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A few more articles on why we need to help Obama put up his shingle somewhere else. '(See 1 - 1c below.)
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Here is an Obama shovel ready project - drain that swamp and follow the bouncing ball! (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Risk of debt downgrade grows. Higher interest rates to fund our rising debt means government taking bigger chunk of GDP.
Perhaps I am making a big leap but I connect these dots, do you?
Greenspan/Bernanke = low interest rates = eventual inflation in energy and food. Effect: kindles flames in nations with high unemployment and populist angst = riots in Tunisia, Egypt etc. (See 3 below.)
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Krauthammer hammers Obama and SOTU - no change, Obama just remains a false prophet and we a leaderless nation.
Obama gives me the shingles!(See 4 below.)
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At least this general and chess player gets it! (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)A Presidency to Nowhere High-speed rail and solar shingles are not the answer to America's "Sputnik moment.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
No president before Barack Obama has been so right and so wrong.
When in his State of the Union speech Mr. Obama said, "This is our generation's Sputnik moment," citing the emergence of global competition from the likes of China and India, he was right.
Minutes later he proposed to cover the country with high-speed rail and companies making solar shingles.
High-speed rail and solar shingles? If that's the president's idea of meeting our Sputnik moment, then Houston, we have a problem.
About halfway into the speech, I began to wonder: What is John Boehner thinking? Let's first welcome back the tradition of House Speakers who bring nothing but a poker face to the State of the Union. (The vice president re-tightening his tie in the middle of the speech was a minor Biden classic.)
I'm guessing that about the time the president was calling investments in clean energy "the Apollo projects of our time," the new Speaker was thinking: "This is bunk," or some word to that effect.
That probably wasn't Mr. Boehner's first thought. Before the bunk arrived, his first thought was: "We're in trouble."
If Barack Obama had come even close to matching policies with the sentiments he spun across the House chamber in the first sections of that speech, the Republicans would have been dealing with a formidable new centrist president.
The speech's prelude could have been delivered by Ronald Reagan or written by the conservative entrepreneurial Utopian George Gilder.
In a single generation, "the rules have changed," he said, propelled by technology. "The naysayers predicting our decline" are wrong. When moments later Mr. Obama said, "We are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea," one felt the ghost of the Gipper hovering nearby. The president called forth more of those spirits, praising "the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny. That's why centuries of pioneers and immigrants have risked everything to come here."
And: "We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world." Yes!
And: "Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation." Oh, yes!
Even an Obama naysayer was thinking, Go for it, Mr. President. Unleash our nation of pioneer entrepreneurs with incentives to work, save and invest. (But why the weird slap at the all-American competitiveness of the Super Bowl?)
For a while Tuesday night, it appeared Mr. Obama would replicate Bill Clinton's almost sci-fi ability to absorb his opposition's best ideas, such as welfare reform, and re-infuse them into the body politic as his own. But no. We got high-speed rail and solar shingles.
Barack Obama believes what he believes. The ideas he came in with are the ideas he will go out with, and nowhere in that speech was there a fully formed policy idea reflecting authentic belief in the private economy.
The recently promised and much-needed regulatory review was offset with a paean to regulation. "It's why we have speed limits." He somehow felt compelled to tell productive suburban families that he'll try to rescind the tax cut for them, the $250,000 "millionaires."
Once past the Reagan moment, the Obama policy menu had three entrees: clean energy, education and infrastructure. This was lifted, almost verbatim, from the Obama budget message two months into his presidency: "Our budget will make long overdue investments in priorities—like clean energy, education, health care, and new infrastructure." He extolled "new jobs that pay well" such as "installing solar energy panels and wind turbines."
This isn't a vision. It's an obsession.
Sending the completed trade agreements with Colombia and Panama to Congress for ratification should have been a lay-up for a president seeking the center. That's not happening.
What's ahead? Mainly one thing: November 2012.
If the State of the Union disappointed policy wonks, it's because the Obama presidency has entered full campaign mode. His State of the Union was a road map to a second term. Draw the Republican Congress toward the post-November spirit of reform on spending, entitlements and taxes, let these ideas twist in the wind of endless negotiation, pocket the "bipartisan" effort, and run out the clock to a three-point November victory.
Then what?
After ObamaCare and financial re-regulation, the remaining Obama years are looking like a presidency to nowhere. Even if you believe in green jobs, that's an industry off in the future. Beyond the Keynesian liniment oil of public spending, he's offering almost nothing for the here-and-now economy.
