Austerity - Can Politicians Allow It? Do They Have A Choice?

The disturbed Left! (See 1 and 1a below.)
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More Soros 'tsuris.' (See 2 below.)
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Obama and Democrats sinking into their own muck and mire.

Obama's new 'pinata' - The American Chamber of Commerce! (See 3, 3a, 3b and 3c below.)
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When you are brain washed you can and often will believe anything. (See 4 below.)
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Why is Israel practicing helicopter attacks with Greece? (See 5 below.)
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Lieberman, deemed a diplomatic bull in the china shop for telling it like it is. (See 6 below.)
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Obama and his economic plan one big failure according to this editorial.

Yesterday I referred to the 1099 saga Obamascare imposes on businesses. Let me take a page from a small business I know something about.

(See 7 below.)
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Austerity had to come it was only a matter of time.

Now that austerity is upon us can politicians allow it? Do they even have a choice? (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1)The American Left Slides Into Psychosis
By J.R. Dunn

History tells us that organizations, movements, even entire nations can go mad in much the same way an individual does, with the same expression of irrationality, frenzy, and violence. Recent evidence suggests that the American left is going through precisely such a breakdown.


In his memoir Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung, the psychiatric pioneer who was smarter than Freud, discussed a particular case history in which a patient told of a troubling dream: he was repeatedly confronted with the image of a howling feces-covered baby. Jung had no immediate explanation, and thought about little else for several days. At last the solution appeared: his patient harbored a buried psychosis, one that was in danger of emerging. To his horror, Jung realized that it must be the therapy itself that was threatening his patient's sanity. Jung was presented with the dilemma of how to cut short the analysis without allowing the patient to guess the actual reason, which might well send him into a tailspin from which he would never recover. (Freud would have kept pushing until the guy was institutionalized.)


Fortunately, on his next visit, the patient asked to curtail the treatment, giving only vague reasons. A relieved Jung concurred. The patient never returned, but Jung checked on him regularly and assured himself that the man remained whole and rational, the seed of insanity remaining safely buried for the balance of his life.


What better metaphor for the current condition of the left? Leftism suffers from an equivalent psychosis -- one that is now beginning to break out. This is not by chance but due to the ongoing collapse of the left's epic dream. Leftists have always believed that one clear shot, one opportunity to put their policies into play without opposition from "reactionary interests," would result in a political chain reaction, success leading to further success and finally absolute triumph as the New Socialist Jerusalem came into being with almost no effort on their part. This is childish fantasy, a wish-fulfillment daydream, transparent almost to the point of contempt. (It's also extremely ahistorical -- exactly such circumstances existed in 1933 and 1964 due to historical accident. Liberals botched things then exactly as they are doing now.) But for many years it has been the only thing keeping the left going.


Leftists really believed that Obama embodied their moment. Obama held all the cards -- majorities in both houses, a slavish press that viewed him as no less than a godling, an enthusiastic public, even an acquiescent international establishment, overlooking a few holdouts such as Kim and Ahmadinejad. No left-of-center president has had smoother road before him -- not FDR, not Lyndon Johnson. Yet Obama's efforts amount to utter failure. Not because of opposition from the "party of no," not because of circumstances, not because of sabotage. But because of Obama's "success" itself. He got the bills passed, guaranteed that their execution would be in the hands of extraconstitutional figures beholden only to him, and got them funded by means both legal and illegal. All of it was put into play with a smoothness that only Chicago thuggery combined with socialist chicanery could accomplish. He launched them, and they crashed, and they burned.


They crashed and burned because they cannot work. Not in a universe with natural laws that operate the way they do and with human nature constituted as it is. They have never worked anywhere they have been tried -- not in Europe, not in Asia, not in Africa, nowhere across this wide world. Obama's grand schemes have been attempted previously. The failures were hurriedly stuffed down the memory hole, enabling the left to hope for another shot sometime down the line. (No small number of people in this country -- many of them not doctrinaire leftists by any means -- truly believe that FDR "ended" the Depression.)


But today they have a problem -- several, in point of fact. The first is that the memory hole has in large part been filled in over the past decade and a half by such things as the Internet and the New Media. It's no longer a simple matter to shove nationwide failures out of sight. It may not even be possible.


The second is the fact that this time they bet the house. They put everything down on Obama. Because it had to work. Because the third time was the charm. Because O was the messiah. And now they're sitting in the casino dead broke, without another dime to lay on the table, and through the doorway they can hear the shouts of the people whose money they embezzled.


This is why the left is being overwhelmed by psychosis. Because they are up against the wall with no way out. Under such circumstances the strong individual bites the bullet and runs for daylight. The weak fall apart. It's been a long, long time since anyone defined leftists as "strong."


The left's psychosis, like those of many individuals, involves violence. Simply put, no left-wing regime has ever attained complete power without causing the deaths of its own citizens on a mass scale. We need simply give a short roll call of the bloody names: the USSR, Red China, "Democratic Kampuchea," Cuba, Vietnam... these speak well enough for themselves.


Some of the mortality incurred by social-nationalist states is caused by accident -- policies that simply don't work out (this includes hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S. itself, another memory-hole saga that is going to emerge back into the light come this January). But violence is the major cause -- the ubiquitous secret police, the not at all uncommon massacres, the brutal crushing of dissidents and worker's protests, and the camp networks that no leftist government can do without. A left-wing state cannot exist without violence because there is no other method of keeping the people in line once the inevitable policy failures occur.


The policy failures are piling up in this country. So it is no coincidence to find violence breaking out in their wake.



In Philadelphia on election day in 2008, two members of the New Black Panthers planted themselves outside a polling station wearing bogus military gear, one of them armed with a nightstick. Several potential voters were chased away. The case, uncontested by the defendants, was suddenly dropped by the Justice Department. It has taken over a year to establish that the highest levels of the department ordered an end to litigation involving electoral violations by minorities. That, in other words, Panther violence was to be sponsored and encouraged at the highest levels of the federal government.

Kenneth Gladney was beaten by union goons in St. Louis in August 2009 for selling patriotic items outside a town hall meeting in an effort to supplement his unemployment payments. Gladney was worked over badly enough to be hospitalized. Legal proceedings began last April but have not progessed one iota.

In New Orleans last April, two Republican political operatives, Allee Bautsch and Joe Brown, were attacked by anarchists after leaving a GOP dinner. Both were badly beaten, Ms. Bautsch seriously enough to require hospitalization. Although the gang leader was identified from a videotape and was of distinctive appearance (he looks like a combination of the late Frank Zappa and Richard Reid, the shoe bomber), no arrests have been made.

