a
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All too often politicians tell their audience what they want to hear, leave and forget what they said. Perhaps David Cameron is the genuine article. (See 1 below.)
Then we have our own 'first dude' who, unlike T.R, 'TALKS A LOT – CARRIES NO STICK AT ALL.'
Stop and think about the fact that elections of our presidents are becoming more and more subject to foreign influence. Carter got washed overboard by Iranian Mullahs, the Clintons have consistently been financed by questionable and illegal Chinese money and now Obama could be whacked by Qaddafi if energy prices continue to sap consumer budgets as well as our nascent recovery.
Soon we may have the best president foreign money can buy.
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The man who placed logs on the housing flame speaks out about oil prices. (See 2 below.)
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What is this very volatile market telling us when good employment news appears? It would seem the market is now concerned the evident recovery means the Fed will withdraw from stimulating the economy and what I wrote about Bill Gross is going to dictate market trends for the foreseeable. Time will tell so stay tuned. (See 3 below.)
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It is all in the interpretation.(See 4 below.)
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Obama seeks something dramatic from Netanyahu since Obama is looking more like a deer caught between headlights in virtually everything else he attempts.
Obama to Netanyahu: 'pull my chestnuts out of the fire and you cannot use gloves.'
The only stick Obama has it the one he uses against Netanyahu. (See 5 below.)
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If The Tea Party has been ineffective then why are Cuomo and Christie sounding like clones? (See 6 below.)
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President 'slick' must find a way to blame GW for Islamist Middle East regimes that will probably rise to power as a consequence of all these 'democratic' rebellions Obama has found so encouraging. (See 7 below.)
Obama must also figure out a way to deflect the effect of energy prices, which are rising through the roof, and his patronizing of the Far Left who see oil spills everywhere.(See 7a below.)
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Dick
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1)British PM pledges his ‘indestructible’ support for Israel
By JONNY PAUL
David Cameron says Israel has a right to search vessels entering Gaza, protect its people from rocket, missile attacks coming from the Strip.
LONDON – British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday reaffirmed his commitment to Israel, saying that his belief in Israel is “indestructible.”
Speaking at a dinner for the Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitism and provides security for the Jewish community in the UK, the prime minister said he wants to build a strong and productive relationship with Israel.
“With me you have a prime minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible. And you have a prime minister who wants to build a strong and productive relationship with Israel,” he told the audience of over 1,100 at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, central London.
“I will always be a strong defender of the Jewish people. I will always be an advocate for the State of Israel,” he said.
Cameron said that he has instructed Britain’s ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, to make one of his top priorities the building of a new partnership between the hi-tech economies of Israel and Britain.
In reference to the rocket and missile attacks from Gaza, the prime minister said that Israel has a right to protect itself.
“When rockets are being launched at Israeli citizens, and when children are in danger, Israel is within its rights to protect its people,” he said.
He also told guests that Israel has a right to search vessels entering Gaza.
“When over 100 rockets are fired into Israel from Gaza in one year, Israel is within its rights to search vessels bringing cargo into Gaza."
“But just as the Palestinian Authority has made significant steps to shoulder its responsibility, tackling violence from the West Bank, Israel needs to engineer a real drive to help improve life for ordinary Palestinians,” he said.
The prime minister said emphatically that anti-Semitism was “abhorrent” to him, vowing that he “will never rest” while the Jewish community in Britain feels under threat.
“A Jewish friend asked me the other day will it be safe for my children and grandchildren to live here? The answer to that question will always be ‘yes,’” Cameron said.
“Instead of ignoring extremism we have to confront it in all its forms, wherever it is found. That means, yes, banning preachers of hate from coming to our country. It means proscribing organizations that incite terrorism, and yes, it means stopping extremist groups from getting an audience on our university campuses.”
Addressing the Jewish community’s and Israel’s concern over an “insidious shift from legitimate debate to illegitimate intimidation,” the prime minister said that “it is absolutely right that in Britain’s universities, students and faculty should be able to criticize Israel, just as they can criticize any country, or any government, any politician."
“But it is absolutely wrong that in any of our universities there should be an environment where students are scared to express their Judaism or their Zionism freely. It is absolutely wrong that universities should allow speakers to spread messages of anti-Semitism and hate."
