime minister's office as saying he was pleased "that all sides have scaled back the rhetoric."



Obama and Hariri also discussed U.S.-led international efforts to isolate Iran over its disputed nuclear program, officials said. Lebanon holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council through May 31.



Diplomats said Beirut had quietly asked the permanent members of the Security Council -Britain, France, Russia, China and the United States - not to push for a vote on a new Iran sanctions resolution while it held the presidency.



Lebanon is expected to abstain in any vote because Iranian-backed Hezbollah is in its government, diplomats said.



Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Lebanon no longer enjoyed the status it had under the Bush administration, when it was the "fulcrum" of efforts to spread democracy in the Middle East.



The Obama administration's Middle East policy is more focused on the nuclear stand-off with Iran, war in Afghanistan, and reviving the Middle East peace process, he said.



Nevertheless, the United States has expanded military assistance to Lebanon to strengthen its armed forces as a counterweight to Hezbollah, allocating 500 million euros to training and equipping Lebanese security forces since 2005.
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6)Report: EU may cut aid to PA if talks fail

The EU could reconsider the amount of aid it provides to
the Palestinian Authority if no progress is made in peace talks, EU
diplomats reportedly said Monday, as officials meet to discuss the next
seven-year budget.

The aid, approximately 300 million euros, is meant to prepare the PA for a
peace treaty with Israel that would provide them with a sovereign state, but
"if that isn't coming then I can see a number of questions," said Christian
Berger, the EU's representative in Jerusalem, according to the Reuters news
agency.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, financial assistance to the
PA and Palestinian people constitutes the EU's highest per capita foreign
aid program. Its seven-year budget, which will end in 2013, partly funds UN
support projects.

Additionally, funds are transferred via the EU's PEGASE program which has
contributed to PA salaries and pensions, as well as providing financial
assistance to Palestinian families below the poverty line and encouraging
the growth of small businesses in the West Bank.

A delegation from the European Parliament is visiting Israel and the
Palestinian territories this week and would certainly be asking "if at the
end of the day we don't have a state, then what are we doing with the
money," Berger added, Reuters wrote.

EU Ambassador to Israel Andrew Standley said discussions on the next
seven-year budget would start soon and focus on how best to spend the money.

Israeli and Palestinian officials recently re-entered indirect talks
mediated by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, with the Obama
administration calling on the meetings to swiftly move on to direct
negotiations, which were broken off in December 2008 when Israel launched
Operation Cast Lead.

"If there's a breakthrough then I guess there's a likelihood that our
support will be increased," Berger told reporters at a briefing of EU
delegation heads.

Berger added that Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's plans for the creation of
institutions in preparation for a state, which receive EU support and
funding, were on track and the PA was "performing better than some states
are states already."

In January, Fayyad rebuffed rumors that the EU would slice its funding to
the PA if no new developments are achieved in the peace process. "I have no
idea about this issue at all," Fayyad said at the time.
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7)The fruits of weakness
By C. KRAUTHAMMER


Last week’s uranium deal maneuver between Iran, Brazil and Turkey demonstrates how traditional US allies have decided that there’s no profit in lining up with a president given to apologies and appeasement.

It is perfectly obvious that Iran’s latest uranium maneuver, brokered by Brazil and Turkey, is a ruse. Iran retains more than enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. And it continues enriching at an accelerated pace and to a greater purity (20 percent). Which is why the French Foreign Ministry immediately declared that the trumpeted temporary shipping of some Iranian uranium to Turkey will do nothing to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

It will, however, make meaningful sanctions more difficult. America’s proposed Security Council resolution is already laughably weak – no blacklisting of Iran’s central bank, no sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas industry, no nonconsensual inspections on the high seas. Yet Turkey and Brazil – both current members of the Security Council – are so opposed to sanctions that they will not even discuss the resolution. And China will now have a new excuse to weaken it further.

But the deeper meaning of the uranium-export stunt is the brazenness with which Brazil and Turkey gave cover to the mullahs’ nuclear ambitions and deliberately undermined US efforts to curb Iran’s program.

The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

THAT PICTURE – a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam – is a crushing verdict on President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost in lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a US president given to apologies and appeasement.

They’ve watched Obama’s humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed US negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant US strategic advance in the region in 30 years.


