Biggest turn on for guys!
Men all over the country are urging their wives
and sweethearts to get this 'chic' procedure.
The going rate now exceeds $10,000.
Many men feel it is worth it.
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So it has come to this? What happens if Cuba attacks Guantanamo?
Referencing the above, is Obama becoming unzipped?(See 1, 1a, 1b and 1c below.)
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Perhaps public unions will prove more dangerous, destructive and challenging than Sharia law and Islamist terrorism. Maybe even more than GW and Israeli settlements! (See 2 below.)
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A 'ship of fools' sails into the White House.
How many nations and leaders must be thrown under the bus for these self-appointed 'leaders' to wake up to reality? How long will it take them to realize Obama is a world class blame shifter.(See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) The US, UK, Libyan opposition lack military strength to take on Qaddafi
Barring changes in the military situation, Muammar Qaddafi looked Wednesday, March 2, as though he had averted his regime's immediate danger of collapse by dint of a successful counter-offensive against rebel forces. His prospects had strikingly improved since Saturday, Feb. 26, when President Barack Obama told him to leave and the UN Security Council clamped down sanctions on his regime.
During the day, the regime's armored forces and commandos supported by the Libyan Air Force recaptured parts of Brega, Libya's refinery city and supplier of the country's benzene, and sections of the Bay of Sirte town of Ajdabiya. Military sources say the loss of Brega will cause severe fuel and refined oil shortages in rebel-held Cyrenaica in the east.
Saif al-Islam, who has been running his father Muammar Qaddafi's propaganda campaign since the uprising began more than two weeks ago (Feb. 17), told the French Le Figaro confidently on Wednesday: "It's true that it's a bit messy in the east, a few hundred people died there, but within two days everything will be back in order."
As his counter-offensive went forward, Qaddafi himself addressed a public event in Tripoli covered by state television, looking relaxed and self-confident.
The reverses suffered by the rebels were implicit in their appeal to the West Tuesday night, March 1 for military intervention, when a few hours earlier they rejected foreign troops coming to their aid.
But their SOS came too late.
Unless they can get hold of fuel from outside Libya, the rebels have no chance of organizing enough fighting strength to stand up to Qaddafi's army. Not only have they lost sight of their goal of taking Tripoli but their alternative provisional government in Benghazi is in jeopardy. With the capture of Ajdabiya, Qaddafi's forces control the strategic crossroads linking the two halves of Libya, Tripolitania to Cyrenaica, and have cut off links between the rebels in Cyrenaica and the opposition groups in the west.
It is worth noting that troops engaged in Qaddafi's counter-offensive Wednesday came from the strategic town of Sirte, where they were encamped after leading the recapture of Misrata and Zawiya the day before.
The prospect of foreign military intervention on behalf of the Libyan opposition faded Wednesday. By then, British Prime Minister David Cameron was the lone Western voice still talking about a Western or British military option in Libya. Even his close advisers said he was putting his reputation on the line and exposing himself to derision even by calling for the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya.
British military circles emphasized that the British army lacks commando strength as well as warplanes and warships for a war operation against Qaddafi, especially for a lengthy campaign. Just this week, 11,000 British troops were sacked in the wake of the Cameron government's defense budget cutbacks.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that the administration was still very far from imposing no-fly zones over Libya. This was a reversal of her comment Tuesday that this option was being "actively considered" and followed the news conference given Tuesday by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, in which both stressed that the UN Security Council in imposing sanctions on Libya had not authorized outside military intervention.
Gates pointed out that there is "no unanimity within NATO for the use of armed force… and we also have to think about, frankly, the use of the US military in another country in the Middle East."
Regarding the imposition of no-fly zones, Adm. Mullen was equally skeptical. He warned that such an operation, which he described as "very complex," could lead to situations in which Americans planes were brought down.
Both poured cold water on any military options while Gates pointed out that there was no confirmation of the slaughter of civilians by air bombardment. On the number of protesters killed and army defectors, Gates commented, "We are still in the realm of speculation."
