'Aren't you wearing your wedding ring on the wrong finger?'
'Yes, I am. I married the wrong man.'
If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say -- talk in your sleep.
Just think, if it weren't for marriage, men would go through life thinking they had no faults at all.
First guy says, 'My wife's an angel!'
Second guy remarks, 'You're lucky, mine's still alive.'
Doctor: Your husband needs rest and peace. Here are some sleeping pills..
Wife: When must I give them to him?
Doctor: They are for you
But my friend, John Podhoretz, believes the biggest joke is D.C. (See immediately below.)
Burning down the economy
In debt fight, pols lashing out at allies
By John Podhoretz
Pull up a chair and grab some popcorn, because it looks like Washington is about to light a match and burn the economy to the ground, and I'm sure you want a front-row seat.
Oh, you think Washington already did that to the economy? The way this madness is going, it seems safe to say you ain't seen nothin' yet.
Quick recap of yesterday's madness: John Boehner, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, presented a plan to raise the debt ceiling.
His plan came under immediate attack from his fellow conservatives, some in the House and many in activist circles,
Congress & the president are burning us all.
who said basically that Boehner was a political sellout.
If Boehner was trying to sell out to the Democrats, it appears he did a pretty bad job of it, though. The White House announced it would veto Boehner's plan if it was passed by Congress and sent to the president's desk.
And the Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, spoke to reporters and said Boehner's plan was dead on arrival -- even though it hadn't arrived yet.
So Boehner's plan is dead. The conservatives who oppose his plan certainly won't support Harry Reid's plan.
So what about the White House plan, you ask?
Let us journey now to the White House briefing room, where President Obama's spokesman, Jay Carney, stood before a disbelieving press corps talking about the nonexistent plan the way Baghdad Bob talked about the continuing glories of the Saddam Hussein regime as the American Tomahawk missiles were zooming around his head.
"Show us the plan," NBC's Chuck Todd said to Carney.
Carney eventually responded with a flirtatious jibe: "We have shown a lot of leg on what we were proposing."
"Where?" Todd asked.
Carney replied, "From the podium, right here. You need something printed for you? You can't write it down? There is ample detail . . ."
Then ABC's Jake Tapper got into the action: "That's not a plan. It was details of a plan, but it wasn't a plan in the same way we are getting a plan on the House side or on the Senate side."
Todd then followed up: "You guys went before the American people last night and said call your Members of Congress, we want a compromise. Well you had a plan you were making the case for, that sounded like the compromise. Release it to the public."
When this exchange began, an exasperated Carney said to Todd, "I understand that the idea there is not an Obama plan is like point No. 1 on the talking points issued by the Republican Party."
Yes, Carney was accusing Todd -- an MSNBC reporter and anchor! -- of delivering Republican talking points.
In the wild satirical movie "Top Secret," made in 1984, an American in East Berlin meets a beautiful local woman. She tells him she had an uncle who was born in America.
"But he was one of the lucky ones," she says. "He managed to escape in a balloon during the Jimmy Carter presidency."
Somebody find me a balloon. Please.
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I wish I knew how to post this so you could click and hear it. Since I cannot, at least for now, I urge you to listen to Mark Levin:
//www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011//mark_levin_to_tom_friedman_you_piece_of_.html
Succinctly, Levin had this to say about Tom Friedman, liberal Jews and The New York Times : "I am so sick of you liberals of my faith (Judaism). You sellouts. People of Israel have more courage than liberals of my faith could ever possibly have. They sit back in this country and throw stones. It disgusts me. And then they give aid and comfort to Obama. I'm speaking as a conservative, an American and a Jew. They disgust me," Mark Levin said on his nationally syndicated radio show this evening.
Levin was responding to Tom Friedman, who called Israel "inbred."
Liberals do not know how to triage. They cannot prioritize. They become intellectually overwhelmed by their myriad of unending concerns and this leads them to make too many irrational and wrongheaded decisions.
I repeat, I too am concerned about Far Right religious zealots impacting social liberties but if the nation sinks, because of Obama's insane economic theories and incompetent leadership qualities, I suspect riots will destroy many of those sacred rights they profess are so dear to them along with an economic melt-down.
You cannot support a republic on a tax base where half do not pay none and have no skin in the game. We are all in a boat called America and we all must row together and strive to speak the same language - English - while doing so.
My advicer: Save the patient first then worry about what he/she eats later.
