Obama has brought change - more people on food stamps and his picture is also on a stamp!
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Once you know the facts, it's understandable;
So Arnold approaches Maria and says "Maria, the maid wants another raise, and Maria after a little thought says.... screw her.
The rest is history
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De Borchgrave on our deficits and what it means for future military spending.
Some 15 years ago, Bernard Schwartz. Chairman of Loral, told me the only reason we continued flying piloted military planes was for the glory because we had the capability, even then, of pilotless drones etc.
(See 1 below.)
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Read and scroll all the way to the bottom. What is wrong with us? (See 2 below.)
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Obama the hostile. Dennis Miller, who is not Jewish, offers some cogent thoughts that are worth reading. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Merkel trying to save Euorpe but if Germany rids itself of nuclear power it will become more dependent on Russian energy sources and thus, come increasingly under Russian influence. (See 4 below.)
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Mark Mobius and Templeton were clients when I was more active and he is a very bright man. So is Steve Sjuggerud. Wall Street abounds with conflicting views.
(See 5 below.)
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Not your conventional thinking but it corresponds to mine. Then Hanson on Obama
s campaign startegy. (See 6 and 6a below.)
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California your failed state. (See 7 belw.)
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Dick
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1)Shining citadel redux
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
In Jan. 1981, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th U.S. president, he declared the federal budget to be out of control. The deficit had reached $74 billion, and the federal debt was at $930 billion. Mr. Reagan said a stack of $1,000 bills equivalent to what Uncle Sam owed would be 67 miles high. Chump change and height today.
Now that same stack of $1,000 bills would reach 900 miles high. In $1 bills, it would pile up to the moon - and back. Not once, but twice. Like a drunken sailor, America continues to borrow about $125 billion a month - $10 billion of it from China. The U.S. owes China $1.3 trillion.
Now at $14.3 trillion, the national debt ceiling must be raised again by Aug. 2 if the U.S. is to avoid default. The lords of Capitol Hill are playing a dangerous game of chicken, as no one wants to assume the responsibility of drastically curbing federal spending and raising taxes at the same time.
Default would rock global markets. By comparison, the Great Depression would look like children losing their weekly allowance. And the rest of the world would begin to look to China as the next global supreme power.
With the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his secret lair a short walk from Pakistan's prestigious military academy, we have dramatic evidence that small-scale operations can be more effective for changing the course of history than multidivision invasions that inadvertently hand victory to our enemies.
The intelligence bonanza from that raid included a large collection of memory sticks, flash drives, digital audio and video files, printed material, computer equipment, recording devices and handwritten documents. - the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever.
The intel already has been used to strike al Qaeda targets in other parts of the world.
The $1 trillion we blew on Iraq killed Saddam Hussein, but it was a pyrrhic victory that enhanced Iran's power and influence in Iraq. As the last 40,000 U.S. troops prepare to leave, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki knows he has to live in proximity with Iran along a 713-mile border from the Persian Gulf to Turkey's southeastern frontier.
The original U.S. strategic plan was to knock off the Iraqi dictatorship, whose demise would prove contagious in Syria and, with pro-Western Jordan, give Israel 25 years of security.
The U.S. can no longer afford a global military strategy and a defense budget that is almost as large as those of the rest of the world combined. Aircraft carrier task forces cost $30 billion or more to build, including aircraft and escort ships. Annual running costs: $5 billion plus.
Eleven carrier task forces are operational, though cost cutters see barely sufficient resources for eight such carrier groups. This would save about $100 billion. The Navy's current budget: $150 billion.
Yet conservative think-tank experts are calling for a larger defense budget in order to keep the U.S. dominant on land, sea and air. Carrier-borne F-18 Super Hornets could have reduced Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad house and compound to dust, but that would have destroyed all the intelligence.
The holy grail of defense spending is not as holy as it was before Abbottabad.
Outspending and out-arming the Soviet Union worked at a time when the Soviet empire was on the verge of internal economic collapse. The "American Century" was the politico-military-economic miracle of the 20th century. If America has lost some of its luster in the early 21st century, the loss is entirely self-inflicted.
The Iraq war was an expensive mistake. The Afghan war was an ill-thought-through, expensive punitive expedition that dragged in 42 other nations and, thus far, has cost the hapless U.S. taxpayer almost half a trillion dollars - with still a few years to go before all the troops come home.
Afghanistan's Taliban regime was ousted in a couple of weeks by a U.S. force of 410 men (110 CIA operatives and 300 Special Forces) led by CIA agent Hank Crumpton. The al Qaeda contingent, led by Osama bin Laden, exited into Pakistan during the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.
Delusions of grandeur, or whatever it was, kept us spending billions on weapons systems for the last war, not the cyber- and robotic conflicts of the future.
The F-35 will be the last manned fighter bomber built. And the Pentagon estimates the total cost of owning and operating the fleet of 2,500 F-35s at $1 trillion dollars over the estimated 50-year life span of the aircraft. And that doesn't include the $385 billion the Department of Defense will spend to buy them.
The Air Force is training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots, a fundamental shift for the 62-year-old service.
Few of the Air Force Academy's 4,000 cadets will ever get to fly manned aircraft.
In the future, even aerial dogfights will be fought by drones piloted by remote control from hundreds of miles away. The Global Explorer, with a wingspan the same size as a Boeing 747, flies at 65,000 feet for several days, well out of range of most anti-aircraft missiles, and monitors in a single shot an area of almost 300,000 square miles. All of Afghanistan is 252,000 square miles.
Global Explorer costs less ($30 million) and is more effective than a spy satellite. The stealthy and speedy Phantom Ray can dart in and out of enemy territory to destroy a preprogrammed target. The X-47B is the drone look-alike of a B-2 bomber.
There are now 7,000 drones of various types in the U.S. arsenal.
In Afghanistan, neither old nor new bells and whistles will prevent Taliban from coming back, albeit "reformed" with pledges to keep out bin Laden and his terrorist mob. In fact, al Qaeda fighters took a powder during the battle of Tora Bora 10 years ago. And killing Afghan guerrillas was not why friends and allies originally signed on.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor-at-large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
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2) How they vote in the United Nations:
Below are the actual voting records of various Arabic/Islamic States which are recorded in both the US State Department and United Nations records:
Kuwait votes against the United States 67% of the time
Qatar votes against the United States 67% of the time
Morocco votes against the United States 70% of the time
United Arab Emirates votes against the U. S. 70% of the time.
Jordan votes against the United States 71% of the time.
Tunisia votes against the United States 71% of the time.
Saudi Arabia votes against the United States 73% of the time.
Yemen votes against the United States 74% of the time.
Algeria votes against the United States 74% of the time.
Oman votes against the United States 74% of the time.
Sudan votes against the United States 75% of the time.
Pakistan votes against the United States 75% of the time.
Libya votes against the United States 76% of the time.
Egypt votes against the United States 79% of the time.
Lebanon votes against the United States 80% of the time.
India votes against the United States 81% of the time.
Syria votes against the United States 84% of the time.
Mauritania votes against the United States 87% of the time.