Spokesmen in Washington also worked hard to play down the military significance of the passage of two amphibious assault craft, the USS Kearsarge and the USS Ponc, through the Suez Canal to Libyan waters. The Pentagon stressed that the 800 marines aboard these vessels would stand ready to render humanitarian aid and help rescue refugees stranded in Libya.
1a)Obama at the Abyss
By James Lewis
It's crunch time in Washington, D.C. President Obama must know that a dozen Republicans are saving those boastful videotapes of Mr. O pushing President Mubarak out of power, followed by an endless series of breakdowns throughout the Arabic world.
Just think about that as a 30 second commercial next election year:
Obama: "Mubarak must resign. Now means Now!"
Map of the Middle East with fires exploding in a series from Tunisia to Bahrain, to the sound of breaking glassware. Over and over again.
Those chandeliers will still be falling from the ceilings in the next election campaign, because the instability in the Arab world is not going to be settled quickly. Obama will be seen as another Jimmy Carter, and like Carter, his first challenge will come from inside the Democratic Party.
It was Ted Kennedy who challenged Carter in the Democratic primaries after the Iranian fiasco. Kennedy weakened Carter, and Reagan got elected as a result. Democrats who lived through that disaster for the left haven't forgotten it, and Obama is now looking into the same abyss. His biggest challenge is likely to come from Hillary and Bill, who are aching for revenge.
But Hillary is also implicated in the fiasco in the Middle East, where Obama deliberately told Mubarak to leave, after raising expectations throughout the Muslim world that he couldn't possibly satisfy. The voters can also be reminded of HillaryCare, as ObamaCare runs into the longest economic recession in history.
Imagine a Republican ticket campaigning against Obama and Hillary in 2012. The Arab regimes from North Africa to the Gulf are in a death spiral. Egypt is gone as an American ally, Tunisia, Bahrain and Yemen are teetering. Obama's political fate is tied in with the Muslim world. He is now negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the regime that shielded Osama bin Laden to launch the 9/11 attack on New York and Washington. Maybe the voters will finally connect those dots. It is high time for them to do so.
If Ahmadinejad explodes a nuclear bomb in the next year (as predicted), even Americans who are in deep denial now will finally feel the cold wind from an unstable Third World armed with missiles and nukes. Obama and the Democrats have been playing footsie with Muslim Brotherhood fronts like CAIR. Obama's billion-dollar presidential run was probably financed in part by foreign sources. Untold millions flowed in packaged in email donations under the reporting limit (read: oil money from the Middle East). All the Democrats are attracted to oil money like horse flies to whatever metaphor you like.
We are seeing a near-repeat of the politics of 1948, when the Democrats were forced to choose between Stalin's Communists and Truman's Democrats. It was a time of mass disillusionment with a media-created leftist dream, one in which Uncle Joe Stalin was the "friend" who fought the Nazis with American aid. Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actor's Guild at that time, and he had to fight the Stalinists in Hollywood on a daily basis. Based on that experience, Reagan changed from a registered Democrat to a Republican.
Stalin's deadly threat became clear to everybody soon after Hitler fell, and Americans didn't want to lose more boys in another gigantic war. They wanted the boys to come home, and when Stalin exploded the bomb in 1953, using secrets stolen from the Manhattan Project, they fell out of love with the left. The Reds had infiltrated the schools and colleges, the government and the media, all the way to FDR's White House. Then Stalin tore off the mask.
Sound familiar? That's the abyss Obama is looking into at this very moment.
In Egypt last week, the biggest Muslim radical theocrat, Yussuf Al Qaradawi, flew back from exile and addressed a million cheering supporters at Tahrir Square. The Muslim Brotherhood is now openly turning into a political party, and there are even more extremist groups that will get into parliament.
Radical Muslims have taken over after four different elections in the last three decades: Khomeini in Tehran, Hamas in Gaza, the Turkish Mu Bros in Ankara (remember the suiciders on the cruise ship Mavi Marmara? That ship was owned by the Mu Bro party.). And now we have Hezb'allah taking over Lebanon. Syria and Turkey have formal alliances with the radicals in Tehran.
