Believing You Can Drink Your Own Bath Water!

Selwyn Duke offers commentary regarding Obama, Muslim faith and thoroughly thinking through the challenges. (See 1 below.)
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Ed Lasky probes deeper and offers an insightful explanation why The Democrat Party and policies of Obama are finally beginning to cause Liberal Jewish voters to flee and/or rethink their enslavement.

It was something that eventually had to occur because there was no rational explanation of their obeisance to the Democrat Party other than historical and hysterical. (See 2 below.)
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Dunn sees problems for Republicans as well as Democrats. He points out Republicans are likely to miss another opportunity to roll back bad policies because their behaviour is: "... all too typical of [a] party that has become used to the status of whipped dog of American politics." (See 3 below.)
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Iran continues to rattle, prepare and build! (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Bury Keynes Voodooism before it buries us all. (See 5 below.)
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Is Obama overrated and does he have poor political instincts?

I have said all along, Obama's problem is that he believes he can drink his own bath water.

Obama was oversold like toothpaste that would prevent cavities, make teeth white and eliminate bad breath. Now we are discovering that Obama has flaws, has pressed policies upon us that have not worked, cost more than is rational and he is not the great communicator many led themselves to believe he was. Consequently, they are now questioning former assumptions.

Obama is probably not as a religious as he professes and whether he is a Muslim , or whatever, is really not the issue. He has portrayed himself as sympathetic to Muslim concerns, has bowed to Muslim rulers and that has turned many people off. He also chose not to speak to The Boy Scouts on their 100th birthday and that has deepened suspicions of where his American spirit lies. He is no Reagan and is very above the neck which also leaves a lot of people flat.

In a very short time, Obama has become his own worst enemy and that makes him vulnerable to being a donkey on which many are willing to pin their grievances. His own blame shifting pronouncements have also made him suspect so it is not surprising people are now questioning his sincerity on a variety of levels.

As for myself, I don't give a damn what religion Obama espouses to believe. I am, and have always been, far more interested in his policies and their economic impact because Americans are, by and large, hard working decent public spirited beings. We are optimists and we are now fighting mad this president is proving less than many expected they were buying.

I personally am also displeased with his attitude towards Israel, his apparent diffidence towards other various allies and I also suspect he will be less than honest about his intentions and actions to thwart Iran, N Korea and radical Islamists in general.

Obama may sincerely believe turning the other cheek is a workable policy but history proves otherwise and an economically weakened America is a threat to world peace and order and that seems to be where he is taking us.

As for the Mosque issue, I believe it is an act of insensitivity and has nothing to do with Constitutional Rights regarding religion. This is magnified by the fact that every Muslim nation has proven less than hospitable towards people of other religions. It might not be right that innocent Muslims are reaping what their more radical brethren have sown but humans have strong feelings when it comes to perceiving they are having their collective faces rubbed in it.

Being Jewish, I am also very sensitive to believing my actions are a reflection on my community and I try to conduct myself accordingly. I am sure if Israelis flew airplanes into American buildings it would not sit well nor should it and there would be a price to pay. That's life. (See 6 below.)
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This was sent to me by a dear friend, tennis player and fellow memo reader.

Do not monkey with him!"


The Monkey Experiment


"Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes the attempt with same result, all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another
Monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the
Stairs.

To his shock, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.

The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing all of the original monkeys, one at a time, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

Why not?

Because as far as they know, that is the way it has always been done around here.

And that, my fellow Democrat and Republican monkeys, is how Congress operates....
We need to REPLACE all the original monkeys at once this November."
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--Dick

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1)The Truth about Obama's Muslim 'Faith'
By Selwyn Duke

Now that Barack Obama has decided to be for the Ground Zero mosque before being implicitly against it (perhaps), discussion about his faith has once again reached a fever pitch. To many, his stance proves he's a Muslim, with a recent poll showing that almost 20 percent of Americans hold that opinion; to others, it just reflects a desire to be faithful to the Constitution (now, that would be change). The truth, however, is a bit more nuanced. Obama is not religiously Muslim. Culturally, though...well, that's a different matter altogether.


In reality, calling Obama a "Muslim" gives him too much credit. As G.K. Chesterton once said, "We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end." The truth, however, is that few people have thought thoroughly and to a definite end. And Obama is no exception. He hasn't even thought matters through enough to understand the folly of statism. Even more to the point, he is a moral relativist, a position the antithesis of any absolutist faith. Inherent in Islam is that belief that Allah, not man, has authored right and wrong and that, consequently, it isn't a matter of opinion. Thus, Obama cannot truly believe in Islam -- or in Christianity or Judaism, for that matter.


Oh, and since some will ask, how do I know Obama is a relativist? It's simple: Virtually all leftists are, as the denial of moral reality that is relativism lies at the heart of liberalism.