Obama never 'ran' a business but he sure knows how to run his mouth and 'ruin' a nation.
His silver tongue has become tarnished because of his repeated distortions and outright lies.
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An example of how Dodd-Frank reaches close to home. Our daughter is a young, but highly successful, real estate agent in the Orlando area. She is one of Dave Ramsay's preferred agents and she was telling me that banks have now been ordered to separate their lending and appraisal functions. Consequently banks are required to bring in appraisers from outside their lending area .
Thus, in her case she has been dealing with some Jacksonville appraisers who know nothing of the Orlando market and have been low balling appraisals based on their own territorial experience. (Jacksonville is a basket case of foreclosures and short sales whereas Orlando has begun to stabilize and has a far better flow of people coming and going.)
Therefore, unrealistic low ball estimates are having a dramatic negative impact on loan closings and lending practices basically causing the Orlando market to tank again.
The unintended consequences of rules and regulations that may have a well meaning purpose in theory but cause disarray in the real world. Just one more piece of extraneous evidence how Obama and his Czar advisers are choking the nation with their brilliance.
'I am from the government and I am here to help you.'
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Commentary on the Norwegian massacre. (See 1 below.)
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I,Bernie Marcus and Ben Stein have Obama figured out but does the rest of the nation? We'll see after Nov. 2012. If not, then woe is us. (See 2 below.)
Apparently, even the Bible has the right and left figured. (See 2a below.)
And there are others. (See 2b,2c and 2d below.)
If truth be know Obama's campaign sign should have read "No, I Can't!"
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According to author Max Singer, the best is yet to come. That said, the definition of a pessimist is: " someone who has met too many optimists."(See 3 below.)
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It's about time. After they leave Israel they should visit Boehner and the Republicans in D.C.! (See 4 below.)
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Before Pearl Harbour, American scrap dealers were selling iron and steel to Japan, which in turn, they used it to make military equipment which eventually rained down on us Dec. 7, 1941.
It appears we have learned very little and continue to fund those who wish to destroy us.(See 5 below.)
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Will Obama's meddling in Israeli housing and other economic issues actually be Netanyahu's political undoing? (See 6 below.)
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Bringing Mubarak to trial - not a vintage time.?(See 7 below.)
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Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)What Did the Norwegian Murderer Think?
By Phyllis Chesler
http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/1022/norwegian-murderer
The author strongly condemns the murder, but challenges the grieving Norwegian government and intelligentsia to do something effective about their own failed multi-cultural policies.
I condemn mass murder and the slaughter of unarmed civilian innocents.
Therefore, I condemn the shocking Norwegian-on-Norwegian, infidel-on-infidel, mainly Caucasian-on-Caucasian massacres carried out by Anders Behring Breivik—just as I have condemned the mass murders of Jewish, Israeli, Hindu, European, and American civilians carried out by Muslim Islamist terrorists.
Please note: Breivik may have feared and despised the refusal of first, second, and third generation Muslim-Norwegian immigrants to become Europeans, to embrace Enlightenment values—but he killed the children of those Norwegians who, in his opinion, were enabling Muslims to set up separatist and hostile enclaves in Norway.
Will this terrify the multi-culturalists as much as Islamism has? Will Breivik's dastardly, dreadful action lead to policies which will finally begin to deal with issues such as female genital mutilation, polygamy, forced marriage, and honor killings on Norwegian soil? His constitutes only one terrorist attack and perhaps the first of its kind.
We must remember that in the name of Islam, Muslim Islamists have perpetrated thousands of terrorist attacks, both on their own people and on civilian infidels.
My esteemed colleague, Barry Rubin, writes that "There have been over 10,000 Islamist terrorist attacks, many of them against Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and others. The number of such attacks against Muslims in the West or indeed in the world is perhaps one percent of that number."
Also, historically, in the name of Islam, jihadists have colonized vast territories in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and India. They have persecuted, enslaved, exiled, or murdered the indigenous infidels who once lived there and either destroyed their holy sites or transformed them into grand and gracious mosques.
Nevertheless, Western political leaders, the media, and the professoriate have focused only on Western imperialism, racism, and historical slavery and have absolutely refused to focus on Muslim imperialism, racism and historical and contemporary slavery.
Meanwhile, the steady penetration of Islamic gender and religious apartheid continues apace in the West, especially in Europe, including in Norway.