The Muslim world is being torn between modernizers and medieval reactionaries. That struggle has been going on since Ataturk modernized Turkey after World War I. It is a constant internal tug-of-war in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well. Nobody knows where the dominos will fall.
We do know that every Muslim faction wants the tie-breaker of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Everybody will use anti-Western and anti-Israel propaganda to gain an advantage.
The Russians and Chinese have been trying to fish in these troubled waters, too, but ultimately they, too, are vulnerable to Muslim regimes with nuclear weapons. Russia has seen major suicide bombing attacks already. Moscow and Beijing have been angling for advantage against the United States, but their heads are buried in the sand. Through North Korea, China is helping to nuclearize the Middle East and Pakistan. Russia is building the Bushehr reactor in Iran. Post-Soviet Russia must think of itself as a European power, its fate tied in with the West. China is becoming the biggest trading power in the world, and that means its fate is tied in with free markets in oil, and with its biggest customers in America and Europe. Putin is mentally stuck in the Soviet past, and Hu grew up under Mao Zedong. They will have to start thinking like rational actors in a world of substantially free trade. Their political traditions are imperialistic, but in the modern world, trade brings more wealth than coercion.
We are seeing the biggest international shake-up since 1953, the year Stalin died and the Soviet Union went nuclear.
Obama is not going to keep all those dominos from falling, because nobody can. At least half the American voters will hold him responsible, and they will be right, because Obama is basically an agitator. That's Alinsky dogma. Obama always gambles that change will come out on his side, when in fact nobody knows the outcome. He's an irresponsible gambler. Reality always catches up with gamblers, sooner or later.
Obama constantly dances away from any responsibility for domestic and foreign fiascos. So far the media have supported his constant re-writing of reality. But if and when a Democrat emerges who can beat Obama and maybe beat a Republican, the media will start to think the unthinkable: Can Obama lose in 2012?
The answer is: You betcha!
In the long term this is a battle between modernity and medievalism in the Muslim world. But in the short term it will be one threat of nuclear war after another.
American voters will soon start to look for adults to lead the country. Not ego-tripping adolescents.
1b)Jihad Has Come to India
By Richard L. Benkin
Jihad has come to India. The Obama administration and the State Department will tell you that it is nothing more than isolated acts by individuals. The government in New Delhi will say you are stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment. The mainstream media will ask how you can say that when we are hearing nothing about it from them. But it is real, and it is happening now. I have seen it first-hand. The Obama administration's studied denial will find us caught as flat-footed in India as we were in Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere. The difference is that India is an economic and military giant, with nuclear weapons, and could be a cornerstone of any effective fight against radical Islam.
For several years, I have been talking about the progressive radicalization of Bangladesh. Although it is the only country that ranks among the ten most populous and the ten most densely populated, as well as being the second largest Muslim-majority nation, events there do not capture people's imagination. When you talk about India in the same context, however, people take notice. The thought of an Islamist dominated India scares the heck out of them and should. While our own strategic thinkers concentrate on internecine struggles in the Middle East, their obliviousness to the significance of an Islamist India has enabled our enemies to further their agenda.
I have spent several years along India's 2545 mile-long frontier with Bangladesh, and have seen the impact Bangladesh's radicalization has had on its giant neighbor to the west. Amitabh Tripathi, who has been fighting against what he calls his country's "soft policies," noted that Bangladesh's Muslims "are not radicalized but their institutions are." That radicalization and a level of corruption on both sides of the border that makes my fellow Chicagoans look like amateurs has already produced demographic change in many strategic areas of India. It also has given Muslim activists carte blanche throughout the entire country. The process is deliberate, has been going on for decades, and should send us a screaming warning signal, not only because of what it bodes for India, but also because of what sort of future the Obama administration's soft policies and tolerance for an open border to our south mean for the United States.
