---
Great British TV drama about Israel and the Palestinians. It fails, however, in its historical documentation and therefore undercuts its own message. However, the British have a problem when it comes to facts about how they stiffed the Jews and never lived up to the terms of the Balfour Declaration so they continue to re-write history according to their own bias and that's where the Brit's Crumpet crumbles. (See 2 below.)
Then, Melanie Phillips presents her version of the British view towards Israel:
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2011/01/awesome-interview-with-melanie-phillips.html
---
Government spending and why it may never stop until it is too late and our nation's fiscal position is too far gone. (See 3 below.)
---
I did not know that our State Department is currently spending over $700 million to help rebuild infrastructure in various countries and that, in many instances, the money is going to rebuild Mosques. I am not against Mosques but I am disturbed that taxpayers are funding their rebuilding.
Therefore, you might find this site of interest: http://www.wsbtv.com/video/25764282/index.html
---
Obama needs the Jewish vote and money so he flip flops when it comes to voting for and against Israel and settlements.
Obama is an unmitigated disaster and like the writer suggests he would not need to produce a birth certificate to run for president of the Palestinians. (See 4 below.)
---
Kim Strassel told Republicans tonight the 2012 election would not be easy because Obama is electable and thus they could not bring about needed change unless they capture the White House. To do that they must do something they find difficult - expand their base and low key some issues that turn independents off and, while they go through the process of deciding what policies to follow, they must present a united front and explain to the American voter the necessity of what they seek to do. A tall order perhaps but doable.
There is something perverse about union members and teachers protesting balancing a budget by asking them to be reasonable in their demands to enjoy 'fat cat' pensions and pay scales and then have Obama support them. The public gets it but not Obama. Hopefully he will in 2012.
Let the revolution begin! (See 5 and 5a below.)
---
Qadafi's world is crumbling. Again, are the Saudi's next? (See 6 and 6a below.)
---
Dick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Dear Fellow American Patriots:
With so many things going on in Congress, our State Legislature, and local politics, it is difficult to stay focused on the main problems. Yes, the national debt, increased “hidden” taxes, Obama Care, smaller government, and all the attendant issues need our attention.
However, all of these issues fade in importance when the issue of “multiculturalism” raises its head. We have heard the heads of state of three European nations and our allies speak out recently against multiculturalism and how it is destroying their countries. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, Great Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke about how they had embraced toleration of the continued practice of immigrating cultures to continue the actions they had practiced in their native country.
This is happening in the United States of America, the melting pot of the world. People have fled to America for its freedoms, wanting to be an American, to speak English, and to strive for the right to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But we bend over backwards to make people comfortable, to help them continue to live in the past from which they were escaping rather than help them assimilate into the joy of being an American. In our early days it was a privilege to be granted admission by the immigration authorities at Ellis Island and to step on American soil. My maternal grandparents came from Germany. My grandmother came as an indentured servant at the age of 12. Her parents did this as a gift to their daughter. It wasn’t easy for any of them. They didn’t bring Germany with them. In fact, their oldest son died in WW I fighting the Germans.
What has happened to our country when we make exceptions, overlook behavior that is out of the norm in order not to be accused of racism or profiling. A case in point: Maj. Hasan, the Ft. Hood assassin. He was pushed up through the ranks, commanding officers ignored his verbal and written statements that his highest obligation was to his religion, Islam, not to the Constitution of the USA that he had sworn to protect. Our government still has not described him as an Islamist terrorist. Then there are the municipalities and states that are instituting Sharia Law over the laws of our land. If you are not familiar with Sharia Law, I suggest you study it.
PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN should resound from our lips and the lips of our President. We have helped almost every country in the world with humanitarian aid: food, medicine, clothes, and money without asking for something in return. We speak one language, ENGLISH. If you do not agree with this, then I suggest you return to the place from which you came and be happy.
We must be ever vigilant against the enemies from without and within. The following video shows what is happening in parts of our country.
Let Freedom Ring,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)Channel 4's landmark TV series 'The Promise' is built on a serious historical falsehood about Israel
British TV channel Channel 4 has been broadcasting 'The Promise'. And it is a landmark piece of television. 'The Promise' is a four-part, six-hour dramatisation of the founding of Israel, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today.
