Recapturing The Glory Days - Is It Possible?

Obama is more liked among Muslims than GW but public support for terrorism dropped faster under GW. (See 1 below.)
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Outsourcing has favorable blow back consequences. (See 2 below.)
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I have finished "Decision Points" and I will let the rest of the book speak for itself and encourage all to read it.

When one reflects back on the enormous things that hit GW, put them in perspective and make linkage of events prior to his becoming president which also had their impact, he comes out looking far better than contemporaries have concluded and history will only elevate his presidency in my opinion.

Reagan was deemed a buffoon, Truman a bankrupt ward hack and they are now revered as excellent CIO's as well they should be.
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Another view of the economy. (See 3 below.)
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Broken commitments one after the other?

Struggling to recapture 'gravitas?'

Lights out on missile defense? You decide. (See 4, 4a and 4b below.)
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Saudis have obtained access to nuclear weapons and missiles from Pakistan! (See 5 below.)
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Victor Davis Hanson puts America's current plight into historical perspective. Interesting must read article. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Is Obama's Muslim Outreach Working?
Public support for terrorism is still dropping in Islamic countries, but more slowly than it did during the Bush years close.
By JOSHUA MURAVCHIK

For two years, President Obama has labored to improve America's standing in the eyes of the Muslim world. He hasn't gotten anywhere with the governments of Iran, Syria, the Palestinian Authority or perhaps any other Muslim country. But with their publics, Mr. Obama is much better liked than his predecessor, which has yielded more favorable ratings for the U.S. in general.

This is worth noting—even though the people choose their government in very few Muslim-majority states—because America's popularity affects public approval of terrorism. Even where people cannot vote, the amount of terrorism will be influenced by whether terrorists are seen as heroes or villains.

A poll out this month from the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project sheds interesting light on attitudes toward terrorism in several Muslim countries. The results are mildly encouraging for America—but not necessarily for Mr. Obama and his outreach efforts.

The survey gauges attitudes toward three crucial terrorism-related subjects: al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and suicide bombings. The good news is that the proportion of pro-terror opinion continues to decline. The bad news is that the minority holding such views remains considerable.

For example, 20% of Egyptians, 23% of Indonesians and 34% of Jordanians say they hold favorable views of al Qaeda. Asked whether they have confidence that bin Laden will "do the right thing regarding world affairs," 19% of Egyptians, 25% of Indonesians and 14% of Jordanians responded positively. On the question of suicide bombing, 20% of Egyptians, 20% of Jordanians and 15% of Indonesians said it is "often" or "sometimes" justified (as opposed to "rarely" or "never").

At first glance, these results seem to reflect well on Mr. Obama's engagement project. A few years ago, these measures of support for terrorism were much higher. But the Pew report also offers a time-sequence chart, dating back to 2003, of answers to the question about bin Laden.

It shows an encouraging decrease in support for terrorism—but the largest drop came when George W. Bush was president. The sharpest decrease in terror support in Indonesia, Turkey and Lebanon came between 2003 and 2005; in Jordan, between 2005 and 2006; and in Nigeria and Egypt between 2006 and 2007.

Only in Pakistan was the largest drop between 2008 and 2009—but the poll was taken in April 2009, so Mr. Bush was in office more than Mr. Obama during that one-year interval. From 2009 to 2010, the one full-year interval of Mr. Obama's presidency for which Pew offers data, the decline was negligible everywhere except in Jordan, where the drop-off was smaller than it was from 2005 to 2006.

What does this all mean? More studies are needed before we can go much beyond guesswork. Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama wanted to drive down support for terrorism among Muslims. Mr. Bush's approach was to knock heads together and speak bluntly of the need for societal change. Mr. Obama's approach has been to curry favor with publics and rulers alike. Mr. Bush's approach may have worked better.

A ground-breaking Gallup poll conducted in 2001 and 2002 revealed that hostility toward the U.S. was rife in the Muslim world even before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This, I believe, reflected U.S. support for Israel and for unpopular Muslim rulers, as well as resentment that America had eclipsed the Islamic world in power and achievement, contradicting the Quran's promise that Muslims will be supreme.

Perhaps for a brief moment after 9/11, many Muslims hoped that bin Laden had found the way to fight back against the infidels. In that case, Mr. Bush's fierce response may have quashed such hope and restored some realism.

