Obama Still Smoking Pot?

Is high unemployment symptomatic of Obama's policies? Maybe not all of it but he has spent/wasted 100's of billions with little to show for it. (See 1 below.)
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Technology is both our friend and enemy. It has and will continue to reshape our lives and interpersonal relationships. An interesting article. (See 2 below.)
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Republicans generally miss opportunities and will probably do so again.

However, Karl Rove gives them a rational road map but can they follow it and speak with a co-ordinated voice? Time will tell. (See 3 below.)


Christie provides the GOP a model of how leadership can and should be done. (See 3a and 3b below)
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In order to curry favor with Arabs, has Obama decided to throw Israel under the bus? Does Obama understand the implications of opening 'Pandora's Box?' Does he care? (See 4 and 4a below.)
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It ain't over til its over and The Muslim Brotherhood is gaining steam in Egypt. (See 5 below.)
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Bruce Walker picks up on my characterization of Obama as the "What Me Worry President." (See 6 below.)

Krauthammer chimes in on Obama's budget likening it to Louis XV! Obama rests his case on growth assumptions that would suggest he is still smoking pot.(See 6a below.)
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Barry Rubin challenges conventional wisdom when it comes to moderation. (See 7 below.)

Have fissures developed? (See 7a below.)
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Frank Ryan sees a disaster in the making. The disaster in the making already occurred with Obama's election. Ryan must be referring to another one as a consequence of our 'change artist' president's budget. (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1)Fossella: High Unemployment Reflects Obama Policies
By Forrest Jones and Ashley Martella

Stimulus spending and other economic policies spearheaded by the Obama administration have done nothing to lower high unemployment rates, says former U.S. Congressman Vito Fossella.

The government should have focused on ways to spark private companies to invest and hire instead of trying to spend its way out of the recession, which has only helped increase the country's debt burden, says the former Republican congressman from New York who served as a member of the House Financial Services Committee.

"There was this guise that stimulus is going to resurrect the economy and put millions of people back to work," Fossella tells Newsmax.TV.

"Many people, including myself at the time, said it was a waste of money and a waste of energy and the focus and the goal should be to incentivize American workers and businesses to put people back to work,” says Fossella, now managing director at public policy and business development firm Park Strategies.

“The American people should be given those creative tools that really would resurrect the economy and expand the tax base and grow us out of this recession/depression and really and truly lower unemployment for the long haul."

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said recently that unemployment rates will remain elevated for quite some time.

"I think it's essential for both Congress and the Fed to get together to figure out ways to truly stimulate this economy and allow American businesses to put more people to work and not waving a wand out of Washington as if it's going to happen tomorrow," says Fossella.

Meanwhile, the government must tackle the debt on both fiscal and monetary-policy fronts, and do so now.

"I think anyone that feels you can just control government spending and just raise it to astronomical levels, that you can have $1.5 trillion in deficits and you can have debt as far as the eye can see, and simultaneously, you have a Fed that is just printing money that I think ultimately will have inflationary effects, anyone — whether you're a Democrat or Republican — that embraces that idea is complicit."

While spending must be checked, it's likely that the government will see an increase to its debt ceiling, Fossella adds.

In any event, both parties need to realize that spending has to be cut.

"I think the focus should be with the Democrats and the Republicans working together along with the administration to find out what we can afford, and spend what we can on things that are essential. What's not essential right now should not be part of the receipt. At the end of the dinner you don't order things that you don't need when you don't have any money in your pocket. Right now the focus should be on spending on things that are essential to the American people."
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2)
Is Your Job an Endangered Species?
Technology is eating jobs—and not just obvious ones like toll takers and phone operators. Lawyers and doctors are at risk as well.
By ANDY KESSLER

So where the heck are all the jobs? Eight-hundred billion in stimulus and $2 trillion in dollar-printing and all we got were a lousy 36,000 jobs last month. That's not even enough to absorb population growth.

You can't blame the fact that 26 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed on lost housing jobs or globalization—those excuses are played out. To understand what's going on, you have to look behind the headlines. That 36,000 is a net number. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in December some 4,184,000 workers (seasonally adjusted) were hired, and 4,162,000 were "separated" (i.e., laid off or quit). This turnover tells the story of our economy—especially if you focus on jobs lost as a clue to future job growth.

With a heavy regulatory burden, payroll taxes and health-care costs, employing people is very expensive. In January, the Golden Gate Bridge announced that it will have zero toll takers next year: They've been replaced by wireless FastTrak payments and license-plate snapshots.

Technology is eating jobs—and not just toll takers.

Tellers, phone operators, stock brokers, stock traders: These jobs are nearly extinct. Since 2007, the New York Stock Exchange has eliminated 1,000 jobs. And when was the last time you spoke to a travel agent? Nearly all of them have been displaced by technology and the Web. Librarians can't find 36,000 results in 0.14 seconds, as Google can. And a snappily dressed postal worker can't instantly deliver a 140-character tweet from a plane at 36,000 feet.

So which jobs will be destroyed next? Figure that out and you'll solve the puzzle of where new jobs will appear.

Forget blue-collar and white- collar. There are two types of workers in our economy: creators and servers. Creators are the ones driving productivity—writing code, designing chips, creating drugs, running search engines. Servers, on the other hand, service these creators (and other servers) by building homes, providing food, offering legal advice, and working at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Many servers will be replaced by machines, by computers and by changes in how business operates. It's no coincidence that Google announced it plans to hire 6,000 workers in 2011.

But even the label "servers" is too vague. So I've broken down the service economy further, as a guide to figure out the next set of unproductive jobs that will disappear. (Don't blame me if your job is listed here; technology spares no one, not even writers.)