We have been watching it. And it is gripping. We are not surprised that it has been receiving very good reviews, and is a likely candidate for future broadcasting awards. Over 1.5 million viewers in the UK have been watching its two episodes to date, including - we assume - most people with an active interest in the conflict: politicians, academics, students, members of human rights groups, writers and intellectuals, diplomats and civil servants.
The production is superb. The acting is excellent. It is meticulously observed and staged..And it is also built on a major historical falsehood. A falsehood so severe that it undermines the credibility of its messages. Its director Peter Kosminsky claims that he "told both sides of the story". But episode 1 reveals that he does not even know what the Israeli side of the story is......
'The Promise' describes the events of 1945-8 through the eyes of Len, a British sergeant who had witnessed the liberation of the Jews at Bergen-Belsen, and is later posted with British forces to Palestine. At a crucial moment in that first episode Len, together with other British army officers, receives a briefing from their British army commander on the purpose of their mission in Palestine, and the history behind it. This takes place shortly after the second world war.
The commander's words are not intended as a partisan speech. It is the moment at which the British soldiers (and by extension 1.5 million viewers) are provided with the background to the conflict, and indeed the subsequent episodes of 'The Promise'. Indeed it is the only piece of the script which endeavours to tell the story of how the Jews, the Arabs and the British found themselves in three-way conflict.
Here is what the British commanding officer in The Promise says:
"The Jews and Arabs have been living here in relative harmony for thousands of years. But our victory over the Germans has turned the trickle of Jews coming to this land into a flood. You must understand, the Jews see it as their holy land. But the Arabs, who have been here for over a thousand years, see them as stealing their land. Our job is to keep the two sides apart....."
There you have it. The historical narrative of Israel. And it is a narrative which does not operate to resolve the conflict, but to perpetuate it. Ever since World War Two, the Arabs have seen the Jewish national enterprise as the consequence of Nazism. Without indigenous roots. And without historical legitimacy.
They build their sense of victimhood on the argument that they are "paying the price" for European fascism. Far from challenging this mindset, Kosminsky's so-called 'balanced' narrative has reinforced it. Kosminsky makes no mention of the steady return to Palestine of Jews which had been carrying on since the 1880s. Kosminsky does not hint at the Balfour Declaration or other international commitments to support a Jewish national home.
Kosminsky does not recognise that Jewish national life had existed thousands of years ago in the land of Israel, and that the connection is a national connection.
Kosminsky does not pay any attention to the Jews' state-building efforts in the period before the Second World War. And Kosminsky perpetuates a complete falsehood that the Jews and Arabs had been living in "relative harmony". Kosminsky reportedly researched The Promise for over a decade. But has he heard of the Arab riots against the Jews of the Yishuv in the 1920s or 1930s?
Has he heard of the incessant violent assaults upon Jews building up Palestine? Has he heard of the Hebron massacre of 1929?
The idea that there was "relative harmony" in Palestine till World War Two is a fiction. It's a fiction which Hamas and other rejectionists and ideologues readily embrace.
Meanwhile, the claim that the Arabs had been living there for a thousand years is also a massive over-simplification. Even the most partisan historians have to admit that Palestine under the Ottomans and then the British was not exactly a hub of Arab nationalism, or a focal point of Arab pride and economic endeavour.
While 'The Promise' is brilliant drama - and we will be highlighting its strengths as well its weaknesses in the future - there are plenty of other major flaws in its so called 'balanced' narrative and in its framing of the conflict. In subsequent weeks we will be explaining them. For now, here is a link to the programme website. We have quoted just one short extract from episode one. See for yourself: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-promise/4od (Not available outside the UK
And by the way, here are two other examples of the damage which is caused when the narrative of Israel is artificially started at World War II:
Barack Obama made this error in his major speech to the Arab world in June 2009: click here:
'How President Obama got it wrong on Israel's history... and why it matters for future peace' (Beyond Images Briefing 242)
And The Economist made this error in an obituary of Yasser Arafat published in 2004: see
The Economist Magazine's obituaries: misleading accounts of Israel's history' (Beyond Images Briefing 124)
Key messages: Delegitimisation of Israel is not just a matter of outrageous, flagrant denial of Jewish national rights.
It is happening in drip-drip style, as ideas which call the history of Israel into question are steadily absorbed into liberal discourse, into respectable mainstream thinking. Click here for The Beyond Images Report on Delegitimisation which provides many examples of this.