At the "Working Together" Washington union bash this past October 2nd, a reporter for Human Events was assaulted by a female union member. Viewing the footage it's difficult to tell exactly what triggered the incident, but it's all part of the pattern. No arrest was made here either.

For well over a year, Sarah Palin and her close friend Kristan Cole have been harassed by an unbalanced individual claiming to be on some sort of mission with Biblical sanction involving the punishment of the governor and her associates. This campaign escalated to outright stalking in recent weeks when the individual sent Palin a copy of a receipt for a pistol purchase and made a threatening call to Ms. Cole from what seemed to be a local Alaska number.


Beyond the threats themselves, what's disturbing is the left-wing response. Comments on local media reports (there has been no national coverage. If Palin slipped a soda can into the regular trash, the sky would be rent asunder amid raging headlines, editorials, jabbering talk-show hosts, and the whole nine yards. But a threatened assault on a national political figure simply doesn't rate.) feature page after page of remarks such as, "Go get her, Shawn!" (Refering to the perp), "Good luck, Shawn!" "Wish I could be there," and so on. While some of this is the standard crassness we've come to expect from leftists, some is undoubtedly intended to goad the stalker to further action.


In Houston on August 27th, on the eve of serious revelations concerning voter fraud, the warehouse containing Harris County's entire supply of voting machines burned to the ground. While unquestionably suspicious, it's difficult to tell from media reports if any real investigation is taking place.


Most recently, we have had the incident marking the full emergence of left-wing psychosis in all its mad glory: the "No Pressure" film released by the 10:10 group. Few AT readers can have missed discussion of this little gem, which features a series of vignettes in which anyone opposed to the "global warming" hoax is annihilated by a magic button that blows them to pieces on the spot. (Some may protest that the film is English -- the author, Richard Curtis, is noted for his genteel British comedies. But in truth it's international -- Gillian Anderson is American, and if you were to further trace artistic and financial involvement, you'd find plenty more Yanks in the mix.)


This is as clear a depiction of left-wing psychosis as we are ever going to see. The yearning -- of an intensity beyond the grasp of sane, normal individuals-- to possess some means of total power, some instrument of near-divine retribution and punishment. Not for personal aggrandizement or sadistic pleasure, no, not at all... but simply to remove those stones in the path of progress: the Neanderthals, the troglodytes, the reactionaries, who are standing between the people and their righteous destiny. We'll use it just a few times, only against the really bad ones, and only to make an impression. And once we do that, we'll put it aside, and never, ever touch it again, we promise....


This is infantilism, pure and simple, as all psychoses are, including the one diagnosed by Jung. A compulsive belief that the world needs to bow to the demands of the eternal child immediately and without protest. And when it doesn't -- and we can be sure it won't -- that it be punished to the limits of the imagination and beyond. This is the impulse behind leftism, stacked to the roof as it is with people who never grew out of deepest childhood, who have grown twisted and embittered in the conviction that world has let them down and must pay for it.


It is also the impulse of the tyrant from time immemorial, from the Neros and Ashurbanipals to the Stalins and Maos of our own epoch. In "Pressure" we see it expressed more clearly than ever before, by extremely talented and sophisticated people, in the expectation that it will encourage others. (Another point that struck me was the way the film mixes bloodshed with whimsy. Whimsicality -- what unfunny people have instead of a sense of humor -- has always been a mark of the left. Now it has been publicly intertwined with the impulse to kill. How sick is that?)


Some readers might find this overwrought. These are all minor incidents, well separated in time and space. But trends tend to reveal themselves as discrete incidents. We can be sure that some of these episodes are probes, carried out to test how blatantly the line can be crossed. If judged successful, then in three weeks we'd see hundreds of polling stations patrolled by Panthers, and Black Muslims, and SEIU goons. And in 2012, not one but dozens of voting machine warehouses gone up in flames. And over the next few years, we'd be inundated with commercials, films, and scenes of smiling, cheerful lefties beheading, gassing, vaporizing, and setting ablaze anyone who disagrees with them.


But success eludes them, and after November the left will lose its collective mind. The acting out will intensify, the assaults grow more vicious as the dream continues its collapse. Anyone who has ever stood against them -- the Tea Parties, the GOP, ordinary Americans asserting their rights -- will be targeted. It would be wise to consider methods of self-defense.


But it will come to nothing. No socialist paradise, no universal nanny government, and certainly no police state. It will come to nothing thanks to one simple fact: the American left has no spine.


Kent State, once etched in national consciousness, is now beginning its slow fade into history. It was the apotheosis of the Anti-Vietnam war movement. When in May 1970 U.S. troops entered Cambodia seeking to destroy communist bases and supply dumps being used against South Vietnam, the left went wild across the entire country. At Kent State they raged down the streets smashing windows, burning cars, and menacing passersby. There were rumors that certain unknown figures had brought in weapons, rumors that turned out to be all too true.


On May 4, someone took 4 shots at the Ohio National Guard troops protecting the campus. (This information, well understood by the investigating committee, was kept secret for forty years, being released only this year. The identity of those who suppressed it remains unknown. Obviously, such facts would have seriously embarrassed the left. Readers may draw their own conclusions.) The troops returned fire, killing four rioters on the spot. The rest broke and fled, and peace returned to the Kent State campus.


Along with the country as a whole. After Kent, the antiwar Movement collapsed. There were a few more riots, a few attempted "Days of Rage", but the revos who had terrorized the country for years suddenly found themselves isolated as the bulk of their followers discovered better things to do.


That's the left in action. Once it all turns real, once their rhetoric and activities get the response they have earned, they suddenly turn into good, obedient yuppies, concerned with their investments and their summer homes. I will be quite surprised if the results are any different this time.


J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker, and will edit the forthcoming Military Thinker.


1a)Shutting Up Business
Democrats unleash the IRS and Justice on donors to their political opponents

If at first you don't succeed, get some friends in high places to shut your opponents up. That's the latest Washington power play, as Democrats and liberals attack the Chamber of Commerce and independent spending groups in an attempt to stop businesses from participating in politics.

Since the Supreme Court's January decision in Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass legislation to repeal the First Amendment for business, though not for unions. Having failed on that score, they're now turning to legal and political threats. Funny how all of this outrage never surfaced when the likes of Peter Lewis of Progressive insurance and George Soros helped to make Democrats financially dominant in 2006 and 2008.