U S Foreign Aid to those that hate us:
Egypt, for example, after voting 79% of the time against the United States,
still receives $2 billion annually in US Foreign Aid.
Jordan votes 71% against the United States
And receives $192,814,000 annually in US Foreign Aid.
Pakistan votes 75% against the United States
Receives $6,721,000,000 annually in US Foreign Aid.
India votes 81% against the United States
Receives $143,699,000 annually.
WHY? WHO IN THE HECK STARTED THIS AND WHY? THEY ACTUALLY BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS THEM.
Perhaps it is time to get out of the UN and give the tax savings back to the American workers who are having to skimp and sacrifice to pay the taxes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)Where Obama is leading Israel
By Caroline B. Glick
Since the president's policy speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the charge he's the most hostile US leader the Jewish state has ever faced
In the aftermath of US President Barack Obama's May 19 speech on the Middle East, his supporters argued that the policy toward Israel and the Palestinians that Obama outlined in that speech was not anti-Israel. As they presented it, Obama's assertion that peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be based on the 1967lines with agreed swaps does not mark a substantive departure from the positions adopted by his predecessors in the Oval Office.
But this claim is exposed as a lie by previous administration statements. On November 25, 2009, in response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's acceptance of Obama's demand for a 10-month moratorium on Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the State Department issued the following statement: "Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements."
In his speech, Obama stated: "The United States believes… the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."
That is, he took "the Palestinian goal" and made it the US's goal. It is hard to imagine a more radically anti-Israel policy shift than that.
And that wasn't Obama's only radically anti-Israel policy shift. Until his May 19 speech, the US agreed with Israel that the issue of borders is only one of many — including the Palestinians' rejection of Israel's right to exist, their demand to inundate Israel with millions of foreign Arab immigrants, their demand for control over Israel's water supply and Jerusalem — that have to be sorted out in negotiations. The joint US-Israeli position was that until all of these issues were resolved, none of them were resolved.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, claim that before they will discuss any of these other issues, Israel has to first agree to accept the indefensible 1967 boundaries as its permanent borders. This position allows the Palestinians to essentially maintain their policy of demanding that Israel make unreciprocated concessions that then serve as the starting point for further unreciprocated concessions.
It is a position that is antithetical to peace. And on May 19, by stipulating that Israel must accept the Palestinian position on borders as a precondition for negotiations, Obama adopted it as US policy.
SINCE THAT speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US president Israel has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel.
Friday's Yediot Aharonot reported on the dimensions of the threat Obama may pose to the Jewish state. The paper's account was based on administration and Congressional sources. The story discussed Obama's plans to contend with the Palestinian plan to pass a resolution at the UN General Assembly in September endorsing Palestinian statehood in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
According to Yediot, during his meeting with Obama on May 20, Netanyahu argued that in light of the Palestinians' automatic majority support at the General Assembly, there was no way to avoid the resolution.
Netanyahu reportedly explained that the move would not be a disaster. The General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed the PLO's declaration of independence in 1988.
And the sky still hasn't fallen.
Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the Palestinian resolution. Obama's distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly frustrated US Ambassador Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians' Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
Yediot's report asserts that Obama refused to brief Netanyahu on the steps his administration is taking to avert such an unpalatable option. What the paper did report was how George Mitchell — Obama's Middle East envoy until his resignation last week — recommended Obama proceed on this issue.
According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said would be "painful for Israel," would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is illegal.
That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting.
Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell's policy represents the most anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama's actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell's policy recommendations.
First there was his speech before AIPAC. Among other things, Obama used the international campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a justification for his policies of demanding that Israel capitulate to the Palestinians' demands, which he has now officially adopted as US policy.
As he put it, "there is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process — or the absence of one. Not just in the Arab world, but in Latin America, in Europe, and in Asia. That impatience is growing, and is already manifesting itself in capitals around the world."
From AIPAC, Obama moved on to Europe. There he joined forces with European governments in an attempt to gang up on Israel at the G8 meeting.
Obama sought to turn his embrace of the Palestinian negotiating position into the consensus position of the G8. His move was scuttled by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who refused to accept any resolution that made mention of borders without mentioning the Palestinian demand to destroy Israel through Arab immigration, Israel's right to defensible borders, or the Palestinians' refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.
If Harper had not stood by Israel, the G8's anti-Israel resolution endorsing the Palestinian negotiating position could have formed the basis of a US-sponsored anti-Israel Security Council resolution.
Israelis planning their summer trips should put Canada at the top of their lists.
THE FINAL step Obama has taken to solidify the impression that he does not have Israel's best interests at heart, is actually something he has not done. Over the past week, Fatah leaders of the US-backed Palestinian Authority have made a series of statements that put paid any thought that they are interested in peace with Israel or differ substantively from their partners in Hamas.
At the Arab League meeting in Qatar on Saturday, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian state "will be free of all Jews."
Last week the US-supported Abbas denied the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and claimed absurdly that the Palestinians were 9,000 years old.
Equally incriminating, in an interview last week with Aaron Lerner from the IMRA newsgathering website, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said that now that Hamas was the co-leader of the PA with Fatah, responsibility for continuing to hold IDF St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit hostage devolved from Hamas to the PA. And the PA would continue to hold him hostage.
Shaath's statement makes clear that rather than moderating Hamas, the Fatah-Hamas unity deal is transforming Fatah into Hamas.
And yet, Obama has had nothing to say about any of this.
Obama's now undeniable antipathy for Israel and his apparent willingness to use his power as American president to harm Israel at the UN and elsewhere guarantee that for the duration of his tenure in office, Israel will face unprecedented threats to its security. This disturbing reality ought to focus the attention of all Israelis and of the American Jewish community. With the leader of the free world now openly siding with forces bent on Israel's destruction, the need for unity has become acute.
MADDENINGLY, HOWEVER, at this time of unprecedented danger we see the Israeli media have joined ranks with Kadima in siding with Obama against Israel in a joint bid to bring down Netanyahu's government. Yediot Aharonot, Maariv, Haaretz, Channel 2, Channel 10, Army Radio and Israel Radio's coverage of Netanyahu's visit and its aftermath was dominated by condemnations of the prime minister, and praise for Obama and opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who called for Netanyahu to resign.
The fact that polling data showed that only 12 percent of Jewish Israelis regard Obama as pro-Israeli and that the overwhelming majority of the public with an opinion believes Netanyahu's visit was a success made absolutely no impression on the media. The wall-to-wall condemnations of Netanyahu by the Israeli media lend the impression that Israel's leading reporters and commentators are committed to demoralizing the public into believing that Israel has no option other than surrender.
Then there is the American Jewish leadership. And at this critical time in US-Israel relations, the American Jewish leadership is either silent or siding with Obama. Right after Obama's shocking speech on May 19, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement endorsing it. Stand With Us congratulated Obama for his AIPAC speech.
With the notable exceptions of the Zionist Organization of America and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA), leaders of American Jewish organizations have refused to condemn Obama's anti-Israel positions.