“And it is absolutely wrong for any university authorities to duck their responsibilities to ensure a clear line between free speech, which is a fundamental right, and intimidation, which is fundamentally wrong,” he said.
In reference to Universal Jurisdiction, the law exploited by pro-Palestinian activists to threaten to arrest Israeli dignitaries who enter the UK on “war crimes” charges, Cameron said his government has acted but needs to do more.
“In the same way when the UK’s laws were used to try and arrest Israeli politicians who visit our country, without any real prospect of prosecution, this government pledged to act: changing the law so people don’t fear coming here. That’s what I said we would do on Universal Jurisdiction. That is what we have done. But we need to do more.”
He also recognized that Israel is sometimes unfairly treated and judged differently.
“Some people try to judge Israel’s government by a higher code of conduct than they would apply to their own government,” he said.
Turning to the Middle East, the prime minister warned that now was not the time “to park” the peace process.
He urged Israel to seize the initiative in the negotiations with the Palestinians, saying that it was “absolutely vital” to secure this historic opportunity for peace and stability in the region. Rather we should use developments in the region to try to drive forward progress, not hold it up.
“And yes, it means meeting the road map obligation to halt illegal settlement activity, as the resolution Britain supported at the UN Security Council last month underlines,” he said.
He called on Israel help improve life for ordinary Palestinians, by allowing more humanitarian goods into Gaza and more support for economic development in the West Bank.
The prime minister paid tribute to Britain’s Jewish community for its sense of national pride and contribution to the wider community. He also praised the work of the CST.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2) Greenspan: Huge Risks Remain on Oil, Deficit
By Greg Brown
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says the U.S. economic recovery is real and under way, but he warns that stock-market prices are at a “premium” now and that a number of potential spoilers lie in wait, including a quickly rising oil price.
Separately, Greenspan said he believes that the Fed still has the power to erase the multi-trillion-dollar buildup of money supply and could do so quite quickly, but he worries that political action on the federal deficit would be delayed, creating huge new risks for which Fed forecasters cannot accurately account.
On oil, Greenspan called crude prices a “reliable” measure of future global activity. As events continue to unfold in the Libya, Brent crude for April delivery rose in early trading to $115.41 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate rose as well, to $103.57, per barrel earlier in electronic trading, the highest since Sept. 29, 2008.
“As a leading indicator, global oil prices are a very useful statistic. The only problem is, we don’t know fully where all the channel areas are,” Greenspan said in an interview on CNBC. “My view is, when oil prices get up into this area and start move higher, you do have to start to worry.”
Greenspan went on to detail a number of caveats, including the risk of higher food prices in the near future as growth in emerging markets leads more people to consume meat over grains, pressuring farm production. Food prices seem destined to rise no matter what, Greenspan noted, due to lack of producing land.
Yet, minus the well-known debt problems and hot commodity prices, Greenspan said that he believes that the United States is quickly moving toward a self-sustaining recovery.
"There is no question that the momentum of this economy, leaving out the oil price issue, leaving out euro problems that have emerged, and very specifically leaving out the budget problems, this economy is really beginning to pick up momentum," Greenspan said.
"The fascinating issue for forecasters is, How do you factor in all the negatives? These are not modest rises here, modest costs here. This is big stuff on the debit and credit side,” he said.
On oil, Greenspan noted that “oil and gold tend to move together. The problem we’re having now is, when we’re talking about the oil price, which oil price?”
Americans get their oil from two sources — Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) — so it’s harder to figure out which price matters most to the U.S. economy, Greenspan said.
“We don’t know what proportion of the oil coming in is priced against Brent and against WTI,” he said. “The answer seems to lie half and half.”
However, Brent crude, the price paid largely in Europe and elsewhere in the world, has become the more relevant price for the U.S. recovery. “When we talk about which price is going to hit us, keep an eye on Brent, not on WTI,” he said.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, agrees that rising oil costs could hinder the recovery. “The most direct impact is that they take more money out of people’s paychecks,” she told Newsmax.TV.
“So people have less money to spend on other things, so they can’t go to restaurants as much,” says Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist for the Labor Department. “That impedes economic recovery through the rest of the economy. It’s a bit like a tax. It’s as though we’ve imposed a 50-cent gas tax all at once.”
“The impact will be a slight slowing of the economy as the prices basically move down the chain.”