Rep. Paul Ryan, in his response, was right that "our nation is approaching a tipping point." Either the government leads the economy, as proposed in the last two-thirds of Mr. Obama's State of the Union, or it will be driven into the 21st century by the nation's pioneer legacy of individual innovation, as he seemed to say in the first third of the speech.
If you belief it's the latter, six more years of chasing Mr. Obama's idea of investments will be a waste of precious time. The Super Bowl of global competition is well into the first quarter. The future is now.
1a)Obama vs. Ryan: The Choice Is Clear
On Tuesday, Republicans offered an alternative to the president's big-government vision.
By KARL ROVE
President Barack Obama's State of the Union address and Rep. Paul Ryan's Republican response offer competing visions of the country.
For Mr. Obama, it is business as usual. Sunny days are ahead if only government continues its spending binge. A year ago the euphemism was "stimulus." Now it is "investment." Most of his hour-long speech was a paean to liberal activism, as the president called for redoubling outlays on high-speed rail and "countless" green energy jobs. His single concrete proposal about cutting spending was a five-year freeze on nondefense discretionary outlays. This follows last year's call for a three-year freeze that was never enacted.
The president's proposal would save $400 billion over 10 years. But that is on a federal budget that's increased 25% in two years, raising government's share of GDP to 25% from roughly 20%.
Freezing government at the current record levels is insufficient. And to their credit, Republicans have proposed cutting $100 billion from this year's budget. This would save $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. The GOP already made a $42 billion down payment on their $100 billion in cuts from the president's budget by deep-sixing the Democratic omnibus bill during the lame-duck session.
In its new poll this week, Resurgent Republic (a group I helped form) found that voters believe by 61% to 31% that the federal government should be "spending less to reduce [the] deficit" rather than "spending more to help [the] economy." Yet the president continues to believe that we can borrow and spend our way to prosperity. This makes him look disconnected from spending, deficits and the debt—issues that most Americans now link to the nation's economic health.
Mr. Ryan's speech was a quarter the length of the president's, yet he devoted half again as many words (922) to the country's fiscal picture as did Mr. Obama (621). It was free of budget gimmicks, and he laid out in candid, unvarnished terms America's fiscal challenge.
By doing so, the Wisconsin congressman framed the discussion that will play out over the next year or two. He drew deeply from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to defend limited government. "Our nation is approaching a tipping point," Mr. Ryan said. "We still have time" to make vital changes, the Budget Committee chairman said, "but not much time." The challenge is about more than budgets and debt. It is about government's basic purposes and its role in our lives. If we don't act soon, the nature of American society will change in deep, lasting ways.
Mr. Ryan understands that the nation's fiscal imbalance cannot be repaired just by cutting nondefense discretionary spending (which makes up only $666 billion of this year's $3.5 trillion federal budget). More than $2 trillion of the budget consists of mandatory spending, and he knows that reforming these programs, especially Medicare, is the only path to fiscal sanity and economic growth. Otherwise America will face a crushing debt and huge tax increases.
Precisely when and how to reform and restrain mandatory spending remains to be seen—Mr. Ryan has his own ideas, outlined in his "Roadmap for America's Future." But the debate about the role and purpose of government has been joined in a way America hasn't seen in three decades.
Tuesday, Mr. Obama proclaimed the country was "poised for progress." In some anemic ways it is. But 142 million Americans were employed the day before Mr. Obama took office and 139 million are today. The total debt was $10.6 trillion before his inaugural and $14.2 trillion today. The time for blaming his predecessor passed long ago. Mr. Obama is the president and Americans increasingly expect him to act as such.
After Tuesday night's address, the president sent supporters an email about his speech. The subject line read "We Do Big Things" and the message was signed simply "Barack." The familiarity was touching, but the theme was misplaced. Tuesday's speech gave no evidence that Mr. Obama will do the big things this country needs in the next two years.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
1b)'Investment' Charade
Milton Friedman warned that government spending cancels out higher-return private investment.
By STEPHEN MOORE
Words matter in politics, which is why the federal government no longer "spends" (and wastes) money, but rather "invests" it. According to Barack Obama's State of the Union address, nearly every penny of the $2.5 trillion domestic budget—for installing solar paneling on the roofs of libraries, funding lavish teacher retirement funds, building high-speed rail lines to nowhere, erecting billboards advertising the stimulus plan—is a high-return "investment" in America's future.
This is all spin. It's a variation on the theme that brought us the $814 billion stimulus two years ago. That spending—er, investment—was going to create three million jobs. Those jobs never showed up.
As part of the counterattack against Republican plans to cut $100 billion out of the domestic budget, the White House claims that America has been under-investing in infrastructure, education, science, research, transportation, environmental protection, green energy and so on. But if you examine the actual funding record of these programs, you see that there's been no spending drought. There's been a deluge.