Their silence becomes all the more enraging when placed against the massive support Israel receives from rank-and-file American Jews. In a survey of American Jews taken by CAMERA on May 16-17, between 75% and 95% of American Jews supported Israel's position on defensible borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian "refugees," Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist and the right of Jews to live in a Palestinian state.
The refusal of most American Jewish leaders, the Israeli media and Kadima to condemn Obama today makes you wonder if there is anything the US president could do to convince them to break ranks and stand with Israel and with the vast majority of their fellow Jews. But it is more than a source of wonder. It is a reason to be frightened. Because Obama's actions over the past two weeks make clear to anyone willing to see that in the age of Obama, silence is dangerous.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, where her column appears.
3a)Here we go:
The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one
thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up
word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years.
Like 'Wiccan,' 'Palestinian' sounds ancient but is really a
modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in the
1967 war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, the West Bank was owned
by Jordan, and there were no Palestinians.'
As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as
big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the
'Palestinians',weeping for their deep bond with their lost
'land' and 'nation'.
So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word
'Palestinian' any more to describe these delightful folks,
who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out
they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are:
'Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would
Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal
Struggle And Death.' I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect
to see on CNN. How about this then: 'Adjacent Jew-Haters'.
Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country.
Oops, just one more thing: No, they don't . They could've
had their own country. Anytime in the last thirty years,
especially several years ago at Camp David. But If you have
your own country, you have to have traffic lights and
garbage trucks. And Chambers of Commerce, and worse, you
actually have to figure out some way to make a living.
That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters
in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of
dead Jews, of course that's where the real fun is -- but
mostly they want Israel.
Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or 'The
Zionist Entity' as their textbooks call it -- for the last
fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to
divert the attention of their own people away from the fact
that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and
tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been
around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something.
It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes
poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim
Mideast. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't
given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way,
thanks a hell of a lot for that one.
Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million
Arabs; five million Jews.
Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and
Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And
now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of
that pack of matches, everyone will be pals..
Really? Wow, what neat news.
Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the
tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to
drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.
My friend, Kevin Rooney, made a gorgeous point the other
day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million
Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple
brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping
belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course
not.*
*Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for
generations to drive a tiny Arab state into the sea? Nonsense.
Or dancing for joy at the murder of Innocents? Impossible.*
*
Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs
baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting.
No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the
worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.
However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a
danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some.
After September 11th our president told us and the world he
was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that
supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months
and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City
every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing
we did, and we tell them to show restraint.
If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every
day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the
administration to just be done with it and kill everything
south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan .
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4)Wunder Woman
By Joshua Hammer
Meeting Obama this week in Washington, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is on a furious quest to save Europe
The arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn had gone down 48 hours earlier, and Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, was still absorbing the news. Settling into a chair in a vast conference room in the glass-and-steel Chancellery in Berlin, Merkel grimaced and shook her head when asked about her reaction to the International Monetary Fund chief's plummet from grace. She had been scheduled to meet Strauss-Kahn to discuss the worsening euro crisis, but the meeting had been scrapped after he was charged with sexual assault. "I will say that the presumption of innocent until proven guilty applies to everybody," the careful Merkel said, shifting in her chair. "I will wait and see how the legal process proceeds."
It was early afternoon in Berlin, and Merkel was taking time out of her rigidly programmed schedule to meet with an American reporter — a rare concession for a politician who almost never talks to the foreign press. And Merkel exerted as much control as she could over the process.
Wearing a prim beige jacket and black pants, Merkel kept her answers concise, in German, and with her press attache firmly at her side as a timekeeper. But her unyielding demeanor — and insistence on speaking her native tongue — was broken when I paused to admire the view from the window. The Germans, after unification, built a dazzling, celebratory cityscape along the former East-West fault line. Switching to English, Merkel, who grew up in the Communist East, admitted she still found it surprising to be going to work each day "on this side" — in the former West Berlin —"and not on the other side."
More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that in her nearly six years as chancellor, Merkel, now 56, has established herself as Europe's strongest and most durable leader. She has, in turbulent times, guided her Christian Democratic Union to healthy wins in two elections. Forbes magazine has repeatedly named her "the world's most powerful woman." And though her standing at home has slipped this year, among the current crop of European leaders, who almost comically embody national stereotypes — who, after all, is more Italian than Silvio Berlusconi, more French than Nicolas Sarkozy, more British than David Cameron, and, indeed, more German than Merkel? — she still seems the most assured in her office.
"Angela is the very opposite of the flashy glad-hander as a politician," says former British prime minister Tony Blair. "She is one of the easiest politicians to underestimate, and it's one of the stupidest things any politician can do."
She has steered Germany through the worst global financial meltdown since the Great Depression, keeping budgets down and confidence high. Last year, Germany enjoyed a growth rate of 3.6 percent — the highest in Western Europe — and the economy is on track to remain strong this year. In the euro crisis, Merkel has been a strong voice for fiscal discipline while diligently (if sometimes reluctantly) cobbling together rescue plans for Europe's profligate nations — Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, who have chafed loudly at German demands. (A Greek newspaper wrote that Germany was turning debtor countries into "colonies of the Fourth Reich" and Europe into a "financial Dachau.") But beyond such hissy fits, there's little the poorer EU nations can do. Without Berlin, the euro would be kaput. Germany is Europe's only truly global economy — the world's second-largest exporter after China and the fourth-largest economy after the U.S., China, and Japan.
"Her constant fear, her constant desire, will be to make sure that any help that's given to Greece is given on a basis that cures the problem rather than merely postpones it," says Blair. "Her concern — naturally — is to make sure that any help that is given is help that she can justify to her own people. It really is as simple as that."
In what is still a men's club of world leaders, she holds her own. During a February phone call, she rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his refusal to extend a settlement freeze. When he castigated her for an anti-settlement U.N. vote, she barked back: "How dare you?" according to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. When I pressed her on the conversation, she told me that she never talked about her private phone conversations, but then added: "I believe that finding a two-state solution is now more urgent that ever … and a suspension of settlement-building would be a justifiable step to make progress. As a friend of the Jewish state, I'm profoundly convinced that a negotiated solution is in the best interests of Israel."
For all her apparent grandeur, close friends describe her as uneitel — a term connoting modesty. She still vacations in the same cottage in the former East Germany that she owned before the fall of the Wall, and her husband, Joachim Sauer, a fellow scientist, commutes regularly from their unpretentious apartment in central Berlin to the institute of chemistry at Humboldt University.
Merkel is efficient, in part because she has kept her independence and her private life to herself, says James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president. "She's not someone running around the world in tiaras and things, trying to gain recognition because of her presidency," says Wolfensohn, who admires her toughness. "I don't know how you run Germany without being very strong — I don't think it's for weaklings."
On the world stage, she has been a vocal supporter of human rights, repeatedly pointing to her own remarkable journey from Lutheran priest's daughter in the Communist East to leader of a united Germany. "Above all, it influenced me in terms of recognizing that freedom is not a given," she says. "That led me to becoming, and I believe I still am, a fervent advocate of freedom, and also of freedom of opinion."