The left-leaning multi-culturalists and "progressives" in Norway have refused to help endangered Muslim girls and women in their midst; the Norwegian government has refused to limit forced marriages to illiterate home country cousins, nor have they effectively intervened in matters of domestic violence when the perpetrator was Muslim as was his victims.
The fearless Hege Storhaug, has written an excellent book, now (2011) in English, on this very subject. It is titled "But The Greatest of These is Freedom. The Consequences of Immigration in Europe." Together with Rita Karlsson, Storhaug runs Human Rights Service an online website and think tank.
The kinds of leftists and multi-culturalists whose children Breivik fiendishly chose to massacre, are the kinds of leftists who persuaded the Norwegian government to stop funding this excellent website. They were accused of being…"Islamophobic." Storhaug and Karlsson are feminists, the sane kind. They want to extend the rights of freedom to every citizen of Europe and Norway but their own politically correct government and intelligentsia tried to defeat them by de-funding their efforts.
Storhaug paints a bleak but accurate picture.
The majority of Muslim immigrants to Norway are Pakistanis. In general, Muslim immigrants often outnumber native Norwegian children in school. She writes:
"In a typical classroom, a grand total of five Norwegian pupils may be expected to do the job of integrating no fewer than fifteen immigrant children – a virtually impossible task. Many grandchildren of immigrants start their first day of school without the slightest knowledge of the Norwegian language or Norwegian culture."
Native Norwegians have learned to live cautiously. Gay couples dare not hold hands in public in parts of Oslo. Since the 2006 bombing of Norwegian embassies (due to a Norwegian publication of the Mohammed cartoons), Norwegians have not dared to "say anything critical or negative about Islam…such comments are reserved for safe, private conversations."
In Storhaug's view, "marriage is at the heart of the immigration policy challenge, because marriage is the main route to Norway." It is the way to immigrate and to obtain Norwegian citizenship as well. About 75 percent of all those who immigrate to Norway come through "so-called reunification with persons in Norway." And, about 75 percent of the first-generation (and second-generation!) Pakistani-Norwegian immigrants "married in Pakistan." And, between 30-60 percent of these marriages are between cousins. The cost to the European and Norwegian state is considerable. She refers to a British study which indicated
"a high rate of deformities among newborn babies of Pakistanis. The Pakistani population accounts for 3.4 percent of the country's births, but fully 30 percent of the birth defects among newborns occur in children of parents with Pakistani origins."
Honor killings of Muslim girls and women are epidemic in Europe as is polygamy. Storhaug mentions a pattern in which Norwegian-Pakistani men immigrate with multiple wives whom they subsequently divorce under Norwegian law after which they marry new wives and bring them over from Pakistan. Again, Norway serves as the "financial base" for such human rights violations.
Storhaug describes the customarily heartless way in which Muslim Pakistani women are treated by their families. For example:
"Mina was…given a 'choice' among three cousins was pressured to choose a particular one – the one who had the weakest position on the marriage market, because he hadn't been to school and was darker than most people in a region where dark skin is equated with low status and ugliness. This young man, according to Ahmed, was the one who most desperately needed a visa to the West. In the end, therefore, he was the one who got Mina – a human being reduced to the status of a living visa."
Storhaug analyzes the normalized paranoia that characterizes many Pakistani Muslim families. There is no privacy—privacy, which might lead to forbidden thoughts or acts, is viewed suspiciously. The slightest disobedience might lead to a beating or an honor killing.
Storhaug cites a similar problem in Denmark where "fewer than half of the non-Western immigrants…had jobs. Non-Western immigrants accounted for about five percent of Denmark's population, but received just under 40 percent of its social budget." Storhaug quotes Poul C. Matthiessen, Danish professor of demography:
"istorically, this is the first time that Denmark has experienced a wave of immigration by people who are explicitly antagonistic to Danish values and norms…all earlier immigrant groups…right up to the mid 1970s, had adjusted quickly to Danish norms and values. This included Dutch farmers in the 1500s, French Huguenots in the 1600s, Swedish and Polish workers in the 1800s, Jewish refugees from Russia around the year 1900, and Chileans in the 1970s."