Of course it may be that the critical factor in changing attitudes has not been U.S. policies but the actions of the terrorists themselves—who regularly turn their bombs against Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

The data are too slender to sustain the claim that Mr. Bush's policies succeeded in turning much of the Muslim world against terrorism. But they are substantial enough to inform our understanding that Mr. Obama's approach has achieved little in this regard.

Mr. Muravchik is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
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2)The Mistaken Attack on Outsourcing
When American firms grow abroad, they also grow domestically.
By MIHIR DESAI

President Obama concluded his recent meeting with leading corporate executives with a call for more ideas about how to create jobs at home. With this meeting, he has begun to work toward a sorely needed rapprochement with the business community. The continued degradation of the relationship between that community and the White House serves no one.

Sound public policies surely matter, such as the provisions on expensing in the recently passed tax legislation, which will help spur investment. But the president could perform an even greater public service if he changed the way he has talked about the impact of American firms on the economy.

Since his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that the global operations of U.S. companies harm the country because they drain the American economy of jobs. His rhetoric about "tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas" has populist resonance at a time of economic uncertainty, but it is also at odds with the available evidence about how globalizing firms affect the American economy. Moreover, it harms the popular understanding of our opportunities and challenges.

When American firms grow abroad, they also grow domestically, as demonstrated by research I conducted with C. Fritz Foley of Harvard and James R. Hines Jr. of the University of Michigan (published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2009).

The data do not support the crude, fixed-pie intuition that firms either invest abroad or at home. Ten percent growth in American firms' foreign investment is associated with 3% growth in their domestic investment. And when firms grow abroad, their domestic exports and R&D activities grow especially, contrary to Mr. Obama's rhetoric.

Today, CEOs in this country look out on global markets that are growing at four or five times the pace of the U.S. economy. Foreign operations of all sorts are typically considerably more profitable than domestic opportunities would be. And, of course, American CEOs must compete with companies that are based—and that invest—all around the world.

Vilifying or penalizing American businesses for their global operations will only lead them to consider leaving the U.S.—or consider being bought by foreign companies. Such moves would hurt America by removing valuable headquarter jobs. Instead, Mr. Obama should emphasize how Americans succeed when our firms succeed world-wide. That formulation better captures reality and offers a more sensible way to engage businesses in a new spirit of cooperation.

The United Kingdom, Canada and Japan have all initiated reforms that explicitly recognize the benefits of their global firms by lowering penalties on their overseas activities. The U.K. government, for example, has initiated a restructuring of its corporate tax system, including a shift to a territorial system that does not tax the foreign income of British companies. According to the U.K. Treasury, the new system "will better reflect the global reality of modern business and will allow businesses based in the UK to be more competitive on the world stage supporting UK investment and jobs."

Mr. Obama could manifest a similar appreciation for his country's global firms by pushing significant corporate tax reform—such as making marginal rates more consistent with global norms and adopting a territorial system.

The president's recent trip to Asia—on which he was accompanied by CEOs of companies with major foreign operations—may signal a nascent appreciation for this crucial issue, and the president could reinforce the message at his upcoming State of the Union address. Altering the national conversation can help prevent the rise of a new economic protectionism that demonizes global firms.

Mr. Desai is a professor of finance at Harvard Business School.
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3)Shiller: Second Recession Possible, Triggered by Weak Housing
By Greg Brown

The housing economist who predicted the massive housing crash sees a down year ahead and, worse, believes that renewed housing problems could trigger a second recession.

“It’s not entirely clear that this is a double-dip in housing, but it’s starting to look like housing is beginning to resume the downtrend from 2006 to 2009,” says Robert Shiller, Yale professor and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

The latest Case-Shiller numbers show prices fell in October, down 0.8 percent from a year ago. Some metro areas are just now recovering to prices they saw a decade ago, while others — notably Detroit — are struggling with catastrophic price declines.

What’s driving the slow real-estate market, in Shiller’s estimation, is the jobless rate. He sticks to his view that the risk of a return to recession is real and that housing is symptomatic of our economic sluggishness.

“We haven’t recovered. We still have a 9.8 percent unemployment rate. We have 4.1 percent long-term unemployment rate, which is extremely high. It’s typically around 1percent. We’re at near record levels on that,” Shiller told Fox Business. “Something isn’t quite right.”

Recessions do end, Shiller points out, when people finally are forced into buying to replace durable goods like cars and appliances. Oddly, the housing slowdown might be part of the reason retailers did so well this Christmas, Shiller says.