Speaking of relativists, this matter of Obama's "faith" much reminds me of Adolf Hitler and paganism. Like Obama, Hitler sometimes feigned a belief in Christianity, but in reality he held the religion in contempt. He believed it was "the greatest trick the Jews ever played on Western civilization" and lamented that it was not a warrior creed like Islam or the ancient Germanic paganism with which the Nazis wanted to replace Christianity (I wrote about this here). Yet while Hitler's second in command, Heinrich Himmler, certainly believed in the ancient pagan myths -- going so far as to launch expeditions to the Far East to prove them, à la Raiders of the Lost Ark -- it's silly to think that the leader himself viewed them as anything but a utilitarian device. He wasn't quite that romantic.


But what about culturally? For sure, Hitler preferred seeing Swastikas and runes (respectively, pagan symbols and letters) to crosses and crèches, rebuilt Germanic pagan temples to churches. That was where his passions lay. (If some are upset at a comparison between Hitler and Obama, know that I'd never call the president a National Socialist. He's an international socialist. Also, Hitler was patriotic.)


Obama also has passions, and there is no question as to where they lie. As journalist Todd Fitchette wrote in "The un-faith of Obama,"


... he continues to openly praise Islam; he bows to Muslim leaders; he claims that the Muslim call to prayer is "the most beautiful sound in the world;" he regularly quotes from the Koran and cites it for directing his life; ...


In the past year alone he made a big deal out of hosting a celebratory dinner to open the month of Ramadan -- held in the state dining room; he refused to attend the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts (an avowed Christian organization), and, refused to attend the National Day of Prayer because he claimed to do so would be offensive to non-Christians.


Then there is that king of Freudian slips, when Obama matter-of-factly said to interviewer George Stephanopoulos, "You're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith," and he didn't seem headed for a correction until Stephanopoulos interjected. (Note: This doesn't contradict my assertion that Obama has no real faith. Nancy Pelosi has spoken of her Catholic faith, but, as she is also a relativist, it can be nothing more than part of her cultural tapestry.)


And are Obama's passions surprising? He spent some of his formative years in the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, where he was registered as a Muslim in both schools he attended and sometimes prayed on Fridays in a mosque. Moreover, there is another factor, one most people don't consider.


As many know, there once was a great boxer named Cassius Clay. He converted to Islam in 1964, seemingly bothered that Jesus was portrayed as "a white with blond hair and blue eyes," as he put it, and took the name "Muhammad Ali." Of course, the irony of this is that despite being intensely aware of his slave roots, Ali rejected the name of an abolitionist (Clay) and took the name of a slave-owner (Muhammad). It also perhaps eluded him that Christians were the first ones to outlaw slavery, while Muslims give black Africans rope and chains to this day.


But I mention this because Ali's path is a common one in the black community; it is why we've long had the Black Muslims and why Islamic names are so common among American blacks. Many blacks have bought the bill of goods that Christianity is the white man's religion, the faith of oppressors. And they embrace Islam as part of a rejection of "white" society.


Obviously, being part of this milieu could only have reinforced Obama's affinity for things Muslim and antipathy for things authentically Christian -- of which Western civilization is one. And if Americans hadn't been brainwashed with political correctness, they would understand this. With foreign and domestic Muslim influence; attendance at a Black Liberation Theology, pseudo-Christian church; and alliances with ex-terrorists and declared communists, Obama perfectly fits the profile of an America-hater. The wolf never really wore sheep's clothing; it's just that Americans had wool pulled over their eyes.


As for Obama's eyes, they cannot look heavenward when they're so busy looking down on little people who "cling to guns and religion." I sense that Obama is a certain kind of person, one much like Hitler -- who wanted to create a new German pagan religion with himself at its center -- in a particular sense. This type of person essentially says the following to God: "The universe just isn't big enough for the two of us." And his little world certainly isn't, filled to all corners as it is with his bloated, power-hungry ego. This, by the way, has been acknowledged by more honest secularists. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century poster boy for atheism who is rumored to have been a philosopher (in reality, he is someone who helped discredit the field), once said through his version of Zarathustra, "If there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God? Therefore there can be no gods." I have a feeling that Obama cannot endure it to be no god.


It is, again, unwise to give Obama too much credit. Good faith is defined as "an act of the will informed by the intellect," and any kind of faith requires submission to something higher than yourself. Obama is neither that intellectual nor that humble. But all humans have passions, and his aren't hard to discern. He is anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Christian (the traditional variety), anti-white, and anti-life. He is more comfortable dining with Bill Ayers than with the Queen of England, more internationalist than nationalist, and perhaps more at home in Dar al-Islam than Dar al-Harb. He has lived abroad and traveled much, but he is a lover of nations like a Casanova is a lover of women: He has known many but loves, and is faithful to, none -- not even the one to which he should be married. He is a cultural traitor, and as Cicero said two thousand years ago, "A murderer is less to be feared."