Total spending on what Mr. Obama's budget calls "investment outlays," outside of defense, rose 46% between 2008 and 2010, to $372 billion from $254 billion. Of that, education funding soared 116%, though it's anyone's guess how much of that investment found its way into a classroom. Aid to states and localities rose one-third, as did funding for the National Science Foundation. Unemployment insurance, which has been the administration's highest budget priority, quadrupled to $189 billion from $43 billion.
As far as the infrastructure crisis, that's a myth too. If our bridges are collapsing and roads and airports are congested, its not for a lack of funding. Transportation financing has climbed just under 40% since 2008. The administration secured a 60% increase in transit dollars in 2010.
Another big winner has been government investment in business—which used to be called corporate welfare. The Department of Commerce's budget has more than doubled since 2008, which is only slightly faster than the 81% budget hike for the Department of Energy and the 84% jackpot that went to housing programs.
Keep in mind that these budgets have skyrocketed over the same two-year period when household incomes and spending—investment in families and children—have barely budged. If you want new jobs, business investment should get much higher priority than government spending, so the mismatch is distressing. Total private business investment has fallen by 10% since 2008. It's possible that government investing isn't adding to the total stock of capital in the country at all but rather, as Milton Friedman used to warn, is merely canceling out higher-return business spending.
The budget blowout comes atop the spending blitz carried out by George W. Bush. In the decade before Mr. Obama took office, inflation-adjusted spending on infrastructure, education and R&D rose by 32%. The education budget soared after the 2001 No Child Left Behind law, and in 2007 Mr. Bush signed a $284 billion highway bill, the largest in U.S. history.
Let's grant for a moment that all government spending is really "investment." The question no one dares to ask in Washington is, what is the return on that investment? Can anyone really argue that the schools are better today than they were in the 1950s or '60s, before Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education? The U.S. government also spent billions on green energy in 2009 and 2010, but the number of wind projects fell by 50% last year. If that's an investment, it's one that any private investor would pull the plug on.
The administration doesn't want cuts in Pell Grants and other student-loan programs. But the main effect of student aid for higher education has been to raise tuitions, not to make college more affordable.
As Republicans in Congress make decisions about what to fund and what not to fund, they should ask this fundamental question: Is this dollar of funding so valuable to the economy that it is worth borrowing another 40 cents?
That is why the best investment in America's future now is to bring spending down as rapidly as possible to reduce debt and finance reductions in tax rates—especially on investment.
Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal editorial board.
1c)After You, Mr. Ryan
The President says the deficit is the GOP's problem now. .Article Video Comments (178) more in Opinion ».EmailPrintSave This ↓ More.
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close Yahoo! BuzzMySpacedel.icio.usRedditFacebookLinkedInFarkViadeoOrkut Text Amid his Reaganite sunshine and new admiration for the wonders of private enterprise, President Obama's political message in Tuesday's State of the Union address boils down to this: Republicans, it's your budget problem now.
The deficit is awful and must be cut, entitlements are unsustainable and must be addressed, the tax code hurts growth and must be reformed, and government should be smaller and more efficient, but don't look to Mr. Obama for ideas on how to fix any of this. Go ahead and cut spending and Medicare if you want, Republicans. The President will get back to you with his reply as time and politics allow.
After you, Congressman Ryan.
Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot and Wonder Land Columnist Daniel Henninger critique the President's State of the Union address.
.As political strategy, perhaps this will turn out to be shrewd. Republicans will advance their budget and spending cuts, Democrats will attack them, the voters will sour, and Mr. Obama will ride to re-election. It happened in 1996.
As leadership, however, this is an abdication that contradicts Mr. Obama's rhetorical flourishes about a new bipartisanship and the need "to merge, consolidate and reorganize the federal government." Beyond his welcome if vague support for reducing corporate tax rates in return for closing loopholes, Mr. Obama offered not a single new idea or spending cut. The bulk of his address was devoted to his familiar priorities that he said Republicans should spend more on. Green energy subsidies. High-speed rail!
At least the address had good timing, because less than 12 hours later the Congressional Budget Office released its annual budget review and exposed how deep the fiscal mess really is. Even CBO dared to call it "daunting," which for these budget gnomes is a primal scream.
Eighteen months after the recession formally ended, the federal deficit for fiscal 2011 (through September) is expected to increase once again, this time to $1.48 trillion, or 9.8% of GDP. That's a share of GDP topped since World War II only by the 10% reached in Mr. Obama's first year in office, when at least the recession was an excuse. The annual deficit in the 1980s never exceeded 6% of GDP.