“There is a sense right now of ‘Let’s put this behind us. Let’s have a good Christmas. Let’s buy presents and let’s have a good time,'” Shiller says.

“So it’s carrying us forward, and maybe it will. But the real-estate market declining is a sign to me that maybe it won’t hold.”

He isn’t calling for a housing disaster in 2011. But his view does diverge from those of other professional forecasters, who believe that housing will be generally flat for the year.

Despite low rates and already brutal pricing pressure in overbuilt markets, the threat of hundreds of thousands of homes in the foreclosure pipeline doesn’t bode well for a housing rebound anytime soon.

Quite the opposite, Shiller warns.

“The worry is, we might have a stagnant housing market for years,” says the Yale professor.

“Just this month we saw a 1.3 percent decline. If you’re leveraged 10-to-1, that’s 13percent in one month. That’s real,” Shiller says.

Forecasters aside, consumers seem to “get it” about the weak recovery so far.

Private research from the Conference Board shows that its index of consumer confidence fell to 52.5 in December, down from a revised 54.3 in the November survey.

The index would need to get to 90 to show a full recovery, a figure it hasn’t seen since December 2007.
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4)Obama's Inaugural Address: Two Years of Broken Promises
By Lee Cary

Along with the annual turn of the calendar from one year to the next comes the musing over where our lives have been and where we hope they'll go. This year the icy currents of our musings as a people will run deep.


Certainly, they won't be equivalent to a nation fighting a bloody Civil War. Nor do we face the daily trauma of a Great Depression with one of four Americans unemployed. Nor are these days as ominous as when we were reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor and suddenly at war with powerful and evil nations in Asia and Europe.


This time, the threats ride in on a slow tide, now washing around our ankles as we wonder just how deep the water will become. This time, it's different. This time, we lack what we always assumed would emerge when America found herself facing a crisis. We lack presidential leadership and will for at least the next two years.


There's no immediate value in reviewing the litany of presumptions and assumptions that brought us the current regime. But the consequences of the 2008 election are there for all with eyes to see and ears to hear. Besides, it's a long-done deal -- just not the deal that many who voted for the freshman senator from Illinois thought they were getting.


To prove that, all we need do is review the trail of broken promises in President Obama's January 2008 inaugural address. Back then he said, "We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears, and true to our founding documents."


But, during the Obama administration, the Constitution has become a founding document to be subverted rather than served.


Obama said, "Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age."


But the irresponsibility over several administrations whereby banks were forced to artificially support a sub-prime interest rate that led to the housing bubble and brought down a financial house of cards gets translated into the president's distorted notion of class warfare, where the greedy and irresponsible "some" are at fault.


Obama said, "On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord."


But hope and unity have not been byproducts of the Obama style of boot-on-the-neck governing -- one that most closely resembles the one-party tyranny of his hometown, Chicago.


Obama said, "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogma that for far too long have strangled our politics."


But petty grievances and false promises have flourished during the last two years as recriminations and worn-out dogma rule. And the promise of a post-partisan era of politics now seems, in retrospect, at best to have been adolescently naïve and at worse duplicitous.


Obama said, "We will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth."


But even Pollyanna must admit that new jobs are not being created, and the only new foundation being laid for growth is a thicker concrete upon which debt grows toward national bankruptcy.


Obama said, "We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together."


But when none of that happened, he announced that there really never were any "shovel ready" projects after all. It's like the punchline from the old skit from "Saturday Night Live..."Never mind."


Obama said, "We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its costs."


But the legacy media never asked, "Just what does 'restoring science' mean?" And anyone today who thinks that Obamacare will lower costs is delusional. It's clear now that government control was always the primary goal -- never lower costs.


Obama said, "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply."


But the translation to that became "I will decide the lay of the land, and I'm not interested in any political debate, since I won the election. And those who oppose me are cynics."


Obama said, "Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day[.]"


But the myth of federal government transparency is as great, if not greater, than during any previous administration. And major legislation drafted during the last two years was done, out of all places, least often "in the light of day."


Obama said, "The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."



But the nation doesn't prosper at all when its leader pits one group of citizens against another and plays the Marxist class warfare card over and over again. It's a big world. And the big money will find somewhere else to go, just as the deep-water drilling rigs that the Obama administration has banned from the Gulf of Mexico are today moving elsewhere.