According to Storhaug, "government officials who are supposed to help immigrant women enter the work force have instead formed an 'unholy alliance' with those women's husbands. The husbands want the women to stay home, keep house, and raise children; and the employment counselors don't want to harass the women by trying to push them into jobs, since their chances of finding employment are poor anyway. So instead they arrange for the women to take hobby-like courses in subjects like food preparation and needlework. Far from bringing them closer to the work force, these courses ensure that they won't neglect their domestic duties. The government, in short, has made a compromise; it keeps Muslim women busy within their husbands' strict boundaries and ignores their need to develop into skilled workers – and active citizens."
Storhaug, like myself and a handful of other feminists, are all haunted by the Western feminist silence about Islamic gender apartheid in the West. She explains that silence succinctly and accurately.
"The feminists are obsessed with their own ethnic Norwegian causes: longer maternity leave, shorter work days for the same pay – in short, everything that can give them a better life, materially and socially. At the same time, many of the classical feminists appear to be old socialists blinded by the multicultural dream – a dream, alas, that has led them to accept the oppression of women in sizable segments of the population."
Some radical Islamists and their enablers are now blaming the Israeli Mossad for Breivik's actions. Others are blaming the anti-jihadist websites and thinkers whom Breivik apparently read. Will they now blame those feminists who have exposed the penetration of Islamic gender and religious apartheid into the West, especially into Norway?
Allow me to repeat myself: I condemn the mass murder of innocent and unarmed civilians no matter what the cause.
But I hereby challenge the grieving Norwegian government and intelligentsia to do something effective about their own failed multi-cultural policies and not use the tragic event as yet another opportunity to silence legitimate discourse and dissent
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2)WE'VE FIGURED HIM OUT!
By Ben Stein
Why was President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed? Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:
The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008.
(Pig in a poke means: an offering or deal that is foolishly accepted without being examined first. A poke means sack.)
They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.
They ignored his anti-white writings in his books.
They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright.
They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of his life as a student.
They ignored his ultra-left record as a "community organizer," Illinois state legislator, and Senator.
The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.
Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth. Barack Obama is a super likeable super leftist, and not a fan of this country.
The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill -- a great idea in theory -- was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way helped all Americans.
The American people already know that Mr. Obama's plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never can be --
"a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society." Either the costs go up or the free society goes away... An historical truth.
These are perilous times. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, has given Iran the go-ahead to have nuclear weapons, an unqualified betrayal of the nation. Now, we face a devastating loss of freedom at home in health care. It will be joined by controls on our lives to "protect us" from global warming, itself largely a fraud, if believed to be caused by man. She has also signed on to a Small Firearms Treaty at the U.N. This is a back door gun control move. This is approved by the Senate and a 2nd Amendment majority doesn't exist in the Senate now. It will supersede all U.S. Law and the 2nd Amendment. All citizen possession will be eliminated through confiscation. Just Like Great Britain and Australia .
Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms. There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America.
2a)Origin of Left & Right
I have often wondered why it is that Conservatives are called the "Right"
and Liberals are called the "Left."
"The heart of the wiseinclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." Ecclesiastes
10:2 (NIV)
Thus sayeth the Lord?
2b)The Danger of a Weak American President
By James G. Wiles
It's now clear that the emperor has no clothes. By August 2, President Barack Obama could become largely irrelevant in our domestic politics.
Unless Monday night's presidential address turns things around, Mr. Obama is about to be a lame duck before his time. If so, the American people can breathe easier. To borrow a slogan from the 2004 John Kerry-John Edwards campaign: "Help Is on the Way."
But conservatives should not necessarily offer three cheers for this outcome -- which is, let me hasten to add, entirely of the president's own making.
As I catalogued here last week, the United States is currently passing through a moment of danger -- both domestically and abroad. The U.S. economy has now stalled, with the highest level of unemployment since before the Second World War. Indeed, we haven't had a moment like this since Jimmy Carter became president in the wake of Watergate, the First Oil Shock, stagflation, and the fall of Southeast Asia to the Communists.
Now that it's clear that something like Speaker John Boehner's package will be passed to resolve the debt ceiling crisis and whittle away a bit more at the deficit, it's doubly clear that President Barack Obama has shot his wad. Unless Mr. Obama is reelected in 2012, this president is now largely unable to do further damage domestically. Only his veto pen retains its potency.
It's a different matter abroad. There, Mr. Obama remains in charge of America's position in world affairs. As president, he is commander-in-chief of the American military, America's head of state and the Leader of the Free World.