Merkel will meet with President Obama in D.C. next week to discuss the economy, the ongoing wars, and transatlantic relations. Afterward she will dine at the White House, where the president will present her with the Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. Ironically, her award comes at a time of growing tensions in the German-American alliance. In contrast to the back-slapping (and shoulder-massaging) she shared with George W. Bush, Merkel regards Obama warily, though they share the same cerebral style.
The relationship between the two got off to a bad start in July 2008, when Merkel criticized the prospect of Obama using Berlin's Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop for a campaign rally. A year later, Obama, now president, declined an invitation to attend the 20th-anniversary celebration of the fall of the Wall, prompting one American wag to write that Obama had replaced John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" with the more prosaic "Ich bin besch�ftigt" ("I'm busy"). Obama still hasn't taken time to visit Berlin, feeding the perception in the Merkel camp that he doesn't view Europe as a priority.
Not surprisingly, Merkel herself insists that she gets along just fine with Obama. "I had a reliable, friendly relationship with President Bush, and I have a very good and friendly relationship with President Obama," she told me. "We have very different biographies, but we work well together, and the fact that he invited me to Washington to receive the Medal of Freedom speaks for the quality of our relationship." she says.
Playing well with others has become a Merkel hallmark, at home as well as abroad. In December 2008, with the German economy slowing to a crawl, roughly 30 people — CEOs, economists, and union brass — gathered around a table in Merkel's office. Peter Loscher, chief executive of Siemens AG, who attended the meeting, recalls that Merkel asked each person in the room what was wrong with the economy and what could be done to fix it. Eventually, Loscher says, Merkel helped forge an agreement that is remarkably German in its consensus: the business leaders said they would avoid laying off a considerable number of workers in the coming year, and instead cut back their hours. The government, in turn, would offset a portion of the costs and allow companies to keep their skilled employees until the downturn passed. The idea, says one German politician, originated with her political opponents, but Merkel embraced it and managed to convince the naysayers in her party. "Her mantra is collaboration and not confrontation," says Loscher. "She has a great capacity to build trust."
But recently there has been blowback and public awkwardness. Last month, at the American Academy in Berlin, Helmut Kohl, the 81-year-old former German chancellor, passionately defended the euro zone. Sitting in his wheelchair, Kohl spoke in a faint voice. His speech was slurred and his words were hard to decipher. But his message — that Germany was not doing enough to preserve the union — seemed clearly intended for Merkel, his former, now estranged, protegee, who appeared frosty as she watched from the front row. "Germany's future is with its neighbors," Kohl said. "We have to follow our path with the Greeks, too, even if it costs us something."
And earlier this year, Merkel was criticized for the German decision to abstain on the March U.N. Security Council vote on the "no-fly zone" over Libya and NATO intervention. "The rest of the West is perplexed, sensing a drift toward stay-apart-ism," says Josef Joffe, editor and publisher of Die Zeit, the German daily. "Germany has never been so alone." Merkel insists that Germany remains strongly supportive of its NATO allies and denies that she was pandering to Germany's notoriously noninterventionist electorate. "We are all in agreement with our friends and allies that the Gaddafi regime must be brought to an end, that Libyans deserve freedom and democracy just as much as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and the entire region," Merkel says. "But in the end a purely military solution will not be feasible; politics will have to play its part."
Merkel spent what she describes as a contented youth in the rural East German town of Templin, about 60 miles northwest of Berlin. Her father had brought the family there from Hamburg when she was an infant, before the Berlin Wall went up. It was, she says, "a very beautiful and nature-filled childhood." Her parents fostered an atmosphere of intellectual inquiry; Merkel recalls being surrounded at home by "many books, frequent visitors, and interesting conversational partners." Yet the family had no illusions about the restrictions and dangers of life in the East German police state. "We knew we were living in a dictatorship, with constant caution required as to what you could and could not say," she told me, adding that her parents advised her to ward off overtures from the Stasi, the secret police, by telling them that she was a chatterbox and would make a lousy informer. Merkel remained passive politically, throwing herself into the study of physics at the University of Leipzig. She graduated in 1978, and got a job as a chemist at the prestigious Academy of Sciences in Berlin.
A decade later, the Berlin Wall fell. In March 1990, just before East Germany's only democratic election, Merkel walked into the East Berlin office of the fledgling Democratic Awakening Party and signed on as a volunteer. "She was late to the revolution, but she learned fast," says Hans-Christian Maa�, an East German politician who met Merkel during this period, and often invited the young physicist over to his home, where she would bake cookies for his children. Their party was crushed in the polls — the leader turned out to be a Stasi informer — but Maa� found Merkel a job as deputy spokesperson in the transitional government. In late 1990, she ran for Parliament and made a favorable impression on then-chancellor Helmut Kohl; after her election, he appointed her minister of women and youth in the first cabinet of a unified Germany. "For her, it was like the first light of a new future," says Maa�.
Merkel rose rapidly through the ranks of the Christian Democratic Union. She recalled, "I was sitting at the same table with Helmut Kohl. I hardly knew anyone in Bonn, and at first I didn't know how to lead a ministry. I kept saying to myself, you have to make sure that you keep your feet on the ground. There was a great deal to learn in a very short time." She learned fast. Kohl appointed her minister of the environment in his next government, and later, deputy chairman of the Christian Democratic Union.
Lord George Weidenfeld, an Austrian-born publisher, who ran in the same circles as Merkel back when she was a junior politician, recalls a "very friendly and very informal" woman who was often a good listener during boat rides and weekend getaways. "She is a sort of a Margaret Thatcher figure in the sense that she is a very strong person," he says. "[But] she is the best representative of what I have called the three Ms — the movement of the militant middle."
As one of the only women, and one of the only former East Germans, in the party's upper echelons, she was dismissed — foolishly — as a lightweight by party bosses. When Kohl, and the party's secretary general, Wolfgang Sch�uble, became embroiled in a scandal over a secret campaign slush fund, Merkel showed no mercy to her former mentor. She published a letter in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, criticizing the pair for their lack of transparency and demanding reforms. Sch�uble was forced to step down as party boss, and Merkel took over, opening the way to her election five years later as chancellor. "The western boys never believed that the eastern girl would treat them the way she did," says a prominent Berliner. "But she knows how to play the game of power politics."
Understated she may be, and underrated. But Angela Merkel, with her quiet steel and very Lutheran common sense, is a leader without whom Europe would be in disarray.
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5)Templeton's Mobius: Another Financial Crisis is ‘Around the Corner’
Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management’s emerging markets group, said another financial crisis is inevitable because the causes of the previous one haven’t been resolved.
“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis,” Mobius said Monday at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo in response to a question about price swings. “Are the derivatives regulated? No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes.”
The total value of derivatives in the world exceeds total global gross domestic product by a factor of 10, said Mobius, who oversees more than $50 billion. With that volume of bets in different directions, volatility and equity market crises will occur, he said.
The global financial crisis three years ago was caused in part by the proliferation of derivative products tied to U.S. home loans that ceased performing, triggering hundreds of billions of dollars in writedowns and leading to the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008. The MSCI AC World Index of developed and emerging market stocks tumbled 46 percent between Lehman’s downfall and the market bottom on March 9, 2009.