And, two years ago, Obama also said, "With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet."


But the nuclear threat from Iran and North Korea has increased. And the hoax of man-made global warming has been exposed, as has its High Priest, a former U.S. vice president, who's made a mess of his private life and a fool of himself.


Finally, the president closed his inaugural address by quoting George Washington.


America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words: with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.


These were Obama's truest words -- read by him, but not his own. And ironically, today the icy currents of our common dangers are borne to us largely by the inept leadership of the president who quoted them two years ago.

4a)The Return of Obama Gravitas
By Stuart Schwartz

Stay tuned for 2011, when the political and media establishment will declare that indeed, Barack Obama has found his misplaced gravitas. Insiders will celebrate an awesomely deep president who will have sharpened his pants crease and will again bask in the unrestrained praise of the media gods. Amazing media grace: It once was lost, but now it's found, a gravitas for all to see


Do not be surprised when the first quarter of the new year brings a flood of stories celebrating the newly found effectiveness of the president and his policies. Official Washington will join with old media to again celebrate the president's "gravitas," which is code for belief in the necessity of "a rather small Western elite" to manage every aspect of our lives. At the same time, a Tea Party-influenced Congress will be portrayed as lacking seriousness of purpose -- gravitas, the media will put it -- by virtue of its constrictive policies and approaches. Limited government? Individual responsibility? Constitutional restrictions? All simply the thoughts and machinations of people who lack the intelligence to think big, to engage in social engineering on behalf of a greater vision. In other words, a citizenry and new Congress that lack gravitas, the media will tell us.


Gravitas -- what more can you ask for? Hence, the new year will bring renewed emphasis on the "brilliance" of Obama despite all evidence to the contrary. Never mind a presidency that has been "a striking failure"(American Thinker), a president whose direction of a "profligate Congress [that] carpet-bombs taxpayer dollars on greedy federal bureaucrats" (National Review), and a White House that offers "corruption" and "blatant disregard for the rule of law" (Judicial Watch)? Whom are you going to believe -- the media or your lying eyes?


That's why the media will lead a rediscovery of the gravitas of the president after a December that has seen 71% of the voters scream that he's taking the nation "down the wrong track." What do voters know? For the media, Obama is, after all, a president who once used the words "colloquy" and "Manichean" in a policy discussion, thereby astounding a Washington Post reporter who -- although admitting he didn't know what Obama was talking about -- allowed that Obama sure sounded smart. It's that gravitas thing, you know. The assumption is that if your policies are confusing, your words polysyllabic, and your pedigree Ivy, then you occupy a higher "intellectual stage" than the rest of us -- or so declares former NPR and current FOXNews commentator Juan Williams.


Neither Williams nor others in the liberal media offer supporting evidence. Like the sun, Obama's brilliance is simply there, evident to all who think correctly. His gravitas is assumed. Sure, he may have misplaced it for a while (perhaps when the thought of a Sarah Palin presidency caused him to lose his vaunted Marxist cool and descend into a fit of giggles), but the silly season is over, the midterm elections behind, and the media will now portray him as both master of the Beltway and the world leader in gravitas.


With the need to assist his reelection, the networks and newspapers will shift from the occasional "Has Obama lost his gravitas?" to "Well, gosh darn, it turns out he never lost it because he is it!" The New York Times Company let us know this past week through its Boston Globe subsidiary that Obama is the embodiment of seriousness. By using a word or embracing an issue, Obama "can add a bit to its gravitas." His involvement underlines the importance of an issue or course of action. What's important? We dunno, says the New York Times, the Washington Post, the networks. Ask the guy with the gravitas who sets the agenda.


Obama is not in Washington to serve; he is in Washington to engineer. And there are few things in life more important than engineering outcomes for the lives of other people -- that's what you do when you have gravitas. Gravitas has its center in the Democratic Party, but it has a significant presence among Beltway Republicans. Karl Rove, for example, has long possessed gravitas, having engineered the growth of the federal bureaucracy and debt during the Bush years. Rove, like Obama, views Washington power as something to be grown and used, rather than limited. When the chief political advisor for President Bush promoted open borders and amnesty, he was displaying gravitas by adding a Democrat-like dependent constituency. Rove and Republican insiders have gravitas; limited government devotee Sarah Palin, Rove points out, does not.