The world, however, now sees that America's president is weak. He does not command the Congress or the confidence of the American people. He refused to pull the trigger on Moammar Gaddafi, matching his actions to his words. With seventeen months to go in his term, the president presently appears unlikely to win reelection -- or his party to retain control of one House of Congress.
This is dangerous. In this wicked world, it is important that the American president be feared. This one is not.
The last time this happened, the year was 1979. And America's enemies moved very aggressively to take advantage of the failure of the Carter presidency.
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. It air-lifted Cuban troops into Angola, Mozambique, and the Horn of Africa, while simultaneously funding a Communist takeover in Nicaragua and a Communist insurgency in El Salvador. The USSR also began building a blue-water navy. A Soviet brigade was planted in Cuba, and Russian bombers began flying long-range patrols along the American coast.
In the Middle East, the Iranian Revolution occurred. Soon the entire U.S. Embassy staff had been taken hostage.
It is a different world today. But the issue remains the same. In the wake of the failure of Obama's presidency, will America's enemies move? Our moment of maximum weakness -- and the moment of maximum danger for American allies like Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, the Philippines, and Georgia -- begins now.
Will they move? Where will they move?
Those now become the questions.
2c)Obama's Ineptitude
By Steve McCann
At a critical time in its history, the country has as its president a man unqualified and unable to lead. Even the left has begun to finally question their allegiance to Barack Obama, and more importantly, his allegiance to them. More Americans, some in the media, are openly asking if the president is a liar, with the word mendacity frequently used in describing his actions. In the debt ceiling debate, he has shown not only his narcissistic side, but his complete lack of principles and indifference to the plight of the American citizens and the future of the country.
Today the United States finds itself adrift on a roiling sea of uncertainty; its economy floundering under the weight of oppressive debt and mismanagement, its status in world affairs at its lowest ebb since the beginning of the 20th century, and its citizens openly questioning the future.
Barack Obama is a man without a core, leaving the ship of state rudderless in the management of foreign affairs and domestic policy, which have spun dangerously out of control over the past two and half years.
A cursory examination of Mr. Obama's life and accomplishments reveals a man whose life has been centered around the discovery of two personal attributes (as detailed in his autobiography Dreams from My Father): his ability to deliver a speech, and his skin color in a nation obsessed with guilt for the past. His writings and the sharing of a strong anti-colonialist sentiments with his father portray an overwhelming sense of entitlement due solely to his paternal African descent.
While raised in a sea of Marxist and socialist thinking, these philosophies only served to confirm his deep seated animosity toward the United States and the western world, and not as a basis for any firm ideological beliefs. Over the years, his reluctance to promote the purity of those ideologies whenever given the opportunity confirms that he has never been an abject true believer.
Rather Obama has used and manipulated the true believers into being the foot soldiers for his personal ambition, by doing and saying just enough to keep his left-wing base in line. The most overused phrase since he assumed the national spotlight is: "thrown under the bus," and it has been well-used for good reason, as in the case of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose church Obama joined in order to politically ingratiate himself with the Chicago black community.
Out of his Marxist upbringing, Obama has embraced the doctrine of the end justifies the means, but in his case as a strategy to achieve his egocentric ambitions. This cynical belief represents the epitome of corruption. A leader within government or the national community at large who is captive to this thinking must be by necessity devoid of ethics, integrity, or morals.
Relying on his personal and physical traits, the gullibility and support of those desiring atonement for the past, coupled with his entitlement mentality, Obama has been able, akin to a piece of driftwood, to float upon the current, until one day he washed up on the shore as president of the United States.
Obama's early adult years were spent as a "community organizer," but only for a period of three years, until the realization set in that this was not the road to greatness. He then entered Harvard Law School, where his charm and speaking ability resulted in his election as the president of the Harvard Law Review. This move resulted in his first introduction to fame, as he was nationally trumpeted as the first black president of the Review.
He also learned how easily the white elite establishment, in particular the media, could be manipulated as he at age 31 -- someone with no real-world accomplishments -- was initiated into the Ruling Class, signed to a publishing contract and given a large advance to supposedly write a book which evolved into a personal memoir: Dreams from My Father.
The gullibility of the establishment, and Obama's success in manipulating it, are epitomized by Joe Biden's remark in 2007 when he said, "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
In 1991 Obama signed on to the faculty at Chicago Law School, where for twelve years he served as a Lecturer teaching constitutional law. During that same period he joined the law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galahad (1993-2002) specializing in civil rights litigation. He also served on the Board of the Woods Foundation (1994-2002) and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (1995-2002). Obama was now firmly ensconced in the elite circle of the Ruling Class.