Chairman Max Baucus of the powerful Senate Finance Committee got the threats going last month when he asked Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman to investigate if certain tax exempt 501(c) groups had violated the law by engaging in too much political campaign activity. Lest there be any confusion about his targets, the Montana Democrat flagged articles focused on GOP-leaning groups, including Americans for Job Security and American Crossroads.


Mr. Baucus was seconded last week by the ostensibly nonpartisan campaign reform groups Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, which asked the IRS to investigate whether Crossroads is spending too much money on campaigns. Those two outfits swallowed their referee whistle in the last two campaign cycles, but they're all worked up now that Republicans might win more seats. Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)(4) affiliate of American Crossroads supported by Karl Rove, is a target because it has spent millions already in this election cycle.

Last Tuesday, the liberal blog ThinkProgress, run by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had collected some $300,000 in annual dues from foreign companies. Since the money went into the Chamber's general fund, the allegation is that it could have been used to pay for political ads, which would violate a ban on foreign companies participating in American elections. The Chamber says it uses no foreign money for its political activities and goes to great lengths to raise separate funds for political purposes.

That didn't stop President Obama from raising the issue in a Maryland speech last week, saying that "groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections." Within hours of the ThinkProgress report, the bully boys at MoveOn.org asked the Department of Justice to launch a criminal investigation of the Chamber. In a letter to the Federal Election Commission, Minnesota Senator Al Franken expressed his profound concern that "foreign corporations are indirectly spending significant sums to influence American elections through third-party groups." From the man who stole his Senate election in a dubious recount, this is rich.

Even Mr. Franken admits in his letter that the Chamber's commingling of funds in its general accounts is not "per se illegal," but apparently he thinks it's fine to unleash federal investigators because the Chamber cash might contribute to the defeat of fellow Democrats.

The outrage over the Chamber is especially amusing considering the role of foreigners in U.S. labor unions. According to the Center for Competitive Politics, close to half of the unions that are members of the AFL-CIO are international. One man's corporate commingling is another's union dues.

Unions and liberal groups are hardly cash poor this year in any case. The Campaign Media Analysis Group looked at the combined spending of candidates, their parties and outside groups and found that Democrats outspent Republicans $47.3 million to $40.8 million in a recent 60-day period.

Democrats claim only to favor "disclosure" of donors, but their legal intimidation attempts are the best argument against disclosure. Liberals want the names of business donors made public so they can become targets of vilification with the goal of intimidating them into silence. A CEO or corporate board is likely to think twice about contributing to a campaign fund if the IRS or prosecutors might come calling. If Democrats can reduce business donations in the next three weeks, they can limit the number of GOP challengers with a chance to win and reduce Democratic Congressional losses.

The strategy got a test drive in Minnesota earlier this year after Target Corporation donated $100,000 cash and $50,000 of in-kind contributions to an independent group that ran ads supporting the primary candidacy of Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. MoveOn.org accused the company of being anti-gay, organized a petition, and crafted a TV ad urging shoppers to boycott Target stores. Target made no further donations, and other companies that once showed an interest have since declined to contribute.

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Then there's the curious reference to the tax status of Koch Industries by White House chief economist Austan Goolsbee. In a late August conference call with reporters, Mr. Goolsbee cited the closely-held Koch as an example of "really giant firms" that pay no corporate income tax because they file under other tax rules. But how in the world would Mr. Goolsbee know Koch's tax status? Could his knowledge be related to the White House-liberal campaign against Koch for contributing to Americans for Prosperity, a group that is supporting free-market candidates for Congress this year?

In an August 9 speech, Mr. Obama personally trashed Americans for Prosperity, hinting that it was funded by "a big oil company." He had to mean Koch, which makes no secret of its support for Americans for Prosperity.

The White House didn't respond to queries about Mr. Goolsbee's remark for weeks until GOP Senators requested an investigation. The Treasury's inspector general for tax matters has since announced such a probe, and last week White House spokesman Robert Gibbs finally got around to explaining that Mr. Goolsbee's statement "was not in any way based on any review of tax filings" and that he won't use the example again.

We're glad to hear it, but pardon our skepticism given the ferocity of this White House-led campaign against businesses that donate to political campaigns. Faced with electoral repudiation as the public turns against their agenda, Democrats are unleashing government power to silence their political opponents. Instead of piling on, the press corps ought to blow the whistle on this attempt to stifle political speech. This is one more liberal abuse of power that voters should consider as they head to the polls.
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2)The Soros Web and the Spiders Within
By Ed Lasky

Barack Obama's latest straw-man style of attack is focused on the United States Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has earned his ire by being a free-enterprise group, and one that is practicing its First Amendment rights to criticize an administration bereft of officials with real-world experience but chockablock with animus toward capitalism. Obama's latest claim is that the ads run by the Chamber are funded by foreign sources.


Who is helping perpetuating this claim -- for which there is no evidence? George Soros: Obama's pal and donor, and a man who wielded his power over his 527 groups to help power Obama to the Oval Office.


The New York Times charts the path of the "foreign money" charge:
The issue of the chamber's funding first gained notice this week when ThinkProgress, a blog affiliated with the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal advocacy group, posted a lengthy piece with the headline "Exclusive: Foreign-Funded ‘U.S.' Chamber of Commerce Running Partisan Attack Ads."


The piece detailed the chamber's overseas memberships, but it provided no evidence that the money generated overseas had been used in United States campaigns. Still, liberal groups like MoveOn.org pounced on the allegations, resulting in protests at the chamber's offices, a demand for a federal investigation by Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and ultimately the remarks by Mr. Obama himself.


White House officials acknowledged Friday that they had no specific evidence to indicate that the chamber had used money from foreign entities to finance political attack ads.

Soros is pulling the strings of his puppets -- again.


Think Progress is a branch of the Center for American Progress, the think-tank founded and funded to a great extent by George Soros and his political allies, Herb and Marion Sandler. The Center has been described by Bloomberg News as the "Soros-Funded Democratic Idea Factory." The CAP also provided the administration with many of its officials, including the controversial Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones (he returned to his sinecure at the CAP when he was "resigned" in the wake of revelations about his radicalism). The head of the CAP, John Podesta, managed the transition from Senator Obama to President Obama. The Obama administration has plenty of alums from the Center for American Progress.