To quote Chesterton again, "There was a time when men weren't very sure of themselves, but they were very sure of what the truth was. Now men are very sure of themselves but not at all sure of what the truth is." The latter describes Obama. If he does have faith, it is in himself. And that is a faith terribly misplaced.
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2)Why Jews are Deserting Obama and the Democrats
By Ed Lasky

One little-noticed trend that speaks volumes: the decline in Democratic Party identification and support for Barack Obama from American Jews, once among their most reliable and enthusiastic backers.


There has been a steady drip-drip-drip of Jews leaving the Democratic Party, most recently noted by the Pew Research Center. This has caused consternation among the usual suspects -- among them, the National Jewish Democratic Council and New York Times columnist and uber-liberal Charles Blow, who commented just a few days ago:

In a Pew Research Center report issued on Thursday and entitled "Growing Number of Americans Say Obama Is a Muslim" (tragic in its own right), there was another bit of bad news for Obama: the number of Jews who identify as Republican or as independents who lean Republican has increased by more than half since the year he was elected. At 33 percent it now stands at the highest level since the data have been kept. In 2008, the ratio of Democratic Jews to Republican Jews was far more than three to one. Now it's less than two to one.


This is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel, while taking "special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world," as Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, put it in June. If that sounds like courtship, it is.


With all due respect to Mr. Blow, this shifting dynamic is a bit more complicated than blaming it all on Barack Obama's harsh treatment of Israel.


Blow's simplistic approach suggests the ugly issue of dual loyalty. Most Jews are not single-issue voters, and Israel is not the top concern of most Jews. This fact has not escaped the notice of pro-Israel groups in America, which are often at wit's end to generate pro-Israel feelings among American Jews. Yet Blow and others seem to want to focus on Israel. Hispanics aren't accused of putting their home countries above America when they march for immigration "reform"; Poles aren't criticized when they express pride in their homeland, and they were among the fiercest domestic foes of the Soviet Union (these include Zbigniew Brzezinski, who routinely all but charges Jews with dual loyalty but omits his own role in bringing the Taliban to power in Afghanistan as a way to weaken the Soviet Union to the point where it had to eventually stop occupying his homeland). The political correctness that is the guiding principle at the New York Times apparently does not extend to American Jews. Be that as it may, Jews are as American as everyone else and focus on domestic concerns when they vote. What they see happening under Democrat rule, they don't like.


Indeed, it can be argued that among all the groups that America can be divided into (and Obama's reign seems to be splintering America at its seams into various tribes), Jews are the ones paying the steepest price for the Democrats' policies. Many of the changes undertaken by Obama have had a disparate negative impact on American Jews.


The legacy of anti-Semitism has been a major force that has driven many Jews to become small business owners. They are in for a load of trouble in the days ahead. More onerous regulations, such as having to file many more 1099s so the IRS can make sure they get every nickel possible from Americans and a pro-union agenda that rewards unionized firms, are just the tip of the iceberg. Many small businesses are incorporated as S-corporations; these will now face onerous new taxes. Small business owners are the unsung heroes in America; they generate most of the private-sector jobs. They also lead generally very stressful lives -- trying to deal with the challenges of competition, labor relations, customer service, risks of bankruptcy. Barack Obama and the Democrats have just loaded onto their shoulders many more problems.


Jews in America are also among the highest per-capita earners. Why? Again, anti-Semitism may be a factor. This has led American Jews toward entrepreneurship and professional careers that allow them to develop talents that shield them from bosses who don't like Jews. There is also a cultural reason: Jews revere education. Many become doctors and lawyers. But this dynamic has had a toxic side-effect: it has generated anti-Semitism and slurs in the past. In any case, Jews are being surpassed by Asian-Americans, including Indian-Americans, so maybe that will recede as a problem (it already has, because Americans, despite the bleating of liberals, are among the least prejudiced people in the world).


But what won't recede is the wave of higher tax rates targeting higher-income Americans. David Drucker writes in the New York Post:


High-income people will lose many of their tax cuts under the Democrats' plan: they'll lose a large fraction of their itemized deductions including charitable gifts and mortgage interest. Their tax rate on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains will go from 15% to 20%, and the top two wage tax rates will return to 36% and 39.6% from their current levels of 33% and 35%.

Jews will get hit with multiple whammies on New Year's Day.


Higher taxes on income will be just one of them (and since many still live in New York, they will face an even worse hangover, since New York taxes are confiscatory). But higher taxes on capital gains will bring its own pain to many Jews because of a demographic fact: Jews are the oldest ethnic group in America.