In 1996, he turned to politics. In his first state senate race he defeated incumbent Alice Palmer by eliminating her and all other primary rivals from the ballot through successful but highly contentious challenge petitions. Obama won the election unopposed.
In a further revelation of his muddled and uncertain belief system, while in the state Senate (1997-2004) he voted present on controversial bills over 130 times. When given the opportunity he would not take a position on issues and avoided any commitment to his ideological upbringing.
In 2004 Obama ran for the U.S. Senate. His Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, was forced to withdraw three months after the Republican primary when the Chicago Tribune (where David Axelrod worked and had many friends) petitioned a judge in California to release sealed child custody documents. Obama was essentially able to run unopposed, as the Republican Party in Illinois was unable to find a viable candidate within the state and chose Alan Keyes as the sacrificial lamb.
After a lackluster and self-admitted boring two years in the U.S. Senate, Obama decided to run for president in 2006; after all nothing else in his life had been difficult to achieve, so why not the presidency? His only real challenge was to eliminate Hillary Clinton. The initial strategy was to compare her to Barack Obama, as she and her husband carried so much baggage they could not compete with Obama's soaring oratory (on display at the 2004 Democratic Convention) and skin color.
As his previous runs for public office and his life's philosophy had shown, Obama firmly believed in doing or saying anything when it came winning elections, and that was true in the 2008 Democratic primary, so he won yet another primary battle in a party susceptible to his charm and their own desire to assuage their white guilt, along with near-unanimous support from black Democrats.
Fate continued to be kind to Barack Obama. The Republican Party, bent on self-destruction, chose John McCain as its presidential nominee and in late September 2008 the financial and stock markets collapsed after years of abuse spawned in large part by Democratic Party policies. Barack Obama floated in on a wave and found himself as president of the United States.
However, there are now no other currents to float upon, there are no other waves to ride. There are no longer massive adoring crowds to deceive. There are no more titles to capture. For the first time in Barack Obama's life, he is accountable, and upon his shoulders rest the lives and fortunes of millions in the United States and the world. He has repeatedly shown that he cannot deal with, and will never be able to shoulder responsibility, as he is at his core self-absorbed, dishonest, a liar, and without coherence in his personal beliefs and convictions.
It is now up to the Congress, while not structured to do so, to assume the mantle of national leadership if the United States is to weather the current storm, as the current occupant of the White House has marginalized and proven himself to be the most inept president in modern history, and the worst steward of the economy since the nation's founding. There is no further need to negotiate with Barack Obama or pay deference to the office of the president until he no longer occupies it.
2d)Obama's Exit from Relevance, Stage Left
By William Sullivan
Just how far to the left Obama's politics can veer is a topic that has not been limited to domestic spectators. Two years ago, Hugo Chavez famously quipped about Obama, "Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to right." Whether or not Obama's politics are left of a self-described socialist's or Communist's is open to debate, but one thing has become certain -- Obama now finds himself well to the left of his party.
Only too perfectly timed with Nevada businessman and campaign contributor Steve Wynn's comments last week that lambasted Obama's attack-politics against the wealthy, Senator Harry Reid has distanced himself from Obama. And Reid would have good reason to jump ship in the wake of these comments. Wynn saying that "this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, progress and job creation in my lifetime" probably carries some weight to his constituents. Americans are deeply concerned about job creation, and where Wynn has applied his own means in Nevada to be very successful in this area, Obama and Reid have applied everyone else's means to miserably fail.
So Harry Reid circumvented Obama's influence, and worked directly with House Speaker John Boehner to discuss a possible proposal that accomplishes the tasks of cutting long-term spending while avoiding immediate default and the inevitable credit correction that would follow. As a result, a Congressional resolution between the Senate and House may now be possible. But notably missing from this agreement is the repeal of the Bush era tax cuts and the elimination of certain deductions for wealthy Americans making over $200K annually.
Barack Obama doesn't appear to like the omission, and in a speech made at the White House on Monday night, he refused to acknowledge that the talks even took place by declaring negotiations to be in a dangerous stalemate. (This is a claim that House Speaker Boehner immediately refuted) Obama expressed his distaste for any deal that would not include a tax hike for the rich and regurgitated his slander against corporate jet owners, hedge fund managers, "millionaires and billionaires," and said that they have to "pay their fair share" because families are sitting around their dinner tables each night, nervously counting on Washington to seize and appropriate more of their money to secure everyone else's Social Security, Medicare, military checks, and college tuitions.