The next step in the proliferation of the man-made virus was to get MoveOn.org to spread the canard that the Chamber was using foreign money to fund political campaigns in America. MoveOn.org is the jewel in the crown of Soros-funded 527 groups (Soros is the single largest funder of such groups). The fact that Soros runs an offshore hedge fund that keeps its investors hidden (and most probably includes a slew of foreigners) is rarely mentioned. The riches of Soros include hefty management fees extracted from foreign investors; money is fungible. Can we logically consider that some of the money Soros liberally spreads in American politics is foreign money?


Then Senator Al Franken used his pulpit from the Senate (where he usually slumbers or mugs insulting facial expressions when Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell speaks) to get media coverage to hype the charge regarding foreign money. Al Franken was the beneficiary of George Soros when he ran his campaign against the incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman. Franken owes a great deal to Soros, who was the donor to a range of 527 groups based in Minnesota which ginned up false and specious charges against Coleman -- a story that I covered in "The Soros Connection in the Minnesota Senate Race Vote Count."


Soros wanted Coleman -- probably the sharpest monitor and critic of the United Nations -- out of the Senate. Coleman was focused like a laser beam when exposing fraud (especially the Oil for Food Scandal) and other problems at the United Nations (see "Why Soros Wants Norm Coleman Out of the Senate"). Soros was a donor to Franken, and he also helped cover the expenses of the legal campaign waged by Franken to take the seat by, among other steps, hosting a big fundraising party at his fancy digs in Manhattan.


The election of Franken was fraught with problems but nevertheless was made official by Minnesota's Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie. Ritchie was elected with the help of the Secretary of States Project -- an undertaking of a group called the Democracy Alliance. This is a group of billionaires led by George Soros and Democratic activists and operatives (including Anna Burger, a highly placed official of the Service Employees International Union) that has undertaken to change the political landscape of America and is using a bulldozer to do so. The agenda of the Secretary of States Project was to place into office politicians whom they consider friendly towards their goals -- among them electing Democrats. These Secretaries are responsible for ensuring the integrity and honesty of the voting process in states.


And what have we discovered since Franken's election was made official by the Secretary of State of Minnesota? A citizens' group has run its own investigation regarding the integrity of his election and, lo and behold, has discovered enough fraudulent votes cast for Franken that suggest his election, in retrospect, was at the very least worthy of further investigation .


Then, to cap it off, President Obama ranted and raved about the Chamber and the influence of foreign money in American politics. George Soros and Barack Obama have a long history together. Soros was an early and ardent supporter of Senator Barack Obama -- even finding a loophole in campaign finance laws that allowed him and Soros family members to escape the limits that normally apply in terms of donor giving. They flooded Obama with money, a topic I covered in an article I wrote for American Thinker back in early 2007 ("Soros, Obama and the Millionaires Exception").


The canard being promoted by Obama and George Soros has no basis in fact, as the New York Times makes clear:


Organizations from both ends of the political spectrum, from liberal ones like the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Sierra Club to conservative groups like the National Rifle Association, have international affiliations and get money from foreign entities while at the same time pushing political causes in the United States.


Such groups, which collectively have spent hundreds of millions dollars on political causes to advance their agenda, are required by law to ensure that any foreign money they receive is isolated and not used to finance political activities, which would violate a longstanding federal ban. The Chamber of Commerce says it has a vigorous process for ensuring that does not happen, and no evidence has emerged to suggest that is untrue.

Even the White House was eventually forced to own up to the rhetorical ruse:


White House officials acknowledged Friday that they had no specific evidence to indicate that the chamber had used money from foreign entities to finance political attack ads.


"The president was not suggesting any illegality," Bob Bauer, the White House counsel, said. Instead, he said Mr. Obama's reference to the chamber was meant to draw attention to the inadequacies of campaign disclosure laws in allowing groups to spend large amounts of money on politics without disclosing their donors.

Of course, their admission happened at the end of Friday -- always the dumping ground for embarrassing admissions -- timed to a news cycle that all but takes weekends off.


The strategy was clear: gin up a canard so it enters the spin cycle (spun by Soros-linked enterprises) during the week in a very active political season. The hope was to generate enthusiasm with the Democratic base to pony up some campaign money and desire to cast votes. Mud was slung onto the Chamber by using a baseless charge. Then -- when the truth came out -- an admission that there was no backing for the charge, no evidence, was made during the dead zone of the news cycle. This is how a virus spreads. How to stop the virus? Vote the right way in November.


The entire campaign is dishonest in the extreme. Michael Barone calls it "projection" because Obama's own 2008 campaign all but invited foreign donations:


... it's well documented that the 2008 Obama campaign did not put in place address verification software that would have routinely prevented most foreign donations. In effect they were encouraging donations by foreign nationals. Here's the Washington Post on this back in October 2008:


"Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed. Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged." (snip)

Then there's the question of whether foreign nationals are contributing to the Obama campaign. There is more than enough evidence to warrant a full-scale investigation by the Federal Election Commission, including the $32,332.19 that appears to have come from two brothers living in a Hamas-controlled Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah, GA (that's Gaza, not Georgia). The brothers' cash is part of a flood of illegal foreign contributions accepted by the Obama campaign.

A Chamber spokesman alluded to this bit of history by suggesting those in glass houses should not throw stones. Regardless of the blatant dishonesty of the Big Lie regarding Chamber spending, the latest news from Mike Allen's Playbook on Politico is that Barack Obama and his supporters will continue to spread the Big Lie and "double down on it." Arrogance and impunity in action.


How is that hope and change mantra that lulled so many Americans to suspend their disbelief coming along? The strategy may be clear and despicable, but the network behind it remains murky to the general public. So much for Obama's transparency pledge and the politics of hope and change.


Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
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3)Barack Obama: Liar and Demagogue
By Steve McCann

There are among the population of the country Barack Obama has been chosen to lead those who have experienced firsthand the iron fist of a dictatorial government and who have survived the bloodshed that resulted. Tens of millions died during the past century under dictators. Deep within their psyche, these survivors are extraordinarily attuned to those factors that gave rise to the devastation when dictators have their way.


They know that the first step along this path is the emergence of a leader willing to do or say anything to promote a destructive and failed political philosophy and to achieve power by manipulating the emotions, fears, and prejudices of the people. But above all, they are mindful that only by exposing those who are determined to undermine their society, without hesitation or fear, can their nation be saved.