Each year in districts like Uttar Dinajpur and North and South 24 Parganas directly across from the Islamic state, my colleagues and I find that more and more villages which once had mixed Hindu-Muslim populations are now all Muslim or Muslim-dominated. Gone are the roadside temples characteristic of places where Hindus practice their faith openly; gone are the sights of Hindu women dressed in their colorful saris and other vestments. They have been replaced by mosques and burqas. Last year, Tripathi and I met with Bimal Praminik, Director of the Kolkata-based Centre for Research in Indo-Bangladesh Relations and arguably the foremost authority on these population changes. He is convinced that this population shift is a deliberate and an integral element the jihad that threatens all of us: "Bangladeshi infiltration with Pakistani ideas... trying to 'Pakistanize' the entire region," he said adding that that the dominant culture for South Asian Muslims has become more "Arabic," than South Asian.
In 1947 when the British left, they partitioned the Indian subcontinent into Hindu and Muslim states. West Bengal went to Hindu India, and East Bengal (now Bangladesh) became part of Pakistan. While Hindu and Muslim majorities respectively, remain, exhaustive studies by Pramanik and others hold out little hope that things will continue that way. During the second half of the 20th century, the Muslim proportion of West Bengal's population rose by 25 percent and its Hindu population declined by nine, a process that has continued into the 21st. At the same time, Bangladesh's Hindu population dropped from almost a third to nine percent. The process has not been pretty and has involved murder, gang rape, abduction of women and children, forced conversion to Islam, and legalized thievery of ancestral Hindu lands under Bangladesh's anti-Hindu Vested Property Act. And now it is happening in India.
Between 1981 and 1991, Muslim population growth in West Bengal actually exceeded its growth in Bangladesh. The South Asia Research Society concluded that Hindus have been fleeing Islamist persecution in East Bengal since the partition; but that since Bangladesh's emergence as an independent nation in 1971, "there has been large scale voluntary infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims...to West Bengal and other parts of India" as well. The actual Muslim population growth exceeded Indian government projections that were based on demographic factors (fertility and mortality), internal migration, and the influx of Hindu refugees; thus, there had to be another element driving the change. Pramanik identifies it as "illegal immigration from across the border." Islamist plans have been so detailed and longstanding that since 1951 the Muslim growth rate exceeded that of Hindus in each individual district of West Bengal.
Statistics might be the "smoking gun," but jihad's impact is far more powerful in the testimony of individual non-Muslim residents who are its victims. One elderly woman in the Howrah district told us how Muslims are taking over her property piece by piece. She even showed us a wall with a star and crescent on it that local Muslims built to identify it as dar al Islam. In another village, residents showed us the remains of a Hindu temple that Muslims recently destroyed after urinating on its holy objects. Most poignant was the testimony of a crestfallen mother whose 22-year-old daughter was abducted weeks ago by local Muslims. Abduction of Hindu women and girls in the name of Islam has been common in Bangladesh for years and is a key element in jihad: eliminating females of childbearing years from the gene pool and forcing them to "produce" Muslim offspring instead. It is now happening in India, according to victimized parents who told me about it in India's North and Northeast.
Residents of Deganga, only 40 kilometers from the West Bengal capital of Kolkata, lived through an anti-Hindu pogrom last September. The pogrom started -- as these things are wont to do these days -- with a fabricated land dispute in which Muslims claimed a wooded area off the region's main road that Hindus own and on which sits a Hindu shrine that is considered very sacred. As the 2010 Islamic observance of Iftar came to an end, a large group of Muslims attempted to seize the land until local Hindus stopped them. It was then that they started attacking Hindu households and shops indiscriminately, forcing many to flee the area with little more than the clothes on their backs.
I returned to Deganga last month to find that while many homes and shops have been rebuilt, a sense of security by Hindus in their ancestral land has not. Most of the residents spoke about leaving the area; others talked about being fearful of attack, their children unable to attend school, and Hindu women being harassed whenever they go to the market or other places in the area. Many of them showed us charred pieces of their former residences; in other cases we were able to see signs of it bleeding through a new coat of paint. Hindu women and girls showed us where they hid during the attack to avoid being raped or abducted and made concubines; a fate that likely has befallen the missing 22-year old daughter of the mother above.