• Sloppers are those that move things—from one side of a store or factory to another. Amazon is displacing thousands of retail workers. DMV employees and so many other government workers move information from one side of a counter to another without adding any value. Such sloppers are easy to purge with clever code.

• Sponges are those who earned their jobs by passing a test meant to limit supply. According to this newspaper, 23% of U.S. workers now need a state license. The Series 7 exam is required for stock brokers. Cosmetologists, real estate brokers, doctors and lawyers all need government certification. All this does is legally bar others from doing the same job, so existing workers can charge more and sponge off the rest of us.

But eDiscovery is the hottest thing right now in corporate legal departments. The software scans documents and looks for important keywords and phrases, displacing lawyers and paralegals who charge hundreds of dollars per hour to read the often millions of litigation documents. Lawyers, understandably, hate eDiscovery.

Doctors are under fire as well, from computer imaging that looks inside of us and from Computer Aided Diagnosis, which looks for patterns in X-rays to identify breast cancer and other diseases more cheaply and effectively than radiologists do. Other than barbers, no sponges are safe.

• Supersloppers mark up prices based on some marketing or branding gimmick, not true economic value. That Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner Two-Tone Date for $9,200 doesn't tell time as well as the free clock on my iPhone, but supersloppers will convince you to buy it. Markups don't generate wealth, except for those marking up. These products and services provide a huge price umbrella for something better to sell under.

• Slimers are those that work in finance and on Wall Street. They provide the grease that lubricates the gears of the economy. Financial firms provide access to capital, shielding companies from the volatility of the stock and bond and derivative markets. For that, they charge hefty fees. But electronic trading has cut into their profits, and corporations are negotiating lower fees for mergers and financings. Wall Street will always exist, but with many fewer workers.

• Thieves have a government mandate to make good money and a franchise that could disappear with the stroke of a pen. You know many of them: phone companies, cable operators and cellular companies are the obvious ones. But there are more annoying ones—asbestos testing and removal, plus all the regulatory inspectors who don't add value beyond making sure everyone pays them. Technologies like Skype have picked off phone companies by lowering international rates. And consumers are cutting expensive cable TV services in favor of Web-streamed video.


Like it or not, we are at the beginning of a decades-long trend. Beyond the demise of toll takers and stock traders, watch enrollment dwindle in law schools and medical schools. Watch the divergence in stock performance between companies that actually create and those that are in transition—just look at Apple, Netflix and Google over the last five years as compared to retailers and media.

But be warned that this economy is incredibly dynamic, and there is no quick fix for job creation when so much technology-driven job destruction is taking place. Fortunately, history shows that labor-saving machines haven't decreased overall employment even when they have made certain jobs obsolete. Ultimately the economic growth created by new jobs always overwhelms the drag from jobs destroyed—if policy makers let it happen.

Mr. Kessler, a former hedge fund manager, is the author most recently of "Eat People And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs," just out from Portfolio.
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3)Why the GOP Should Welcome a Budget Battle
Americans understand the need for spending restraint now.
By KARL ROVE

President Obama's 2012 budget is not a serious governing document. It's a political one, designed to boost his re-election chances.

By repeatedly saying that his budget reduces the deficit by $1 trillion over 10 years, he hopes the numbers make him sound fiscally conservative. But he puts off 95% of the deficit reduction until after his term ends in 2013. And he assumes that economic growth in the next few years will be at least 25% higher than credible economic forecasters estimate.

Mr. Obama's budget includes $1.6 trillion in tax increases that are real enough—but most of the spending cuts are not. For example, as Rep. Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman pointed out to me, the administration projects war costs for Iraq and Afghanistan at surge levels for the next decade, and then conjures up about $1.3 trillion in defense savings by assuming drawdowns in each theater—drawdowns that were already in the cards. Outside of this sham transaction, according to Mr. Ryan, there are only $104 billion in real spending cuts over the next 10 years.

Mr. Obama's budget includes $1.6 trillion in tax increases that are real enough—but most of the spending cuts are not.

Moreover, the administration simply ignores entitlements. This is a dereliction of duty, although it has a certain political logic: The budget is not meant to be taken seriously—it's meant to be quickly forgotten so that the administration can turn attention to, and attack, what congressional Republicans do about federal spending.

Mr. Obama wants House Republicans to take the lead in cutting current spending and proposing future restraint in entitlement and other mandatory spending. He's betting that letting Republicans take the lead will cripple them. This misreads public opinion. But it is plausible to believe that Republican mistakes can help revive Mr. Obama's political fortunes. So it's important that the GOP offers real budget cuts without coming across as angry and frenetic. Republicans need to patiently show what they are doing and why, and to express their sadness and disappointment over Mr. Obama's failure of leadership.

Congressional Republicans need to make methodical and sensible recommendations for cutting discretionary outlays and restraining future entitlement spending. They must explain to the public why the Obama budget will lead to our nation suffering horrific tax increases, massive austerity cuts, and real human suffering. They need to show that the president's fiscal path is, to use a favorite word of his, unsustainable.

Tactically, Republicans should respond to Mr. Obama's agenda as they did to his infatuation with high-speed rail projects. Three days after Vice President Joe Biden touted the magical balm of high-speed trains, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers released the continuing resolution for the balance of fiscal year 2011.

It cut the rest of this fiscal year's high-speed rail funds, rescinded $3.5 billion appropriated in previous fiscal years but still unspent, and rescinded $3.75 billion in unspent transportation money from the 2009 stimulus, almost all of it from Mr. Obama's high-speed rail plan. Overall, nearly $8 billion was cut from transportation, but none from vital road projects that are real priorities for the states.

The result: Very few Americans believe the billions Mr. Obama wants for speedy trains from Milwaukee to Madison, or Columbus to Cincinnati, will spark economic recovery. This still leaves transportation spending higher than it was two years ago, when Mr. Obama came into office. Republicans can reasonably ask the public: Are we better off with all the spending and red ink Mr. Obama has added over the past two years?