Older people have often relied on the health of the stock market to cushion their retirement years. That cushion has deflated this year under the multiple blows administered by Barack Obama and the Democrats. (Much of last year's growth was due to the Federal Reserve running its printing presses overtime -- the only government branch that worked overtime last year; also, the market was just vastly oversold in the panic of 2008.) As Democrat policies took hold (the failed stimulus, ObamaCare, financial "reform"), the market started to tank because investors saw a bleak future for free enterprise in the Age of Obama. Obama's penchant for railing against Wall Street -- historically, an anti-Semitic rallying cry -- may strike the wrong chord with American Jews. Didn't the self-declared student of history who absurdly claimed that "nobody has spoken out more fiercely on that issue of anti-Semitism than I have" attend any of his history classes (or did he play hooky, as he claimed to during all those days that Jeremiah Wright broadcast his jeremiads against whites, America, and Israel?).


Also, American Jews have far fewer children on average than most groups in America. Children are expensive, but they also have historically been seen as a form of insurance by people: the kids will be there to help seniors. But if people have fewer kids, they not only have the ability to save more money (again, kids are expensive), but also must save more money to help themselves during their sunset years.


The stock market stall, combined with vastly increased taxes on capital gains and dividend income, bode ill for America's oldest "tribe": Jews.


Since I mentioned ObamaCare, one can ask, how will that impact American Jews? Not well. As noted above, many Jews are doctors. The healing arts are revered among Jews ("my son, the doctor"). ObamaCare will suppress the freedom of doctors, load them up with additional paperwork and patients, and will eventually hit their bottom line.


Furthermore, seniors are very concerned about the future of health care in America, as they should be. How welcome will be the gutting of Medicare and Medicare Advantage to fund health care for legions of younger people who can opt in and out of government-funded medical care whenever it suits them (for example, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital)? Not very -- and that includes the oldest demographic sliver in America: Jews.


These are just a few reasons why American Jews might be open to moving to the other side of the aisle. Others include a massive change in the Jewish population from the influx of Russian Jews, who abhor statist control of the economy and of their daily lives, and who revere liberty as only those who never had it before would. There has also been a surge in the Orthodox community -- and they have far more children than Reform Jews, so the Jewish population as a whole is moving inexorably more towards conservatism. They also tend -- as is true of religious Christians -- toward the redder end of the political spectrum. Simplistically and myopically blaming Obama's approach toward Israel for the "defection" of American Jews from the Democratic Party short-changes Jews and is wrong. The single-minded obsession that Jews focus only on Israel runs the risk of encouraging charges of dual loyalty, and that has led to a great deal of suffering for Jews throughout history.


A digression on the charge of dual loyalty:


Living in Chicago, I have seen the efflorescence of ethnic pride and identity politics. St. Patrick's Day brings us the greening of the Chicago River and the sprightly appearance of leprechauns. Latino Congressmen such as Luis Gutierrez make immigration reform a top priority -- even if it leads to his arrest. Chicago has a potent African-American business and political block that both propelled Barack Obama's career and gave America Oprah Winfrey. What other city in America allows kids a day off school to honor Casimir Pulaski? When the World Cup happens, I learn a great deal from the giant flags whipping from car windows. There is nothing wrong with people caring for their relatives and friends in foreign lands. But for Blow and others to point their finger at Israel as the reason Jews are leaving the Democratic Party is wrong. They should stop promoting that canard.


Jews are as American as everyone else. When they see their lives being harmed, their interests being ignored, and their dreams being dashed to death by Democrats, they respond just as other Americans do. They express their concerns and seek to protect their future in that most American of places: the voting booth.


Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
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3)GOP in Default Mode
By J.R. Dunn

It's widely acknowledged that in 2010, the Democrats are on the ropes. But just about the same could be said for the Republicans.


A few weeks ago, John Cornyn and John Boehner revealed this election's GOP platform. In a year of massive unrest, public disgust with government, and large-scale rejection of interventionist policies, the GOP will emphasize...deficits. An issue to warm an economist's heart -- and the occasional accountant's, too. Top that one, Obama.


In the wake of Scott Brown's stunning upset in Massachusetts last February, with the entire New England region open to exploitation, the GOP is doing nothing. There are no plans to challenge incumbents in New England. No money, no candidates, no program. Historical moment? Wuzzat mean?


No effort is being made to emphasize the achievements of the nation's Republican governors. Jan Brewer, Chris Christie, and Mitch Daniels, among others, are steering their states through the worst economy since the Carter '70s, pressing critical policy changes, and most important, defying Washington while they're at it. Yet the RNC knows them not.