In every single one of these cases, local authorities have refused to take action. In fact, during the Deganga pogrom, they arrested the community's wealthiest Hindu on the false charge of firing on the jihadis. In the past, this official inaction has been purchased; but it is also a product of the alliance between Islamists and Communists in India. That alliance was announced publicly at a meeting in the south Indian state of Kerala; and it has been policy for West Bengal's three-decade old communist government. Wherever we spoke with these villagers, Muslim neighbors would gather menacingly in an attempt to intimidate our informants. In some cases, they attacked after we left -- again with no action by the authorities.
In Meerut northeast of New Delhi and far from Deganga, the population of this once Hindu-dominated town is now split down the middle between Hindus and Muslims; and the Hindus are living in fear. Just five days ago before my arrival, a Hindu was burned to death and shortly before that a community leader was targeted and killed. These actions are becoming more common in this substantial-sized town with no police re-action; and according to residents and activists, it is only a matter of time before things explode.
Our State Department will tell you that there is no jihad in India. They will hew the official line that the liberal Awami League government in Bangladesh has put an end to anti-Hindu actions there. A similarly weak government in New Delhi will parrot the same platitudes. Yet, their false palliatives bring no comfort to the scores of victims who have told us their stories; or the many others now unable to do so.
They cannot explain away major terrorist attacks in India's largest cities like Mumbai, Pune, in New Delhi, and elsewhere. They cannot explain how insurgents can regularly kidnap minor officials and receive their ransom (usually release of prisoners, cash, and government forbearance from counter terrorist action) every time they do. If the Obama administration and its left-wing counterparts in India do not replace their studied ignorance with effective action, we will be as "surprised" over what becomes of India as we were with Iran, Egypt, and a host of other nations.
Imagine what an Islamist India would mean for us.
1c)How is Qaddafi still hanging on?
By Dan Murphy
Libyan leader, clinging to power in Tripoli, has now faced down more internal and external pressure than fellow autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia
Muammar Qaddafi is ringed by financial sanctions. The United States and European powers say they are mulling further steps, including extending a no-fly zone over the country to protect the uprising against his rule. The country is split, with large swathes of territory out of his hands and opposition forces closing in on the capital.
Yet Mr. Qaddafi, still clinging to power in the capital, has now faced down more external and internal pressure than Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali combined. His country's situation is more chaotic, and as a percentage of the population, he has killed more of his own people in an effort to put down the democracy uprising.
So how is he hanging on? Two main reasons: Libya's divided armed forces and Qaddafi's apparent tolerance to see his country torn apart by civil war.
LIBYA'S WEAK MILITARY
Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, where the militaries have a tradition of loyalty to the state and to the armed forces as an institution, the regular Libyan military has been kept deliberately weak and divided by Qaddafi - who seized power as a 28-year-old Army captain with a few hundred confederates in 1969.
The best-trained and equipped forces in the country are paramilitaries commanded by his friends and family members, who answer directly to him. There is quite simply no general with the power to tap Qaddafi on the shoulder, tell him "time's up," and have the whole military stand behind him.
"We simply don't have the forces to go to Tripoli and confront him," says a former officer in his Air Force, who's helping to organize the defenses around liberated Benghazi, Libya's second largest city. "There's been lots of talk of sending people against him but we don't yet have the weapons, the training, to really get through."
While there are some well-trained troops who have technically rebelled, it's unclear if they'd be willing to take offensive action against Qaddafi.
For instance, Interior Minister Gen. Abdel Fatah Younis was dispatched to Benghazi with a unit of special forces to put down the armed protesters who eventually overwhelmed the Benghazi barracks. He immediately defected from the regime and said he refused to shoot protesters.
But many of the youth fighters in Benghazi who sparked the uprising say he also provided safe passage out of town to regime loyalists, who have reinforced Qaddafi's supporters in Tripoli and his hometown of Sirte.
QADDAFI IS NO RUN-OF-THE-MILL DESPOT
As much as Mr. Ben Ali or Mr. Mubarak resisted their departures, they seemed to take seriously concerns about plunging their countries into a civil war.