But Rove (indeed, most of official Washington) is a gravitas Mini-Me compared to the Dr. Evil of Barack Obama. Obama thinks both strategically and big, as is the wont of those with gravitas. Whereas our founders thought small (as ideas, limited government power and pushing responsibility to the states and individuals lack gravitas), Obama instinctively understands the need for vast Soviet-style bureaucratic oversight of individuals and groups. Beginning next week, the media will again promote the serious thoughts by a serious individual engaged in the serious engineering of society. We have an election to win: Hi ho, gravitas, away!


The gravitas of Obama underlies the growing media narrative of what MSNBC's Chris Matthews calls his "comeback." After all, Obama can't fail because he possesses an innate sense of the proper stances and views. This worldview is the single trait that most separates what educator Angelo M. Codevilla calls the "ruling" class -- insiders oriented toward government and contemptuous of the "uneasy" majority over which it rules -- from the "country" class, the rest of us who are judged "intellectually and ... humanly inferior" to those holding the reins of media and political power. Gravitas is not earned; rather, it is conferred by our elites upon those deemed intellectually distinctive.


So the new year will see the Obama gravitas guns blazing, courtesy of the mainstream media. This is a familiar pattern: Joe Biden, whose Senate career redefined the word "inept," has gravitas courtesy of the New York Times; NPR has conferred gravitas on socialist mass murderers Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba; heck, the New York Times even celebrated the passing of Stalin and his gravitas with a salute to his creation of a "Mighty Socialist State."


And so, as workers dismantle the holiday arugula tree at the White House and the president shows a sense of purpose with a five-iron on the fairways of Hawaii, the media prepares for the return of gravitas to Washington.


Happy New Year, taxpayers. May the gravitas be with you.


Stuart Schwartz, formerly a media and retail executive, is a gravitas-free professor of communication at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.


4b)Obama Dims the Light on Missile Defense
By Paul Kengor

On December 13, 1981, under direct orders from Moscow, Poland's communist regime declared martial law. The move was another in a series of several decades of Russia's jackboot on the necks of Poles. A few days later, President Ronald Reagan, at the request of the Polish ambassador who had just defected, walked to the window of the White House dining room with a candle. He lit the candle for the people of Poland. More than that, he went on national television, on December 23, and told his fellow Americans, "For a thousand years, Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed."


Reagan added another extraordinary gesture, surely igniting the unholy rage of the church-state distorters at the ACLU. The president asked Americans everywhere to light a candle for freedom in Poland that Christmas.


It was the kind of gesture that the Polish people, who felt defenseless against the Russians, never forgot. One little candle made Reagan a hero to the Poles. At one point in the 1980s, a survey by the group Paris Match asked Poles who was Poland's "last hope." Reagan finished only behind the Polish Pope and Virgin Mary. To this day, the Polish people name landmarks and erect statues to one of our greatest presidents.


In January 1991, with the Berlin Wall still crumbling, Poland was already bolting the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact for a post-Cold War alliance with the United States. America is Poland's natural ally.


The U.S.-Poland relationship flourished into the 2000s, especially under President George W. Bush. The coup de grâce was Poland's blessed opportunity to participate in joint U.S. missile defense, along with another persecuted Cold War people -- the Czechs. Both Poles and Czechs would collaborate in what Ronald Reagan had described as his "dream": missile defense. History had been set right.


Unfortunately, last week the Senate approved New START, which President Obama was gung ho to conclude with Russia. The treaty is notoriously complicated, and trying to interpret it is a sticky business. I agree with those observers who fear the treaty might jeopardize missile defense -- largely due to Obama's strange eagerness to assuage the likes of Vladimir Putin.


Obama, for the record, insists that missile defense has not been compromised, but the language of the treaty -- combined with Obama's softness on the Russians, the Russians' toughness toward Obama, Obama's previous pro-Russia moves at the expense of Poles and Czechs, and Obama's traditionally tepid support of missile defense -- is not reassuring. I'm pessimistic, and I'm far from alone.


Reagan started START, championing "strategic arms" reductions rather than limitations. Reagan also started missile defense and rejected Russians' (Gorbachev's) pleas to reduce missiles at the expense of missile defense. That was what Reykjavik was all about.


For Barack Obama, call it the anti-Reykjavik.


Sadly, some Reagan administration members, including George Shultz, are arguing that Ronald Reagan would have backed this treaty. They cannot logically assert that. As one of Reagan's closest aides told me last week, with unusual anger: "That's a damned lie. You can only say that if you haven't read the treaty."