Elements of Channel 4's 'The Promise' are a classic instance of this phenomenon. The Promise is doubtless being viewed by almost everyone in the UK who passionately believes in the Palestinian cause.
In building its drama on the basis of an explicit historical fiction, it is not contributing to peace and understanding. It is fuelling the falsehoods on which the delegitimisation of Israel thrives. There are many many other falsehoods: we will be highlighting some in future emails.
No amount of great acting and brilliant direction can obscure that fact.
By the way, we have not seen a single syllable uttered about The Promise in public by any of the central Jewish organisations which claim to be fighting delegitimisation in the UK, in the two weeks since its broadcasts began..... Are we on Beyond Images missing something.... or - just possibly - are they?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)From: Rep. Marsha Blackburn marsha.blackburn@mail.house.gov
Subject: This Week In Washington: The 2012 Budget and The Continuing Resolution for 2011
Spending, Cutting, and the Debt
Friends,
Activity in the House this week was important for the fiscal future of our country. We've had two important issues before us that will set the course for Federal spending over the next few years. They are very different legislative actions, and it is important that both are understood.
First, during the lame duck session last December, Congress passed a temporary spending bill to continue government operations through the first months of 2011. That bill comes to an end next month, and Congress must pass another one to continue funding the government.
The need for repeated Continuing Resolutions (CR) to fund the Federal government is a product of Congressional Democrats’ failure to even offer a budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2011. As such, we are forced to fund this year in a piecemeal fashion. This gives House Republicans an opportunity to make our first series of spending reductions. You will find more information on the CR, together with my efforts to cut spending, below.
The other fiscal news this week is the President’s release of the FY 2012 budget. I had hoped the President had grasped the feelings most Americans have about continued government spending and debt. After reviewing the budget the Administration proposed, I am disappointed President Obama clearly hasn’t gotten the message.
As we work through this week, it is important to have an accurate assessment of the fiscal state of the nation. Our Gross Domestic Product is $14.4 trillion while we are currently more than $14 trillion in debt. That debt breaks out to $45,000 per American at a time when the median income for 7th District families is $61,387. Every incumbent Member of Congress and every Administration bears some blame for the spending spree that accumulated that debt.
The United States pays $1.273 billion in interest payments on the debt every single day. At the same time, national unemployment has been at 9 percent or higher for 21 consecutive months. This is America’s longest jobless streak since the Great Depression. The average person looking for a job has been at it for 36.9 weeks. 43.5 million Americans are on food stamps, the highest number in history. These numbers persist two years after Congressional Democrats and the President initiated their $1.16 trillion stimulus program ($821 in spending and an additional $347 billion in interest on the borrowed money). In fact, during the four years that Democrats controlled the House, our economy lost 6.8 million jobs.
When you include this stimulus spending, Democrats increased non-security discretionary spending by 84%. This forced the gross national debt to increase from $8.6 trillion to over $14 trillion. The White House predicts the deficit will reach $1.5 trillion in the current fiscal year.
The approach that the President and Congressional Democrats have taken towards economic stimulus – massive deficit spending in an effort to create jobs – has clearly failed. The resulting debt is destined to hobble our economy and limit our children’s future unless we enforce significant cuts now.
What follows is a more detailed examination of both the CR and the President’s budget. While they impact each other, they are distinctly separate items and it is important that we understand them as such.
FY 2011 Continuing Resolution
We are constrained in our cuts by the nature of the CR and the government’s fiscal cycle. Because it applies to the rest of FY 2011, we can only use it to cut spending through September 30 of this year. We will have to turn to other measures, like the President’s Budget, to make deeper cuts in the future.
Since House Democrats never bothered to pass a budget for the year, the best benchmarks to judge our cuts by is by what President Obama asked for in is FY 2011 budget. Using that budget as a guide, our CR cuts $100 billion with $81 billion cut from non security funding and $19 billion cut from security related agencies. That represents a $60 billion cut from actual spending last year, trimming some agencies by as much as 40%. Most importantly it cuts spending where the President wanted to merely freeze it and reverses the trend of increases in discretionary spending year after year after year.