Meanwhile, Greenspan said that although stocks were trading at “quite high equity premiums,” it was clear that corporations were now starting to sink money into plants and equipment, a significant indicator of corporate faith in recovery.
U.S. employers added 192,000 workers in February, fewer than the 196,000 expected by economists. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent from 9 percent to hit the lowest level since April 2009. It had been expected to rise to 9.1 percent.
Greenspan said that he has “considerable trust” in the judgment of current U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, whom he says is watching the money supply carefully and effectively has the tools to mop up the $2 trillion in printed money from the Fed, when the time comes.
“The Fed knows exactly where the risks are. There has been a huge rise in excess reserves. The excess reserves are basically being held by individual commercial banks and other depository institutions at 25 basis points at the 12 Reserve Banks,” Greenspan said. “There is virtually no indication that there has been a secondary move” toward lending the money out, which might spark rampant inflation.
If the money begins to move into the economy, the Fed at this point “is in a position where it can contract its balance sheet, very significantly,” Greenspan said. “The issue is will they do it in proper timing. They think they can,” he said.
As for the economy itself, the bigger risk than the Fed is the deficit, which has the former chairman quite concerned. A stalemate over spending continues in Washington, with the latest offering from the White House to cut spending at $10.5 billion, a small fraction of the $100 billion demanded by the GOP and its activist Tea Party wing.
“We’ve got very strong forces both plus and minus, but there is no question that the plus side is accelerating,” Greenspan said. Of all the negatives out there, “the critical one is the budget issue.”
“If you asked me to put down the best estimate I could of the outlook, I would (say) probably reasonably strong GDP growth for a while,” Greenspan said.
“But I am very much concerned that we are presuming we are going to be able to move from this trillion-and-a-half dollar annual rate of deficit dramatically to a major contraction, at will, after the economy has been running up for quite a long period of time.”
The fundamental problem is that the lack of clarity on the budget muddies the waters for the Fed, which has to set policies now that will affect the economy for years. Resolution of the deficit deadlock and a clear path forward on spending reductions is key, Greenspan said.
Putting off the decision is “much too risky, because it presupposes our ability to forecast, which we just don’t have. If we get that choice wrong, it’s a very major mistake,” Greenspan said.
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3)Employment Picture Makes Things Cloudy for Investors
By: Jeff Cox
Maybe today’s nonfarm payrolls number will convince investors not to get their hopes up too high.
Amid the almost breathless anticipation that has come to greet these monthly unemployment reports, the government put forth some fairly vanilla numbers: 192,000 new jobs created, which was a bit below consensus, and a drop of the unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, which was a bit better than consensus.
Any way you slice it, the payroll gains are consistent with at least some level of recovery, especially after the dismal February report.
Market reaction? A drop in stock prices—and, curiously, a drop in bond yields—underscoring how the recent spate of decent economic reports might be putting a little too much fire in the investor belly.
“This report was good, but it was not the blockbuster some people thought we might get,” said Josh Feinman, chief global economist for Deutsche Bank Advisors. “These are the daily vagaries of sentiment in the market.”
Wall Street followed up a huge rally Thursday with a pullback Friday, perhaps a classic sell-the-news event but also a sign that some good news isn’t good enough.
“This notion that things are going to boom all of a sudden, that’s not the way it works,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab in San Francisco. “You have to bottom first and then you slowly make your way up. You don’t get from the bottom to the next top in one fell swoop.”
Also inherent in the trader reaction was a dichotomy on Wall Street in these improving economic times.
So much of the two-year stocks rally has been fueled by Fed-injected liquidity into the system, all of which was predicated on the need to perform radical surgery to get the dying economy off the operating table.
But with a recovery now coming more clearly into sight—inflation dangers and all—the worry becomes that the Federal Reserve will have less incentive to keep up its easing programs and thus will prepare to pull a critical lifeline to the stock market.
While an early exit from the second leg of quantitative easing—QE 2—hardly seems likely, the end now becomes a little easier to see.
“It’s status quo for the Fed,” says Sonders.
Yet she cautions that those hoping for the Fed to wait until 2012 to increase interest rates might be disappointed as well. Sonders actually hopes the Fed does start tightening this year, but the main question will be whether the market is ready for it.