But almost since Day 1, Qaddafi has not only warned of civil war, but also seemed to invite it. He has consistently described democracy protesters as drug addicts, terrorists, and tools of foreign powers in moves that seemed practically calculated to turn his own people further against him.
Qaddafi is no run-of-the-mill despot. Human rights organizations have frequently documented torture by his regime. He's also used terror strikes against his foreign enemies. His recently resigned Justice minister told a Swedish newspaper last month that Qaddafi personally ordered the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 that killed 273 people over Lockerbie, Scotland.
He's successfully bullied foreign powers, such as when a Swiss businessman in Tripoli was arrested in what appeared to be a tit-for-tat move after Qaddafi's youngest son, Hannibal, was arrested in 2008 for assaulting two of his female servants in a Geneva hotel. The charges against Hannibal were soon dropped.
The US suspended diplomatic relations with Libya after the Lockerbie bombing, though all sanctions were lifted and the relationship normalized by 2006.
Libyan intelligence agent Abdelbaset Megrahi, the only person convicted in the bombing, was released from a Scottish jail on Aug. 20, 2009, at a time when British companies were vying for rich oil contracts in Libya. He was released on "compassionate" grounds, with Scottish officials saying he had three months to live. He is still alive today in Tripoli.
IS QADDAFI MAD? 'ALL MY PEOPLE LOVE ME.'
Qaddafi and his sons have also had an "up is down" take on events in Libya in their public statements, leading some to question his grip on reality.
In interviews with the BBC, ABC, and the Sunday Times yesterday, Qaddafi asserted there are "no demonstration at all in the streets" and that "all my people are with me, they love me."
Challenged on the uprising that wrested control of Benghazi from him, he dismissed most of the demonstrators as "Al Qaeda" though he allowed that some youths on "hallucinogenic drugs" may have also joined the alleged Al Qaeda members.
He's also accused the US and the foreign reporters who entered the country illegally from the eastern border with Egypt of working with Al Qaeda.
"I guess we're all Al Qaeda now," laughs Omar al-Jetlawi, who works at the main radio station in Benghazi. "But really, that man is mad."
Of course, many Libyans in and around Tripoli have benefited from Qaddafi's rule, and probably fear what's in store for them if he falls.
Yesterday in Tripoli, Qaddafi's son Saif Islam, who has a PhD from the London School of Economics and has sought to position himself as a reforming successor to his father, led a rally with hundreds of supporters, appearing to urge them to crush the rebellion.
"You'll get all the support you need … facilities and weapons," Saif told a cheering crowd, who chanted "only God, Muammar, and Libya" in response. "You will be victorious," he told them.
That was a far different picture than the one he sought to paint in an interview with ABC over the weekend, in which he insisted there was no violence against his father's rule in the country.
One wild card for Qaddafi is money. Most of Libya's oil production is now in rebel hands, and his access to Libyan funds abroad has been cut off.
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2)Are Public Unions Speeding American's Destruction?
By Paula Dierkins
The ongoing public employees' union protests in Wisconsin against the (minor) cut in benefits witnesses these protestors comparing their struggle to those of the popular, spontaneous public uprising raging all over the Middle East. Such a claim however is ludicrous and laughable. The public in the Middle Eastern countries is revolting against government tyranny. On the contrary, if the demands of the Wisconsin protestors are heeded, it would result in high taxes and therefore, more government tyranny on the public. Any claims by the unions portraying themselves as pro-children or pro-public to justify their demands are blatantly false. Make no mistake, a victory for the unions' means greater tyranny and suffering for the public.
As Professor Tom Di Lorenzo's article puts it, public employee unions are so successful at getting their way because of a double monopoly situation. Most government services such as public transportation, sanitation, fire fighting, police and teaching are monopolies or near monopolies. And because public employees are unionized, they are a monopoly provider of labor. So therefore, if they strike, the "critical" services they provide are paralyzed and the public is in effect held hostage to their demands.