This document shows how much the CR cuts from real FY 2010 spending as well as President Obama’s request for 2011. The $100 billion cut represents targeted reductions in specific agencies and programs that will save money and reduce the size of government. These include cutting $10 million from the EPA budget for local climate change grants, another $5 million from EPA for cap and trade technical assistance, $86 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $8.8 million for exchanges with historic whaling partners (yes, that is a real thing we were spending your tax dollars on) and $55 million from the United Nations Population Fund. You can see a more complete list of specific cuts here.
In the course of the CR debate, I also cast my vote in favor of amendments to limit the EPA's reach into our economy, defund the FCC's internet takeover, and end taxpayer dollars for Planned Parenthood.
I support these cuts because I know that without them, we can’t get our country back on the road to fiscal health. However, I don’t believe these cuts are sufficient. As you all know I have long advocated for across the board cuts. Across the board cuts don’t just represent a one year cost savings, they re-set the budget baseline for future years, which allows the savings to compound year after year. In addition, they force every department to tighten their belt and dig deeper to dig out redundancy and waste. The result is a smaller and more efficient Federal Government.
To that end, I led many of my colleagues in requesting a further 5.5% across the board cut on top of the $100 billion of specific programmatic cuts. Our efforts were not successful this time, but I was encouraged by the many Members who supported the idea. Surely each Federal agency and every Federal office can save a nickel off every dollar they spend. My congressional office has planned to do with 5% less already.
The CR is an important first step on the road to financial recovery, but it must be followed by more concrete measures to restore our fiscal health. Unfortunately, rather than take a hard look at where we can cut waste, President Obama has already threatened to veto the CR.
The FY 2012 Budget
With historic deficits and a federal debt that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has described as the single biggest threat to national security, I hoped that President Obama would present Congress with a responsible budget. I couldn’t be more disappointed.
The President’s FY 2012 budget puts the Federal debt on track to nearly double in size since the day he took office- at a time when the American people have said clearly they want a smaller, less intrusive government. When the American people have said they expect less spending, the $3.8 trillion the President has proposed will move government expenditures to 25.3% of GDP- that includes $8.7 trillion in new spending over the next decade.
When the American people have made it clear they are taxed enough, the President’s budget imposes a $1.6 trillion tax hike on families, small businesses, and job creators. When the American people sent a very clear message that they want the borrowing to stop; the President’s budget runs a $1.6 trillion deficit; the third consecutive deficit over a trillion dollars.
Instead of heeding the warnings of the bi-partisan Debt Commission- who said that we must curtail spending, the President continues to spend. Indeed, he has proposed more spending than in any year since 1945. Though the Commission urged him to address the growing crisis created by our unsustainable entitlement programs, the President’s budget offers no solutions- only more spending.
The charts below shows the trend clearly:
Democrats claim that this level of spending is required to create jobs and get our economy back on track. History proves them wrong. In the immediate post-World War II period, we had the largest relative decrease in government spending in American history. It is only now that government spending has approached the levels reached during the war as a percent of GDP.
Between 1945 and 1947, government spending dropped by 63 percent. At the time, economic experts said such a decrease in government spending would cause a return of the Great Depression. Instead, private investment rushed in and civilian employment grew by over 4 million jobs between ’45 and ’47.
The last time America dealt with the current level of unemployment was during the recession of the early 1980s, when unemployment reached 10.8%. At the time President Reagan cut taxes and frose non-defense discretionary funding. Nineteen months after the Reagan recovery began in 1982 the unemployment rate had dropped to 7.2%. Nineteen months after President Obama and Congressional Democrats initiated their stimulus program, the unemployment rate had only fallen .4%
After we establish near-term spending cuts through the CR we are going to need to offer our alternative budget. Instead of kicking the can down the road, we will offer real long term spending cuts and address the explosive growth of entitlements.
Speaker Boehner promised on Monday that the GOP budget will "deal with the entitlement crisis that we're facing." Majority Leader Eric Cantor instructed us to expect a budget this spring that is "a serious document that will reflect the type of path we feel we should be taking to address the fiscal situation, including adressing entitlement reforms, unlike the President did in his budget." Finally, and perhaps most important of all, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said "We do plan on taking on the biggest drivers of our debt. The President punted. He has abdicated his leadership. We feel obligated to give the country a different choice and chart a new course, athat is what we'll be doing with our spring budget. We owe the country a choice of a different future- a plan for prosperity."
The debate over spending and debt will be a long and contentius one. Unlike the rules under former Speaker Pelosi, the new House majority does not fear consideration of amendments offered by the minority. Open debate can only aid in the formation of a sensible way forward.