There will be dozens of such confrontations in the months ahead. How Republicans handle these opportunities will go a long way toward determining how popular their agenda is. Politics involves optics as well as policy ideas.

The evidence of the federal government's budget woes is so overwhelming that Americans are ready for tough actions. They understand that failing to make cuts now and to restrain entitlements in the years ahead will doom our children and grandchildren—indeed our country—to a future less prosperous and less free.

Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions, 2010).



3a) Christie Coalition a Jersey Majority
A recent poll shows that New Jersey residents back Governor Christie.
By JAMES FREEMAN

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is locked in a stare-down with Democratic legislators over his plan to reform the state's bloated pension system. A recent Quinnipiac University poll suggests that the Dems may want to blink first if they value re-election.

The survey of 1,347 registered New Jersey voters finds they agree with Mr. Christie that state spending is out of control and that state workers should bear the brunt of spending cuts. A full 82% of respondents call the state's budget problems "very serious," and 64% favor cutting services instead of raising taxes to balance the state budget. Moreover, only 26% favor raising taxes.

It gets worse for the big-government crowd. Some 56% of New Jersey voters favor laying off state workers; 65% favor furloughing these employees; and an overwhelming 77% favor a wage freeze for those allowed to stay on the job. By more than 2-to-1, voters also favor reducing pensions for new workers -- an idea that, amazingly, wins 57% support among union households.

The survey also confirms that Mr. Christie has succeeded in drawing a political distinction between school teachers and the unions that represent them. While 62% of Garden State voters maintain a favorable opinion of public school teachers, just 27% have a favorable view of the New Jersey Education Association, with 44% holding an unfavorable view of the giant teachers union. Overall, a majority of voters now say that unions are playing a negative role in the state's educational system.

There's no guarantee that legislators will take the hint and enact Mr. Christie's pension reforms. But the Quinnipiac numbers suggest that if they don't, many of them will not be returning to Trenton after this fall's elections.

3b)Where the Leaders Are
In a time of crisis, two governors show Washington the way.
By Peggy Noonan

There were two big speeches this week, and I mean big as in “Modern political history will remember this.” Together they signal something significant and promising. Oh, that’s a stuffy way to put it. I mean: The governors are rising and are starting to lead. What a relief. It’s like seeing the posse come over the hill.

The first speech was from Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor who is the answer to the question, “What if Calvin Coolidge talked?” President Coolidge, a spare and serious man, was so famously silent, the story goes, that when a woman at a dinner told him she’d made a bet she could get him to string three words together, he smiled and said, “You lose.” But he was principled, effective and, in time, broadly popular.

The other speech was from a governor newer to the scene but more celebrated, in small part because he comes from a particular media market and in large part because he has spent the past year, his first in office, taking on his state’s most entrenched political establishments, and winning. His style—big, rumpled, garrulous, Jersey-blunt—has captured the imagination of the political class, and also normal people. They look at him and think, “I know that guy. I like that guy.”

Both Mr. Daniels, who spoke Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and Chris Christie of New Jersey, who spoke Wednesday at the American Enterprise Institute, were critical of both parties and put forward the same message: Wake up. We are in crisis. We must save our country, and we can. But if we don’t move now, we will lose it. This isn’t rhetoric, it’s real.

Here’s why response at both venues was near-rapturous: Everyone knew they meant it. Everyone knew they’d been living it.


Mr. Daniels began with first principles—the role and purpose of government—and went to what he has done to keep his state’s books in the black in spite of “the recent unpleasantness.” He turned to the challenge of our era: catastrophic spending, the red ink that is becoming “the red menace.” He said: “No enterprise, small or large, public or private, can remain self-governing, let alone successful, so deeply in hock to others as we are about to be.” If a foreign army invaded, we would set aside all secondary disputes and run to the ramparts. We must bring that air of urgency to the spending crisis. It is “our generational assignment. . . . Forgive the pun when I call it our ‘raison debt.’“

He argued for cuts and sunsetting, for new arrangements and “compacts” with the young. What followed has become controversial with a few conservatives, though it was the single most obvious thing Daniels said: “We have learned in Indiana, big change requires big majorities. We will need people who never tune in to Rush or Glenn or Laura or Sean,” who don’t fall asleep at night to C-Span, who are not necessarily engaged or aligned.

Rush Limbaugh, who is rightly respected for many reasons—lost in the daily bombast, humor and controversy is that fact that for 20 years he has been the nation’s most reliable and compelling explainer of conservative thought—saw Mr. Daniels’s remarks as disrespectful. Radio listeners aren’t “irrelevant or unnecessary.”

Of course they’re not. Nor are they sufficient. If you really want to change your country, you cannot do it from a political base alone. You must win over centrists, moderates, members of the other party, and those who are not preoccupied with politics. This doesn’t mean “be less conservative,” it means broadening the appeal of conservative thinking and approaches. It starts with not alienating and proceeds to persuading.

The late Rep. Henry Hyde, he of the Hyde amendment, once said to me, “Politics is a game of addition.” You start with your followers and bring in new ones, constantly broadening the circle to include people who started out elsewhere. You know the phrase Reagan Democrats? It exists because Reagan reached out to Democrats! He put out his hand to them and said, literally, “Come walk with me.” He lauded Truman, JFK and Scoop Jackson. He argued in his first great political speech, in 1964, that the choice wasn’t right or left, it was up or down.

That’s what Mr. Daniels was saying. “We can search for villains on ideological grounds,” but it’s a waste of time. Compromise and flexibility are necessary, “purity in martyrdom is for suicide bombers.” We must work together. You’ve got to convince the other guy.