Therefore, on behalf of those of us who have live through the worst of times, and based upon the president's words and deeds, it must be stated that Mr. Obama is a liar and a demagogue.


This deception began during the presidential campaign. Falling sway to soothing rhetoric and a deliberately fraudulent campaign to promote moderate positions on the economy and government, many citizens in 2008 voted for Senator Obama. Further, they hoped that by electing a man of African descent, the long national nightmare of slavery and the long civil rights struggle would at last be relegated to the pages of history. Capitalizing on that hope, Mr. Obama campaigned on the theme that as a political moderate, he would bring all Americans together and end the divisive politics of the past, as well as control the scope and size of government.


In the intervening two years since the election, the president, his underlings in the administration, and the sycophantic members of Congress have repeatedly invoked the checkered past of this country in regard to civil rights and never missed an opportunity to remind the people of Mr. Obama skin color. This has been done in a willful effort to capitalize on so-called white guilt, thus keeping alive the tensions in the black community and muzzling dissent, while enacting radical policies anathema to the overwhelming majority of the American people.


There has been no compunction in exploiting race or racial incidents, such as Professor Gates in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Department of Justice and the Black Panthers, or the references to slavery in recent speeches by the president, to sow dissent among the populace. Given numerous opportunities to denounce racial demagoguery by his supporters or the media, the president has chosen to remain silent, thus giving his tacit approval to the onslaught of racial divisiveness and manipulation.


Employing the crassest of political ploys, Mr. Obama has, with forethought, sought to exploit the issue of illegal immigration by making it a matter of race and not law. His opposition to the Arizona immigration law and the false and overheated rhetoric used by both him and his associates constituted a deliberate attempt to disseminate fear and loathing toward fellow citizens by the Hispanic population in order to capture Hispanic votes and ensure Obama's and his party's radical wing's continued and expanded hold on power.


In a time of recession and apprehension about the future economic well-being of the country, President Obama has exploited one of the oldest of man's failings: envy towards those perceived to have more. Whether it is allusions to "the fat cats" in corporate America or snide references to millionaires or the implication that all of the average citizen's problems can be solved by taking away money from the rich (who supposedly achieved their wealth on the backs of the poor), it is an age-old tactic geared to distract the populace by inciting anger against their fellow citizens and to present the government as the final arbiter of "fairness," which results in the massive expansion of governmental dominance.


In furtherance of these aims, the lies and misrepresentations by Barack Obama and his administration are legion. But none are as egregious as those made in order to pass the Health Care Reform Act. Among the lies were assurances that premiums would not rise, Medicare would not be cut, everyone would be able to keep his or her current doctor and insurance, abortion would not be funded, and national medical costs would be reduced. All were total fabrications used to pass the most insidious attack on personal freedom in the history of the country.


It is of no difference who may have written the bill or what it may have contained within its 2,400 pages or whether Barack Obama or the members of Congress had read it. These false claims by the president would still have been made, as his only concern was to take away liberty from the people and vest it in himself and the government.


No president of the United States, or leader of any other country, would have made his primary foreign policy to go about the world apologizing and denigrating his nation, thus mocking the enormous sacrifices generations of Americans have made to save countless millions of people over the past century. Barack Obama, in a grandiose display of narcissism, did so only as a means of ingratiating himself to others and elevating his stature as a world figure.


By his rhetoric and strategy, Mr. Obama has sunk to the same level as numerous demagogues over the past 150 years who employed these same tactics as a means of achieving personal and centralized power.


The United States is on the precipice of failure. It may follow the well-worn path taken by so many great powers over the centuries and become an entry in the list of the rise and fall of great nations. This country cannot sit idly by and allow a president (or any other national leader) whose guiding personal philosophy is "the end justifies the means" and is thus devoid of honor and integrity, to go unchallenged by being reluctant to confront his words and deeds.


The media, politicians, and general citizenry must not be intimidated by Mr. Obama's skin color or the pall of "political correctness." They must face the reality of who the president is and his radical objectives. Too much hangs in the balance not to speak out forcefully and without apprehension, even after the midterm election, regardless of the outcome, and not to trust or believe whatever the president may do or say in the future. After all, he has squandered all credibility by his actions to date.


3a)Opinion: Why Is Obama Still Talking About 'Change'?

"Let's show Washington one more time, change doesn't come from the top," President Barack Obama told an eager audience at the University of Wisconsin in the first of a series of rallies meant to recapture the magic of his presidential campaign. "Change happens because of you! Change happens because of you! Change happens because of you!"

Does this mean that his one-time supporters should blame themselves rather than the president and his allies for the disappointments of the last two years?

President Obama's plea to "keep believing that change is possible" might seem appropriate from an insurgent candidate or activist outsider long excluded from the corridors of power, but it sounds bizarre coming from the chief executive.

Obama can't credibly pose as protester rather than president.

But he keeps trying, nevertheless.

"In every instance, progress took time," he solemnly intoned in Wisconsin. "In every instance, progress took sacrifice. Progress took faith."


He went on to give three dramatic examples of what he meant: "You know, the slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs, they weren't sure when slavery would end, but they understood it was going to end. When women were out there marching for the right to vote, they weren't sure when it was going to happen, but they kept on going. When workers were organizing for the right to organize and were being intimidated, they weren't sure when change was going to come, but they knew it was going to come."

But in these past triumphs -- the abolition of slavery, the establishment of women's suffrage and the recognition of organizing rights for laborers -- the victims of injustice focused on very specific demands ultimately granted by the 13th Amendment, the 19th Amendment and the Wagner Labor Relations Act, respectively.

What legislative remedies could fulfill the present yearnings of those huddled, oppressed masses (at elite universities and elsewhere) who currently gather around campfires, singing freedom songs?

Will the approval of new stimulus spending, or legislation demanding more detailed disclosure of sponsorship on issues ads on TV, satisfy today's appetite for change? Would a gradual return to the unemployment rate of 7.8 percent that greeted Mr. Obama when he took over the White House satisfy the idealistic demand for progress?

In his campaign appearances, President Obama says little about a fresh agenda for the next two years or a new direction for the country, and warns instead against the change in course those nasty Republicans propose. This shows the extent to which conservatives have seized the momentum in the national debate, with fevered discussion over potential moves to the right and almost no consideration of further lurches to the left.

In part, this reflects an obvious reality: Even if the president and his Democratic allies succeed in maintaining control of both House and Senate, the Republicans most certainly will increase their numbers.