As the nearby chart shows, the main culprit is spending. After falling slightly last year due in part to TARP repayments, federal outlays will climb again this year to 24.7% of GDP. Overall federal spending will have increased by $1 trillion in a mere four years. Without spending cuts, outlays will remain above 23% for the rest of the decade—starting to rise again once ObamaCare becomes fully phased in. (The outlay average from 1971 to 2010 was 20.8% of GDP.)
Compared to this spending boom, Mr. Obama's proposal to freeze domestic discretionary spending for five years is a mere gratuity. It would start from a baseline that pockets the spending increases of the last two years, which as the chart shows has taken outlays to a level not seen since World War II. And it would ignore entitlements, including his health reform. The President's proposal is a feint not a freeze.
The post-recession decline in revenues will also contribute to the deficit, thanks mainly to the slow recovery that the federal spending spree was supposed to boost. The GOP-Obama tax deal will also keep revenues as a share of GDP below 15% in 2011. But as the chart shows, revenues are expected to increase sharply in 2013 and beyond, well above the 40-year average of 18% of GDP. CBO is assuming, as it always does, that higher tax rates have little impact on economic growth.
The message in all of these numbers is that the deficit is mainly a problem of spending and slower economic growth. If the recovery continues and becomes a durable expansion, revenues will revive. But without spending cuts and entitlement reform the deficits will continue at unsustainable levels.
And as they do so will the national debt. We've never been federal debt worriers, but CBO estimates that on current trajectory the debt held by the public as a share of GDP will be 73.9% in 2012, up from only 39.7% in 2008. Those are heights where even we begin to tug at the collar.
So this is the ugly budget reality that House Republicans are inheriting. In his Tuesday night response to Mr. Obama, House Budget Chairman repeated a line he has often used that the U.S. may be at a budget "tipping point." Either Congress begins to control its political appetites, or the debt financing and inevitable tax increases that are coming will erode our economic well-being. The CBO numbers bear him out.
Judging by Tuesday night, Republicans will have to start this reformation without much help from the President. Perhaps if they lead, the public will put enough pressure on Mr. Obama that he has no choice but to follow.
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2)Watchdog: Social Security Faces $45 Billion in Debt This Year, Will be Drained by 2037
Social Security's finances are getting worse as the economy struggles to recover and millions of baby boomers stand at the brink of retirement.
New congressional projections show Social Security running deficits every year until its trust funds are eventually drained in about 2037.
This year alone, Social Security is projected to collect $45 billion less in payroll taxes than it pays out in retirement, disability and survivor benefits, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. That figure swells to $130 billion when a new one-year cut in payroll taxes is included, though Congress has promised to repay any lost revenue from the tax cut.
The massive retirement program has been feeling the effects of a struggling economy for several years. The program first went into deficit last year, but the CBO said at the time that Social Security would post surpluses for a few more years before permanently slipping into deficits in 2016.
The outlook, however, has grown bleaker as the nation struggles to recover from the worst economic crisis since Social Security was enacted during the Great Depression. In the short term, Social Security is suffering from a weak economy that has payroll taxes lagging and applications for benefits rising. In the long term, Social Security will be strained by the growing number of baby boomers retiring and applying for benefits.
The deficits add a sense of urgency to efforts to improve Social Security's finances. For much of the past 30 years, Social Security has run big surpluses, which the government has borrowed to spend on other programs. Now that Social Security is running deficits, the federal government will have to find money elsewhere to help pay for retirement, disability and survivor benefits.
"It means that Social Security is increasingly adding to our long-term fiscal problem, and it's happening now," said Eugene Steuerle, a former Treasury official who is now a fellow at the Urban Institute think tank.
It's a bad time for the nation to be hit with more financial problems. The federal budget deficit will surge to a record $1.5 trillion flood of red ink this year, congressional budget experts estimated Wednesday, blaming the slow economic recovery and a tax cut law enacted in December.
A debt commission appointed by President Barack Obama has recommended a series of changes to improve Social Security's finances, including a gradual increase in the full retirement age, lower cost-of-living increases and a gradual increase in the threshold on the amount of income subject to the Social Security payroll tax.
Obama, however, has not embraced any of the panel's recommendations. Instead, in his State of the Union speech this week, he called for unspecified bipartisan solutions to strengthen the program while protecting current retirees, future retirees and people with disabilities.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he is ready to work with Obama on Social Security and other tough issues.
"I take the president at his word when he says he's eager to cooperate with us on doing all of it," McConnell said.