“I would be surprised if the timing is pushed into the beginning of 2012. If we get a couple more numbers like this, you could pull that expectation back into 2011,” she said. “Zero interest rate policy is for an economy in triage and I don’t think we’re in triage anymore…We’re starting to play a dangerous game if we keep the pedal to the medal.”
The bad news, then, could be the good news: While the jobs report may have looked encouraging, there’s still a lot of work to do.
“It is still early to break out the champagne, because the February surge came after a weak January when only 63,000 jobs were added,” University of Maryland economist Peter Morici wrote. “March data will tell much as to whether the economy is on a sustainable path for growing jobs.”
Indeed, the employment picture, despite its rebound in February, still seems loaded with caveats.
Some very prominent voices have been raised this week over inflation fears, among them investors Warren Buffett and Sam Zell and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.
At the same time, disruptions continue in the Middle East, and US crude oil has eclipsed the $100 mark while pushing prices at the pump up to $3.47 a gallon across the nation.
These are both significant headwinds for employment, as both cut into corporate profits and put pressure on pricing beyond what unleaded gas or a pound of ground beef cost.
Still, the mood remains upbeat, at least until next month’s equally highly anticipated report comes out.
“Overall this report strongly confirms the growing evidence that the economic expansion has moved into a self-sustaining growth phase,” David Resler, economist at Nomura Securities, wrote in an optimistic but still a bit cautionary note to clients. “Unless the surge in oil prices undercuts confidence and spending markedly, look for the trend in employment gains to strengthen further in the months ahead.”
Feinman, at Deustche Bank, said that remains to be seen.
“We need to get stronger than that and we need to sustain that for a long time,” he said. “You’ve got to walk before you can run, but we’re getting there.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)A Blonde in Church
An Alabama preacher said to his congregation, 'Someone in this congregation has spread a rumor that I belong to the Ku Klux Klan.
'This is a horrible lie and one which a Christian community cannot tolerate I am embarrassed and do not intend to accept this. Now, I want the party who did this to stand and ask forgiveness from God and this Christian Family.'
No one moved.
The preacher continued, 'Do you have the nerve to face me and admit this is a falsehood?
Remember, you will be forgiven and in your heart you will feel glory. Now stand and confess your transgression.'
Again all was quiet.
Then slowly, a drop-dead gorgeous blonde with a body that would stop traffic rose from the third pew.
Her head was bowed and her voice quivered as she spoke, 'Reverend there has been a terrible misunderstanding.
I never said you were a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I simply told a couple of my friends that you were a wizard under the sheets.'
The preacher fell to his knees, his wife fainted, and the Congregation roared.
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5) Netanyahu faces growing US pressure. US wants dramatic statements
By Attila Somfalvi
While Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly prepares to present new peace initiative, officials in Jerusalem fear the Obama Administration seeks to demand clear reference to 1967 borders
The Obama Administration will not make do with statements that are "not dramatic" alongside a new peace initiative reportedly planned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, officials in Jerusalem say.
The political sources said they fear that the US Administration will demand clear reference to the 1967 borders as part of the plan and a subsequent Netanyahu speech.
The officials said the PM would not be able to address sensitive issues such as Jerusalem's division or Palestinian refugees. Hence, the sources estimated that the issue of borders "must be on the table," with America expecting Netanyahu to refer to the 1967 borders as the basis for a final-status agreement and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In the past, the prime minister has refrained from addressing the issue of borders, for fear that any statement on the matter would obligate Israel to agree to such boundaries in a future agreement.
'US mistrusts Bibi'
At this time, Washington is boosting the pressure on Netanyahu to produce diplomatic momentum. For the time being President Barack Obama is refraining from presenting a diplomatic plan and forcing it upon Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, the Americans are expecting Israel to undertake significant steps that would revive the diplomatic process, especially in the face of current Mideast turmoil.
Talks between Israel and the US continued in recent months in an effort to find ways to renew negotiations; however, the contacts have not been successful. Now, officials at the White House and State Department, as well as members of Washington research institutes are saying that the US is expecting Netanyahu to take action.