How could anyone seriously expect Mr. Obama to push through more sweeping changes than he's achieved so far when he faces smaller congressional majorities (at best)?


Sponsored Links Why should progressives count on the president to bring about bold, expensive new reforms that he failed to achieve when levels of debt and deficit spending were sharply lower, and his personal popularity was vastly higher?

Nevertheless, Obama can't resist the grandiose rhetorical flourish: "Change is going to come," he assures his followers. "Change is going to come for this generation -- if we work for it, if we fight for it, if we believe in it."

The vague, unfocused nature of such pledges worked well for candidate Obama when he offered a refreshing alternative to the frustrations of the Bush administration.

But two years later, overwhelming majorities believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction, and Obama's energetic campaigning can't conceal the fact that the president played the commanding role in setting the country on its current course.

3b)Why Obama Is Losing the Political War
By Mark Halperin


Barack Obama is being politically crushed in a vise. From above, by elite opinion about his competence. From below, by mass anger and anxiety over unemployment. And it is too late for him to do anything about this predicament until after November's elections.

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.

On Friday, after the release of the latest bleak unemployment data — the last major jobs figures before the midterms — Obama said, "Putting the American people back to work, expanding opportunity, rebuilding the economic security of the middle class is the moral and national challenge of our time." But elites feel the President has failed to meet that challenge and are convinced he will be unable to do so in the remainder of his term. Moreover, there is a growing perception that Obama's decisions are causing harm — that businesses are being hurt by the Administration's legislation and that economic recovery is stalling because of the uncertainty surrounding energy policy, health care, deficits, housing, immigration and spending.

And that sentiment is spreading. Many members of the general public appear deeply skeptical of Obama's capacity to turn things around, especially, but not exclusively, those inclined to dislike him — Tea Partyers and John McCain voters, but also tens of millions of middle-class Americans, including quite a few who turned out for Obama in 2008.

The misery afflicting the country has no political affiliation. Listen to the voices from this striking TV ad for Rob Portman, the Republican former Congressman and Bush budget director who is running for Senate from Ohio. One woman at a Dayton career fair says starkly, "There are no jobs." A man announces plaintively and with obvious frustration, "I've been looking for a job now for 13 months." Events like this job fair are becoming the grim iconic gatherings of our time, the breadlines for the Obama years.

Most of Obama's private (and sometimes public) rebuttals to the voices slamming him on all sides are justified or spot on. He did inherit a lot of problems from the Bush Administration. He did act quickly in the initial weeks of his Administration to stave off a worldwide depression. His efforts at job creation have been obstructed by Republicans (even the proposals based on policies supported by the GOP in the past). His opponents haven't put forth specifics of their own, nor offered genuine compromise, while the media have allowed the right's activists and gabbers to run wild with criticism without furnishing legitimate alternative solutions.

But Obama has exacerbated his political problems not just by failing to enact policies that would have actually turned the economy around, but also by authorizing a series of tactical moves intended to demonize Republicans and distract from the problems at hand. He has wasted time lambasting his foes when he should have been putting forth his agenda in a clear, optimistic fashion, defending the benefits of his key decisions during the past two years (health care and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, for example) and explaining what he would do with a re-elected Democratic majority to spur growth.

Throughout the year, we have been treated to Obama-led attacks on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Congressman Joe Barton (for his odd apology to BP), John Boehner (for seeking the speakership — or was it something about an ant?) and Fox News (for everything). Suitable Democratic targets in some cases, perhaps, but not worth the time of a busy Commander in Chief. In the past few days, we have witnessed the spectacle of the President himself and his top advisers wading into allegations that Republicans are attempting to buy the election using foreign money laundered through the Chamber of Commerce, combining with Karl Rove and his wealthy backers to fund a flood of negative television commercials. Not only is this issue convoluted and far-fetched, but it also distracts from the issues voters care about, frustrating political insiders and alienating struggling citizens (not that many are following such an offbeat story line). Feinting and gibing can't obscure those job numbers.

The President and Democrats have passed many significant measures (the stimulus spending, the auto-company rescue, the health care law and the financial regulation effort) that someday may be seen as brave and bold, the foundation for a better economy. Obama and his closest aides certainly think that will happen. But the President was correct when he said Friday, "the only piece of economic news that folks still looking for work want to hear is, 'You're hired,'" and that's still not occurring for too many Americans.

The politically good news for Obama is that no matter what the outcome of the midterm elections, everything changes in January. Republicans will have a greater obligation, politically and morally, to help govern, rather than thwart and badger. The President will get a chance, in his State of the Union address and in his budget proposal, to show he is turning the page on the political horrors of 2010 for his party and the nation. But before then, Republicans are almost certainly going to demonstrate that you can beat something with nothing, especially when Americans seem to think that the Obama Administration hasn't much to offer either, except more of the same that isn't working.

3c)Democrats' attack ad sets new low for midterm mud

I am sure we are nowhere near touching bottom on the level to which Democrtaic National Committe4e attack ads will sink by Nov.2, but this is a new low so far into the midterm battle.

Here is what's so appalling to me: The ad makes the totally unsubstantiated charge that the Chamber of Commerce is taking money from foreign interests and using it to "steal our democracy." And worse, President Obama is out on the campaign trail, according to the New York Times, creating an echo chamber by making the same reckless claims just as the ad hits the airwaves. And when CBS newsman Bob Schieffer Sunday asks David Axelrod if there is any proof for the claim, the senior Obama aide says they don't need proof -- it's up to the Chamber of Commerce to prove it isn't true.

The Democratic National Commitee is using the same sort of tactic and logic that Sen. Joe McCarthy used in the 1950s: Level a headline-grabbing and unsubstantiated charge, like the State Department is filled with communists, and then say it is up to the State Department and the employees so charged to prove it is not true.

So much for hope and change; this is the politics of fear, slander and divisiveness on the eve of an election that looks as if it could deliver a damning verdict on the first two years of the Obama administration.

And check out the woman being mugged in the parking garage. By the visual logic of this ad, Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie are the muggers.

What do you think of the mugging in the parking garage? is this not a direct appeal to fear?

Read today's New York Times story recounting Obama's words and the assertation by Axelrod and a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee that they have no obligation to produce evidence for the claim that the Chamber of Commerce is taking money from foreign interests and using it to "steal our democracy" and "influence elections."