Of course that means the debate ahead will raise issues and questions and possibly create confusion in the minds of many of those who don't have days on end to spend monitoring floor amendments. Please know that My staff and I serve as a resource for you. I have included some factsheets on my website that you can find here (link). We are ready to hear your thoughts and answer your questions as this important discussion moves ahead.
My Best,
Marsha
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)Obama and Israel at the Security Council: A Tie?
By Richard Baehr
So what should we make of the U.S veto of a Security Council resolution on Friday, after which our Ambassador to the U.N. effectively endorsed the very resolution she had vetoed in a sneering attack on Israeli settlements, later compounded by Secretary of State Clinton calling the settlements illegitimate?
Should we consider the net effect of the veto and the condemnation a tie, or something worse? After all, in the sports world," a tie is like kissing your sister," an expression attributed to among others Bear Bryant, Darryl Royal, and Eddie Erdelatz. If diplomats are trained to be subtle, nuanced, and diplomatic, the Obama administration has crossed a line, moving from challenging settlement expansion to declaring the settlements themselves as illegitimate, including Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Perhaps we can get clarity on legitimacy from Mahmoud Abbas, currently serving the 74th month of his 48 month term as President of the Palestinian Authority to which he was elected in January 2005.
In a particularly unskillful way, the U.S managed to irritate Israel and the Palestinians with its performance at the U.N. this week. The U. S. has been irritating Israel for over two years now, obsessed as it has been over settlements, a final status issue under "Oslo," and an issue that had never before prevented the Palestinians from negotiating with Israel. A settlement freeze became the price for the PA even showing up for talks.
The President has made Muslim outreach the key foreign policy initiative of his Administration. That initiative has taken the President to the Middle East region on several occasions, part of his collection of well over 30 countries visited in just over two years in office. Israel, the country that votes with the U.S. at the United Nations more than any other, has not yet earned a visit. Is it any wonder that by a ratio of close to 10 to 1, Israelis think the President is more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel? Given that in the United States, a recent Gallup survey shows the ratio is almost exactly reversed -- about ten times as many Americans are pro-Israel as pro-Palestinian, maybe our President would have better luck running for President of the Palestinian Authority when Abbas's term is up, or rather when someone notices that Abbas' term is up. I do not believe that production of a birth certificate is required to run for PA President, either.
When Bill Clinton was President, polls suggested he could have been elected Prime Minister in Israel. One did not need to agree with all of Clinton's policies with regard to Israel (I didn't), and yet accept that there was some genuine warmth in U.S relations with Israel during his term in office. So too with President Bush. Clinton made a good faith effort to achieve a peace deal, but there was no deal Yassar Arafat would accept (and there is no deal that Mahmoud Abbas would accept either, of course).
Now we have a President who repeatedly publicly blames Israel for the impasse in peace talks, brings an anti-Israel group (George Soros funded J-Street) into his inner sanctum for meetings with leaders of the American Jewish community, and sends Dennis Ross to their national meeting, and treats Israel's elected Prime Minister with hostility. Of course, Netanyahu and AIPAC, and the ADL are applauding the Security Council veto. They all know, I think, that the President has switched sides in this conflict, and for now at least, they have escaped Obama's wrath at the Jewish state.
Give this man a second term (and really, the record of incompetence is so broad that even if you did not care about Israel, that would be unwise), and all bets are off on what will remain of the U.S Israel relationship. It survived a one term Carter Presidency, but two terms of Obama?
Despite his sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the President does not want to be seen as anti-Israel in the run-up to his re-election run. More than Jewish votes, he needs Jewish campaign cash. Most of the money liberal Jews give to Democrats is not because of the pro-Israel views of Democrats, but because Democrats are liberals. But there is also a line that cannot be crossed. Many liberal Jews need to be able to have a check mark that the Democratic candidate is also good for Israel, issue number 10 or 12 on their agenda.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)The Real Revolution Has Begun
By J. Robert Smith
How delicious is irony, how fickle fate?
Just a little more than two years ago, liberals were ecstatic about Barack Obama's election and Democrats' control of Congress. Liberal pundits were all atwitter about the brand new Democratic Era that voters had ushered in. America would finally become what America should have been years ago: a European-style social democracy.