Political sources said that while ties with America have not been harmed, the relationship between President Obama and PM Netanyahu is "not as intimate as it should have been. An Israeli source said that the White House holds "great mistrust" towards Netanyahu and "has not granted him one minute of mercy
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)Why New Jersey's Christie and New York's Cuomo are singing similar tunes
By Allan Sloan
If you're an average person whose tax money helped pay for the Wall Street bailout, what's going on in New York and New Jersey could really make you angry. Especially if you happen to live there. These states, home to lots of firms and highly compensated folks who benefited from the bailout, are both running enormous budget deficits. But both governors - liberal New York Democrat Andrew Cuomo and conservative New Jersey Republican Chris Christie - are cutting social services to fill the gap and won't even consider raising state income tax rates on the wealthy. What's more, they're even talking about cutting business taxes.
It's a really cruel message if you think about it. It's telling people who are needy - many of whom are suffering the toxic aftereffects of the Great Recession rather than having done anything wrong - that their needs are less important than those of upper-income types or businesses.
But you know what? It's the rational way - and probably the right way - for Cuomo and Christie to behave. Given the intense state-to-state competition for jobs and tax money, Cuomo and Christie don't have much of a choice.
As you can see from the pending congressional redistricting, high-tax, high-cost states such as New York and New Jersey are losing seats because they're growing far more slowly than the national average, and low-cost, low-tax places such as Texas and Florida are gaining seats because they're growing faster.
Before we proceed, please understand that I'm not an anti-public-spending kind of guy. Quite the opposite. I remember well that taxpayers in New York, where I grew up, gave me a chance to bootstrap myself to prosperity. They paid for my high-quality education at Brooklyn College (class of 1966), part of the City University of New York, which was tuition-free when I attended. I also got state scholarships and a low-interest, state-guaranteed loan to help pay for graduate school.
But the world has changed, to New York and New Jersey's detriment, since my school days. That helps explain why governors as disparate as Cuomo and Christie are following similar tax and fiscal strategies. Sure, they're doing a lot of political posturing. But they're also recognizing economic reality.
In a world growing more interlinked and decentralized by the day, it's relatively easy for people to move out of state if they're retirees or have a lucrative gig (money manager, consultant, entrepreneur) that doesn't require a regular presence in a high-cost-area office or factory.
You don't have to worry much about people leaving the country to duck taxes, because becoming an expat is messy, complicated and expensive. Among other things, you have to give up citizenship and pay U.S. taxes on U.S. income for 10 years. But leaving a state? It's a piece of cake. Sell your house, if you own one, buy or rent a place somewhere else, and go.
I think that governors such as Cuomo, Christie (whom I voted for) and Scott Walker of Wisconsin are behaving rationally by not wanting to raise income taxes.
But they're going to extremes by blaming public employees for everything from pension shortfalls to kids who don't thrive in school. A decade of dreadful financial markets has played a major role in pension shortfalls, and factors other than school - can you spell family or neighborhood or expectations? - are major influences on how well students learn.
In an ideal world, we'd handle state and local problems in a rational way, spreading pain among public employees, taxpayers and recipients of government services. That isn't going to happen. Rationality seems to have vanished from public life - or at least from political life.
You might not like the idea of closing state budget gaps without asking for more money from high-income people (including me) who benefited directly or indirectly from the federal bailout. Some days I don't like that idea either. But let's get real. Raising income taxes in a world in which people and capital are ultra-mobile is a dangerous game for any state. Cuomo and Christie are wise not to be playing it.
Allan Sloan is Fortune magazine's senior editor at large.
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7) Obama administration prepares for possibility of new post-revolt Islamist regimes
By Scott Wilson
The Obama administration is preparing for the prospect that Islamist governments will take hold in North Africa and the Middle East, acknowledging that the popular revolutions there will bring a more religious cast to the region's politics.
Egypt- and Tunisia-inspired protests spread through Middle East, North Africa
Obama administration prepares for possibility of new post-revolt Islamist regimes
Obama signals willingness to intervene militarily in Libya if crisis worsens
Gaddafi forces launch new airstrikes; Obama mulls 'no-fly zone' request
Protesters say Maliki is using special security forces to shut down demonstrations in Iraq
The administration is already taking steps to distinguish between various movements in the region that promote Islamic law in government. An internal assessment, ordered by the White House last month, identified large ideological differences between such movements as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Qaeda that will guide the U.S. approach to the region.