Social Security experts say news of permanent deficits should be a wake-up call for action.
"So long as Social Security was running surpluses, policymakers could put off the need to fix the program," said Andrew Biggs, a former deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration who is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Now that the system is running deficits, it simply becomes clear that we need to act on Social Security reform."
More than 54 million people receive retirement, disability or survivor benefits from Social Security. Monthly payments average $1,076.
The program has been supported by a 6.2 percent payroll tax paid by both workers and employers. In December, Congress passed a one-year tax cut for workers, to 4.2 percent. The lost revenue is to be repaid to Social Security from general revenue funds, meaning it will add to the growing national debt.
Social Security has built up a $2.5 trillion surplus since the retirement program was last overhauled in the 1980s. Benefits will be safe until that money runs out. That is projected to happen in 2037 — unless Congress acts in the meantime. At that point, Social Security would collect enough in payroll taxes to pay out about 78 percent of benefits, according to the Social Security Administration.
The $2.5 trillion surplus, however, has been borrowed over the years by the federal government and spent on other programs. In return, the Treasury Department has issued bonds to Social Security, guaranteeing repayment with interest.
Social Security supporters are adamant that the program will be repaid, just as the U.S. government repays others who invest in U.S. Treasury bonds.
"It's an IOU that is backed by Treasury bonds and the faith and credit of the United States government," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. "It is the same faith and credit that enables us to borrow from rich people and from China and from other countries. As you well know, in the history of this country, the United States has never defaulted on one penny owed to a creditor."
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)Moody's Warns: US Credit Rating Risks Are Rising
Moody's Investors Service warned that lack of U.S. government action on the budget deficit increases the likelihood of a negative outlook on the country's top AAA credit rating.
The Moody's report, which came hours after a downgrade of Japan by Standard & Poor's and an IMF warning on growing budget deficits in both countries, reiterated previous comments made by the agency late last year.
Moody's had said in December that the extension of Bush-era tax cuts would add to the likelihood of a negative outlook on the U.S. rating in the next two years.
Lower debt ratings typically push up a country's borrowing costs. A negative outlook makes a rating downgrade more likely in the next 12 to 18 months.
In Thursday's report, Moody's provided more details about the risks to U.S. ratings. It expressed concern about the new configuration of the U.S. Congress, saying it may reduce the chances of an agreement to rein in the deficit.
The Republicans won majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the November elections, but the Democrats continue to hold the majority in the Senate.
Moody's also worried that Congress may fail to consider and pass into law some of the deficit-reducing measures proposed by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a panel mandated by President Barack Obama to find ways to tackle the deficit.
"Recent trends in and the outlook for government financial metrics in particular indicate that the level of risk (to the U.S. rating), while still small, is rising and likely to continue to rise in the next several years," Moody's said in the report.
"Although no rating action is contemplated at this time, the time frame for possible future actions appears to be shortening, and the probability of assigning a negative outlook in the coming two years is rising," it added.
The purpose of the report was to provide more details on the agency's view on the U.S. credit-worthiness and not to address any recent developments that could impact the ratings, Moody's analyst Steven Hess told Reuters in an interview.
For Moody's, the next piece of relevant information for U.S. ratings will be the presentation of the federal budget next month "because it's going to show the proposals on the part of the administration on what to do" to address the nation's deficit problem, Hess said.
Prices for U.S. Treasuries were unmoved on the report, with benchmark 10-year notes remaining 6/32 higher on the day, yielding 3.39 percent.
Long-term U.S. rates are expected to rise toward 5 percent in the next three years but average less than that, Moody's said in the report. At those levels, the agency would remain comfortable with the U.S. debt affordability, Hess said.
"Our expectation and our forecasts for debt affordability include both an increase in the debt and an increase in the interest rate such as the one that we described -- going up but remaining less than 5 percent," he said.
Some traders said the report, which broke late Thursday, could still seep into markets and pull bond prices down Friday.
"When you have punishing news like this from Moody's and other rating agencies, it will clearly leave a negative impression on Treasuries. You could see a rise (in) yields tomorrow," said Todd Schoenberger, managing director at LandColt Trading Inc. in Wilmington, Delaware.
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4)The old Obama in new clothing
By Charles Krauthammer
The November election sent a clear message to Washington: less government, less debt, less spending. President Obama certainly heard it, but judging from his State of the Union address, he doesn't believe a word of it. The people say they want cuts? Sure they do - in the abstract. But any party that actually dares carry them out will be punished severely. On that, Obama stakes his reelection.