There's more to the argument against the treaty. And the "more" underscores how missile defense continues to lose under Obama. Recall Obama's action on September 17, 2009:


That day, Poles and Czechs grappled with a stunning announcement by America's new president, another shocker that was the utter antithesis of Reagan's thinking, and specifically Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Obama cancelled plans for joint missile defense with Poland and the Czech Republic. The American left, and the KGB -- literally, in Putin's case -- finally got what they wanted.


Poles and Czechs cherished this defense alliance. Few partnerships made them so proud. It was the crowning touch, a peaceful one, forged from the Cold War crucible. It was defensive, not offensive. Missile defense hurt no one.


Of course, that's why missile defense so appealed to Ronald Reagan. Mere minutes after his speech announcing SDI in March 1983, Reagan wrote in his diary that he didn't expect his "dream" to come true for at least a couple of decades. Well, after a couple of decades, the dream was bearing fruit in no less than the heart of the former Communist Bloc. Ronald Reagan would have loved that.


But Reagan's dream has become a nightmare under Obama.


Not unlike Frank Marshall Davis, his Hawaii mentor, Obama has taken the side of Russia over the likes of Poland. Davis was pro-Soviet, pro-Stalin, anti-American, anti-Truman, anti-NATO, and much more. As I've noted here before, and as I show through actual documents I've published, including a declassified FBI record with Davis's Communist Party number (that document is published on page 507 of my book, Dupes), Davis was a secret member of Communist Party USA.


Frank Marshall Davis would have relished everything Obama has done with Russia.


As to the big questions: Is missile defense on the ropes? Has it been completely undermined among America, Poland, and the Czech Republic?


Certainly, it's far more tenuous than any time since the Cold War's end.


Of course, why blame Barack Obama? Obama is who he is. The problem is Americans, especially the moderates and independents who elected Obama.


One concluding thought that brings all this together: it's a punch in the gut worth recalling here, a tragic historic parallel that happened along this road. Given America's wretchedly biased educational system and media, it's understandable that Americans wouldn't know about it:


President Obama made his amazing announcement canceling missile defense with Poland -- which, again, was a pro-Russia move -- on September 17, 2009. Why does that matter? Obama's announcement came seventy years to the minute since Stalin's Red Army, in compliance with the devilish Hitler-Stalin Pact, invaded Poland on September 17, 1939. The Russians thereby joined the Nazis in starting World War II. Among numerous other subsequent calamities for Poland, such as the Katyn Woods massacre, the invasion made possible the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz.


Back then, America failed Poland. America's president had been strangely pro-Soviet, with FDR duped by "Uncle Joe" and pro-Soviet advisers. (Click here and here and here.)


Many decades later, presidents such as Reagan and George W. Bush provided a crucial corrective. Obama may be undoing that corrective.


In September 2009, Poles (and Czechs) hoped for mere defense -- missile defense. Few Americans had any objection, except their current president.


The light that Ronald Reagan placed in the White House window for Poland in 1981 was about more than Poland. It was about the United States of America defending freedom against aggressors. That light, I fear, is dimmer this December.

Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.
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5)Pakistan makes two nuclear weapons available to Saudi Arabia

With an eye on the nuclear arms race led by its neighbor Iran, Saudi Arabia has arranged to have available for its use two Pakistani nuclear bombs or guided missile warheads, according to military and intelligence sources. They are most probably held in Pakistan's nuclear air base at Kamra in the northern district of Attock. Pakistan has already sent the desert kingdom its latest version of the Ghauri-II missile after extending its range to 2,300 kilometers. Those missiles are tucked away in silos built in the underground city of Al-Sulaiyil, south of the capital Riyadh.

At least two giant Saudi transport planes sporting civilian colors and no insignia are parked permanently at Pakistan's Kamra base with air crews on standby. They will fly the nuclear weapons home upon receipt of a double coded signal from King Abdullah and the Director of General Intelligence Prince Muqrin bin Abdel Aziz. A single signal would not be enough.

Military sources have found only sketchy information about the procedures for transferring the weapons from Pakistani storage to the air transports. It is not clear whether Riyadh must inform Pakistan's army chiefs it is ready to take possession of its nuclear property, or whether a series of preset codes will provide access to the air base's nuclear stores. The only detail known to Gulf sources is the Saudi bombs are lodged in separate heavily-guarded stores apart from the rest of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

This secret was partially blown by Riyadh itself. In recent weeks, Saudi officials close to their intelligence establishment have been going around security forums in the West and dropping word that the kingdom no longer needs to build its own nuclear arsenal because it has acquired a source of readymade arms to be available on demand. This broad hint was clearly put about under guidelines from the highest levels of the monarchy.