We will merely allude to Michael Steele's perennial circus act to look beyond to 2012, where we have one announced candidate, the immortal Mr. Newt Gingrich, whose most recent sojourn is a national tour with the most Rev. Al Sharpton.


It can't be denied that the GOP is sweeping toward a historic victory, one that may even overshadow the legendary events of 1994, the Salamis of the modern Republican Party (that is, if the current party leadership doesn't throw the opportunity away at the last minute, a possibility never to be overlooked). But this owes very little to the GOP itself. It is instead due to the efforts of the individual candidates and outside parties, above all the Tea Parties, one of the most remarkable popular upsurges in American history. While the TPs are dead serious and out for blood, the Republican Party is tootling along in low gear, its slogan the soul-stirring "Business as usual!"


It's easy to trace the electoral strategy in this. The party intends to take the safe course while encouraging the Tea Parties to knock over garbage cans and tease watchdogs. But that's where the problem lies -- it is a safe strategy. It would be a smart strategy for a party that's on the run or otherwise not expecting much. But that's not the position that the Republicans should be taking in 2010. Rather than viewing the Tea Parties as allies in overturning the Democrats' Neue Ordnung, the GOP is treating them as a disposable resource. Rather than gathering all their forces for a wild, do-or-die charge on Dem strongholds, the party is sitting back and letting the chips fall where they may. This is not a formula for a lasting victory or a necessary political restoration. But it is all too typical of the party that has become used to the status of whipped dog of American politics.


For the adult lives of virtually everyone now living, the GOP has been the loser party. It got that way because of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Great Depression. Herbert Hoover, who had the unexcelled misfortune to be president when the 1929 crash occurred, responded with a grab-bag of interventionist policies -- tight credit, higher taxes, expanded tariffs -- that simply deepened the slump. Following the Bonus March fiasco, he retreated from public view, allowing himself to be caricatured as the "do-nothing" president, and was duly routed by FDR in 1932.


The GOP was routed with him. Republicans were caricatured as the Party of Wall Street, directly to blame for the nation's economic crisis. While New Deal policies failed at turning around the economy, they did convince a desperate public that the Democrats were "on their side." Operating under the aegis of the New Deal, Democratic political machines tightened control over cities across the country. The GOP's 1936 hopeful, the honorable, quixotic Alf Landon, went down to unparalleled defeat, taking the party's hopes with him. FDR settled into a twelve-year imperial reign while the Democrats held complete control of Congress until 1946.


The GOP's return to power under Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 changed little. Ike rolled back nothing, repealed no Democratic policies, and effectively acted as a caretaker for Roosevelt's legacy. (Certain liberal thinkers such as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. went so far as to claim this as the sole legitimate raison d'être for the GOP.) There was no consensus for change. Both parties had drifted considerably to the left. The "conservative" faction of the GOP was a disgruntled, reactionary rump of no significance. William F. Buckley was only beginning his career as a political firebug setting the landscape ablaze with a new, revitalized conservatism. In lieu of meaningful opposition, leftist thinking prevailed. The GOP might be slightly more business-oriented and slightly more hawkish involving defense -- but only slightly. For the better part of four decades following 1932, the GOP was for all practical purposes a junior party to the Democrats.


Both parties worked to impose centralized interventionist policies. The Republican slogan was "the same program, but slower," its major selling point the contention that it could emplace collectivist policies more "responsibly" than the Democrats. Nelson Rockefeller was the leader of this wing, which controlled the party unchallenged for two decades following WWII. Not even Richard Nixon defied this consensus. His one-and-a-half terms, in which he championed Keynesianism, the Environmental Protection Agency, higher taxes, and affirmative action, put him farther to the left than many Democrats.


Change began in the mid-'60s. The west-of-the-Mississippi GOP, not far removed from the days of the frontier, remained solidly conservative. An insurgent movement opposing Rockefeller faction control coalesced around the figure of Arizona's Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964. He was soundly beaten in the wake of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but his candidacy created the conditions for a rebirth of Republican conservatism, nurtured by Buckley's new conservative intellectualism. The conservative "Prairie Fire" culminated in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, the sole president in an eighty-year period to govern on strict Republican (one might go so far as to say "American") principles.


Reagan changed the game completely. Even onetime hippie leftist Bill Clinton felt compelled to govern as a right-of-center Democrat. But both Bushes reinstated the conventional Republican paradigm of a firm foreign policy coupled with domestic policies that were anything but -- not a good sign.


Congress took longer to adjust, with many of the Rockefeller branch (today termed "RINOs") remaining in office through the Reagan years. That began to change in 1994, with a masterful tactical victory engineered by the same Newt Gingrich today cavorting with Al Sharpton. But Gingrich's victory soon foundered on the rocks of his own ego, leaving the party under the control of impotent figures preoccupied with their own agendas while the party as a whole spiraled into blatant corruption -- again in direct imitation of the Democrats. The election of 2006 was a deserved rebuke for this dereliction.