“With every crisis comes great opportunity,” said Mobius. When markets are crashing, “that’s when we’re going to be able to invest and do a good job,” he said.
The freezing of global credit markets caused governments from Washington to Beijing to London to pump more than $3 trillion into the financial system to shore up the global economy. The MSCI AC World gauge surged 99 percent from its March 2009 low through May 27.
‘Too Big to Fail’
The largest U.S. banks have grown larger since the financial crisis, and the number of “too-big-to-fail” banks will increase by 40 percent over the next 15 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Separately, higher capital requirements and greater supervision should be imposed on institutions deemed “too important to fail” to reduce the chances of large-scale failures, staff at the International Monetary Fund warned in a report on May 27.
“Are the banks bigger than they were before? They’re bigger,” Mobius said. “Too big to fail.”
The money manager had earlier said at the same event that Africa has an “incredible” investment potential and that he has stakes in Nigerian banks.
“These banks are doing very well and are much better regulated than they were in the past,” Mobius said, without disclosing which lenders he holds.
Banks account for five of the eight stocks in the MSCI Nigeria (MXNI) Index. Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, the country’s No. 2 lender by market value, surged 31 percent in the six months through May 27, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Shares of Access Bank Nigeria Plc recorded the second-biggest decline on the gauge in the period, the data show.
© Copyright 2011 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved
5a)Right now, the ordinary advice is to be scared. According to the polls I follow that track investor sentiment, everyone is scared right now.
The ordinary opinion is to not be bullish. But history shows that when this happens, you want to BUY stocks. Let me explain…
Individual investors, newsletter writers, and investment managers are all NOT BULLISH right now. Let's take a look at each and how you would have done buying stocks when everyone else was scared…
According to the latest weekly poll by the American Association of Individual Investors, right now, individual investors are less bullish than they've been in all of 2011. Individual investors were this scared twice in 2009 and twice in 2010. Each time, the market "popped" up right after.
Also, according to my friend Jason Goepfert of www.SentimenTrader.com, "Newsletter writers looking for a short-term correction have jumped to a nearly 25-year high." Jason looked back to the five other instances similar to this one. He found their correction fears were unfounded. "There was never really any correction at all."
Finally, Jason just reported that "confidence among investment managers" has dropped near a five-year low. He showed how stocks have typically done well over the following three months when that's happened.
So individual investors are not bullish. Newsletter writers are expecting a correction. And investment managers don't have confidence. Everyone is scared.
But history shows when everyone is scared, you make money.
You can be ordinary and go with the crowd. Or you can be extraordinary and go against the crowd. History shows the right way to be is extraordinary.
Trades from sentiment extremes like this are typically good for about three months. After that, the benefit from the sentiment extreme has worn off.
Nobody is bullish about stocks. So it's time to buy. And history says your safest bet is a three-month trade.
Good investing,
Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
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Will Obama Sink the Democrats?
By James Lewis
The media are playing "divide and conquer" games against Republicans now, a strategy that worked in 2008 by leaving us with John McCain as the only candidate. This time they are swinging between viciously attacking Sarah Palin and her family, and hyping real or imaginary divisions between Republicans -- never among the Democrats, who present the image of a united front with Stalinesque unity. But you can bet there's a lot of vicious in-fighting among Obama, the Clintons, and all the rest, because Obama may be destroying the Democratic Party as we know it.
Already the media are spreading the Big Lie that the GOP has a "weak field" of candidates, declared and undeclared. Like Rudy Giuliani, the best NYC mayor in the last half century and a heroic figure on 9/11/01. Or the four successful former governors of Alaska, Massachusetts, Alabama, and Minnesota. We have one accomplished black businessman, who looks, acts, and talks like a responsible adult, and two brave and articulate conservative women. Even with his flaws, Newt Gingrich was the most powerful GOP Speaker of the House in the last half century. This is a "weak field"?
When know-nothing Obama ran in 2008, the left orgasmed all over itself, and swung a Nobel Peace Prize for him, just for running while black. Even today Obama is a hyped-up incompetent compared to Giuliani.
What the left really fears is that Obama will sink the Democrats. American political parties come and go. In the 19th century the Whigs died out and the Republicans emerged with Abraham Lincoln. Harry Truman's Democrats were forced to purge the Stalinist left from the Democratic Party, making a fast switch to the mainstream because they were deeply penetrated by Stalin's spies and agents of influence. Americans were justifiably scared of Stalin's nuclear bombs, weapons so big and destructive that nobody knew what might happen. The Democrats, some of them vociferously pro-Soviet, had to change in order to survive. They produced generations of mainstream liberals -- Truman, Humphrey, LBJ, JFK -- who would look exactly like conservatives today. Without purging the totalitarian left, they would have died as a party.
Today, as soon as Iran explodes a bomb, Obama is going to be in deep, deep trouble with American voters. Nuclear proliferation is now happening all over the Middle East, because Arabs fear a nuclear Iran much more than a nuclear Israel. Obama has Carterized the most unstable region in the world ten times over. The Democrats well remember how Jimmy got beaten by Ronald Reagan.
The left cannot be trusted in the War on Terror. Carter let the Shah of Iran be overthrown by murderous tyrannical throwback Ayatollah Khomeini. The left is just weak-minded -- which is why they keep denying there is a war going on, even when our troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, and parts of Africa like Somalia.
When the history of the War on Terror is written, it will start with Jimmy Carter, who honestly thought that bloody-minded old Khomeini was "some kind of saint," according to his UN Ambassador Andrew Young. The Shah was pro-American, and educated generations of Iranians (including women) in modern ways of thinking. When Carter allowed Khomeini to take Iran, the mullahs immediately killed off the secular opposition, tried to overthrow the Saudis next door, and ended up in a vicious war with Saddam that killed a million people. Today they control Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. They have always had tactical alliances with Sunni terror groups like Hamas, the Taliban, and Al Qaida. Afghanistan is taking huge bribes from Iran. The Iraqis are worried that as soon as the Americans leave, they will be next.
Thank you, peace-loving Jimmy Carter. What a masterstroke it was to enable the first modern throwback terror regime in the Islamic world. What an example for future generations Jimmy Carter gave us.
Americans who are not mentally comatose today are turning against Obama, because O openly pushed Mubarak out of power in Egypt, thereby sabotaging the only effective peace treaty in the Middle East. Anybody who doesn't see that as a disaster is simply lost to reason. But a lot of liberals will never, ever get it.
Just like Jimmy Carter, Obama is bringing to power the most radical Islamists in Egypt, Turkey, and the other Sunni nations. Obama has done nothing to stop Iran's ruthless march to nuclear power, so that the Saudis may now be ordering their own off-the-shelf nukes from Pakistan. China just announced that "any American attack on Pakistan would be treated like an attack on China." North Korea allowed a US nuclear scientist to visit a brand-new enrichment plant that could only have come from China.
Is this a royal mess or what? And that's only his Foreign Follies.
Domestically, what has Obama done? He's Carterized the economy, with inflation rising for food and gas, and economic stagnation causing almost 10 percent unemployment. He has constantly insulted and demoralized ordinary Americans. He is a racial divider, not a healer. He has literally given the middle digit to Hillary Clinton on television, and symbolically dissed just about everybody else, especially the most productive people in America.
Obama has lost the House of Representatives for the Democrats, and that means that hungry liberals all over the country see their career prospects stymied. His plans for a second term are terrifying: like running your medical care from DC. Rationing medical care for seniors, like the UK. Driving doctors out of business. Affirmative action in all the medical schools, just like Hillary proposed in the 90s.
Listen to these mainstream commentators.
Michael Barone keeps warning that Obama has brought in "gangster government." That's the considered judgment of the best-known PhD political scientist in the country, the editor of the Almanac of American Politics.
Patrick Caddell, after a long career as a mainstream Democratic pollster, is utterly enraged at the leftward lurch of the Demagogues since Clinton. Caddell is just about the last honest man on that side of the aisle. All the decent people in the Democratic Party have been chased out.
Charles Krauthammer, the only other conservative at the Washington Post, just wrote that:
Note how Obama has undermined Israel's negotiating position. He is demanding that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited its claim to the territory won in the '67 war -- its only bargaining chip. Remember: That '67 line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter are Palestinian -- alien territory for which Israel must now bargain.
The very idea that Judaism's holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter is rightfully or historically or demographically Arab is an absurdity.
This is not just about Israel. Imagine what people are thinking in Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, Egypt, Saudi Arabia -- all international flashpoints where trust in American assurances has kept the peace for long decades. When Obama publicly abandons Israel, people start shaking in fear all over the world.
The leftist monopoly on the news is crumbling. The new conservative media are expanding and in quality and quantity, a long-delayed response to the leftist degradation of our culture. Conservatives now have the most articulate speakers in the country, including Rush Limbaugh, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and more.
The left is intellectually bankrupt, and the only thing keeping it alive is media control and government payoffs. The only way the left can stay in power is by monopolizing the media and the schools, to brainwash an entire nation about such little things as the history of the Cold War.
Obama himself is locked in post-colonial socialism, an ideology that has been completely rejected in China, Russia, India, and much of Latin America and Africa.
It is fear, and not self-confidence, that is making lefties like Chris Matthews act like aggressive chimps. When chimpanzees feel scared they go into a very aggressive stance, tear branches off the bushes, bare their teeth, and make loud noises. That's Matthews today. This is not what people do when they feel confident. It's what the power class does when it's afraid of losing it all.
Some leftists are scared that another McCarthyist backlash will arise if Obama loses. They have brainwashed themselves so much about Joe McCarthy that they are now scared of normal Americans. But they also know how extreme they look. To answer Rush Limbaugh the left presents vicious name-callers like Ed Schultz and a squad of Hollywood airheads. If they felt confident they would simply answer substantive arguments with their own. But they are dreadfully weak on substance.
When Americans become serious again -- when Iran's big bomb goes off, or the Great Recession keeps going -- they will vote out Obama and the Democrats.
Every time you read another JourNOlist claiming the GOP is in trouble, just change the word "Republican" to "Democrat." The left isn't losing sleep about Republican losses. They can see the earth yawning open under their own feet, ready to swallow them up, just as the House Democrats were swallowed up in the midterms. Don't think they aren' worried about their poll numbers. Don't think they aren't scared about Tea Party Americans. Don't think they can allow conservatives like you and me to exercise our free speech. They feel panicked, vulnerable, and incompetent. That's where all the rage is coming from.
Historically, leftward lurches in America are always followed by conservative corrections. Woodrow Wilson was followed by Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover; FDR and Truman by Eisenhower; JFK was relatively conservative by leftist standards, but after LBJ swung hard left, Nixon and Ford succeeded him. Jimmy Carter led straight to Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton was stymied by a powerful GOP Congress. And Obama...
We'll find out soon. The SEIU has just pulled out their old Communist banners, and they are tearing off the mask. ACORN is back in business. George Soros is funding all the loudest leftist fronts. Marxists are suddenly sprouting all over the campuses, like an outbreak of ugly pimples. The left is out of the closet.
Yet the Global Warming fraud has been exposed, and the Democrats have suddenly found out they want missile defenses. We now have Aegis-equipped anti-missile vessels near all the hot spots in the world; that's the technology the left threw screaming fits about for decades. Had the left won that debate we would now be exposed to the tender mercies of Iranian missiles a half an hour away. Now that the US has proven that missile defense is possible, every other nation in the world is rushing them into place.
The phony "energy crisis" is on its last legs as countries like Poland, Canada, China, and Israel have discovered major deposits of convertible shale deposits. Natural gas from shale will break the monopoly of OPEC in less than a decade, and reactionary Islam will then lose its big money edge in the world. The Middle East will lose much of its strategic importance as shale deposits are exploited all over the world.
Obama is starting his reelection campaign six months early. The left is already flooding us with phony pre-election headlines and disinformation. Those are signs of panic. They can read the portents of doom in the polls.
The left is strongest on hype, not substance. Alinsky taught them that the appearance of power beats real power. They are always puffing themselves up like blowfish, and trying to demoralize the rest of us. Just watch it happen.
By next year we will know if the left can fool all the people all of the time. No matter how much Obama tries to look like a winner, in fact he is a ball and chain for the Democrats. He lost the House in the midterms. Even the French and Chinese are ridiculing him.
Here's hoping that they all sink together, and that a more centrist party will succeed them.
6a)Reelecting Obama
By Victor David Hanson
Memo to GOP: Obama will campaign against Bush (again) and play the race card. Don’t let him get away with it.
We are beginning to see the contours of the upcoming 2012 reelection campaign of Barack Obama. Whether always officially sanctioned or not, Obama’s campaign will focus on three general themes: a) the 2008 meltdown of the economy on Bush’s watch; b) conservative heartlessness in gutting cherished entitlement programs; and c) racial bias behind any criticism of Barack Obama.
By any standard, the economy has remained mostly dismal for well over two years. Deficits, joblessness, fuel prices, average GDP growth, and housing are far worse than the average during the eight years of Bush’s presidency. Unemployment during almost all of President Obama’s tenure has exceeded 9 percent, despite promises that, because of the stimulus, it would not exceed 8 percent. Gas still averages almost $4 a gallon nationwide, amid a landscape of continual administration resistance to new domestic exploration and leasing. Record numbers of Americans now draw food stamps and unemployment insurance; to suggest that these programs are plagued by abuse and fraud, or that, if they are too easily available, they can discourage initiative, is heresy. Some of the largest states — California, Illinois, New York — are nearly fiscally insolvent. We’ve borrowed $5 trillion since 2009 to “stimulate” the economy — and seen little upsurge in economic growth, but a lot of evidence of a raging inflation to come on the heels of soaring gas and food prices.
Massive debt, record new deficits, high rates of joblessness, out-of-control prices for essentials like fuel and food — a combination like that usually dooms a president’s reelection bid. Similarly weak economies in 1980 and 1992 derailed incumbents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush.
However, Team Obama will make the argument that at least there has not been another Wall Street panic as during September 2008 under Bush, with the general uncertainty that followed. “Bush did it” is now too ironic a charge to evoke any more in matters of foreign policy, given that President Obama has now accepted all the Bush anti-terrorism protocols and wars — and gone well beyond them by joining a third conflict in Libya and quintupling the number of Predator-drone targeted assassinations.
But on the economic front, the “inherited mess” will have to do in the attempt to convince us that the present hard times are still George Bush’s while the signs of a weak recovery are all Barack Obama’s. Similarly, Herbert Hoover was still evoked for nearly a half-century any time FDR, Truman, or LBJ hit a rough patch. And if you did not know about the courageous economic decisions Barack Obama has made on our behalf on the domestic front, you will now, after the heroic killing of bin Laden. In the words of Joe Biden, it was “the boldest undertaking any president has undertaken on a single event in modern history” — an “undertaking” “undertaken” greater than the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, to stop North Korea from obliterating the south, to confront the Soviet Union over its missiles in Cuba, to send troops to recover Kuwait, or to conduct the surge in Iraq?
Obama’s landmark decision, in fact, explains why we can now at last appreciate his (or Joe Biden’s) genius and courage in restoring the ruined Bush economy, or so Biden further assures us: “The American people now . . . have a crystal-clear picture of how strong and decisive this president is. And that’s the last piece of the puzzle that had to be put in place for this great man. People are now beginning to take a second look at those incredibly difficult but absolutely necessary decisions the president had to make the day we walked into the West Wing.”
Then there are those cruel congressional opponents who for some reason believe that the $5 trillion in additional borrowing since January 2009 was a bit over the top. Greed, selfishness, and a lack of compassion — not an aging population, vastly expanded benefits, and soaring health-care costs — are responsible for the difficulties facing both Social Security and Medicare. Remedies abound, but none have been adopted by Team Obama. Before 2012 do not expect that the retirement age will be hiked. Benefits will not be trimmed or some entitlements privatized to encourage competition and cost-cutting — despite the real urgency for reform, since we are already running a $1.6 trillion annual budget deficit, and millions of baby-boomers are on the verge of retirement, a generation not known for either its reticence or its willingness to do without.
If reelected, President Obama will probably be forced to do something about entitlements, but that certain something will for now remain unspoken, and he instead will attack any proposals to change Social Security with the same gusto with which he once trashed the Iraq War and Guantanamo. Already, supportive commercials are airing with a Paul Ryan look-alike shoving a grandmother out of her wheelchair over a cliff. Other hit ads portray the elderly with walkers forced to mow lawns to raise money for their benefits. Ads like that will appear soft in comparison to what’s coming in the next 18 months.
Already, almost weekly one columnist or another insists that to criticize Barack Obama is to display racial bias. A reckless Donald Trump going after Obama’s birth certificate is emblematic of endemic racism; in contrast, unhinged nuts who claimed Sarah Palin never delivered her own child are perhaps a bit too zealous in a noble cause. House Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D., S.C.) summarized the racialist strategy best, when he explicitly charged that opposition to Obama’s reelection hinges on racism: “The fact of the matter is, the president’s problems are in large measure because of his skin color.”
Clyburn’s demagoguery is a sort of strategic racial preemption: Prep the campaign in such a way that no one dares to talk of the president’s shortcomings for fear of being called a bigot — just as, in 2008, legitimate questions about the racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his intimate connection with Barack Obama were acknowledged to be off limits by a terrified McCain campaign. Yet there is no evidence that mainstream criticism of Barack Obama is racial or has in any way exceeded that shown George W. Bush or Sarah Palin. I will concede widespread racism and irrational hatred against the president when Alfred A. Knopf publishes a sick anti-Obama screed that exceeds Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint; or when we see something comparable to the deplorable editorial that the Guardian published by Charlie Brooker, which ended with the question, “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”; or to Jonathan Chait’s crazy “Mad about You: The Case for Bush Hatred” New Republic article.
In fact, the most racially condescending assessment of the president has come from Cornel West, professor of African-American studies at Princeton, who damned Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” West went on more explicitly, couching his criticism of Obama in anti-Semitic, anti-white terms: “I think he does have a predilection much more toward upper-class white brothers and Jewish brothers and a certain distance from free black men who will tell him the truth about himself.”
The president himself — well after the beer summit, Eric Holder’s rants about “cowards” and “my people,” the racist inanities of Van Jones, the “wise Latina,” and all the rest — in ethnically divisive fashion urged Latinos to punish their conservative enemies, and joked that his opponents wanted alligators and moats to stop Mexican nationals from crossing the border.
So will this tripartite strategy work? Only if the president’s opponents allow themselves to be caricatured as greedy Wall Street profiteers who want to punish the elderly and are prejudiced against blacks. And if they can’t answer back defiantly to that nonsense, then they really do deserve to lose.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7)SCOTUS Makes It Official: California A Failed State
Walter Russell Mead
The controversial US Supreme Court decision (pdf) that could ultimately force California to release tens of thousands of prison inmates is more than a shockingly broad exercise of judicial power. It is also an official declaration by the highest constitutional authority in the land that California meets the strict test of state failure: it can no longer enforce the law within its frontiers.
Let there be no mistake: when you produce so many criminals that you can’t afford to lock them up, you are a failed state. Virtually every important civil institution in society has to fail to get you to this point. Your homes and houses of worship are failing to build law abiding citizens, much less responsible and informed voters. Your schools aren’t educating enough of your kids to make an honest living. Your taxes and policies are so bad that you are driving thousands of businesses away. Your management systems must be fouled and confused to the max for you to create something so dysfunctional, so wildly beyond your means, that the Supreme Court of the United States (wisely or foolishly is another question) starts to micromanage your jails.
California used to be the glory of this country, the dream by the sea, the magic state. Now it produces so many criminals it can’t pay to keep them locked up.
This is partly a blue social model thing. California’s public unions are sucking the state dry — like a parasite killing its host. Too many Californians buy the ideology of entitlement best described by that great Louisiana prophet of the blue social model Huey Long: “If you aren’t getting something for nothing, you’re not getting your fair share.”
The federal government’s generation of serial failures in migration policy is also to blame. More exposed to illegal migration than any other state, California has been overwhelmed by both legal and illegal immigrants. Immigrants are a net plus for the United States, but neither the federal nor the state governments have been willing to provide the appropriate policy framework to manage this flow — and to cope with the consequences.
Some of the fault is judicial. California’s prison blues partly reflect micromanagement by a host of addled judges who among them have imposed a conflicting and overlapping set of requirements that increase costs to the point where overall conditions decline. One judge imposes a health mandate; another throws in some food and nutrition requirements; somebody else issues an order for exercise, education, visitation rights or what have you. In the end the system becomes unmanageable and unsustainable and in yet another fatheaded intervention the Supreme Court supports a lower court order for mass prisoner release. Judicial intervention in the prison system needs to be safe, legal and rare: at the moment it seems to be none of the above.
It’s partly about corporate flight. Destructive and shortsighted tax policies have literally driven big corporations out of the state. For the last five years, Southern California has been losing roughly one Fortune 500 corporate headquarters a year, while the state as a whole has lost four such companies in the last twelve months in an accelerating flight to greener pastures in less-dysfunctional states like Texas, Colorado and Virginia.
Meanwhile, California has the one of the worst business climates in the country: in three widely-cited rankings, California came 49th or 50th. High taxes, rigid regulations, bribery, unresponsive bureaucrats: California has it all.
It has one of the most expensive and least effective governments in the country. California has the country’s 6th highest total tax burden and yet also the largest budget deficit ($25.4bn projected for FY2012 — that’s about $687 per capita). North Dakota, by contrast, balances its budget every year, educates its kids better, is creating new jobs and taxes its residents at less than half California’s level.
California’s school expenditures bear no relationship to results. In 2008, although California spent more on public schools than any other state in the country and more per pupil than many, its students ranked 49th (out of 51, including DC) in reading achievement, 48th in math. States like South Dakota spent much less per pupil and got much better results.
The former paradise of the automobile can’t even get car policy right; it has the country’s second highest gas prices and some of the worst traffic in the United States.
Californians weren’t always this incompetent. In fact, California invented the modern American dream. The brilliant banker A.P. Giannini pioneered the mass marketed thirty year mortgage. Under his leadership the Bank of America perfected the growth engine that drove this whole country for sixty years. The bank lent money through the municipal bond market to build the infrastructure for new subdivisions. It lent money to real estate developers to build housing developments and lent money to consumers for mortgages and to buy cars. The tax revenues from the higher land values in the subdivisions payed for the bonds and the schools. The jobs provided by a favorable combination of a good business climate and government support (highway infrastructure, defense spending and industrial investment originally related to World War Two and continuing through the Cold War) put money in consumers’ pockets to pay for it all. Hollywood (also originally banked by Giannini) sprinkled it with magic dust, and the world gazed in awe.
Amadeo Piotro Giannini (Wikimedia)
I’ll never forget my own first trip to Golden California. After I graduated from Pundit High, my parents gave me the use of our beat up old Volkswagon Beetle and a gas credit card for a month. Following a series of misadventures that I hope will NOT see the light of day after all these years, we crossed the California state line and like generations of easterners before us we were awed and stunned by the beauty and wealth of the natural environment and the progressive utopia rising on every side. Gas was 18 cents a gallon; artichokes cost a nickel. The freeways sparkled in the sun; the roses that grew in the median strips were lush and well kept. The LA Times was one of the world’s great papers; the California university system was the wonder of the world.
San Francisco’s glorious Golden Gate Bridge, which Giannini also helped finance.
That glory has gone. Californians pay more to and get less from their state government than anybody else in the civilized world. The progressive meltdown of every important and valuable institution in the state is paralleled by the collapse of California’s place in our national cultural life. San Francisco once looked to be the literary capital of the Pacific; today it is a more provincial, less interesting city than it was fifty years ago. Lost Angeles is a parody of itself, a city to escape rather than a goal to be reached.
California politics and analysis is mostly a blame game these days. When you go to failing states outside the US, you are often treated to long and impassioned arguments among intellectuals about where it all went wrong. Arabs, Argentines, Russians, Nigerians, Pakistanis, Mexicans and, lately, the Japanese sit up into the wee hours about when precisely the key bad decisions were taken — when the point of no return was passed.
That is what discussions about California increasingly sound like. My guess is that we’ll have more of these going forward. Increasingly, I lean to the idea that California as we know it has been decisively and finally lost. Embers are still burning in the ashes (Hollywood, Silicon Valley), but the flame of the west gutters low.
To rekindle what used to be the most glorious star in Columbia’s crown, we are going to have to get away from what has become the California state obsession in recent years: reform. California reform commissions and committees are as common as parking lots these days; the results of past reforms in the form of propositions and constitutional amendments are part of the problem. Most new reforms will meet the same fate: the California state government long ago jumped the shark.
The only hope I can see is to break it up. California’s core problem is that it has outgrown the constitutional model we have for it. California is too populous, too diverse, too complicated to flourish as a single state. Unless we carve this beast into something like five more compact and manageable states, Californians will never have decent representative government at an affordable price.
If California had been on the East Coast, or if it had entered the Union at any time other than the crisis years before the Civil War when slave states jealously worked to minimize the number of free states, the idea of making it one state would have looked absurd from the start. As it is, the constituent parts of California have almost nothing in common. Northern California is more like Washington and Oregon than like anything farther south. The neighborhood of San Francisco Bay has its own history, character and interests that set it off from the rest of the state. Greater Los Angeles, the Central Valley and the Far South centered on San Diego also have what it takes to be successful and happily governed states on their own.
California, Reimagined (Image Source: Wikimedia)
Meanwhile, the state is so huge and has so many major media markets that elections for statewide office are prohibitively expensive. Special interests including public sector unions and corporations play a greater role in California, and grassroots politics matters less, than in most of the rest of the country. The vast differences in interest and outlook between its various regions makes for stalemate and sterile, lowest common denominator compromises in state politics.
At the time of the first US census in 1790, the total population of all 13 states and the western territories was 3.9 million (pdf). Los Angeles county has more than twice that many people now. The state with the largest population in the US in 1790 was Virginia with almost 394,000 inhabitants. Seven cities in California are bigger than that now.
Representative government in California is not failing because Californians are stupider than other people. It is not failing because we somehow can’t find the right mix of redistricting, constitutional amendments and other chicken-wire-and-spit fixes to kludge a working government together.
Representative government is failing in California because we keep using the wrong template. You can’t run a big city through a series of New England town meetings; you can’t run the 8th biggest economy in the world with an institutional mix designed for much smaller, more homogenous units in a much simpler time. California is a region, not a state, and until we adopt the political institutions that match this reality, the state will continue to fail — our very own Sudan by the sea.
California isn’t the only state with this problem, by the way. New York, Florida, Texas and Illinois are obvious candidates for break up; figuring out how to decentralize and localize state government is an important part of making America work in the 21st century.
There are problems with breaking up states. There are common assets like university and road systems. There’s the question of state debt: should citizens of California’s rural regions be indefinitely saddled with debts due to large infrastructure projects in other parts of the state? There are resource issues (in California, think water above all). There are some non-trivial constitutional issues about how to get it done (joint resolution by Congress following petition? constitutional amendment? something in between?).
There are some cost issues as well: would five state governments be five times as expensive as one, for example? I tend to think not; the less populous states will need less government and less regulation and be free to shed layers of management and governance they never needed in the first place. The new states (like all states) should switch to unicameral legislatures — state senates have served no serious purpose since the Warren Court bizarrely ruled that the traditional overrepresentation of rural areas in many state senates was unconstitutional (each county had the same number of senators regardless of population, like the US Senate and the states).
America can’t afford for California to keep failing, and despite the best efforts of a lot of smart people, there’s no way that the Golden State can function in its current form.
There’s no way around it, friends: we need more stars in our flag.
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