They’ve watched America acquiesce to Russia’s re-exerting sway over Eastern Europe, over Ukraine (pressured by Russia last month into extending for 25 years its lease of the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol) and over Georgia (Russia’s de facto annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer an issue under the Obama “reset” policy).

They’ve watched our appeasement of Syria, Iran’s agent in the Arab Levant – sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it tightens its grip on Lebanon, supplies Hizbullah with Scuds and intensifies its role as the pivot of the Iran-Hizbullah-Hamas alliance. The price for this ostentatious flouting of the US and its interests? Ever more eager US “engagement.”

They’ve observed the administration’s gratuitous slap at Britain over the Falklands, its contemptuous treatment of Israel, its undercutting of the Czech Republic and Poland and its indifference to Lebanon and Georgia. And in Latin America, they see not just US passivity as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez organizes his anti-American “Bolivarian” coalition while deepening military and commercial ties with Iran and Russia. They saw active US support in Honduras for a pro-Chavez would-be dictator seeking unconstitutional powers in defiance of the democratic institutions of that country.

This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat – accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum.

Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It’s the perfect fulfillment of Obama’s adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. Hence his foundational declaration at the UN General Assembly last September that “no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation” (guess who’s been the dominant nation for the last two decades?) and his dismissal of any “world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another.” (NATO? The West?)

Given Obama’s policies and principles, Turkey and Brazil are acting rationally. Why not give cover to Ahmadinejad and his nuclear ambitions? As the US retreats in the face of Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela, why not hedge your bets? There’s nothing to fear from Obama, and everything to gain by ingratiating yourself with America’s rising adversaries. After all, they actually believe in helping one’s friends and punishing one’s enemies. – The Washington Post
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8)Real Marines Don't Lie
By Kathleen Parker

WASHINGTON -- I have a thing for Marines, always have. It began a long time ago when I watched my older brother amble away in the night toward his barracks at Camp Pendleton near San Diego.

I cried myself dry that evening, thinking that I might not see him again, knowing that the next morning he was off to Vietnam. Khe Sanh, his ultimate destination, might as well have been another planet. As it turns out, it was Hell.


Jack came home eventually, a different boy than the one who left. Still just a teenager, he was leaner and meaner. His eyes gave nothing away. When our father and I visited Jack in the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, where he was being treated for "battle fatigue" and other afflictions, we stuck to safe subjects: college, cars and girls, his primary interests at that point.

To this day, I've yet to hear any stories of war from him, nor, for that matter, from any of the men in my family, all of them veterans of various conflicts. A few scattered pictures of tough boys sporting knives and guns occasionally find their way to the top of a shoe box, but there are no videos or journals, no displays of purple hearts.

Like most veterans, with a few notable exceptions, my brother has expressed no desire to revisit that time and place, nor any need to boast of his exploits. When you've witnessed the horrors of war, you apparently don't need to tell anyone.

All of these thoughts surfaced as I pondered Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general recently infamous for exaggerating his role as a Marine reservist during the Vietnam era. At various times, he has accurately said that he wore the uniform during that period; other times, he has said that he wore the uniform in Vietnam. In fact, he received several draft deferments while a student at Harvard and Cambridge, and enlisted in the Marines only when those deferments were running out.

And, he did falsely and knowingly imply that he was a combat veteran. The question is why? And what should voters make of it when they go to the polls?

Blumenthal, a Democrat, is running to fill retiring Sen. Chris Dodd's seat. His fiercest opponent has been Republican Linda McMahon, who says her campaign assisted with a New York Times investigation into Blumenthal's false claims. As an unintended consequence, McMahon's involvement may have provided momentum to her principal Republican rival, former Rep. Rob Simmons, who did serve in Vietnam and received two bronze stars.

On a certain level, it is gratifying that those who served in America's most unpopular war -- and who were vilified back home -- now can enjoy some measure of pride in their service. But the humility common among heroes is in scant evidence these days, and selective memory has rarely been so repugnant.

Blumenthal isn't the first to exaggerate his service, of course. "Stolen Valor" is the title of a book that chronicles phony heroes falsely claiming to have served in Vietnam.

There is, indeed, something unique about the Vietnam era that haunts a generation. All are familiar with the deep divisions that brought students to riot, leaving four dead at Kent State, and others to trek to Canada. The draft was the Maginot Line of America's heart, and too many of the unlucky never came home.