In the 21st century, the GOP has fallen back to its ground state as the loser party, a shadow party that has learned its lesson -- submissive, cautious, and unwilling to take chances. (Shortly after the 1994 election, it was discovered that Democratic committee staffers were not being replaced. Asked to explain, an anonymous Republican said that if they allowed the staffers to remain, when the Democrats returned to office, perhaps they'd remember and do the Republicans a few favors. Nothing could illustrate the basic spinelessness of the traditional GOP more clearly.) John Cornyn has already stated that the party will make no attempt to repeal ObamaCare. If the GOP won't tear down that monstrosity, what good is the GOP? The current Republican Party is tired, frightened, and lacking ideas, no fit war wagon for the struggles that lie ahead.


But a wild card remains -- the Tea Parties. American political culture has never been limited, as it is in Europe, to a professional elite that makes the deals and then imposes them on the prole class. In this country the people speak, as they are speaking today. Obama has governed so ineptly, arrogantly, and stupidly as to arouse disgust in people who until now have been happy to ignore politics.


The Tea Parties are not Republican. They're not even necessarily conservative as we have grown to recognize the term. But they are American in spirit, and thus de facto conservative. They must turn to the GOP as a political vessel because they have nowhere else to turn.


The politically independent, philosophically conservative Tea Partiers will win the upcoming election for the GOP. Once that's taken care of, the current Republican leadership will do its best to put distance between the GOP and the Tea Parties, the quicker to return to their loser's slumber.


What's the alternative? Not a future as a third party. Third parties as a rule have a miserable record, from the forgotten John Anderson and H. Ross Perot, who can proudly proclaim that he put Bill Clinton into the presidency on two separate occasions, to the perennial embarrassment of the Libertarians, happily acting as tools for the Dems. If formed into an acting political party, as some are urging, the Tea Parties would probably do little better. (In any case, recent reports indicate that attempts to run "Tea Party" candidates are actually front operations overseen by the Democrats.)


But what future do they have in the GOP full of untrustworthy pols yearning for a return to the old days of well-rewarded ideological servitude? The answer may well be to reverse the equation: for the Tea Parties to use the GOP as a resource.


There are already a number of Republican Tea Partiers, people who believe the same things and share the same goals. Michele Bachmann and Mike Pence are the best-known of these. Next January, they will be joined by a large number of newly-elected politicians who owe their success not to the GOP, but to the Tea Parties. This substantial group could serve as a kernel around which a program of internal conservative reform can be carried out, much as the Goldwater backers did in the 1960s. They will not simply be new recruits, or another faction, but something on the order of a driving wheel for a party that lacks one. It's interesting that Bachmann has already formed a Tea Party Caucus -- exactly what you'd expect of someone with such plans in mind.


The Tea Party could turn the GOP into a vibrant political entity worthy of the new millennium rather than merely a group of tired hacks rubber-stamping the social changes mandated by the Democrats and awarding themselves earmarks. It's possible to view this as a historical imperative, a broad-based citizens' movement fulfilling the promise of the incomplete Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich revolutions.


Even if the Tea Parties fail in rejuvenating the GOP, they could utilize the party as a chrysalis in which to grow and expand until, some time in the near future -- perhaps eight or ten years from today -- they are established enough to emerge as a viable third party, leaving the husk of the GOP behind, much as the Republicans left the Whigs in the 1850s. Either course is viable. Either would offer us a way out of the current impasse of twin parties growing more and more to resemble a political oligarchy in the purest and least democratic sense.

J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker and will edit the forthcoming Military Thinker.
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4)Iran: If attacked our response will be wide-ranging and unpredictable
Iran Revolutionary Guards unveil new high-speed missile-carrying vessels, latest in series of recent additions to country's military arsenal.

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi warned Monday that his country would show a wide-range of reactions in face of a possible attack, adding that the extent would be unpredictable, the Iranian news agency ISNA reported on Monday.

“We will show a very wide-range reaction in case of any military strike which would come due to foolishness and ignorance, our reaction cannot be predicted by the enemy,” he said during an unveiling ceremony of two domestic boats.

During the unveiling, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps inaugurated production lines for two high-speed vessels, the latest in a series of recent additions to the country's arsenal.

The Seraj and Zolfaqar vessels are to be armed with missiles and torpedoes, state media reported.

The production lines were launched in a ceremony attended by Vahidi and Revolutionary Guards navy commander Admiral Ali Fadavi.

Fadavi said that the Zolfaqar vessel would be the best in its class worldwide. The craft is to be capable of traveling at a speed of up to 70 knots (130 kilometers per hour), and would be suitable for both patrol and offensive missions, the admiral said.