"We shouldn't be afraid of Islam in the politics of these countries," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal policy deliberations. "It's the behavior of political parties and governments that we will judge them on, not their relationship with Islam."
Islamist governments span a range of ideologies and ambitions, from the primitive brutality of the Taliban in Afghanistan to Turkey's Justice and Development Party, a movement with Islamist roots that heads a largely secular political system.
None of the revolutions over the past several weeks has been overtly Islamist, but there are signs that the uprisings could give way to more religious forces. An influential Yemeni cleric called this week for the U.S.-backed administration of President Ali Abdullah Saleh to be replaced with Islamist rule, and in Egypt, an Islamist theoretician has a leading role in drafting constitutional changes after President Hosni Mubarak's fall from power last month.
A number of other Islamist parties are deciding now how big a role to play in protests or post-revolution reforms.
Since taking office, President Obama has argued for a "new beginning" with Islam, suggesting that Islamic belief and democratic politics are not incompatible. But in doing so, he has alarmed some foreign-policy pragmatists and allies such as Israel, who fear that governments based on religious law will inevitably undercut democratic reforms and other Western values.
Some within the U.S. intelligence community, foreign diplomatic circles and the Republican Party say Obama's readiness to accept Islamist movements, even ones that meet certain conditions, fails to take into consideration the methodical approach many such parties adopt toward gradually transforming secular nations into Islamic states at odds with U.S. policy goals.
Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories have prospered in democratic elections and exert huge influence. Neither party, each with an armed wing, supports Israel's right to exist, nor have they renounced violence as a political tool.
And while many in the region point to Turkey as a model mixture of Islam and democracy, the ruling Islamist party is restrained by the country's highly secular army and court system, a pair of strong institutional checks that countries such as Egypt and Tunisia lack.
"The actual word and definition of Islamism does not in and of itself pose a threat," said Jonathan Peled, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, citing Israel's relationship with the Turkish government, among others.
But Peled said Israel fears that "anti-democratic extremist forces could take advantage of a democratic system," as, he said, Hamas did with its 2006 victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections. Israel allowed Hamas to participate only under pressure from the George W. Bush administration as part of its stated commitment to promote Arab democracy.
We obviously have concerns that are different than the administration's," Peled said. "We live in the neighborhood, obviously, and so we experience the results more closely."
The choice between stability and democracy has been a constant tension in U.S. foreign policy, and in few places has it been more pronounced than in the Middle East.
Many of the fallen or imperiled autocrats in the region were supported by successive U.S. governments, either as Cold War foils to the Soviet Union or as bulwarks against Islamist extremism before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In his June 2009 address at Cairo University, Obama acknowledged the controversy that the Bush administration's democracy promotion stirred in the region.
"That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people," he said, adding that "each nation gives life to the principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people."
In the Arab Middle East, those traditions include Islam, although Obama did not directly address the religion's role in democratic politics. He said the United States "will welcome all elected, peaceful governments - provided they govern with respect for all their people."
The goal of Islamist movements after taking power is at the root of concern expressed by Republican lawmakers and others in Washington.
Paul Pillar, a longtime CIA analyst who now teaches at Georgetown University, said, "Most of the people in the intelligence community would see things on this topic very similarly to the president - that is, political Islam as a very diverse series of ideologies, all of which use a similar vocabulary, but all quite different."
"The main challenge President Obama will face is a political challenge from across the aisle, and one reinforced by Israel," said Pillar, whose portfolio included the Middle East.
As the Arab revolutions unfold, the White House is studying various Islamist movements, identifying ideological differences for clues to how they might govern in the short and long term.
The White House's internal assessment, dated Feb. 16, looked at the Muslim Brotherhood's and al-Qaeda's views on global jihad, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United States, Islam in politics, democracy and nationalism, among others.
The report draws sharp distinctions between the ambitions of the two groups, suggesting that the Brotherhood's mix of Islam and nationalism make it a far different organization than al-Qaeda, which sees national boundaries as obstacles to restoring the Islamic caliphate.
The study also concludes that the Brotherhood criticizes the United States largely for what it perceives as America's hypocritical stance toward democracy - promoting it rhetorically but supporting leaders such as Mubarak.
"If our policy can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, we won't be able to adapt to this change," the senior administration official said. "We're also not going to allow ourselves to be driven by fear."
After Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, the United States and Israel led an international boycott of the government. But Obama administration officials, reviewing that history with an eye toward the current revolutions, say the reason for the U.S. boycott was not Hamas's Islamic character but its refusal to agree to conditions such as recognizing Israel.
In a speech Monday in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to draw on that lesson, implicitly inviting Islamist parties to participate in the region's future elections with conditions. "Political participation," Clinton said, "must be open to all people across the spectrum who reject violence, uphold equality and agree to play by the rules of democracy."
7a)Obama's Gas Price Migraine
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
The Obama administration has its share of headaches: a possible government shutdown, Arab unrest, the union uprising. The real migraine may be a firestorm over gasoline prices.
Oil last week topped $100 a barrel, and gas has hit $4 a gallon in pockets of the country. The price is expected to keep heading up. This pain is being felt by a public still dazed by recession.
An immutable fact of expensive gasoline: Americans will find someone to blame. We can expect in coming months to hear many sober analysts attempt to explain the complex reasons for rising oil prices: inflation, Middle East tremors, growing demand. Expect, too, for all those reasons to vanish behind what most Americans will see as the far more obvious (and graspable) cause: President Obama's regulatory assault on domestic oil and gas production.
This is, after all, a White House that has put at the center of its domestic agenda its goal of a "green economy," which hinges on making fossil fuels too expensive for Americans to purchase. In January 2008, candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Steven Chu, now Secretary of Energy, told this newspaper in the same year: "Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." That would be, oh, $10 a gallon.
In March of last year, Mr. Obama reversed or scaled back nearly every major offshore oil opportunity that has come about since the price spike of 2008—effectively reimposing a moratorium on drilling off the coasts. His administration has killed leases in developmentally crucial areas of Alaska. His EPA has refused to issue permits. The White House used the BP oil spill as an excuse to also shut down the deep-water Gulf.
Onshore? Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has revoked oil-and-gas leases. The EPA is suffocating the coal industry with regulation. One of the president's only clear State of the Union proposals was to raise taxes on oil and gas. The White House's energy policy, says Dan Kish of the Institute for Energy Research, is "embargoing our own energy supplies to drive up their costs."
Democrats are already desperately spinning the press on why none of this will matter politically. Yes, the party took heat for its antidrilling policies in 2008, but it won't be the same this time. Americans, they say, just witnessed an oil spill; they are okay with a drilling ban. And so long as economic recovery stays on track, no one will sweat an extra buck a gallon. And so on.
The Democrats are right about one thing: It won't be the same as 2008. It will be politically worse. Nobody should forget the extraordinary public fury over $4 gas in 2008. The rage was enough to take Mr. Obama's flailing presidential opponent, John McCain, and propel him ahead in the polls, where he stayed until the financial crisis. Remember also that when oil prices peaked in July 2008, the unemployment rate was 5.7%.
President Bush largely escaped public blame. How could anyone lay high oil prices on a guy the left had spent eight years slamming as an "oil man"? But President Obama's anti-oil record is evident, and Republicans (who, unlike in 2008, run the House), will use their bully pulpit to directly connect prices to the Obama energy freeze.
This week we've seen the first rumblings of the oil-price political freight train that's coming. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell highlighted a Democratic proposal to raise gas prices with new levies on oil and gas, deeming it the "minivan tax." Washington state Rep. Doc Hastings, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, grilled Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Wednesday about the administration's de facto moratorium on deep-water drilling permits. Behind the scenes, GOP members are touching up energy bills, to provide a further contrast with the administration.
The White House sniffs trouble and this week rushed to issue its first Gulf deep-water permit since the spill. Yet the administration has so much wrapped up in its green-energy agenda—stimulus grants, subsidies, programs in every department—it seems unwilling to do more. The EPA has refused to budge on controversial carbon-emissions regulations. The president is now pushing for a "clean energy" mandate, the ugly stepchild of cap and trade. The White House is trying to recruit gullible Republicans to a "comprehensive" energy bill, though its goal appears to be to cloak a further renewable agenda behind the few bones it would toss to natural gas or nuclear.
The administration took a midterm election beating because the public saw it move to the left of reality on spending and health care. Rising gas prices now threaten to catch it out the same way on energy. If it wants to recapture public favor, it will have to make a major shift.
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