Boy, did Democrats misread their mandate! With very little hindsight needed, it's apparent to all but ideologically-blinkered liberals that the Democrats' gross overreach isn't what voters wanted or expected. Voters wanted a redo of the Clinton years. Instead, in the person of Barack Obama, voters got an amalgam of FDR and LBJ with a dash of Neville Chamberlin thrown in.
But here's the real kicker. Two years of Obama-Reid-Pelosi overreach and excesses may have been the table-setter for the real revolution now unfolding. Voters and taxpayers first needed to see the irresponsibility and recklessness of unalloyed liberalism to appreciate that conservative government is far superior. Thank you, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid.
Of course, the real revolution began last year with the 2010 midterm elections. Yes, the GOP made the largest gains in U.S. House seats since 1948. But the underappreciated story is that the GOP racked up huge gains in state legislative contests, and further down ballot, Republicans swept plenty of local offices. State legislatures control congressional redistricting. Republicans now dominate enough key statehouses to lock-in GOP congressional electoral advantages for a decade.
Had voters limited their ballots to throwing out the rascals in Congress, a fair argument could be made that 2010 was just a protest vote -- an attempt by voters to shake up the Democrats. But when voters drill down to change party control of legislatures, city halls, and county commissions, you can bet that they're thoroughly repudiating the party in power. The 2010 repudiation of Democrats was a clear expression of what voters did and didn't want from government.
Move now to the present time. Republicans are on the march in Congress. Late last week, House Republicans passed a budget bill containing $61 billion in cuts. It's not the $100 billion that conservatives aimed for, but it's substantial and can be considered a down payment. The House Republican proposal now goes to the Senate. The budget process wrangling is just in its first phase. Moving forward, the GOP will have multiple opportunities to push more cuts.
And look what else House Republicans are doing. They're using the budget process to hamstring Obamacare by denying it funding. Shutting down and then nixing ObamaCare would be an historic victory in the fight to end liberalism's nearly hundred-year dominance; it would be one of those critical turning points in history -- like Vicksburg and Gettysburg -- a momentum shifter that leads to other key victories, such as entitlements reform.
Also, Indiana Republican Mike Pence offered and passed an amendment cutting funding for the odious abortion mill called Planned Parenthood. Another amendment, offered by Oregon Republican Greg Walden, that passed, chokes off funds for the Federal Communications Commission's net-neutrality gambit. Net -neutrality would concentrate more power in the FCC's hands and stymie free speech across the internet. Net-neutrality could well have been made in China.
Of course, the revolution just beginning isn't confined to the Halls of Congress. Chris Christie, New Jersey's intrepid Republican governor, fired the first shots last year in the burgeoning struggle to bring sanity back to state affairs. Christie's efforts aren't limited to balancing state budgets and reining in taxes, important as those things are. Christie is working to limit government and expand the playing field for the private sector. As we're seeing, government without proper limits is a ruinous beast. California is a prime example.
Now newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is making headlines because he dares to say that his state is broke and that the public employees' gravy train needs to end. Governor Walker wants to end collective bargaining for public employees, excepting police and firefighters, on the simple, common sense premise that employees shouldn't be negotiating the hours they work, among other things.
In Ohio, Governor John Kasich is gearing up to slash budgets, rollback taxes, cut regulations, and confront the Buckeye State's public employee unions. There'll be fireworks aplenty in Columbus.
Thomas Jefferson is being proven right again. The states are the laboratories of democracy. Christie, Kasich, and Walker are seeking to demonstrate that limited, financially responsible government is best for economic and societal health. If successful -- and we should all have high confidence that these governors will succeed -- the lessons will not be lost on voters and politicians in other states. Revolutions are like that; it takes just a few courageous leaders to embolden others and for revolutions to spread.
A marvelous, if unintended, consequence of this burgeoning conservative revolution is what it's doing to liberalism. The budding conservative revolution is starting to place strains on liberalism; beginning to make liberals and their allies fight defensive battles in multiple -- and multiplying -- places. Call this a modified Cloward-Piven -- or Cloward-Piven turned on its masters.
Challenging liberal governance, and pressing limited government reforms, will help bring down liberalism across the nation. And that should be an indisputable aim of the new conservative revolution. Liberalism became a pox on the nation years ago. Marginalizing liberalism would be an incomparable service to generations to come -- and to those kids being lied to now by too many Wisconsin teachers.