Nearly all arguments used by unions to justify their demands are economically fallacious. Every supposedly "critical" service provided by the government/public employee union nexus can be and were in fact at various times in history, provided by the private sector. For example, private schools existed for hundreds of years before the first public school, and even New York's subway was private until 1968. And private enterprise would happily pick up the slack if only the government gets out of the way.
Since government monopoly services such as public schools have no profit/loss mechanism or ignore profit/loss (remember Amtrak and USPS?), it is impossible for policy makers to determine if these institutions utilize resources optimally. Therefore, we don't know the optimum number of teachers or police officers or fire fighters needed to serve a community.
Due to the lack of the profit/loss feedback mechanism, it's a certainty that these government services consume more resources than if they had been in the private sector. These resources needed to sustain the government services and pay for public employees have to be supplied by the private sector, the true wealth producing sector. If the unions in Wisconsin have their way, more resources will be diverted to the public sector via higher taxation. That means that fewer resources are available for the private sector to maintain their capital or increase investments to grow their wealth producing activities. Eventually, the private sector will be bled dry and the entire system will collapse on itself. In fact, we may already be at that point with nearly every public sector across the country having deeply underfunded pensions. Even the cost cuts proposed don't go far enough to restore these funds to solvency.
If you want a glimpse of the destruction wrought by unchecked union power, look no further than Detroit. But the auto unions were private sector unions whose employers didn't have an unlimited pool of wealth. On the other hand, the public trough is many times bigger and so can be bled for a longer period. But the end destruction, when it comes, will be all the more spectacular.
While there may be some underpaid teachers or police officers or fire fighters, these individuals would be hard to find unless they plied their services in the private sector. Perhaps one way out is to accept that public pensions are underfunded and will never pay out their promised benefits in full, liquidate these pension funds by paying out lump sum benefits pro-rata, and then privatize all government services. Over the short term, this will no doubt throw a lot of people into the deep end. However, in the long run, this is path of least pain.
Paula Dierkins writes on the topic of Online PhD Degree .
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3)Obama: Israelis must show seriousness on peace
Jewish leaders: during White House meeting president said Palestinians 'don't feel confident that Netanyahu government serious about territorial concessions'
By Yitzhak Benhorin
US President Obama this week called on Jewish leaders to speak to their colleagues in Israel and to “search your souls” over Israel's seriousness about making peace, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported Wednesday.
According to participants, Obama told the Jewish leaders that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is eager to secure his legacy by establishing a Palestinian state and would accept a decent offer if one were on the table.
“The Palestinians don't feel confident that the Netanyahu government is serious about territorial concessions,” the president reportedly said.
Obama also reportedly said that the Jewish sections of Jerusalem would remain in Israeli hands as part of any peace deal, but that the Arab sections would not.
JTA reported that in an hour-long meeting at the White House Tuesday with some 50 representatives from the Jewish community’s chief foreign policy umbrella group, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Obama reiterated the US commitment to Israel.
The Jewish leaders noted the president's affirmation of his "deep commitment to Israel's security," according to JTA.
Several participants at the meeting told JTA that the president also implied that Israel bears primary responsibility for advancing the peace process. They interpreted the president’s comments as either hostile, naive or unsurprising.
“Many people felt that their worst fears about Obama were confirmed with respect to Israel,” one participant was quoted as saying by JTA. “They felt an enormous hostility towards Israel.”
However, other participants disagreed and said meeting was a positive one. According to JTA, they described the president as “thoughtful” and “forthcoming” in his remarks, and said no new ground was broken.
"The people who loved Obama probably still love him, the people who had big reservations about Obama probably have more reservations than they had before,” one longtime Jewish organizational official told JTA.
JTA said most agreed that the atmosphere was cordial and gracious.
“I thought he reaffirmed his support of Israel, and I thought he did it quite well,” one participant told JTA. “Nothing that he said would I interpret in any way as being anti-Israel or opposed to Israel.”
Others suggested that the president wasn't hostile so much as naive about Palestinian intentions and his belief about Israel's supposed lack of commitment to peacemaking, JTA reported. Still others suggested both interpretations were flawed.
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