Mr. Christie covered similar territory in a way that was less aerial, more on-the-ground. He spoke of making change in Jersey.

Pensions and benefits on the state level, he said, are the equivalent of federal entitlements. They have powerful, “vocal” constituencies. He introduced pension and benefit reforms on a Tuesday in September, and that Friday he went to the state firefighters convention in Wildwood. It was 2 p.m., and “I think you know what they had for lunch.” Mr. Christie had proposed raising their retirement age, eliminating the cost-of-living adjustment, increasing employee pension contributions, and rolling back a 9% pay increase approved years before “by a Republican governor and a Republican Legislature.”

As Mr. Chrisie recounted it: “You can imagine how that was received by 7,500 firefighters. As I walked into the room and was introduced. I was booed lustily. I made my way up to the stage, they booed some more. . . . So I said, ‘Come on, you can do better than that,’ and they did!”

He crumpled up his prepared remarks and threw them on the floor. He told them, “Here’s the deal: I understand you’re angry, and I understand you’re frustrated, and I understand you feel deceived and betrayed.” And, he said, they were right: “For 20 years, governors have come into this room and lied to you, promised you benefits that they had no way of paying for, making promises they knew they couldn’t keep, and just hoping that they wouldn’t be the man or women left holding the bag. I understand why you feel angry and betrayed and deceived by those people. Here’s what I don’t understand. Why are you booing the first guy who came in here and told you the truth?”

He told them there was no political advantage in being truthful: “The way we used to think about politics and, unfortunately, the way I fear they’re thinking about politics still in Washington” involves “the old playbook [which] says, “lie, deceive, obfuscate and make it to the next election.” He’d seen a study that said New Jersey’s pensions may go bankrupt by 2020. A friend told him not to worry, he won’t be governor then. “That’s the way politics has been practiced in our country for too long. . . . So I said to those firefighters, ‘You may hate me now, but 15 years from now, when you have a pension to collect because of what I did, you’ll be looking for my address on the Internet so you can send me a thank-you note.’“

It can be a great relief to turn away from Washington and look at the states, where the rubber meets the road. Real leadership is happening there—the kind that can inspire real followership
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4)Obama Administration Threatens to Throw Israel Under the Bus

In a break with traditional American policy at the United Nations, the Obama administration this week offered to support a UN Security Council statement that condemns Israel’s settlement policies. That offer was reportedly meant as a compromise, so that the US would not have to veto a Security Council resolution being pushed by the Palestinian delegation that condemns Israel.

“The Administration’s position is to throw Israel under the bus,” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said. “Instead of supporting this statement, the American position should be to publicly defend Israel and veto the Palestinian-backed resolution.”

The United States has historically opposed UN Security Council actions that target Israel specifically. The Obama administration’s position represents a break in this longstanding tradition.

The offer to support the anti-Israel statement also marks a shift in position by the Obama administration. A week ago Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the UN Security Council was the wrong venue to address the issue of settlements. This week, the administration said it would support a Security Council statement that faults Israel.

Republicans aren’t alone in criticizing the administration’s approach. New York Democrat Anthony Weiner said yesterday, "This is too clever by half. Instead of doing the correct and principled thing and vetoing an inappropriate and wrong resolution, they now have opened the door to more and more anti-Israeli efforts coming to the floor of the U.N. The correct venue for discussions about settlements and the other aspects of a peace plan is at the negotiating table. Period."


4a)In sharp reversal, U.S. agrees to rebuke Israel in Security Council
By Colum Lynch

The U.S. informed Arab governments Tuesday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity," a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal.

But the Palestinians rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesday of Arab representatives and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution on Friday, according to officials familar with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospect that the Obama adminstration will cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security Council.

Still, the U.S. offer signaled a renewed willingness to seek a way out of the current impasse, even if it requires breaking with Israel and joining others in the council in sending a strong message to its key ally to stop its construction of new settlements. U.S. officials were not available for comment, but two Security Council diplomats confirmed the proposal.

The Palestinian delegation, along with Lebanon, the Security Council's only Arab member state, asked the council's president late Wednesday to schedule a meeting for Friday. But it remained unclear whether the Palestinian move today to reject the U.S. offer is simply a negotiating tactic aimed at extracting a better deal from Washington.

Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, outlined the new U.S. offer in a closed door meeting on Tuesday with the Arab Group, a bloc of Arab countries from North Africa and the Middle East. In exchange for scuttling the Palestinian resolution, the United States would support the council statement, consider supporting a U.N. Security Council visit to the Middle East, the first since 1979, and commit to supporting strong language criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a future statement by the Middle East Quartet.

The U.S.-backed draft statement -- which was first reported by Al Hurra -- was obtained by Turtle Bay. In it, the Security Council "expresses its strong opposition to any unilateral actions by any party, which cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations and will not be recognized by the international community, and reaffirms that it does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, which is a serious obstacle to the peace process." The statement also condemns "all forms of violence, including rocket fire from Gaza, and stresses the need for calm and security for both peoples."

U.S. officials argue that the only way to resolve the Middle East conflict is through direct negotiations involving Israel and the Palestinians. For weeks, the Obama administration has refused to negotiate with the Palestinians on a resolution condemning the settlements as illegal, signaling that they would likely veto it if it were put to a vote. The Palestinians were planning to put the resolution to a vote later this week. But Security Council statements of the sort currently under consideration are voted on the bases of consensus in the 15-nation council.

The United States has, however, been isolated in the 15-nation council. Virtually all 14 other member states are prepared to support the Palestinian resolution, according to council diplomats. A U.N. Security Council resolution generally carries greater political and legal force than a statement from the council's president.