With all the variety of watching a one-trick-pony, America watched as our president used what could be his last chips to double-down on "social justice" and the redistribution of American wealth.
Justin Ruben of MoveOn.org has offered that Americans are frustrated by the budget debate, and that the partisan battle is like a "bizarro parallel universe." I would have to agree, but probably for different reasons. There's certainly something bizarre in a world view suggesting that the wealthiest 10% of Americans paying 68% of the national tax burden is not paying their "fair share," especially when over 45% of Americans pay no share at all. But that's just the tip of the iceberg where Obama's fiscal delusion is concerned. In his speech, he stated that "In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts."
Think about what this statement actually implies. Our president just suggested that allowing taxpayers to keep more of their own money equates to "spending" the government's money. Yet when he legislated a massive entitlement program that allows artists to quit their day-jobs and collect healthcare on the taxpayer dime, he claimed to be "saving" taxpayer money. It's as if the hard-lined left lives in a backward financial reality where spending taxpayer money is actually saving it, and not taking taxpayer money away equates to irresponsibly spending it. A reality where one American citizen paying a lot and getting little in return while another American citizen paying nothing and getting a lot in return is all as fair as fair can be. And if you can blindly believe all of that, as some of Obama's more extremist followers do, you probably have no problem believing that up is down, that left is right, or that right is invariably wrong.
This understandably makes the left's rhetoric surrounding the debt crisis a little confusing to follow, but not because Americans are too dumb to get it or because we have never heard of a debt ceiling before, which was Obama's latest insult to Americans' intelligence on Monday night. It's just doesn't make any sense in the real world that we Americans live in. It only makes sense to extreme progressives.
This highlights the incredible irony in Obama's speech. He offered to independents that "some Republicans" are extremists and a hindrance to bipartisan resolution, yet his extreme adherence to the core tenets of progressivism are, in actuality, the most daunting hurdle to be faced in the coming days. We have to seriously ask ourselves, if the fiscal doomsday is upon us in a matter of days as Obama claims, why would he purposefully throw a monkey wrench into promising and time-sensitive bipartisan negotiation that could avert it? Are American interests in his mind, or are his hard-lined socialistic roots too deep to budge from his clearly partisan agenda?
It seems that more and more Americans have realized that the latter has more truth to it, and as a result, neither party seems to feel his ideas are relevant to the conversation in Washington.
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3)The Astonishing World to Come
By Herbert E. Meyer
Max Singer's "History of the Future" Lexington Books, 178 pages, $24.95, eBook: $9.99
I've just read one of the most brilliant, most important -- and most optimistic -- books about world politics that's been written in the last hundred years.
Reader, have I got your attention?
It's Max Singer's History of the Future, and if Singer is correct -- for those among you who don't know Max, he usually is -- we're heading into a world that will be richer and more peaceful than humanity has ever known.
Simply put, Singer's thesis is that starting in roughly 1800 the human race began its transition to modernity. As we move through the 21st century quite a few countries have completed this transition, dozens are well along in the process, some are only just now beginning to become modern, and others haven't yet started. This global transition to the modern world is uneven, sometimes violent and often sloppy. But it's irresistible and broadly speaking irreversible, which means that in roughly another century the entire world will be modern -- and that will be a wealthier and less war-prone world that we have ever known.
Singer rests his thesis on a set of characteristics that contrast a country in the "traditional" world with a country that has entered the "modern" world. For instance, in the traditional world lifespan is short, while in the modern world it's long. In the traditional world practically no one has a high-school education; in the modern world almost everybody has one. In the traditional world most people live in villages or nomadic bands; in the modern world most people live in cities. In the traditional world, most people are dominated by nature; in the modern world most people are protected from nature. In the traditional world most people don't have a say in how they're governed, while in the modern world most people do have a say in how they're governed.
Singer stands back far enough from today's discouraging and sometimes-ghastly headlines to see the long-term trends:
There are two centuries of experience with modernization. We can see that Asian as well as European countries have already completed the passage to modernity. We see that some countries from all regions and cultures have moved a good way along the path to modernization. This includes Muslim countries like Indonesia, Turkey, and Malaysia; sub-Saharan countries like Ghana; and Latin American countries like Chile and Colombia. So we learn that many more countries are likely to become modern, too.