"Change We Can Believe In." Mr. Obama's slogan always had a nice ring to it, but it was misapplied and a little ahead of its time. With the conservative revolution, change we can really believe in has arrived. How's that for rich irony?
5a)American Way: Barack Obama, cult figure of 2008, left behind by new anti-spending zeitgeist
By Toby Harnden
Something momentous is happening in the United States right now and Barack Obama doesn’t get it. In Madison, Wisconsin last week, up to 40,000 public employees, organised by their unions, the Democratic party and the grassroots Organizing for America group that elected the president in 2008, gathered at the state capitol. Teachers left their classrooms, forcing schools to close.
Their objective? To rail against an attempt to balance the budget and curtail union power by newly-elected Governor Scott Walker, a Republican. The Democratic party’s response? Its state senators have fled Wisconsin to Illinois, dodging state troopers as they went, in order to prevent the budget being voted on. Obama branded Walker’s actions as an “assault on unions”.
It was Obama who crowed just after he entered the White House that “elections have consequences”. In Wisconsin last November, the consequences included the governorship, a Senate seat and the state senate and assembly all being lost by the Democrats.
Although you may have read about the Tea Party being a collection of fringe racists and lunatics, their activists in places like Wisconsin were mainly ordinary Americans sick to the back teeth with out-of-control spending.
Walker’s proposals are relatively modest ones for someone facing a $3.6 billion shortfall. He was elected on a platform of balancing the budget and he’s got to find the money to do that from somewhere.
Budget crises are brewing in Ohio, New Jersey and a slew of other states.
The protests in Wisconsin coincided with Obama presenting his new budget in Washington. Despite all his talk of moving to the centre and cutting the national debt, Obama showed he was utterly unserious about dealing with the US government’s catastrophic addiction to spending.
He cast aside the tough measures recommended by the bipartisan Deficit Commission he appointed and failed to tackle what everyone knows is the main financial drain – the big “entitlement” programmes of Social Security, Medicare (for the elderly) and Medicaid (for the poor).
What Obama proposed would do nothing more than slow down the rate of increase in the national debt. No responsible citizen would run their own household finances this way.
Depressingly, Obama’s calculation seems to be that he can talk a good game on the deficit and spout vacuous slogans like “winning the future”. He’ll leave it to Republicans to propose swingeing cuts in entitlement programmes and then suffer a backlash from frightened voters at the polls in 2012. At least, that’s what happened in 1996. But Obama does not seem to have noticed that 2012 is not 1996.
The fact that a president would use his own campaign foot soldiers to back public employees against their elected state government shows how distorted his priorities have become. Instead of confronting unions, as President Ronald Reagan did with the air traffic controllers in 1981 when he fired more than 11,000 of them, Obama is facilitating them.
In the freshman class of House of Representatives, there is a mood of revolution not dissimilar to that inside Governor Walker’s administration (to be clear: the crowds surrounding the state capitol are the forces of reaction).
Saturday’s package of $60 billion budget cuts, passed in the early hours, did not tackle entitlements. It did, however, set the stage for a confrontation with Obama that could well lead to a government shutdown, which last happened in 1995. Scenes like those in Wisconsin could soon be repeated in Washington.
Two figures in American politics right now are talking seriously about dealing with the federal spending crisis. One is Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana who declared recently that the federal government was “morbidly obese” and needed “not just behaviour modification but bariatric surgery”.
It’s possible that this was also a gentle dig at Christie, a self-described “pretty fat” guy, who is the other. Christie spoke in Washington last week about how he was advised not to slash state programmes. “I had everybody telling me, Governor you can’t do it. Your approval ratings will go in the toilet. People love these programmes.” He ignored them and his ratings went up.
Both Daniels and Christie are being urged by conservatives to run for president. Both like plain talk on fiscal matters and favour action over words.
Obama, in the meantime, prefers fine words, careful positioning, fidelity to powerful Democratic interest groups. His failure to grasp what is happening in Wisconsin, underlines that the cult figure of 2008 is being left behind by the new zeitgeist.