The U.S. concession comes as the Middle East is facing a massive wave of popular demonstrations that have brought down the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and are posing a challenge to governments in Algeria, Bahrain, and Iran.
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5)Egypt Gets Its Khomeini
By Barry Rubin

Friday, February 18 may be a turning point in Egyptian history. On that day Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the best-known Muslim Brotherhood cleric in the world and one of the most famous Islamist thinkers, will address a mass rally in Cairo.

Up until now, the Egyptian revolution generally, and the Brotherhood in particular, has lacked a charismatic thinker, someone who could really mobilize the masses. Qaradawi is that man. Long resident in the Gulf, he is returning to his homeland in triumph. Through internet, radio, his 100 books, and his weekly satellite television program, Qaradawi has been an articulate voice for revolutionary Islamism. He is literally a living legend.

Under the old regime, Qaradawi was banned from the country. He is now 84 years old --two years older than the fallen President Husni Mubarak--but he is tremendously energetic and clear-minded.

It was Qaradawi who, in critiquing Usama bin Ladin and al-Qaida, argued that Islamists should always participate in elections because they would, he claims, invariably win them. Hamas and Hezb'allah have shown that he was right on that point.

Symbolically, he will give the Friday prayer sermon to be held in Tahrir Square, the center of the revolutionary movement. The massing of hundreds of thousands of people in the square to hear Islamic services and a sermon by a radical Islamist is not the kind of thing that's been going on under the 60-year-old military regime that was recently overthrown.

The context is also the thanking of Qaradawi for his support of the revolution, an implication that he is somehow its spiritual father.

Qaradawi, though some in the West view him as a moderate, supports the straight Islamist line: anti-American, anti-Western, wipe Israel off the map, foment Jihad, stone homosexuals, in short the works.

One of Qaradawi's initiatives has been urging Muslims to settle in the West, of which he said, "that powerful West, which has come to rule the world, should not be left to the influence of the Jews alone." He contends that the three major threats Muslims face are Zionism, internal integration, and globalization. To survive, he argues, Muslims must fight the Zionists, Crusaders, idolaters, and Communists.

What is his view of both the Mubarak regime and the young, Facebook-flourishing liberals who made the revolution? As he said in 2004: "Some Arab and Muslim secularists are following the U.S. government by advocating the kind of reform that will disarm the nation from the elements of strength that are holding our people together."

Have no doubt. It is Qaradawi, not bin Ladin, who is the most dangerous revolutionary Islamist in the world, and he is about to unleash the full force of his power and persuasion on Egypt.

Who are you going to bet on being more influential, a Google executive and an unorganized band of well-intentioned liberal Egyptians or the world champion radical Islamist cleric?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
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6)Alfred E President
By Bruce Walker

Barack Obama resembles, more and more, the hapless, clueless, sappily cheerful mascot of MAD Magazine, Alfred E. Neuman. Given the intellectual vacuity of his life so far, attending schools and working in "jobs" that did not require a single original thought, or even exercise in critical thinking, it is increasingly hard to determine whether our illustrious leader actually grasps the profound seriousness of civilized life today.


Our national debt is exploding. Right now it is only a measly $45,000 per person, but it is growing fast. This does not just mean the federal government faces political problems with gigantic deficit "investment" appropriations, but it also means that no one wants to buy our government debt instruments any longer. Simply paying the interest on that federal debt is becoming harder. The value of the dollar and the credit of the government are both dropping precipitously. States cannot pay their "bills" (i.e. lawful obligations). When high unemployment rates are the way to control our porous borders and illegal immigration problem, then the long term prognosis for our nation is much grimmer than the calm demeanor of Alfred E President would suggest.

Europe, the other half of our bastion of Western Civilization, faces a comparable unraveling. Public pensions in nations like Greece are simply unsustainable. Ireland, the once thriving Celtic Tiger, not only needs a Euro bailout, but the Bank of Ireland, on its own, simply began printing Euros. Belgium has lesser but serious economic problems, but the longest European nation unable to form a government must also deal with ethnic schisms in an artificial nation half Walloon and half Flemish. What does one call a bank that essentially begins counterfeiting money and a democracy that cannot form a government? Well, to everyone outside the world of Alfred E President, one calls that "a clue."


Angry young Moslem men continue their thuggish conquest of the European street. The docile, graying population of homegrown Europeans no longer cares to defend its Judeo-Christian heritage or its continental culture. The economic disintegration, which seems so near the edge in much of Europe, will not inspire these Moslems to pick up the heavy burden of pensions caused by a declining indigenous European population. The bitter young men of Islam will, instead, compete with white haired Frenchmen for the shrinking pie of social welfare benefits. Does Alfred E. President seem concerned? He is concerned only in the vague, rhetorical sense that concern can be traded in for modest bumps in personal approval ratings.



6a)Obama's Louis XV budget
By Charles Krauthammer

Five days before his inauguration, President-elect Obama told The Post that entitlement reform could no longer be kicked down the road. He then spent the next two years kicking - racking up $3 trillion in new debt along the way - on the grounds that massive temporary deficit spending was necessary to prevent another Great Depression.

To prove his bona fides, he later appointed a deficit reduction commission. It made its report last December, when the economy was well past recession, solemnly declaring that "the era of debt denial is over."

That lasted all of two months. The president's first post-commission budget, submitted Monday, marks a return to obliviousness. Even Erskine Bowles, Obama's Democratic debt commission co-chair, says it goes "nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare."

The budget touts a deficit reduction of $1.1 trillion over the next decade.

Where to begin? Even if you buy this number, Obama's budget adds $7.2 trillion in new debt over that same decade.

But there's a catch. The administration assumes economic growth levels higher than private economists and the Congressional Budget Office predict. Without this rosy scenario - using CBO growth estimates - $1.7 trillion of revenue disappears and U.S. debt increases $9 trillion over the next decade. This is almost $1 trillion every year.