Who knows what motivated Blumenthal to stretch his truth? Perhaps it was survivor's guilt.

"There is nothing that binds Marines together like combat and, if you missed it, I can understand that he (Blumenthal) may have actually convinced himself he was there," my brother wrote in an e-mail. "But those who served in combat consider Marines who did not the same brothers, regardless. We are a team and those in the rear are just as important as those on the line."

The deception, as always, is something else. Blumenthal had every right under the law to seek deferments. He had every right to be proud of his service during the Vietnam era. But he did not have the right to build personal equity on the borrowed suffering of others.

Had he gone to Vietnam, as he apparently thinks he should have, he would have learned that, and this: Real heroes never brag, and real Marines don't lie.


8a)Feeding America's twilight
By Colin McNickle

Something is in dangerous intellectual disrepair in America. And if we don't fix it, America will be lost.

Here are just a few of the scores of examples:

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called ObamaCare "an entrepreneurial bill" that should encourage Americans to be "creative," and be, say, "a musician." Quit your job, she urged; "focus on your talent" and don't worry about not having health care.

Perhaps that's because other hardworking, tax-paying schmucks are paying for this freeloader's socialist care?

• The Obama administration, in its formal response to the several states' class action lawsuit over ObamaCare, has invoked the Commerce and General Welfare clauses as its constitutional warrant to force people to buy health insurance (and, on this slippery slope, whatever else the government damn well commands).

But James Madison, father of the Constitution, clearly stated (in Federalist 41 in 1788) that the General Welfare Clause is applicable only to the 21 items listed in Article I, Section 8. There's nothing about the federal government forcing you to buy health insurance.

And the Commerce Clause, reminded University of Texas law professor Calvin H. Johnson (in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal in 2004), applied strictly to "specific mercantilist proposals related to deep-water shipping and foreign trade." Interstate commerce hardly was a significant issue in the original debates, the professor reminds.

• Then there's Michael Posner, the Obama administration's assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor. During talks in China to address human rights concerns, he cited Arizona's crackdown on illegal aliens as an example of "racial discrimination." It is "a troubling trend," he said.

Let's see ... defending the Arizona border (not to mention the rule of law) from invading illegals is the moral equivalent of China murdering millions of its own people in defense of a Communist thugocracy.

Never has the imbecility of a true moron ever been on more stark display. Well, not exactly ...

• Mexican President Felipe Calderon, during last week's state visit to Washington, publicly chastised as "discriminatory" Arizona's crackdown.

Not only did President Barack Bumfuzzled fail to immediately cite Mexican law that makes illegals felons and eligible for jail time in one of Calderon's dungeons, Mr. No Gonads failed to also click his fingers and command the Secret Service to grab el presidente by the collar and escort him to the White House gates.

Then Barack the Bower hosted Calderon at a state dinner.

• Writing in Salon.com, Gabriel Winant complains of conservatives' "weird fetishism for the Constitution." 'Nuff said.

It was in 1787, as Benjamin Franklin waited to affix his John Hancock to the newly minted Constitution of the United States, that he remarked on the carving of a half sun on the back of George Washington's chair.

"I have often looked at that picture behind the president without being able to tell whether it was a rising or setting sun. Now at length I have the happiness to know that it indeed is a rising, not setting sun."

Shall the few examples of the kind of behavior and thinking that today is legion predominate and prevail, the American aurora will be but a quaint notion, replaced by a sad and tragic dusk.
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9)Don't Rule Out a Double Dip Recession
In addition to Europe's woes, we have slower growth in China and a decline in bank lending and the velocity of money in the U.S
By CHRISTOPHER WOOD

World financial markets reacted bearishly to Germany's surprise announcement last week banning "naked" short-selling of euro-zone government debt, derivatives and some financial stocks. Short selling is considered naked when it involves the sale of an asset that isn't owned by the seller and isn't borrowed to cover the position while it's held. The news disturbed investors because of the unilateral nature of Germany's action. It's also seen as a potential prelude to other antimarket actions from Germany, or for that matter the U.S. and other Western nations, where the political backlash against free markets continues.