And this admninistration, with this attitude toward unsubstantiated charges and standards of proof, wants to control the press and determine whether a news organization should or should not be considered legitimate
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4)Dupes -- and Traitors
By Herbert E. Meyer

One of the last mysteries of the Cold War is why so many seemingly intelligent Americans believed to the bitter end that the Soviet Union -- history's most vicious dictatorship and an economic basket case -- was paradise on Earth.


Well, now we know. In his new book Dupes, Paul Kengor provides a stunning, detailed exposé of how the Kremlin set out to manipulate those among us whom Lenin famously described as "useful idiots" -- Americans who could be made to fall hook, line, and sinker for Soviet propaganda and who then used their influence to swing public opinion behind the Soviet Union's policies.


Moreover -- and perhaps even more importantly -- Dupes exposes many of those among us who knowingly and willfully did the Kremlin's duping. It's quite a list. Did you know that Frank Marshall Davis, whom President Obama describes in his autobiography as his beloved mentor, was not merely a good-ole-boy who liked to bar-hop in Honolulu with Obama's grandfather, but a card-carrying member -- No. 47544, to be precise -- of the Communist Party of the United States? (And did the president know it back when he sat at Davis's knee out in Hawaii, learning about the world? Does the president know it now? Is there even a chance that some blown-dry White House reporter with teeth like Chiclets will ask?)


The Commie in our Classrooms


And did you know that another hardcore, card-carrying Commie was Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, which to this day is among the most widely used textbooks in American high schools and colleges? (And does the principal of your kids' high school know it? Would she take this clown's book off the curriculum if she did?)


Dupes brilliantly outlines the Kremlin's covert operations to gin up support for the USSR without tipping Moscow's hand. For instance, Kengor shows how Lenin and his successors poured money into the CPUSA from 1919 all the way through the 1980s so that its members and affiliates in the U.S. could organize pro-Soviet demonstrations in our cities and buy space for Soviet propaganda in leading newspapers. (Well, who did you think paid for those full-page ads in The New York Times protesting President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative?)


Kengor (a contributor to American Thinker, by the way) has done an extraordinary amount of research. His list of dupes suckered in by the Kremlin is astonishing. It includes leading intellectuals and writers like John Dewey, Upton Sinclair, Arthur Miller, and Benjamin Spock. And there were leading Hollywood stars including Gene Kelly, his wife Betsy Blair, and Humphrey Bogart. (Bogie caught on to the commies, fast, and publicly repudiated them; it took Gene Kelly a bit longer to figure it out.)


The things these dupes said and wrote about the Soviet Union are just amazing for their blind stupidity. For instance, after visiting the USSR in 1928, John Dewey, whose reputation as an educator remains legendary, wrote in The New Republic that the Bolshevik Revolution had been "a great success" and that the USSR's churches "are not only intact, but taken care of with scrupulous and even scientific zeal." Seventy years later, no less an authority than Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that at precisely the moment when Dewey was visiting Russia, Joseph Stalin had been waging "an all-out war on religion" in which churches were razed to the ground and clergymen arrested. Dewey, the Harvard dupe, never noticed.


Ted Kennedy's Treason


The most explosive revelation in Dupes involves the late Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy. On May 14, 1983, just weeks after President Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative, the head of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov, sent a memo marked "Special Importance" to the Soviet Union's leader, Yuri Andropov. Chebrikov reported that Kennedy wanted to meet with Andropov so the two men could coordinate their efforts to oppose SDI and, perhaps, defeat President Reagan in the upcoming 1984 election. As Chebrikov wrote, "Kennedy believes that, given the state of current affairs, and in the interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the following steps to counter the militaristic policies of Reagan." After outlining these steps, Chebrikov goes on to explain that "the main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they would be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA."


Simply put, Kennedy had set out to form a secret alliance with the leader of the Soviet Union to thwart United States policies -- an act for which the precise, technical word is treason.


Dupes is a knockout. It's first-rate history that reads like a first-rate espionage novel.


Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council. He is the author of How to Analyze Information and The Cure for Poverty.
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5) Israeli, Greek helicopters practice strikes over mountainous coasts


Israeli and Greek Air forces embarked Monday, Oct. 11, on a joint four-day exercise code-named Minoas 2010 over Crete and the western Peloponnese Peninsula according to military sources. Both areas are characterized by long coastal strips and high mountain peaks rising as high a 2,400 meters and extending into the surrounding Ionian and Mediterranean Seas. Taking part are 16 Apache and Black Hawk UH-60 assault helicopters - eight Israeli and eight Greek. Over the weekend, the Israeli choppers flew directly from home base to the big Greek Suda air complex on the island of Grete. They were refueled by the Israel air force in flight as part of the exercise.

Minoas 2010 continues the interrupted joint maneuver held in May from the point where Athens broke it off over the Israeli commando raid of the Turkish Marmora before the protest vessel could reach the Gaza Strip to bust the Israeli blockade.

The helicopters are practicing tactics designed for large expanses of water, island groups - the Argo-Saronic Islands east of the Peloponnese and the Ionian Islands to its west - and high coastal peaks with deep canyons and gorges. This sort of terrain resembles Persian Gulf shores, including the coastal strips enclosing the strategic Strait of Hormuz and the western and southern shores of Iran where key Revolutionary Guards Corps bases are grouped.

Strategic cooperation between the Israeli and Greek air forces has grown in the last two years, further boosted by the breach in Turkish-Israeli military ties. In April 2008, they conducted a large-scale air maneuver which saw 110 Israel fighters of various types flying directly to the same area as the current helicopter exercise.
Western military experts at the time saw this exercise as demonstrating Israel long-distance ability to flying fighter-bombers to and from Iran to if it is decided to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.
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6)French, Spanish FMs: Lieberman violated every rule of diplomacy

European foreign ministers furious with Israeli counterpart, who told them to 'solve their own problems before they complain to Israel.'
By Barak Ravid

The foreign ministers of Spain and France were furious with their Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman, telling him Monday morning during a phone conversation that he had "violated every rule of diplomatic etiquette," an Israeli source reported on Monday.


During a dinner meeting on Sunday, Lieberman told France's Bernard Kouchner and Spain's Miguel Angel Moratinos to "solve your own problems in Europe before you come to us with complaints. Maybe then I will be open to accepting your suggestions."

Lieberman emphasized that "Israel will not be the Czechoslovakia of 2010," at their meeting at the foreign ministry offices in Jerusalem.