Assume you buy the rosy scenario. Of what does this $1.1 trillion in deficit reduction consist? Painful cuts? Think again. It consists of $1.6 trillion in tax hikes, plus an odd $328 billion of some mysterious bipartisan funding for a transportation trust fund (gas taxes, one supposes) - for a grand total of nearly $2 trillion in new taxes.

Classic Obama debt reduction: Add $2 trillion in new taxes, then add $1 trillion in new spending and, presto, you've got $1 trillion of debt reduction. It's the same kind of mad deficit accounting in Obamacare: It reduces debt by adding $540 billion in new spending, then adding $770 billion in new taxes. Presto: $230 billion of "debt reduction." Bialystock & Bloom accounting.

And what of those "painful cuts" Obama is making to programs he really cares about? The catch is that these "cuts" are from a hugely inflated new baseline created by the orgy of spending in Obama's first two years. These were supposedly catastrophe-averting, anti-Depression emergency measures. But post-recession they remain in place. As a result, discretionary non-defense budget levels today are 24 percent higher than before Obama - 84 percent higher if you add in the stimulus money.

Which is why the supposedly painful cuts yield spending still at stratospheric levels. After all the cuts, Education Department funding for 2012 remains 35 percent higher than in the last pre-emergency pre-Obama year, 2008. Environmental Protection Agency: 18 percent higher. Energy Department: 22 percent higher. Consider even the biggest "painful cut" headline of all, the 50 percent cut in fuel subsidies for the poor. Barbaric, is it not? Except for the fact that the subsidies had been doubled from 2008 levels. The draconian cut is nothing but a return to normal pre-recession levels.

Yet all this is penny-ante stuff. The real money is in entitlements. And the real scandal of this budget is that Obama doesn't touch them. Not Social Security. Not Medicaid. Not Medicare.

What about tax reform, the other major recommendation of the deficit commission? Nothing.

How about just a subset of that - corporate tax reform, on which Republicans have signaled they are eager to collaborate? The formula is simple: Eliminate the loopholes to broaden the tax base, then lower the rates for everyone, promoting both fairness and economic efficiency. What does the Obama budget do? Removes tax breaks - and then keeps the rate at 35 percent, among the highest in the industrialized world (more than twice Canada's, for example).

Yet for all its gimmicks, this budget leaves the country at decade's end saddled with publicly held debt triple what Obama inherited.

A more cynical budget is hard to imagine. This one ignores the looming debt crisis, shifts all responsibility for serious budget-cutting to the Republicans - for which Democrats are ready with a two-year, full-artillery demagogic assault - and sets Obama up perfectly for reelection in 2012.

Obama fancies his happy talk, debt-denial optimism to be Reaganesque. It's more Louis XV. Reagan begat a quarter-century of prosperity; Louis, the deluge.

Moreover, unlike Obama, Louis had the decency to admit he was forfeiting the future. He never pretended to be winning it.
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7)American Pundits and Policymakers Don't Understand that Democracy Isn't Necessarily More Moderate
By Barry Rubin

What must be written in order to promote one's career in Washington or popularity in the Western world, and what must be written in order to understand the Middle East are two very different things.


Consider the following theme, as expressed by a president, a former secretary of state, and a leading pundit. I could have added dozens of other examples including newspaper editorials. All agree on a certain principle that makes sense in established Western democracies (and thus appeals to their audiences) but is totally at variance with history and reality in the Middle East.


The theme is this: The people are inevitably moderate. They are mainly concerned with material well-being (fixing pot-holes in the street, collecting garbage, providing good schools and jobs) that makes it impossible to have a radical or ideologically driven government. Thus, if radicals do take power in a country they will inevitably become more moderate.


In fact, every example shows the exact opposite. A brief list of forces that weren't moderated by taking power include: the Free Officers in Egypt, 1952; the Ba'th party in Syria, 1963 and in Iraq, 1968; Iran's Islamist revolution of 1979; the Taliban in Afghanistan; Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority starting in 1994; and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. That is a very partial list and we can add to that Hizballah's new regime in Lebanon, the Sudan, and others.


But this isn't what we're told by people who cannot account for all of those real-world examples. Former Secretary of State C. Rice:


"The Brotherhood...should be forced to defend their vision for Egypt. Do they seek the imposition of sharia law? Do they intend a future of suicide bombings and violent resistance to the existence of Israel? Will they use Iran as a political model? Al-Qaeda? Where will Egypt find jobs for its people? Do they expect to improve the lives of Egyptians cut off from the international community through policies designed to destabilize the Middle East?"


Rice's implication is that of course Islamists cannot make attractive arguments. But what if no government of Egypt can raise living standards because the country lacks resources and money? Then sharia law at home and suicide bombings abroad sound attractive. If Rice knew anything about Egypt -- and this statement reveals she doesn't -- she would know that Iran and al-Qaeda are not factors on the agenda for the Brotherhood. Oh, and where will jobs come from? The government will create them, which means a statist Egypt is pretty inevitable.


By the way, if one has any doubts about Rice knowing anything about Egypt, she writes: "Egypt's institutions are stronger and its secularism deeper" than Iran before its revolution. Actually, I don't think that's true. Egypt is an extremely religious country.


Next, as the Washington Post put it:


President Obama on Tuesday warned Middle Eastern nations, including longtime U.S. allies, that they need to "get out ahead" of surging aspirations for democracy.


One of the most basic factors in Middle East politics is that precisely when people think the government is weak and giving way, they escalate demands. This is what happened in Iran in 1978 and in Egypt now. If governments don't show a strong face, they can disintegrate. All the leaders who hate America understand this principle. If the army had been willing to put down demonstrations from the start, there would have been no revolution in Egypt. And that's why there will be no revolution in Iran or Syria.