No other conclusion can be drawn from a speech that didn't even address the debt issue until 35 minutes in. And then what did he offer? A freeze on domestic discretionary spending that he himself admitted would affect a mere one-eighth of the budget.
Obama seemed impressed, however, that it would produce $400 billion in savings over 10 years. That's an average of $40 billion a year. The deficit for last year alone was more than 30 times as much. And total federal spending was more than 85 times that amount. A $40 billion annual savings for a government that just racked up $3 trillion in new debt over the past two years is deeply unserious. It's spillage, a rounding error.
As for entitlements, which are where the real money is, Obama said practically nothing. He is happy to discuss, but if Republicans dare take anything from granny, he shall be Horatius at the bridge.
This entire pantomime about debt reduction came after the first half of a speech devoted to, yes, new spending. One almost has to admire Obama's defiance. His 2009 stimulus and budget-busting health-care reform are precisely what stirred the popular revolt that delivered his November shellacking. And yet he's back for more.
It's as if Obama is daring the voters - and the Republicans - to prove they really want smaller government. He's manning the barricades for Obamacare, and he's here with yet another spending - excuse me, investment - spree. To face down those overachieving Asians, Obama wants to sink yet more monies into yet more road and bridge repair, more federally subsidized teachers - with a bit of high-speed rail tossed in for style. That will show the Chinese.
And of course, once again, there is the magic lure of a green economy created by the brilliance of Washington experts and politicians. This is to be our "Sputnik moment," when the fear of the foreigner spurs us to innovation and greatness of the kind that yielded NASA and the moon landing.
Apart from the irony of this appeal being made by the very president who has just killed NASA's manned space program, there is the fact that for three decades, since Jimmy Carter's synfuel fantasy, Washington has poured billions of taxpayer dollars down a rat hole in vain pursuit of economically competitive renewable energy.
This is nothing but a retread of what used to be called industrial policy - government picking winners and losers. Except that in a field that is not nearly technologically ready to match fossil fuels, we pick one loser after another - from ethanol, a $6 billion boondoggle that even Al Gore admits was a mistake, to the $41,000 Chevy Volt that only the rich can afford (with their extended Bush tax cuts, of course).
Perhaps this is all to be expected from Democrats - the party of government - and from a president who from his very first address to Congress has boldly displayed his zeal to fundamentally transform the American social contract and place it on a "New Foundation" (an Obama slogan that never took). He's been chastened enough by the election of 2010 to make gestures toward the center. But the State of the Union address revealed a man ideologically unbowed and undeterred. He served up an insignificant spending cut, yet another (if more modest) stimulus, and a promise to fight any Republican attempt to significantly shrink the size of government.
Indeed, he went beyond this. He tried to cast this more-of-the-same into a call to national greatness, citing two Michigan brothers who produce solar shingles as a stirring example of rising to the Sputnik moment.
"We do big things," Obama declared at the end of an address that was, on the contrary, the finest example of small-ball Clintonian minimalism since the days of school uniforms and midnight basketball.
From the moon landing to solar shingles. Is there a better example of American decline?
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5)The Chessboard Series of the Middle East - Update
Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, US Army (Ret)
Stand Up America!
Iran Has Changed the Balance of Power in Lebanon
What is striking about the Chessboard moves by Iran and the current crisis in Lebanon is that the efforts to resolve it are being made by countries in the region. Why are there no serious initiatives on the part of Western countries that enable Iran and Syria to continue to stir the pot unmolested? Iran no longer hesitates to state publicly that its forward defense line now passes through "Lebanon and Palestine." In practice, the Lebanese-Israeli border is in fact Israel's border with Iran.
For Iran, Hezbollah serves as a live and successful model for revolutions, one which is reflected in other organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian terror organizations, as well as extreme Shiite organizations in Iraq trained by Lebanese Hezbollah. Hezbollah is nourished by the growing strength and power of Iran and draws upon its successes. Both parties recognize that the fall of one also signifies the demise of the other. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigating the Hariri murder, which is about to publicize its findings, may offer an opportunity for the West to reverse the trend and take the initiative to reduce Iranian influence in Lebanon, and weaken the power of Tehran.
It appears that our State Department and White House still remain asleep at the switch while the Iranians are very busy and fastidious in resetting the chessboard in the Middle East to their liking. What has Iran been doing in addition to moving their nuclear program forward, becoming the hegemonic power of the Middle East and supporting the international jihad? The Iranians (unlike the United States) are very clever at using proxies to do their dirty work.
Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs seem to achieve some victory on every front weekly in orchestrating the activities in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Syria not to mention their support of Hamas, Iraqi Shiites, and the Taliban (and, oh, let us not forget Al Qaeda and the Bin Laden family). Iran has planned a larger, bolder strategy for the demise of Israel? Russia and China (and their proxy North Korea), somewhat remaining in the background, supply sophisticated technology and military systems to Iran and Syria and languishes in the diminution of the United States influence in the Middle East.
Iran is the Chessboard puppet master now as my friend Jim Woolsey briefed a group in Washington last week. No UN sanctions or resolutions seem to matter and the IAEA is toothless. Iran pulls the strings of the powers that matter and has effectively changed the argument. By orchestrating activities in Lebanon, even as the Saudis flood opposition to Hezbollah with money, they have changed the definition of who is and is not Lebanese. They have supported the Shiite Hezbollah to the point that even the media refers to them as Lebanese people. Lebanon’s roots are virtually gone now, replaced by Shiites who are very close to making Lebanon an Islamic State in totality. The silent 2008 coup they orchestrated on the government is almost complete now. And now, the International investigation into Rafik Hariri’s assassination is a complete farce. Hopefully the International Court will come forth shortly with a factual indictment of those responsible for the assassination Hariri and others. Or will they be too cowardly to deal with the facts and conclusions in fear of Iran?
Iran has been planning major preemptive actions against Israel from southern Lebanon for many years now and they are now capable of implementing multiple strikes on major Israeli commercial and military airports, facilities/installations, cities, and towns. These strikes will not be the feeble ones of 2006, but far more lethal. Hezbollah and Iran with the help of Syria have effectively set much in place, specifically, a plan that now appears ready for launch. Any invasion, attack, or even successful victory there would only embolden the Iranians, Syrians, and others to act on other unknown plans. Remember, Hezbollah declared victory the last time because any success is all they need for their propaganda machine, and if all goes well for them, surprises may abound worldwide. Iran is also the behind the scenes on the Palestinian initiative to declare statehood in 2011.
Iran, the puppet master has set the chessboard of the Middle East in such a manner that they control almost all of the attack points, and a feckless west is doing nothing thus appearing to have no power to change the tide. The pawns are strong and their ability to move has been changed. They are more akin to Rooks and Bishops now and they are ready to pounce. The Israelis have been effectively set into a corner, and the west is not a friend anymore. Feeble talks have been nothing less than the usual failure they have always been, and repeated trips to Damascus by non-Hezbollah Lebanese leaders have resulted in diminishing them to mere pawns. The change in the pieces on the Chess Board is virtually complete and the puppet master has won because of the weakness of the west and the political correctness of the current administration here in the US.
The chessboard has been set by Iran that now forces Israel to fight a multiple front war with little help expected from the west. If the air attack plan against Iran is launched, then the Israelis must simultaneously fight the Hezbollah forces in Southern Lebanon as well as other attacks emanating from the West Bank and Gaza. Israel understands this is the new chessboard; US authorities do not seem to understand.
Now, in Afghanistan, we learned that the Iranian Government provides sacks of cash to Karzai, President of Afghanistan, as well as Taliban jihadists to kill American soldiers and destroy their equipment. Karzai states…. “They do give us bags of money - yes, yes, it is done… We are grateful to the Iranians for this”. In addition, Iran has been secretly supplying explosives to the Taliban for years and most recently through the western province of Nimruz where trucks labeled as Kitchen Supplies and Toys turned out to be explosives. More and more supply convoys meet their fate of destruction coming through the Pakistan lines. Simultaneously, the Taliban forces in Northern Afghanistan strengthen as NATO/ISF forces further rely on supply convoys coming out of the “Stans”.
The Taliban previously stated that Iran was paying them for killing American soldiers and destroying U.S. military vehicles. According to the Taliban treasurer, Iran is paying bonuses of $1,000 for killing an American soldier and $6,000 for destroying a U.S. military vehicle. So Iran is financially supporting the Karzai Government and the Taliban in Afghanistan as Karzai reaches out to the Taliban for a negotiated settlement The U.S. government denies that we are directly involved with these settlement talks but confirms that we are well briefed on them.
Iran is not getting distracted by its ongoing efforts to undermine the U.S. troops and interests in Afghanistan on one side and Iraq on the other, nor in Syria and Lebanon. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently returned from his late 2010 trip to Lebanon to show support for Hezbollah. A few days later he welcomed Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez to Iran where according to the Associated Press they signed 11 agreements promoting cooperation in areas including oil, natural gas, textiles, trade and public housing. Iran’s state TV quoted both leaders as calling their relationship a “strategic alliance” saying that “they are united in efforts to establish a new world order that will eliminate Western dominance over global affairs.”
The United States must now finally support the Iranian Opposition forces with the first step to delist the MEK from the terrorist list. The MEK is not a Terrorist Group. In the January 10, 2011 National Review, four Republican former decision makers (Mike Mukasey, Tom Ridge, Rudi Giuliani, and Fran Townsend) contributed to a burgeoning conversation about the nature of an unwarranted terrorist tag on a principal Iranian opposition organization—the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK). Let us bring all the diverse Iranian opposition groups together. A real new breakthrough strategy.
Their basic argument is sound: The designation is unjustified because the Clinton administration placed the MEK on the list of terrorist organizations for nonterrorist reasons, e.g., to encourage Tehran to engage with Washington; and the Bush administration mistakenly kept the MEK on the list out of fear that the Iranian regime would send additional arms to Iraq for killing American soldiers, which Tehran did in any event. Moreover, the United Kingdom and then the European Union removed the MEK from their respective terrorist lists after being prompted by the Courts, which conducted a thorough review of open and classified evidence. As a result of such actions, the terrorist tag seems unjustified by historical circumstances.
The reasonable argument of the four former policymakers can be corroborated with direct evidence that the terrorist designation is without merit; indeed, the historical evidence affirms their conclusion that the designation is problematic.
Evidence
As input to the UK and EU decisions to overturn the MEK designations, one British court found that, “there have been no offensive operational attacks by PMOI [MEK] operatives inside Iran since August 2001.” And the UK Court of Appeal upheld that finding and concluded that classified material bolstered the idea that the Government could not have reasonably maintained that the MEK intended in the future to resort to terrorism. Building on the European findings, the Iran Policy Committee searched three huge electronic databases for evidence of whether the MEK deserved to be listed as a terrorist organization:
National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Worldwide Incident Tracking System (WITS)
Global Terrorism Database, (GTD), University of Maryland
RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents
The Iran Policy Committee (IPC) study concluded that:
In three major public databases on terrorism, there are no confirmed and credible reports labeling the MEK as a perpetrator of any military incident after 2001.
Because MEK members in Iraq were under U.S. military round-the-clock monitoring and protection between 2003 and 2009, the plausibility of the MEK engaging in terrorist activities, or having capacity to commit terrorism is close to zero during this period.
In the Department of State Country Reports on Terrorism (CRT) 2007, 2008, and 2009, the 2006 accusation that the MEK has “capacity and will” to commit terrorism or terrorist activities does not reappear, suggesting there is no public basis for the Secretary to assert the MEK retains the capability and intent to engage in terrorism and terrorist activities.
Terrorist Tag - To maintain the designation of a group absent terrorism or terrorist activity in the past two years, the State Department must show “current” capability and intent to carry out terrorism or terrorist activities that would threaten the national security interests of the United States or the security of U.S nationals.Capability and intent, such as planning, training, and arming, also relates to the past two years.
Although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held that the MEK continues to be a foreign organization that engages in terrorist activity or terrorism or retains the capability and intent to do so, there is no basis in the public record to justify such a conclusion.
It is unreasonable to believe terrorist capability and intent were hidden from the watchful eyes of U.S. military monitors who also protected the MEK in Camp Ashraf Iraq during the period of Secretary Rice’s January 2009 reconsideration of the designation; consequently, the credibility of the classified record would have to be beyond challenge to justify redesignation. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit questioned the credibility of classified sources used by the Secretary when the Court remanded the designation to State for further review consistent with due process of law procedures.
It is ironic for the State Department to appease the Ayatollahs of Iran by designating as terrorist one of their main opponents about which there is no public evidence of military incidents; terrorism or terrorist activities; or capability and intent not only during the legally binding time for the designation to be valid, but also in the last 10 years.
On the basis of a designation based on nonterrorist criteria; lack of evidence in the public record of MEK involvement in terrorism, terrorist activities, or current capability and intent; as well as doubts expressed by the Federal Appeals Court of the credibility of classified sources used in the redesignation, the terrorist tag on the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq is problematic at best and perverse at worst.
By correcting this unwarranted designation now, President Obama would be in a much stronger diplomatic position before nuclear talks resume with Iran on January 20.
We must begin to focus U.S. policy toward Iran in a way that better promotes our national security interests and strengthens our resolve to face this growing threat. We must change our strategy and soon before more of our men and women die for naught.
So the chessboard is set by Iran. They have the puppet strings on all the chess pieces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, Lebanon; all while Russia, the USA, China, and western nations posture. Iran is an adept Puppet Master now and the Chess Master (and we and others have allowed it to happen!).
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