The Seraj vessel is to be equipped with state-of-the-art technology, reports said.

Iran's defense ministry has in recent weeks displayed several new military projects, including submarines, surface-to-surface missiles and drones.

On Sunday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled the country's first domestically made drone, the Karar, which has range of 1,000 kilometers and is armed.

Ahmadinejad said that the drone could be "an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, but at the same time a messenger of salvation, peace and friendship in the avoidance of conflicts and aggression."

Iran last week also test fired the new generation of the surface-to-surface Qiam-1 missile, described as a huge step in missile development by the defense ministry.

The armed forces have increased their maneuvers in the wake of renewed speculation about possible Israeli airstrikes against the country's nuclear sites.

Tehran says its army is not trained to attack another country, but the West fears Iran could launch a missile strike against Israel, especially with its Shahab missiles, which reportedly have a range of 2,000 kilometers, making them capable of reaching any part of the Jewish state.


4a)Iran unveils missile-launching boats


Iran began mass production on two missile-launching assault boats to patrol the country's coastline and shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported on Monday, according to AFP.

IRNA said that the Zolfaqar missile-launching vessel can be used for patrol as well as attack operations, having a "high destructive power."

The beginning of production came as part of Iran's "government week," in which the Islamic Republic traditionally unveils its most recent technological advancements.

On Sunday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad introduced an unmanned drone bomber which he dubbed the "ambassador of death."

Speaking to a group of officials Ahmadinejad said, "The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship."

The 4-meter long unmanned plane, dubbed as Karrar or striker, was inaugurated by Ahmadinejad on Sunday - the national day for the country's defense industry- in a ceremony aired live on state TV.

The goal of the aircraft is to "keep the enemy paralyzed in its bases," he said, adding that the jet is for deterrence and defensive purposes.

The president championed the country's military self-sufficiency program, and said it will continue "until the enemies of humanity lose hope of ever attacking the Iranian nation."

Referring to Israel's occasional threats against Iran's nuclear facilities, Ahmadinejad called any attack unlikely, but he said if Israel did, the reaction would be overwhelming.

"The scope of Iran's reaction will include the entire the earth," said Ahmadinejad. "We also tell you — the West — that all options are on the table
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5) Bury Keynesian Voodoo Before It Can Bury Us All: Kevin Hassett
By Kevin Hassett - Aug 22, 2010 9:00 PM ET

Initial claims for unemployment benefits surged to 500,000 in mid-August, a level more typical of a recession than a recovery. The bad news confirmed what conservative economists have been saying for some time: The biggest Keynesian stimulus in U.S. history was a bust.

Incredibly, some Keynesians who supported Barack Obama’s $862 billion stimulus now claim it fell short of their goals not because the idea was flawed, but because the spending package was too small. Christina Romer, the departing chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, has become a minor cult hero to the Keynesians, thanks to news reports that said her analysis in 2009 suggested the stimulus should be in the range of $1.2 trillion, or 40 percent larger than it turned out to be.

The notion that a much-larger U.S. stimulus would have been more successful isn’t backed up by evidence. Maybe there would be an argument if some countries were now booming because their stimulus packages were larger. Or if some previous U.S. administration had tried a bigger stimulus and had better luck.

The fact is, the U.S. stimulus was the largest among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the biggest ever tried in the U.S.

Nor does the academic literature support what we might call these Not-Enough Keynesians.

A 2002 study by economists Richard Hemming, Selma Mahfouz and Axel Schimmelpfennig of recessions in 27 developed economies from 1971 to 1998 found that increased spending by government had, in almost all cases, a barely noticeable impact, and sometimes a negative one. Heavily indebted countries that spent more in recessions grew about 0.5 percent less, relative to trend, than countries that didn’t, the study found.

Ask Joe

Why is the left so profoundly committed to stimulus-by- spending, even though there is scant evidence that it succeeds?

Joe the Plumber knows the answer: The left has become religiously Keynesian because that is the only corner of economics consistent with its redistributive ideology.

You remember Joe. During a campaign stop in the 2008 presidential election, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher asked Obama whether higher taxes would punish his business. Obama answered in part, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Obama’s words captured Democrats’ ideology: outside of fairy tales, only government can play Robin Hood, taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor.

The problem, of course, is that high tax rates inevitably cause economic harm. Such a link is at the core of economics. If you reduce the reward for an activity, you get less of it. Democrats and the economists who serve them deny that harm so they can spread the wealth around.

The Tax Alternative

If the economy is in deep trouble, there are two economic policy steps that one could take in order to create a positive stimulus: reduce tax rates, or spend more money. (The so-called tax cuts in the 2009 stimulus had little effect because they were primarily credits and deductions, rather than reductions in marginal rates.)