Toby Harnden’s American Way column is published in the Sunday Telegraph each week.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6)Civil War in Libya: Jets bomb civilians. Pilots, high officials flee to Malta
Qaddafi's 42-year rule of Libya appeared to have begun disintegrating Monday, Feb. 21, as civil war swept the country with no signs of him quitting. Instead, he ordered the army to redouble its brutal assaults on the opposition. The Air Force began bombing crowds at random while army tanks and armored vehicles blasted them with live ammunition - not just in the insurgent eastern provinces of Cyrenaica, but the capital of Tripoli and its environs too. There, helicopter gunships aimed heavy machine fire into the main market, the Souk al Jumma, while the first tribal militias loyal to Qaddafi to arrive in the capital from the Sahara fought alongside the army. Casualties soared to an estimated 600, with 250 in Tripoli alone as Qaddafi rallied for a bloody civil war that could linger for years.
High officials of his regime and businessmen began fleeing Tripoli aboard Libyan Air Force fighter jets and helicopters which landed Monday at Malta's MIA international airport. Government officials in Valetta said the pilots had defected rather than bomb demonstrators, while all the Libyan arrivals asked for political asylum and more flights were on the way.
The United States and European Union have concentrated airplanes and ferries on the island ready to evacuate the thousands of their citizens employed in Libya, most in the oil and gas fields, starting Monday night, while the price of crude oil shot up 5percent.
The 48 hours during which Qaddafi dropped out of sight from Saturday were spent, sources report, in mustering embers of loyal Libyan tribes to fight along the remnants of the army for his reinstatement.
There are no signs he has any intention of following in the footsteps of the Tunisians and Egyptian presidents and step down.
Around two million Cyrenaican protesters, half of Libya's population who control half of the country and part of its oil resources, embarked Sunday, Feb. 20, on a full-scale revolt against Muammar Qaddafi and his affluent ruling Tripolitanian-dominated regime. Unlike the rights protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, in Libya, one half of the country is rising up against the other half, as well as fighting to overthrow a dictatorial ruler of 42 years.
Since last week, heavy battles have been fought in Benghazi, Al Bayda, Al Marj, Tobruk and at least two other two cities. In some places, debkafile's military sources report protesters stormed army bases and seized large quantities of missiles, mortars, heavy machine guns and armored vehicles – and used them. The important Fadil Ben Omar Brigade command base in Benghazi was burnt to the ground.
Our sources cite witnesses who spied Berber tribesmen among the insurgents, which bodes ill for Algerian and Morocco and their large Berber populations.
The reports of massacres and imported mercenaries, especially in Benghazi come mainly from opposition sources in West Europe and cannot be independently confirmed at this time. Neither could reports from the same sources Sunday night that Qaddafi's rule had collapsed and the revolt had spread.
At the same time, there is no doubt that Qaddafi will not scruple to use brutal measures in desperation to save his regime, if he has not already. Hospital sources describe hundreds of dead and injured.
He has meanwhile put Ahmed Gaddaf Al-Dam, his cousin and security chief, in charge of the army's effort to suppress the uprising in Benghazi. Most of the city appears to have fallen to the protesters, with the exception of its airport through which the ruler is pumping heavy reinforcements and sending them straight into battle.
So far, the Libyan Air Force and Navy have not been deployed. Helicopters sent in action to shoot into crowds are confirmed in only one place, Al Bayda.
Since Saturday afternoon, Qaddafi has not been seen or heard in public. According to some rumors, he has left Tripoli and made for the Saharan oasis town of Sebha, his tribal birthplace. So far, he has kept up the flow of military reinforcements to the six rebel cities because the towns of Tripolitania have been relatively quiet. But if Tripoli and its environs rise up too, he will be short of military strength to deal with trouble spots in both parts of the country.
Some Libyan would-be go-betweens proposed a ceasefire between Qaddafi and the protesters whereby the government would resign and the popular former prime minister Abdul Salam Jaloud be appointed caretaker prime minister until the crisis is resolved. But Jaloud declined the offer.
It is too early to determine in advance how the showdown between Qaddafi's army and the protesters-insurgents of Cyrenaica turns out. Before it is over, Libya's eastern provinces may be called on to sacrifice thousands more dead and wounded. If the Cyrenaicans do manage to hold on, they will be in a position to carve Libya in two and break away from Tripolitania and the Qaddafi regime.
6a)Gaddafi goes on Libyan TV amid wave of protests
Gaddafi gives less than 1 minute speech on state TV to dispel rumors he had fled; Air force pilots, diplomats defect; Gov't building burns; Security forces drive streets with megaphones demanding residents stay indoors.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment