Stimulus had a temporary positive side and probably a longer term more negative side.
Probably would have been cheaper to just write a check and give it to each unemployed person but then Obama would not have been able to grow government, hire overpaid Czars and pass all kind of boomeranging and possibly unconstitutional legislation. (See 1 below.)
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Two articles in praise of Netanyahu sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader.
The first by a Christian who sees in Netanyahu something to revere and to feel proud about and the second, by a Jew who pointed out the stark contrast between Netanyahu who loves America, is passionate about our nation's values and intends to protect his own nation and speaks of it in terms America's current president probably does not even comprehend and certainly does not speak about in the same terms.
Netanyahu's speech to Congress should be a wake up call to Liberal Jews to take the blinders off and see Obama for who and what he is - an empty suit, an incompetent leader and an even worse executive and diplomat.
What these two articles point out is something I have been writing about for years.
American Jews have both geographic and economic political clout. Their numbers are largely concentrated in important urban areas and states with large electoral votes. Secondly, they are politically engaged and donate significantly to candidates.
They demonstrated this clout when they turned against Jimmy Carter and voted for Reagan. Carter admitted this cost him the election and and it has stuck in his craw ever since.
Will Obama's demonstrated two-faced antipathy towards Israel cause American Jews, who voted 78% for him in 2008, vote for the Republican candidate in 2012? Perhaps but perhaps not. Why? Because liberal Jews are biologically prone to seek every excuse in the book to keep on blinders. More importantly, Obama is black and Carter is white.
Logic would dictate Jews, who are considered fairly sophisticated, would realize the terrible economic plight our nation is in and that alone would drive them into the conservative corner. However, most Liberal Jews use abortion, Republican mean spiritedness, Sarah Palin, Iraq, GW and all the other stereotypical reasons to prevent themselves from taking the enlightened path of reason over the self-defeating one of passion.
Yes, if matters continue along their current course, both domestically and in the Middle East, I suspect Obama will suffer some liberal Jewish fall out but I am fairly confident well over 60% will still continue to act as obedient serfs and cast their vote for the myth of progressive hope and change.(See 2 and 2a below.)
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More commentary re Netanyahu and Obama's dust off etc. In these two articles it is evident Obama has a glass jaw and cannot take a punch based on facts. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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A U.N. resolution stipulating a Palestinian State may not have legal force but it carries a host of negative real world consequences which enemies of Israel - and here I would add virtually all of Europe - will and can use to delegitimize the nation starting with various import bans etc. on the specious and trumped premise Israel is an occupying nation.
All of this is in keeping with what Melanie Philips wrote in: "The World Turned Upside Down."
Letter to the UN Secretary General:
A UN Resolution Recognizing a Palestinian State within the "1967 Borders" Would Be Illegal.
§ The following is a letter drafted jointly by lawyers of the Legal Forum for Israel and by Amb. Alan Baker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
§ The letter is directed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and signed by jurists and international lawyers from around the world.
§ The letter cautions the Secretary General as to the inherent illegality and harm to the UN and to the Middle East peace process which would be caused by the adoption of a resolution declaring a Palestinian state and determining its borders.(See 4 below.)
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It's all Greek to Germany and you must see the clever video at the end of Mauldin's article! (See 5 and 5a below.)
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Dick
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1)Watchdog: Stimulus Fueled Both Growth and Deficits
By Forrest Jones
The economic-stimulus package approved in 2009 fueled economic and jobs growth but also cost more than planned and helped widen already gaping deficits, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a non-partisan entity.
Specifically, the plan increased the number of people employed by between 1.2 million and 3.3 million, and lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.6 and 1.8 percentage points in the first quarter of 2011, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing CBO data.
It also raised gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 3.1 percent in the same period.
The stimulus package had its biggest impact in 2010, boosting GDP by as much as 4.6 percent in the second quarter of that year, while increasing employment by 1.4 million to 3.6 million in the third quarter.
The CBO initially thought the program would cost $787 billion spread out from 2009 to 2019, but has now bumped that figure up to $830 billion.
Plus the positive effects are fading.
"CBO estimates that the employment effects began to wane at the end of 2010 and continued to do so in the first quarter of 2011."
The White House and Congressional Democrats tout the job-creating and growth figures while Republicans question the program's effectiveness and costs.
"It’s maybe had a little temporary effect," says former Minnesota governor and Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty, according to the Boston Globe.
"But it comes with big negative consequences down the road. It sets a really bad precedent."
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2)Ich bin ein Israeli
By Russ Vaughn
He came, he saw, he conquered. Bibi Netanyahu took America by storm this week. This charismatic, articulate spokesman for the Jewish people and for their Israeli homeland, seized every media opportunity to demonstrate that he is the world leader in command of the issues and the situations involving Israel and her antagonists. Watching him on various media venues, I became convinced of two things: Netanyahu is a better American than many Americans, more knowledgeable of our democratic underpinnings than many of our fellow citizens; secondly, he is a leader who will reestablish the term Churchillian in coming events.
There's an email circulating right now with a photo of Bibi in his youth, dressed out in the uniform of an Israeli paratrooper juxtaposed with a picture of a young Obama of approximately the same age, laid back, cool and toking. One young man is suiting up to face death, defending his vulnerable country while the other is laid back and soaking up the many benefits afforded him by a languid, guilty society. To this old paratrooper those two pictures speak volumes about the basics of leadership and character. It is there in the one picture while the other forecasts what now passes so lamely for leadership in America.
To reinforce my admitted prejudice, our president attempts to manipulate the media to make himself look good to the Muslim world by calling for Israel to surrender territories earned by blood and toil, then backpedals shamelessly in the face of world resistance to his too-easy willingness to appease his Muslim brothers. More tellingly, he backtracks in the face of losing millions of dollars in campaign donations from prominent American Jews. What profound character, what principled beliefs, eh?
I watch, I witness and I take my stand. I, a non-Jew, will stand with Israel. If my president insists on his present course then I will support any and every move to unseat him including impeachment. As Bibi so eloquently stated, Israel is the eastern democratic arm of America in the midst of all that Middle Eastern tyranny. Simply put, Bibi is right and Obama is dead wrong. One has a grasp of geopolitical realities and assumes the responsibilities inherent in guiding and guarding his vulnerable state; the other blithely and narcistically campaigns for re-election. The distinction could not be more stark. After the events of this week, I truly believe that many millions of Americans will join me in paraphrasing John Kennedy:
Ich bin ein Israeli.
2a)Congress Gets an American President -- For a Day
By Rabbi Aryeh Spero
It was fitting that Barack Obama was out of the country on the day when a leader walked into a joint session of Congress and spoke the way an American President should.
Benjamin Netanyahu's speech extolled America and the ideals for which it stands. The enthusiasm of the members of both the House and Senate was born not only of their admiration and love for the State of Israel, but also because a man of stature stood before them and announced something they haven't heard during the last two years, namely, that America represents the best the world has ever seen. Unlike President Obama, who has reminded us that American values may not be suitable for most countries, Mr. Netanyahu spoke of his pride that his country, Israel, mirrors the idealism and nobility of America. Contrary to Barack Obama, Netanyahu believes in American exceptionalism.
Having actually been in the House Chamber to witness the event, I was able to see a panorama that one doesn't see on television. The thrill and excitement on the faces, in the applause, in the thirty standing ovations, was internalized by all those who had the privilege of being an immediate participant in this historic moment. They loved the Prime Minister and they loved his speech because he showed his love for America.
When speaking of justice and liberty, Netanyahu spoke about them as enduring principles of the American personality, as opposed to the current President who speaks of them in terms of class warfare, not to mention an America at fault for those within our country he claims have not yet received justice or liberty. He spoke with awe when referring to our Founders and their inscriptions on the monuments that line the Potomac, America's River Jordan. There was nothing in his remarks, unlike the President, that appeared ambivalent about these great men. For Mr. Netanyahu and the members of Congress who rapturously drank in his words of praise about America, it was a refreshing moment.
When speaking of the narrative of his country, Israel, he found no better model than that of America's own narrative. They cheered because, on that spot, where Presidents normally deliver an annual message to our citizens, stood a man who they knew revered what they revere and finds precious what is precious in the hearts of the countrymen whom they represent.
He spoke truth and he spoke as a statesman -- as a leader. Finally, the people's representatives heard a leader casting Iran as the foremost threat to civilization. He spoke of a world divided between liberty and tyranny. The public has starved over the last two years for words of moral clarity. What it has received, instead, has been diplomatic, U.N.-type language that speaks about Iran as if it is but a problem in need of a solution, as opposed to the cataclysmic and moral challenge that it really is. Mr. Netanyahu speaks of ultimate victory, intoning a self-confident righteousness in our cause, whereas Mr. Obama uses the standard, lipid political jargon characteristic of bureaucrats dealing with problems of "de-stabilization".
Instead of a president continually dodging the ideological threat that is Islam and, worse, denying the danger it poses, Mr. Netanyahu spoke forthrightly about the worldwide threat of extreme Islam. He did not speak like a community organizer, nor did he speak as one whose priority is to protect particular constituencies or befriend him to diplomats who populate the United Nations. Unlike the present occupant of the White House, Mr. Netanyahu spoke as a world-class statesman, at times Reagan-esque, and even Churchill-ian.
I saw the faces, the body language, the enthusiasm, the immediacy on each of those filling the seats of august ancestors. Remember, a man such as Eric Cantor, for example, does not simply represent Culpepper, Virginia, but is heir to the seat of James Madison himself. And so it is with so many of our current representatives who are scions of great predecessors. For one hour on May, 24, 2011, our representatives, most of whom see themselves first as Americans, were allowed to imbibe feelings of America's majesty. Finally, the joint session of Congress was not victim of chastisement from a haughty overseer, but a recipient of sweet and reinforcing acknowledgment of our country's greatness. Today, no Supreme Court Justice was reviled, instead the justice of America was extolled.
It was evident from Mr. Netanyahu that not only does he love America, but also loves Americans. Over the last two years, the America people have heard how they "cling to their religion and their guns." They have been forced to listen how their police, such as in Cambridge, are "stupid." They have been humiliated by a man who has gone across the world apologizing for America and its precipitation of so many of the world's ills. They have heard their own president characterize this nation as "sometimes arrogant". Perhaps, worst of all, they have had to endure a nauseating rewriting of their own history and sacrifice by a President who errantly speaks of the great contributions that Islam made from early on in our history in the development of this country. Today Mr. Netanyahu came in front of the entire Congress of the United States "not to bury her, but to praise her." It was as if for one day we had an American President again.
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3) Pro-Palestinian-in-Chief
BY STANLEY KURTZ
Obama’s hard-Left tilt is real.
It’s time to revisit the issue of President Obama’s Palestinian ties. During his time in the Illinois state senate, Obama forged close alliances with the most prominent Palestinian political leaders in America . Substantial evidence also indicates that during his pre-Washington years, Obama was both supportive of the Palestinian cause and critical of America ’s stance toward Israel . Although Obama began to voice undifferentiated support for Israel around 2004 (as he ran for U.S. Senate and his national visibility rose), critics and even some backers have long suspected that his pro-Palestinian inclinations survive.
The continuing influence of Obama’s pro-Palestinian sentiments is the best way to make sense of the president’s recent tilt away from Israel . This is why supporters of Israel should fear Obama’s reelection. In 2013, with his political vulnerability a thing of the past, Obama’s pro-Palestinian sympathies would be released from hibernation, leaving Israel without support from its indispensable American defender.
To see this, we need to reconstruct Obama’s pro-Palestinian past and assess its influence on the present. Taken in context, and followed through the years, the evidence strongly suggests that Obama’s long-held pro-Palestinian sentiments were sincere, while his post-2004 pro-Israel stance has been dictated by political necessity.
Let’s begin at the beginning — with the controversial question of whether Obama’s cultural heritage through his nominally Muslim Kenyan father and his Muslim Indonesian stepfather, along with his having been raised for a time in predominantly Muslim Indonesia, might have had some effect on the president’s mature foreign-policy views. Obama’s unusual heritage and upbringing have had an effect on his adult views.
Top presidential aide and longtime Obama family friend Valerie Jarrett was born and raised in Iran for the first five years of her life. In explaining how she first grew close to Obama, Jarrett says they traded stories of their youthful travels. As Jarrett told Obama biographer David Remnick: “He and I shared a view of where the United States fit in the world, which is often different from the view people have who have not traveled outside the United States as young children.” Remnick continues: “Through her travels, Jarrett felt that she had come to see the United States with a greater objectivity as one country among many, rather than as the center of all wisdom and experience.” Speaking with the authority of a close personal friend and top political adviser, then, Jarrett affirms that she and Obama reject traditional American exceptionalism. One hallmark of America ’s exceptionalist perspective, of course, is our unique alliance with a democratic Israel , even in the face of intense criticism of that alliance from much of the rest of the world.
Obama’s close friend and longtime ally, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said’s successor as the most prominent American advocate for the Palestinians, goes further. Khalidi told the Los Angeles Times that as president, Obama, “because of his unusual background, with family ties in Kenya and Indonesia , would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians.” Khalidi’s testimony is important, since he speaks on the basis of years of friendship with Obama.
Those who know Obama best, then, affirm that his foreign-policy views are atypical for an American politician, and are grounded in his unique international heritage and upbringing. That is important, because our core task is to decide whether Obama’s pro-Palestinian past was a stance rooted in sincere sympathy, or nothing but a convenient sop to his leftist Hyde Park supporters. Jarrett and Khalidi give us reason to believe that Obama’s decidedly pro-Palestinian inclinations are rooted in his core conception of who he is.
Obama came to political consciousness at college, and prior to his discovery of community organizing late in his senior year, his focus was on international issues. Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, highlights his anti-apartheid activism during his sophomore year at California ’s Occidental College . Obama’s anti-apartheid stance, however, was part of a far broader and more radical rejection of the West’s alleged imperialism. Obama himself tells us, in a famous passage in Dreams, that he was taken with criticism of “neocolonialism” and “Eurocentrism” during these early college years.
What Obama doesn’t tell us is that he was a convinced Marxist during his college years. More important, once Obama graduated and entered the world of community organizing, he absorbed the sophisticated and intentionally stealthy socialism of his mentors. Obama’s socialist mentors strongly supported what they saw as the “liberation struggles” carried on by rebels against American “oppression” throughout the world. So Obama’s continuous radical political history strongly suggests that his early support for Palestine ’s “liberation struggle” grew out of authentic political conviction, not pandering.
Although Obama has long withheld his college transcripts from the public, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2008 that Obama took a course from Edward Said sometime during his final two undergraduate years at Columbia University . This was just around the time Obama’s ties to organized socialism were deepening, and certainly suggests a sincere interest in Said’s radical views. As Martin Kramer points out, in his superb 2008 review of Obama’s Palestinian ties, Said had just then published his book The Question of Palestine, definitively setting the terms of the academic Left’s stance on the issue for decades to come.
After Obama finished his initial community-organizing stint in Chicago and graduated from Harvard Law School , he settled down to a teaching job at the University of Chicago around 1992, and went about laying the foundations of a political career. Sometime not long after his arrival at the University of Chicago , Obama connected with Rashid Khalidi.
To say the least, Rashid Khalidi is a controversial fellow. Khalidi was at one time an official spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Also, in the years immediately prior to his friendship with Obama, Khalidi was a leading opponent of the first Gulf War, which successfully reversed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Khalidi condemned that action as an American “colonial war,” insisting that before we could end Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait , we would first have to end Israel ’s supposedly equivalent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Khalidi’s influence helped turn the University of Chicago of the Nineties into “the hot place to be for . . . trendy postcolonialist, blame-America, trash-Israel” scholarship.
Khalidi was reportedly present at the famous 1995 kickoff reception for Obama’s first political campaign, held at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. That is no minor point. We’ll see that as Khalidi’s close friend and political ally, Ayers played an integral role in the story of Obama’s relationship with Khalidi.
In May 1998, Edward Said traveled from Columbia to Chicago to present the keynote address at a dinner organized by the Arab American Action Network, a group founded by Rashid and Mona Khalidi. We’ve known for some time that Barack and Michelle Obama sat next to Edward and Mariam Said at that event. (Pictures are available.) It has not been noticed, however, that a detailed report on Said’s address exists, along with an article by Said published just days before the event (Arab American News, May 22, June 12, 1998).
For the most part, Said focused his article on harsh criticisms of Israel , which he equated with both South Africa ’s apartheid state and Nazi Germany. Said’s criticisms of the Palestinian Authority also were harsh. Why, he wondered, weren’t the 50,000 security people employed by the Palestinian Authority heading up resistance to Israel ’s settlement building? In his talk, Said called for large-scale marches and civilian blockades of Israeli settlement building. To prevent Palestinian workers from participating in any Israeli construction, Said also proposed the establishment of a fund that would pay these laborers not to work for Israel . Presciently, Said’s talk also called on Palestinians to orchestrate an international campaign to stigmatize Israel as an illegitimate apartheid state.
So broadly speaking, this is what Obama would have heard from his former teacher at that May 1998 encounter. Yet Obama was clearly comfortable enough with Said’s take on Israel to deepen his relationship with Khalidi and his Arab American Action Network (AAAN). We know this, because Ali Abunimah, longtime vice president of the AAAN, has told us so.
In many ways, Abunimah is the neglected key to reconstructing the story of Obama’s alliance with Khalidi and AAAN. While Abunimah’s accounts of Obama’s alliance with AAAN have long been public, they are not widely known. Nor have Abunimah’s writings been pieced together with Obama’s history of support for AAAN. Doing so creates a disturbing picture of Obama’s political convictions on the Palestinian question.
In late summer 1998, for example, a few months after Obama’s encounter with Edward Said, Abunimah and AAAN were caught up in a national controversy over the alleged blacklisting of respected terrorism expert Steve Emerson by National Public Radio. In August of that year, NPR had interviewed Emerson on air about Osama bin Laden’s terror network. According to columnist Jeff Jacoby, however, Abunimah managed to obtain a promise from NPR to ban Emerson from its airwaves, on the grounds that Emerson was an anti-Arab bigot. It took Jacoby’s research and public objections to lift the ban.
Attempting to bar an expert on Osama bin Laden’s terror network from the airwaves is not exactly a feather in AAAN’s cap. Yet Obama continued his relationship with AAAN. Abunimah himself introduced Obama at a major fundraiser for a West Bank Palestinian community center a short time later in 1999. And that, says Abunimah, was “just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation.”
The year 2000 saw yet another public clash between Ali Abunimah and Jeff Jacoby over terrorism, along with a deepening alliance between Obama, Khalidi, Abunimah, and AAAN. In May 2000, Abunimah published a New York Times op-ed taking issue with a State Department report on the rising threat of terrorism from the Middle East and South Asia . The report focused on al-Qaeda, in particular. This was one of the most timely and accurate warnings we received in the run-up to 9/11. Yet Abunimah trashed the report. In a longer study released around the time of his op-ed, Abunimah went further, questioning Hezbollah’s designation as a terrorist organization, and suggesting that we ought to be, at the very least, “deeply skeptical” of the State Department’s warnings about Osama bin Laden.
As Abunimah continued to downplay the threat from bin Laden, his ties to Obama deepened. In 2000, AAAN founder Rashid Khalidi held a fundraiser for Obama’s ultimately unsuccessful congressional campaign. Abunimah remembers that Obama “came with his wife. That’s where I had a chance to really talk to him. It was an intimate setting. He convinced me he was very aware of the issues [and] critical of U.S. bias toward Israel and lack of sensitivity to Arabs. . . . He was very supportive of U.S. pressure on Israel .” Obama’s numerous statements over the years criticizing American policy for leaning too much toward Israel were vivid in Abunimah’s memory, he says, because “these were the kind of statements I’d never heard from a U.S. politician who seemed like he was going somewhere rather than at the end of his career.” Obama’s criticism of America ’s Middle East policy was sufficient to inspire Abunimah to pull out his checkbook and, for the first time, contribute to an American political campaign.
Within a year, Obama did Khalidi and Abunimah a good turn as well. From his position on the board of Chicago ’s Woods Fund, Obama, along with Ayers and the other five members of the board, began to channel funds to AAAN, totaling $75,000 in grants during 2001 and 2002. Now Obama and Ayers were effectively supporting the pro-Palestinian activism of AAAN’s vice-president, Abunimah, and funding an organization founded by their mutual friends, the Khalidis, in the process.
In the first year of the Woods Fund grant, Abunimah was the focus of a critical Chicago Tribune op-ed by Gidon Remba, a former translator in the Israeli prime minister’s office. Pointing to Abunimah, among others, Remba decried attempts by “Yasser Arafat’s Arab-American cheerleaders” to “vindicate the resurgence of attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinian gunmen and Islamic suicide bombers.” Yet Obama and Ayers re-upped AAAN’s money in 2002.
An August 2002 profile of Abunimah in the Chicago Tribune quotes a supporter of Israel noting that, while he has heard Abunimah deplore terrorism, he has never heard Abunimah affirm that he “supports the continued right of Israel to exist alongside a future Palestine.” That is because Abunimah does not appear to recognize such a right. Instead, Abunimah favors a “one-state solution,” in which Israel ’s identity as a Jewish state would be drowned out by an influx of Palestinian immigrants seeking the “right of return.” Abunimah’s book, One Country, which spells out his one-state solution, features an extended comparison between Israel and South African apartheid.
For Bill Ayers, Abunimah’s claims that Israel is an apartheid state, along with his arguments that international law at times licences violent resistance against Israel , surely resonate. As I show in Radical-in-Chief, Ayers has never abandoned his Weatherman ideology. The reason Ayers refuses to repudiate the Weathermen’s terrorist past is that he sees the group’s violent actions as justified resistance to the “internal colonialism” and apartheid of a racist American society. That likely explains why Ayers happily channeled grant money to AAAN, which makes a Weatherman-style argument against Israel .
In the acknowledgments of Resurrecting Empire, a monograph he worked on toward the end of his time in Chicago , Khalidi credits Ayers with persuading him to write it. A core theme of Resurrecting Empire is that the problems of the Middle East largely turn on America ’s failure to force Israel to resolve the Palestinian question. This claim that Israel is the true root of the Middle East ’s problems is what Martin Kramer identifies, correctly, I think, as the key lesson imparted to Obama by Khalidi.
Khalidi left Chicago in 2003, after the now-famous farewell dinner at which Obama thanked Khalidi for years of beneficial intellectual exchange. The article in which the Los Angeles Times reports on that dinner adds that many of Obama’s Palestinian allies and associates are convinced that, despite his public statements in support of Israel , Obama remains far more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause then he has publicly let on.
Specifically, Abunimah has said that, in the winter of 2004, Obama commended an op-ed Abunimah had just published in the Chicago Tribune, saying, “Keep up the good work!” (This is likely the op-ed in question.) According to Abunimah, Obama then apologized for not having said more publicly about Palestine , but also said he hoped that after his race for the U.S. Senate was over he could be “more up front” about his actual views.
It didn’t turn out that way. Once Obama’s new-found stardom gave him national political prospects, he swiftly shifted into the pro-Israeli camp, to Abunimah’s great frustration. Would a reelected Obama finally be able to be “more up front” about his pro-Palestinian views, belatedly fulfilling his promise to Abunimah? In short, was Obama’s pro-Palestinian past nothing but a way of placating a hard-Left constituency whose views he never truly shared? Or is Obama’s post-2004 tilt toward Israel the real charade?
The record is clear. Obama’s heritage, his largely hidden history of leftist radicalism, and his close friendship with Rashid Khalidi, all bespeak sincerity, as Obama’s other Palestinian associates agree. This is not to mention Reverend Wright — whose rabidly anti-Israel sentiments, I show in Radical-in-Chief, Obama had to know about — or Obama’s longtime foreign-policy adviser Samantha Power, who once apparently recommended imposing a two-state solution on Israel through American military action. Decades of intimate alliances in a hard-Left world are a great deal harder to fake than a few years of speeches at AIPAC conferences.
The real Obama is the first Obama, and depending on how the next presidential election turns out, we’re going to meet him again in 2013.
3a)Netanyahu's rules of debate
If it had been a fight, they would have stopped it.
By Hugh Hewitt
Friday's showdown between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't close, and it wasn't pretty -- though Netanyahu didn't want to leave any obvious marks. The end result was that our president is suddenly aware that Chicago rules don't work on tough-minded leaders of countries surrounded by terrorists.
The battle between the warrior and the academic was bound to turn out this way. President Obama was a community organizer once. Netanyahu was commander of the Israeli Defense Forces' elite special forces unit, Sayeret Matkal. Faculty meetings can get rough, but not as rough as the hostage rescue mission to free Sabena Flight 571.
So the president's absurd declaration about 1967 borders is off the table. In fact, the table is gone. Israel can wait out the 20 months left to Obama's presidency, or even 48 months if American voters insanely choose to experiment with epic incompetence at the top for another term. Israel isn't going back to the Auschwitz borders, and only a naive and inexperienced academic would think that Thursday's speech would do other than worsen prospects for a negotiated settlement.
Netanyahu's take-down of the president should be on the TiVo of Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Jon Huntsman (and, yes, Rick Perry if what I have been hearing is true). One of those men will be standing opposite the president in the debates of September and October of 2012, and Netanyahu showed exactly how to respond to the prolixities and pauses of the teleprompter-dependent president.
First, let the president talk, and talk, and talk. (And talk.) His frequent rhetorical cul-de-sacs numb the minds of listeners and set up the opportunity for sharp contrasts between the definitive and the ambiguous, the purposeful and the feckless.
Second, look right at him when responding. This so unnerved President Obama that his anger and frustration was visible. Whether he brought the sense of superiority to the White House or whether it erupted there, the president does not care for people who challenge him directly, cannot seem to believe that anyone would have the temerity to do so. This is the sign of a deep insecurity, and Netanyahu used it.
Next, speak from specifics, using facts and especially history. Netanyahu used history to spank the president on Friday. A GOP nominee armed with specific references -- not just to Obama's many blunders but also to clear evidence of the American exceptionalism that Obama has clearly rejected -- will put the wordy academic on his heels.
Finally, express core truths bluntly -- especially the harshest ones, such as the nature of Hamas. The president has been shrinking from clarity for more than two years, whether it is clarity on Iran, on the butcher Assad and the nuttier Chavez, and most recently on the key Palestinian problem -- that Hamas, like Hezbollah to the north, wants Israel destroyed.
Netanyahu showed a worldwide audience that purposefulness can be as polite as it is pointed, and that Obama has a glass jaw. A clenched glass jaw, but a glass jaw nonetheless.
Israel isn't going back to the 1967 borders. Hamas cannot be a partner in peace negotiations. And Israel is a friend and a valued ally, not a lap dog. The president would do well to figure out that our country prefers Netanyahu's approach to his. Even the president's own party does.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
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4)May 25, 2011
His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon,
Secretary-General of the United Nations,
1st Avenue & 44th St.
New York, NY 10017
Excellency,
Re: The Proposed General Assembly Resolution to Recognize a Palestinian State "within 1967 Borders" - An Illegal Action
We, the undersigned, attorneys from across the world who are involved in general matters of international law, as well as being closely concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, appeal to you to use your influence and authority among the member states of the UN, with a view to preventing the adoption of the resolution that the Palestinian delegation intends to table at the forthcoming session of the General Assembly, to recognize a Palestinian state "within the 1967 borders."
By all standards and criteria, such a resolution, if adopted, would be in stark violation of all the agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as contravening UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) and those other resolutions based thereon.
Our reasoning is as follows:
1. The legal basis for the establishment of the State of Israel was the resolution unanimously adopted by the League of Nations in 1922, affirming the establishment of a national home for the Jewish People in the historical area of the Land of Israel. This included the areas of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, and close Jewish settlement throughout. This was subsequently affirmed by both houses of the U.S. Congress.
2. Article 80 of the UN Charter determines the continued validity of the rights granted to all states or peoples, or already existing international instruments (including those adopted by the League of Nations). Accordingly, the above-noted League resolution remains valid, and the 650,000 Jews presently resident in the areas of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem reside there legitimately.
3. "The 1967 borders" do not exist, and have never existed. The 1949 Armistice Agreements entered into by Israel and its Arab neighbors, establishing the Armistice Demarcation Lines, clearly stated that these lines "are without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto." Accordingly, they cannot be accepted or declared to be the international boundaries of a Palestinian state.
4. UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) called upon the parties to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and specifically stressed the need to negotiate in order to achieve "secure and recognized boundaries."
5. The Palestinian proposal, in attempting to unilaterally change the status of the territory and determine the "1967 borders" as its recognized borders, in addition to running squarely against Resolutions 242 and 338, would be a fundamental breach of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in which the parties undertook to negotiate the issue of borders and not act to change the status of the territories pending outcome of the permanent status negotiations.
6. The Palestinians entered into the various agreements constituting what is known as the "Oslo Accords" in the full knowledge that Israel's settlements existed in the areas, and that settlements would be one of the issues to be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations. Furthermore, the Oslo Accords impose no limitation on Israel's settlement activity in those areas that the Palestinians agreed would continue to be under Israel's jurisdiction and control pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.
7. While the Interim Agreement was signed by Israel and the PLO, it was witnessed by the UN together with the EU, the Russian Federation, the U.S., Egypt, and Norway. It is thus inconceivable that such witnesses, including first and foremost the UN, would now give license to a measure in the UN aimed at violating this agreement and undermining major resolutions of the Security Council.
8. While the UN has maintained a persistent policy of non-recognition of Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem pending a negotiated solution, despite Israel's historic rights to the city, it is inconceivable that the UN would now recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state, the borders of which would include eastern Jerusalem. This would represent the ultimate in hypocrisy, double standards, and discrimination, as well as an utter disregard of the rights of Israel and the Jewish People.
9. Such unilateral action by the Palestinians could give rise to reciprocal initiatives in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) which could include proposed legislation to declare Israel's sovereignty over extensive parts of Judea and Samaria, if and when the Palestinians carry out their unilateral action.
Excellency,
It appears to be patently clear to all that the Palestinian exercise, aimed at advancing their political claims, represents a cynical abuse of the UN Organization and of the members of the General Assembly. Its aim is to bypass the negotiation process called for by the Security Council.
Regrettably, this abuse of the UN and its integrity, in addition to undermining international law, has the potential to derail the Middle East peace process.
We trust that you will use your authority to protect the UN and its integrity from this abuse, and act to prevent any affirmation or recognition of this dangerous Palestinian initiative.
Signed by jurists and international lawyers
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5)Europe at the Abyss
By Robert Samuelson
WASHINGTON -- It has come to this. A year after rescuing Greece from default, Europe is staring into the abyss. The bailout has proved insufficient. Greece needs more money, and it can't borrow from private markets where it faces interest rates as high as 25 percent. But Europe's governments are reluctant to advance more funds unless other lenders -- banks, bondholders -- absorb some losses by writing down their debts. This, however, would constitute a default, risking a broader banking crisis that might torpedo Europe's fragile recovery in France, Germany and elsewhere. There is no easy escape.
What's called a "debt crisis" is increasingly a political and social crisis. Looming over the financial complexities is the broader question of the ability -- or willingness -- of weak debtor nations to endure growing hardship to service their massive government debts. Already, unemployment is 14.1 percent in Greece, 14.7 percent in Ireland, 11.1 percent in Portugal and 20.7 percent in Spain. What are the limits of austerity? Steep spending cuts and tax increases do curb budget deficits; but they also create deep recessions, lowering tax revenues and offsetting some of the deficit improvement.
Just how long this grinding process can continue is unclear. In Spain, the incumbent socialist party lost big in recent elections. Popular unrest persists in Greece amid signs -- reports The Washington Post's Anthony Faiola -- of a "resurgence of an anarchist movement" there and elsewhere.
Some causes of Europe's plight are well-known: the harsh recession following the 2008-2009 financial crisis; aging populations coupled with costly welfare states. But there's also another less recognized culprit: the euro, the single currency now used by 17 countries.
Launched in 1999, it aimed to foster economic and political unity. Economic growth would improve. Costly currency conversions would cease; money would flow smoothly across borders to the best profit opportunities. Using euros -- and not marks or lira -- Germans, Italians and others would increasingly consider themselves "Europeans." For a while, it seemed to succeed. In the euro's first decade, jobs in countries using the common currency increased by 16 million.
It was a mirage. The euro helped create the crisis and has made its resolution harder, as a new report from the International Monetary Fund shows. For starters, the euro fostered a credit bubble that led to booms in housing, borrowing and consumer spending. When each country had its own currency, the country's central bank (its Federal Reserve) regulated local interest rates and credit conditions. With the euro, the European Central Bank (ECB) assumed that job. But one policy didn't fit all: Interest rates suited to Germany and France were too low for "periphery" countries (Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain).
"Financial markets" -- private investors -- compounded the problem by assuming that the euro's creation reduced risk. Weak countries would be protected by the strong. Money poured into the periphery countries. There was a huge compression of interest rates. In 1997, rates on 10-year Greek government bonds averaged 9.8 percent compared to 5.7 percent for similar German bonds. By 2003, Greek bonds fetched 4.3 percent, just above the 4.1 percent of German bonds.
"The markets failed. All this would not have occurred if banks in Germany and France had not lent so much," says economist Desmond Lachman of the American Enterprise Institute. "It was like the U.S. housing market." Both American and European banks went overboard in relaxing credit standards.
Now that the credit bubble has burst, the euro impedes recovery. One way countries revive from financial crises is by depreciating their currencies. This makes exports and local tourism cheaper, creating some job gains that cushion the ill effects of austerity elsewhere. But latched to the euro, Greece and other vulnerable debtors forfeit this safety valve.
Greece's debt is now approaching an unsustainable 160 percent of its annual economy (gross domestic product). If it defaulted, investors might dump bonds of other weak debtors for fear that they too would default. That could send interest rates soaring and saddle European banks with huge losses. At the end of 2010, Europe's banks had about $1.3 trillion of loans and investments -- both governmental and private -- in Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal, reports the Institute of International Finance, an industry research group. A banking crisis would imperil economic recovery.
So Europe is playing for time. It's struggling to delay any Greek default long enough for other vulnerable countries to demonstrate they can handle their debts. The very process makes the euro -- contrary to original intent -- a source of contention, as nations shift blame and costs to others. Given Europe's huge debts, even the holding action may fail. It may merely postpone a broader crisis. "They may dodge this bullet," says Lachman, "but not the next."
5a)A Random Walk Through the Minefield
According to Dealogic, European banks have to refinance about €1.3tn of maturing debt by the end of 2012. This is the sort of pressure point capable of triggering a liquidity panic unless Euroland policymakers become much more proactive in the interim. But, as noted, it may take more market stress now to force precisely this sort of policy response. That implies a much greater correction for the euro against the US dollar than what has been seen thus far, and a further correlated sell-off in risk assets, including commodities (Chris Wood, writing in Greed and Fear).
There are just so many risks in Europe that it is hard to make a list long enough. I think the risk to the world markets is higher than the subprime risk, at least from what I can see today. I know that the leaders of Europe think they can “contain” the risk. So did Bernanke in the summer of 2007. You cannot contain this until you actually admit the problem.
Our credit institutions are so intertwined that a repeat of the 2008 credit crisis is entirely possible. Who plays the role of Lehman? Let me count the candidates. Greece. Ireland. Portugal. Spain. The ECB. Any number of large European banks with massive Irish exposure. Greece alone could be dealt with. That is why ECB leaders are right to talk passionately about contagion risks. But ignoring the political realities is not the way to deal with it.
The simple fact is that at some point, whether this year or the next or the next, depending on how long they can kick the can down the road and how long German voters are prepared to bite 27% of the cost (NOT a given), Greece is going to default. Maybe the plan of the ECB is to keep financing Greek debt until it is off enough bank balance sheets and onto the back of the euro through the ECB balance sheet, before they pull the plug.
Whatever the plan is, right now Europe looks like a very dysfunctional family. The potential for a messy divorce is quite real. Can you see Greece or Ireland giving up sovereignty to Brussels? Really? Then you should buy Greek bonds at 24%. They are a steal. At a minimum, Europe is in for years of expensive “therapy.” And we have not even gotten to their version of their health-care and pension crisis.
The euro appears to me to be a massive short. (Note: I and my family leave the eurozone [Tuscany] June 16-17. Just saying.) You should limit your exposure to Eurozone sovereign debt and bank debt. If you are invested in US financials that write credit default swaps to European banks or hedge funds, you are not investing, you are gambling.
Gaming the GDP Numbers
I know I should quit, but this one quick note, as this just really annoys me. I get the methodology and rationalization of how GDP is calculated, but it does have the appearance of being “gamed.” This from my friends at Consumer Metrics. Link to the full report after.
“The importance of the price deflater used by the BEA cannot be overstated. In calculating the "real" GDP the BEA continued to use an overall 1.9% annualized inflation rate, which is substantially lower than the inflation rates being reported by any of the BEA's sister agencies. The mathematical implications of the deflater are simple: a lower deflater creates a higher ‘real’ GDP reading. If April's CPI-U (as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) of 3.2% year-over-year inflation is used as the deflater, the reported 1.84% annualized growth rate shrinks to a 0.56% annualized rate, and the ‘real final sales of domestic products’ is actually contracting at a 0.63% rate. If instead of the year-over-year CPI-U we were to use the annualized CPI-U from just the first quarter (5.7%), the ‘real’ GDP would be shrinking at a 1.82% annualized rate, and the ‘real final sales of domestic products’ would be contracting at a recession-like 3.01%.” ( http://www.consumerindexes.com/)
Tuscany (And I Get the Irony)
I am in Boston (Cambridge) at a Harvard reunion week with friends (I went to Rice – Harvard on the Bayou, as it was called back then – so am not a Harvard alum) and fly to Rome and then take a train to Tuscany on Sunday and Monday. Five of my kids will already be there. After having basically trash-talked Europe for nine pages, I get the irony of going there; but the little village of Trequanda is the first place I have ever gone back to for a vacation. It is heaven, or at least it is for me. I love Italy. For that matter, I love France, Spain, Greece, and the other dozen-plus European countries I have been to. Rarely have I had a bad time.
There is a difference between the people and land of a country and its government. I am truly sad for what I think will be a difficult time for the people of the eurozone, not that we in the US (as I have written many times) don’t have our own issues on the near horizon. But there is no reason not to enjoy ourselves on the descent into economic hell.
Finally, although I rarely do this, let me highly recommend you take about 15 minutes and watch the “rap” videos of a sparring match between Keynes and Hayek. The first, which hit the streets a year ago, was sensational and fun; but the second one is the best capture of the economic irony (that word again) of the acceptance of Keynes in the press, when Hayek is being proven right, right in front of our eyes. For those with some understanding of economics it is great fun. It is also a serious teaching tool.
I met Hayek in his late ’80s in the mountains in Austria, for a magical 3-hour interview/private lecture. If you have not watched the first rap video, then do so as a set-up to the second, which has amazing production values. Look for the Bernanke, double-nodding in time to Keynes rapping about consumer spending. I guarantee better than TV. You can see them both at http://pipesandtheories.blogspot.com/2011/04/keynes-v-hayek-rap-battle-part-ii.html
John Mauldin
John@FrontlineThoughts.com
Copyright 2011 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved
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