But notice the problem for the Robin Hooders: If you cut tax rates in a recession in order to stimulate the economy, then you are conceding that lower tax rates can be a good thing. And if that’s true, then higher tax rates will be harmful -- something the left has always denied.

So the Obama economic team was left to rely totally on spending in its response to the recession.

Bad Medicine

Supporters of this type of stimulus are either unfamiliar with the literature or willing to ignore it. The result is policy that is harmful to our country and inconsistent with modern economic science. If the Obama economic team were medical doctors, they would be pushing the use of medicine not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

As the economic data again head south, it will be much harder to devise successful economic policies because of the budgetary hole that the Keynesians have dug for us.

In all likelihood, the data will soon be so convincingly bad that we’ll again debate the need for an economic stimulus. Let’s hope that when that begins, all will finally concede that the ideas of John Maynard Keynes are as dead as the man himself, and that Keynesianism is the real voodoo economics.

Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.
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6)Obama's Poor Politicking
By David Paul Kuhn

CNN political analyst Gloria Borger recently posed a question: "How does the great communicator, Barack Obama, lose a communications battle?"

The assumption is revealing. The Obama hyperbole has gradually faded into reality. Said to be a brilliant politician. Said to be a great communicator. The conventional perceptions of Obama were flawed from the outset. The political class has gradually come to recognize those flaws in isolation. But enough aberrations construct a norm. The presumed exceptions become the rule. And in time, the premises themselves require reexamination.


Obama's mismanagement of the debate over Park51, the Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero, is a window into the president we have come to know. This is not a matter of man versus myth. It's man versus man. It's now plainly silly to place Obama beside the great communicators of the television age. He's no Reagan or Kennedy, in this sense. But this mosque incident, like so many incidents before it, also raises deeper questions. Does Obama simply have poor political instincts?

There is the failure to seize upon, if not lead, during defining moments. There was the cool response to the AIG bonuses early on. There was the BP disaster this summer.

There was the bad theater. The expressions of American mistakes abroad. Not said from a position of strength. But said at a time when America was confronting its own national weakness.

There were the impotent uses of power. The fruitless chase of GOP moderates on healthcare. The failed attempt to push out the New York governor. The presumptuous firing of Shirley Sherrod. The inability to manage Charlie Rangel.

There were the unforced errors. Many with deep cultural resonance. The "bitter" slip during the 2008 campaign. Last summer's cop and prof circus. Now the Muslim Park51 mess.

Why did Park51 become such a mess? Obama defended the right to have the mosque near Ground Zero. But the day after, he refused to comment on whether it was right. By midweek, Obama said he had no regrets. The law professor would not further incriminate himself.

Obama could have taken the principled stand on the mosque. It would not have been popular. But the principled stand can outlive the popular stand. It becomes a testament to character. And that gets to grit, the central value by which all presidents are judged. Instead, Obama refused to weigh into the wisdom of building a mosque near Ground Zero. Liberals were left without the moral leadership they crave. Americans were left without the character they respect.

Nevertheless, we return to Borger's question. Where is the communicator we thought we knew? More aptly put, was he ever the man they thought they knew?

The most underestimated aspect of the 2008 campaign was the political environment. Could even a Ronald Reagan have beaten a Democrat two years ago? Unlikely. It is forgotten how clumsily Obama dealt with the rare obstacle. How difficult it was for him to deal with Sarah Palin until she imploded. How difficult it was for him to walk back the bitter remarks. How difficult it was to close the deal on Hillary Clinton. How lucky he was to campaign in a year where the economy trumped cultural issues. When his Hyde Park liberal character would not undercut his bid. Even John McCain's war heroics fell flat. It was, simply, the economy.

That too reminds us of Obama's questionable instincts on the grand scale. This is a candidate who first sustained majority support after the market crashed on September 15. Yet Obama focused his first year on myriad liberal dreams over the economic crisis. Unlike most Americans, his priorities did not change with the crisis. Obama never even offered the great speech to match this Great Recession. And that was supposedly his specialty.

It's not that Obama is bad at the trade. He simply falls far short of the hype. This is not a man "misunderestimated," to borrow a term from his predecessor. And that is partly Obama's own fault.

This is the same man who, on the cusp of his national address at the 2004 Democratic convention, told a reporter "I'm LeBron, baby." This is the president who reportedly told Democratic lawmakers "the big difference here and in '94, was you've got me." "I'm pretty good at politicking," Obama recently told supporters at a fundraiser.

To borrow from Golda Meir, no need to be so humble.

David Paul Kuhn is the Chief Political Correspondent for RealClearPolitics and the author of The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma.
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