During the telephone conversation between the three FMs Monday, the European ministers voiced their extreme dismay with the fact that details of the meeting were made public an hour after it took place. "You violated our trust," they said to Lieberman.

Moratinos said that Lieberman had apologized for what had happened during the meeting, but Foreign Ministry officials denied this report, saying that Lieberman did not apologize but rather clarified that he did not intend for his remarks to be presented in the media as a reprimand of Kouchner and Moratinos.

The French and Spanish foreign ministers said that were very surprised by Lieberman's remarks during Sunday's meeting, especially in light of the fact that, according to them, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made remarks contradicting Lieberman's tone mere hours before the meeting.

While Netanyahu told the European statesmen that he aims to achieve a peace agreement with the Palestinians within a year, Lieberman stressed to them that "anyone who talks like that is naïve." The men emphasized to Lieberman during their dinner that they completely disagreed with his assertion that a peace deal could not be achieved.

They explained to Lieberman that if a Palestinian state is not established within the next year or two, it would undermine Israel's security, urging Lieberman to take advantage of the current Palestinian leadership, as no one knows what the alternative will be in the future.

Meanwhile, Lieberman denied the reports that the dinner was unpleasant, and said despite the fact that it was at times complicated, the dinner was "very tasty, and there was a good, honest and open atmosphere. We spoke openly, as friends do."

Lieberman added that he indeed spoke with Moratinos on the phone and described the conversation as "good." He stressed that he did not reprimand anyone, and said that "we need to stop squirming and stuttering. In Europe they passed the Burka ban law [France] and the Minaret ban [Switzerland] and no one got excited about it."

"In the reality of the middle East only the strong survive," he added.
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7)Epic failure: Obama's bad economic plan

Obamanomics is done for. On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy lost 95,000 non-farm jobs. Most of the losses came from the government sector as short-term census jobs ended and local governments temporarily propped up by stimulus money began letting go teachers and other employees because future revenues are expected to fall.

Businesses created 64,000 jobs (29,000 fewer than in August), a dismal showing and a sure sign that economic growth is slowing again. But the numbers are a sign of more than that.

They reveal that Obama's plan to "prime the pump" by spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money targeted to specific economic sectors has been a dismal failure. Obama and his allies in Congress thought the economy would do better under their direction than if they cut taxes and spending and let Americans decide for themselves where the money should go. They were spectacularly wrong. Fortunately, voters get to tell them that in just a few weeks.
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8)The Age of Austerity
By Robert Samuelson

WASHINGTON -- We have entered the Age of Austerity. It's already arrived in Europe and is destined for the United States. Governments throughout Europe are cutting social spending and raising taxes -- or contemplating doing so. The welfare state and the bond market have collided, and the welfare state is in retreat. Even rich countries find the costs too high; but the sudden austerity could perversely trigger a new financial crisis.

Europe's plight is now the most obvious threat to the already lackluster global recovery. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the world economy will expand about 4 percent in 2011. Although this sounds respectable, the underlying growth predictions for the United States (2.3 percent) and Europe (1.8 percent) are so low that there would be little, if any, reduction in the 38 million unemployed in these two major economies.


Clearly, most European nations waited too long to overhaul their welfare states. (The same is true of the United States.) The added costs of the global recession have now forced them to do the politically unthinkable: chop social spending and raise taxes in trying economic times. They have little choice, but it may be a mission impossible.

On the one hand, huge deficits and debts -- the sum of past deficits -- mean some countries can no longer borrow at reasonable interest rates. Last week, rates were about 10 percent on Greek 10-year government bonds and more than 6 percent on Irish and Portuguese bonds. Even these rates would be higher if these countries hadn't acted to cut long-term budget deficits. By contrast, rates are about 2.3 percent on 10-year German government bonds and 2.4 percent on 10-year U.S. Treasuries.

On the other hand, abrupt tax increases and spending cuts threaten deeper recessions. In Greece, the value-added tax (a national sales tax) was increased four percentage points; the normal retirement age is also being raised. Portugal approved a VAT increase of two percentage points. In Ireland, government workers' salaries were cut an average of 7 percent. In Spain, grants for new children are being abolished. Unemployment rates are already about 11 percent in Portugal, 12 percent in Greece and 14 percent in Ireland.

To some economists, this is folly. Desmond Lachman of the American Enterprise Institute foresees a futile downward economic spiral. As recessions worsen, losses in tax revenues and higher jobless spending will offset some projected improvements to budget deficits. So, more tax increases and spending cuts will be needed.

People will lose patience, Lachman says. Governments will fall or decide that default -- repudiating some debts -- is a lesser evil than tolerating persisting mass misery. "It's a race between Greece and Ireland" to see which defaults first, he argues. The defaulting country will also abandon the euro and create its own currency to regain some control over its interest rates and exchange rate.

The danger: another financial shock, perhaps like Lehman Brothers' failure. If one country defaults, investors will dump bonds of others. European banks, with more than $1 trillion in loans to Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, will suffer new losses, Lachman says.

Not so fast, argues Jacob Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute. Europe has acted "pragmatically" to avert doomsday, he says. Because bond markets can force weak countries into bankruptcy -- by not buying their debt or imposing punitive rates -- Europe has created temporary lending sources. In May, the European Union and IMF rescued Greece with a $146 billion package. The EU and IMF have also pledged a roughly $1 trillion fund that other countries (say, Ireland or Spain) could tap. Finally, the European Central Bank -- Europe's Fed -- is buying the bonds of weaker borrowers.

The ultimate hope is to buy time. Effective deficit cuts, it's argued, will ultimately spur economic growth by reassuring bond markets that debt levels are sustainable and justifying lower interest rates. That's also the theory of new British Prime Minister David Cameron, who's proposed shrinking government spending a sixth by 2015.

Austerity is transforming economics and politics. The Age of Entitlement was about giveaways; the Age of Austerity will be about take-backs. The Age of Entitlement was about maximizing economic growth; the Age of Austerity will be about minimizing economic reverses. Similar dilemmas confront most advanced societies. Even Germany's government debt as a share of the economy is large (73 percent in 2009).

Governments are caught in a vise. Without unpopular spending cuts and tax increases, unmanageable deficits may choke their economies. But those same spending cuts and tax increases also threaten economic growth. The United States is not exempt. Low American interest rates mean bond markets haven't yet turned on us. We need not threaten the recovery by immediately slashing budget deficits. But we do need to act convincingly to curb future deficits. Austerity can't be fun; but how painful is still partially up to us.
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