Also causing anxiety is the ominous rise in recent weeks in the three-month London interbank offered rate (Libor), the rate the most creditworthy banks charge each other for loans. This could result in yet another European credit crisis with banks becoming increasingly unwilling to lend to each other because of the interconnected holdings of "junk" European government debt. Bank for International Settlements (BIS) data shows that European bank exposure to sovereign debt in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain totalled $2.8 trillion at the end of last year, accounting for 89% of international banks' total exposure to those countries.


Moving beyond Europe, a further negative for investors to contend with has been China's current tightening cycle; most particularly a machine-gun burst of antispeculation measures in the past two months aimed at its booming residential property market. China's leadership, worried by growing social concerns about unaffordable apartment prices, will want to see official confirmation that both residential property transactions and residential property prices are falling, as indeed is now the case. Transaction volumes are down more than 50% from the levels reached in the first half of April. Prices will soon follow.

An easing in policy toward housing by Beijing is unlikely until the end of the third quarter, though an earlier U-turn on policy is plausible in the event of a complete blowup in Europe. For this would reactivate Beijing's concerns about its business abroad. When the green light is turned on again, whenever that may be, all the empirical evidence suggests that this will translate into renewed demand for residential properties—as was also the case at the beginning of 2009, which was the last time the policy was reversed.

China's woes have served to aggravate the concerns of investors who are already negatively focused on Europe, where the Greek crisis has revealed the critical fault line of the euro-zone—namely the difficulty of having monetary union without political union.

Meanwhile, the fundamental trend in the West remains profoundly deflationary. Last week the U.S. government reported that the country's core consumer price index (CPI) inflation rate slid in April to its lowest level in 44 years.

Markets: Renewed Global Anxiety
3:46
Global markets are seeing selling pressure again as concerns about Europe's debt crisis reassert themselves. Spain's nationalization of a regional bank has contributed to the anxiety, Dow Jones Newswires's Paul Vigna and Michael Reid report.
.It is also the case that, if the U.S. headline CPI remains flat from May onwards, the year-on-year headline CPI inflation rate will then fall to 1.4% in June and zero by January from 2.2% in April. This trend will reawaken deflationary concerns prompting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to keep interest rates at zero.

Or consider Ireland, which has suffered an astonishing 16 consecutive months of price deflation. The Irish CPI fell by 2.1% year-on-year in April. This deflation action is beginning to make Japan's experience of the past 20 years look like a picnic because Ireland, unlike Japan in the 1990s, remains in fiscal contraction mode. Thus, the Irish government aims to reduce its deficit to 10% of GDP in 2011 and then to 2.9% in 2014 from 14.3% last year

Others in the euro-zone will surely follow. Spain has potentially a huge deflationary cycle to endure given its level of consumer leverage and the degree of anticipated fiscal tightening. Spain's household debt-to-GDP ratio was 83% at the end of 2009, and Spain has to refinance €165 billion of maturing government debt by the end of 2011.

For the moment Spain has only just sunk into outright price deflation. Spanish core CPI, which excludes unprocessed food and energy products, fell by 0.1% year on year in April. This is the first core CPI deflation in Spain since the data series began in August 1986. But the pattern looks set to endure, and this is in a country that already has 20% unemployment.

Meanwhile, in America bank lending continues to decline as does the velocity of money in circulation. If this persists, markets will face worryingly low GDP growth in the U.S. going into 2011. It's this prospect that's begun to be discounted in the recent stock-market correction, which has already seen the S&P 500 give up all its gains for the year. This will sooner or later pave the way for another round of fiscal easing in Washington when both the Obama administration and Congress give up on their current hopes of a normal U.S. recovery.

That political mood swing will again raise the protectionist risk in Washington, with the lightning rod being the Chinese exchange rate. Beijing has been signaling that it will resume incremental appreciation of the renminbi by the middle of this year. But with the renminbi having appreciated by 24% against the euro since late November, China's leaders may be having second thoughts. A trade row between China and the U.S. on top of the growing concerns about a "double dip" in the West is the last thing markets will want to contend with. But they may have to.

Mr. Wood, equity strategist for CLSA Ltd. in Hong Kong, is the author of "The Bubble Economy: Japan's Extraordinary Speculative Boom of the '80s and the Dramatic Bust of the '90s" (Solstice Publishing, 2005).
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