The idea that the popular is always the more moderate fails to comprehend a great deal of world history.


This is why nonsense like this by Thomas Friedman is dangerously false:


"The Arab tyrants, precisely because they were illegitimate, were the ones who fed their people hatred of Israel as a diversion. If Israel could finalize a deal with the Palestinians, it will find that a more democratic Arab world is a more stable partner. Not because everyone will suddenly love Israel (they won't). But because the voices that would continue calling for conflict would have legitimate competition, and democratically elected leaders will have to be much more responsive to their people's priorities, which are for more schools not wars."


Now nobody has written more than I have -- in books like The Long War for Freedom, The Tragedy of the Middle East -- about how this system worked. Yet the "voices that would continue calling for conflict" would include Hamas and a large portion of Fatah. Indeed -- and read this carefully -- the most obvious successor to Mahmoud Abbas as leader of the Palestinian Authority is Muhammad Ghaneim, who opposes any deal with Israel and would tear up any such agreement made by Abbas.


Logic has nothing to do with how people write about these issues. Hasn't the "Palestine Papers" affair once again shown how angry is the reaction to even the slightest compromise with Israel? The head of the negotiations' unit, who dared suggest some concessions, had to resign. Isn't it democratic Egypt, not autocratic Egypt, threatening to abrogate the treaty with Israel? Of course. Would there be any possibility of a democratic Jordan, after overthrowing the monarchy, keeping their treaty with Israel? Of course not.


Let us assume for the moment that the peace treaty Israel and Lebanon came close to signing in 1982 was completed. Would the Hezb'allah-dominated regime, that came to power in free elections, abrogate that treaty? Of course it would.


If democracy is established in Arabic-speaking states there will be Islamist and leftist, and radical nationalist parties that will use demagoguery to get votes. In no Arabic-speaking country is there a strong liberal party, and that includes places where there is a relatively open political system like Kuwait, Iraq, and Lebanon.

7a)Fissures emerge among Egypt's protest leaders, jeopardizing victory
By Dan Murphy


Less than a week after toppling Mubarak, Egypt's protest leaders are split on how to proceed. Some say the military is pursuing a 'divide and conquer' strategy


For more than two weeks Tahrir Square in central Cairo was the focal point of the Egyptian revolution, a sacred place where swelling crowds of protesters overturned three decades of government efforts to divide the Egyptian people.

Again and again, protesters at Tahrir spoke of the feelings of unity and brotherhood, of pride restored in being Egyptian and Arab. A simple set of demands — the dictator Hosni Mubarak out, fair elections, a reformed constitution and a rejection of fights over ideology — saw tens of thousands of previously apolitical Egyptians join hands with the country's small core of long-standing reformers.

And then, at almost the moment of victory, it all started to come apart, even as Egyptians' success was inspiring democracy activists in Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen.

Now, just five days since Mubarak was forced to step down, the rank-and-file among protesters have deserted Tahrir and bickering has broken out among protest leaders.

'DIVIDE AND CONQUER' STRATEGY?
Critics say Egypt's military, which took direct control of the country for what it insists will be a maximum of six months before restoring civilian rule, is seeking to exploit the divisions.

The head of the Egyptian military, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Tuesday appointed a council to reform the Constitution with limited input from the broad coalition that led the first stage of the revolution.

There have also been indications that he and other military officials are favoring some groups over others in an attempt to break apart a broad front that viewed Mubarak's removal as a first step, not an end point.

"One thing I don't really like is that the Supreme Military Council has not tried to speak to the parties or to movements that drove this phenomenon," says Osama Ghazali Harb, a spokesman for the Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, whose leader Ayman Nour was imprisoned after he sought to run for president against Mubarak in 2005.

"They've singled out a few young people to talk to, they're from the people's movement, but there are a lot of others that need to be included," he says. "The military should not try to revive the old tactic of divide and conquer."

Among those young people was Google marketing executive Wael Ghonim, whose online activism helped kick off the protests on Jan. 25 and who briefly emerged as the face of the movement after he was secretly detained by the Mubarak regime for over a week during the height of the protests.

But Mr. Ghonim is politically inexperienced, having been involved in activism for less than a year. His own political leanings are as yet unclear.

The Ghad Party is a member of the National Association for Change, an umbrella group of reformers that coalesced around former UN nuclear watchdog boss Mohamed ElBaradei a year ago, and Mr. Harb says the absence of real outreach to the group by the military is worrying.

Other activists say they're worried the Muslim Brotherhood, a group outlawed under Mubarak but officially tolerated as a sort of fig-leaf opposition, will cut deals with the military regime behind the backs of other reformers. "They've done that sort of thing before," charges one leftist activist who helped organize recent protests. "Before the 2005 elections, there were signs they were negotiating with the regime to take an 'acceptable' level of parliamentary seats."

CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
Yesterday, the military named Tariq al-Bishri — a judge respected for his independence, yet who is also close to the Muslim Brotherhood — to head the constitutional reform committee. Other members of the committee appear to be legal figures very close to the Mubarak regime and his ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).

"The appointment of Sobhi Saleh, a former Brotherhood MP in Alexandria, to the same committee has sent an even more worrying message: that the Army is drafting the [Muslim Brotherhood] to help calm down the national euphoria by giving the group a privileged position in amending the Constitution," writes political analyst Issandr El Amrani for Al-Masry Al-Youm.

He argues the move "will revive longstanding perceptions of a symbiotic relationship between the regime and [the Brotherhood] at the expense of public interest."

And today, a spokesman for the new constitutional committee said that a full overhaul of the Constitution, a key demand of Egypt's democracy activists, is not in the works. Ismail Etman told Al-Hayat TV in a statement that a handful of articles will be simply amended, and urged public protests to cease.