Partial nuclear transparency was approved by Riyadh as part of a campaign to impress the outside world Saudi Arabia was in control of its affairs: The succession struggle had been brought under control; the Saudi regime had set its feet on a clearly defined political and military path; and the hawks of the royal house had gained the hand and were now setting the pace.
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6)The American 21st Century
By Victor Davis Hanson

The current debt, recession, wars and political infighting have depressed Americans into thinking they soon will be supplanted by more vigorous rivals abroad. Yet this is an American fear as old as it is improbable.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression supposedly marked the end of freewheeling American capitalism. The 1950s were caricatured as a period of mindless American conformity, McCarthyism and obsequious company men.

By the late 1960s, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., along with the Vietnam War, had prompted a hippie counterculture that purportedly was going to replace a toxic American establishment. Oil shocks, gas lines, Watergate and new rust belts were said to be symptomatic of a post-industrial, has-been America of the 1970s.

At the same time, other nations, we were typically told, were doing far better.

In the late 1940s, with the rise of a postwar Soviet Union that had crushed Hitler's Wehrmacht on the eastern front during World War II, communism promised a New Man as it swept through Eastern Europe.

Mao Zedong took power in China and inspired communist revolutions from North Korea to Cuba. Statist central planning was going to replace the unfairness and inefficiency of Western-style capitalism. Yet just a half-century later, communism had either imploded or had been superseded in most of the world.

By the early 1980s, Japan's state capitalism and emphasis on the group rather than the individual was being touted as the ideal balance between the public and private sectors. Japan Inc. continually outpaced the growth of the American economy. Then, in the 1990s, a real estate bubble and a lack of fiscal transparency led to a collapse of property prices and a general recession. A shrinking and aging Japanese population, led by a secretive government, has been struggling ever since to recover the old magic.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the European Union was hailed as the proper Western paradigm of the future. The euro soared over the dollar. Europe practiced a sophisticated "soft power," while American cowboyism was derided for getting us into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Civilized cradle-to-grave benefits were contrasted with the frontier, every-man-for-himself American system.

Now Europe limps from crisis to crisis. Its undemocratic union, when coupled with socialist entitlements, is proving unsustainable. Symptoms of the ossified European system appear in everything from a shrinking population and a growing atheism to an inability to integrate Muslim immigrants or field a credible military.

As we enter this new decade, we are currently being lectured that China is soon to be the global colossus. Its economy is now second only to America's, but with a far faster rate of growth and budget surpluses rather than debt. Few seem to mention that China's mounting social tensions, mercantilism, environmental degradation and state bosses belong more to a 19th than 21st century nation.

Two symptoms of all this doom and gloom are constant over the decades. First, America typically goes through periodic bouts of neurotic self-doubt, only to wake up and snap out of it. Indeed, indebted Americans are already bracing for fiscal restraint and parsimony as an antidote to past profligacy.

Second, decline is relative and does not occur in a vacuum. As Western economic and scientific values ripple out from Europe and the United States, it is understandable that developing countries like China, India or Brazil can catapult right into the 21st century. But that said, national strength is still found in the underlying hardiness of the patient -- its demography, culture and institutions -- rather than occasional symptoms of ill health.

In that regard, America integrates immigrants and assimilates races and ethnicities in a way Europe cannot. Russia, China and Japan are simply not culturally equipped to deal with millions who do not look Slavic, Chinese or Japanese. The Islamic world cannot ensure religious parity to Christians, Jews or Hindus -- or political equality to women.

The American Constitution has been tested over 223 years. In contrast, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea do not have constitutional pedigrees of much more than 60 years. The last time Americans killed each other in large numbers was nearly a century and a half ago; most of our rivals have seen millions of their own destroyed in civil strife and internecine warring just this century.

In short, a nation's health is not gauged by bouts of recession and self-doubt, but by its time-honored political, economic, military and social foundations. A temporarily ill-seeming America is nevertheless still growing, stable, multiethnic, transparent, individualistic, self-critical and meritocratic; almost all of its apparently healthy rivals in fact are not.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."
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