Harb, spokesman for the opposition Ghad party, says he sees signs that the process of constitutional reform is being dangerously separated from politics.

"Changing the Constitution doesn't require a committee, it requires a a national dialogue — people need to talk about the nature of the state they want: A strong presidency? Is there going to be proportional representation in Parliament? The role of religion, and so on," he says.

"This dialogue needs to take place in the press, in the parties, and down to the grass roots. Then after some months a consensus will emerge. This isn't a matter for appointed committees to decide. It's a matter for the people to decide."

DIM PROSPECTS FOR FRIDAY PROTEST
Less than a day after Mubarak's removal, with the raucous party in downtown Cairo starting to wind down and thousands of protesters volunteering to pick up trash, take down barricades, and repaint curbs before heading home, men were grabbing microphones and delivering political bromides.

The unity that brought together Christians and Muslims without acrimony, and men and women without the sexual harassment usually endemic in large mixed crowds, appeared to fray. Islamist activists who appeared to be from the Muslim Brotherhood were demanding that men be separated from women in the crowds gathered to hear celebratory concerts on the makeshift stages around the square.

And the rank-and-file protesters were starting to drift away.

Sameh Sabri, a burly bank worker who'd joined the protests, explained why he was helping with the cleanup. "We didn't own this space — none of this was ours before," he said, gesturing at the square. "It is now. But it's time to head home and give the military a chance. We can always come back if we have to."

The view of Mr. Sabri and many others like him dim the prospects of a mass demonstration called for this Friday at Tahrir to remind the military that political reform must move forward.
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8)Creative Destruction and the Federal Deficit
By Frank Ryan

The President announced the 2012 budget of $3.73 Trillion with an expected deficit of $1.1 trillion. The massive deficit combines with the three prior years' deficits of in excess of $1 Trillion each which will push the national debt beyond $16 Trillion.


When combined with the exploding state deficits and other unfunded liabilities, the debt crisis will begin to unfold rapidly and unpredictably for our citizens. A national disaster is in the making.


Republicans in Congress responded with demands for budget cuts of $100 billion.


The current debt crisis requires so much more than a band aid. We need a tourniquet to stop this hemorrhaging. Cuts of $100 billion are not even a good start yet such cuts may be all that is politically possible at this point. Such a political reality sets the stage for the disaster that is sure to follow.


Some may question the need for caution. Some may underestimate the nature of the concern. After all, our professors taught us that fiscal policy and the use of government to smooth out the business cycle is a legitimate way to govern.


This time things are different. Fiscal and monetary policies, as with all economic measures, operate within constraints. The constraints have all been broken and the effects of these fiscal and monetary policies are uncharted and will lead to extremely volatile results.


The issues facing our nation are profound and made more so because of the constraints of our aging population, the coming retirement of baby boomers, the decline in education quality and a voter turnout of less than 30% in the 2010 elections does not bode well for reform.


I specialize in keeping organizations out of bankruptcy. In doing so, I have found some elements that are critical to the success of the turnaround of the business. Most organizations ignore corrective actions early on such that a full blown economic crisis ensues. For economies, this is part of the Creative Destruction described by Professor Schumpeter as part of the natural economic process.


It is natural for a people to ignore warnings until it is too late. Enforced discipline is apparently preferable to financial self-discipline.


First for a turnaround to be successful everyone must understand the critical problems being faced. Everyone must be willing to sacrifice. I contend that with only 30% of voters engaged, we, as a nation, are not on the brink yet. This will result in too little being done too late.


The $100 billion in cuts may be all that is palatable to the electorate right now. Unfortunately, this token cutback is not sufficient to stop even one month worth of excess spending.


True reform is required but my belief is that it is not politically acceptable as yet. Ending the Departments of Energy and Education come to mind as possible candidates for cutbacks, but I doubt that such cut would be enacted before the crisis become so severe as to not make any difference.


Second, the turnaround requires all to take a long term view and not a short term view. Self discipline must win out over self-indulgence.


If no one is willing to accept change or cut backs then all cuts will be cosmetic in nature and not yield substantive results. Ford Motor Company and its unions negotiated the tough issues and solved them. They will emerge a great company and will survive. They remembered their customer and their dealers not just themselves. GM took the easy way out and will lose in the long run.


A turnaround is not without discomfort. The longer the fixes take to be enacted, though, the more painful the cure. Social Security, for example, was first identified as a problem in the 1970's yet no substantive corrective actions were taken. The final Social Security fix will not be pleasant but it will be done.


Third, a successful turnaround requires spending less than you take in and not increasing your revenues at the expense of controlling your costs. Government cannot make up its deficiencies by volume!


Fourth, there cannot be any sacred cows in a turnaround. Every department must be viewed and waste eliminated. In the Federal government alone, the effort must be undertaken to remove incompetent managers and employees to make government more effective and less costly.


Finally, the customer must take center stage. In a government, the customer is the taxpayer. It is the person paying the bills not the recipient of the government largesse but the financier of the government must be looked at as someone to nurture and not vilify.


Without the steps above enacted in a timely manner, the turnaround will not work. The failed turnaround is marked by a situation in which the solution is forced upon us. I fear that is where we are headed.


Our creative destruction is underway. The bad news is that it is not stoppable any longer. The great news is that in the long run our vibrant people will survive and a greater nation is likely to emerge, but only if we decide to get engaged in the fight and strive to remain faithful to the founding principles of our Nation and our Constitution. I am confident that we will.


Frank Ryan, CPA specializes in corporate restructuring and lectures on ethics for the state CPA societies. Frank is a retired Colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve and served in Iraq and briefly in Afghanistan. He is on numerous boards of publicly traded and non-profit organizations.
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