But we also see that many countries have not really started on the path to becoming modern, though they have some of the benefits of modernity. We also see countries like Argentina and Cuba, which once were well along the path to development, stagnating and falling far behind. So we learn that modernization is not just for some narrow group of special countries, nor is it automatic and guaranteed for everyone.
We also see that overall, the pace of growth is uneven. Per capita growth for the whole world was nearly three percent a year from 1950 to 1973, but just a little more than half as fast from 1973 to 2003 (although faster in the last years of the period.). Only Asia, led by China and India, grew faster after 1973 than in the twenty-three years before 1973. ...
It seems clear that unless there is a drastic and unprecedented change for the worse, much of the world will continue moving along the path to modernity. The real questions are: How fast? How many will be left behind?"
So what does this tell us about the future?
Most of the next century will be overwhelmingly dominated by modern countries. The big story will no longer be the passage to modernity, because most of the world will have completed its passage. In the twenty-second century the concern about modernity will be what, if anything, should be done about the part of the world that hasn't made it yet.....When you think about it, the question of when the "whole world" will be modern is not so important. Once three-quarters of the world is modern, and much of the rest is on the way, it will be the modern part of the world that counts.
And if you've been yearning to once again hear the voice of a hard-headed optimist -- and who among us who remembers, say, Ronald Reagan, hasn't been yearning to hear this voice again? -- here's just one paragraph that's typical of the clear, insightful, and uplifting prose that marks every page of Singer's remarkable book:
Until recently, people assumed that life would remain the way it had always been. Today, people all over the world believe that change is possible, and that their actions can change their destinies. This simple belief looses a great flood of human energy and imagination. It is the fundamental source of the power that cannot be stopped from gradually transforming the world. This power can be resisted in some places, perhaps even for decades or more, but it will always break out someplace else, and eventually it will overcome resistance everywhere.
There are two things to say about Singer's viewpoint: The first is: Wow! The second is: He's absolutely, obviously right. Just look at some actual, real-world numbers that rarely make the headlines and to which so many of today's political leaders seem oblivious: By 1980 or 1990, more than 2 billion human beings had emerged from poverty. Since then, about another half-billion have emerged from poverty; in just the last six years more than 20 million Brazilians have crossed this magic line. Today on the continent of Africa the number of people who now have disposable income is -- take a deep breath -- 300 million.
Put all these numbers together, and you discover that each year more than 50 million human beings are emerging from poverty. The result is the most astounding -- and most under-reported -- fact in the world: the emergence of a global middle class. In other words, and just as Singer posits, the world is getting richer rather than poorer -- as he puts it, more modern. And in the modern world, most people are busy leading productive lives and aren't interested in causing trouble beyond their borders. They'd rather shop than fight. They'd rather have a Starbucks on the corner than a car bomb.
Why is this so important? Because these people -- the ones you see marching toward Tahir Square in Cairo, or risking their lives in Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Iran -- don't want war. They just want a better life. They want a say in how they're governed. They want jobs, and enough money to live decently and raise a family. And this means they will be our future customers, creating a demand for the kinds of goods and services our country's entrepreneurs know how to produce and sell. And that will create more jobs for American workers.
Obviously, there's a lot that can go wrong. These revolutions can take some nasty turns; indeed, some already are. Singer readily acknowledges that there are people in this world -- al Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban and so forth -- who would rather set off a car bomb than sip a latte. And he believes that no compromise is possible with these or any other group of Muslims who believe in violent jihad. Moreover, he sees the difficulties inherent in reconciling Islam with modernity:
Islam does not recognize a distinction between the political and religious realms....This is why, today, many Islamic countries are more deeply Islamic than Christian countries are Christian. It is also why outside of Turkey and Iraq (so far), Islamic experiments with democracy have failed, and free and representative government, with the guarantee of individual rights, has not taken root...Democracy, based on the rule of the people, grates against the Islamic view that law comes from God. It is regarded as a denial of the sovereignty of God.
But after providing his readers with a detailed overview of where things stand in the Muslim world today, and of how Islam is actually practiced, Singer concludes that even this faith can be modified as "modernity" takes root:
My conclusion from all this discussion and history is that it is not impossible that someday Muslims might reconcile democracy and Islam. Although liberal democracy is a product of the West, and the history of Muslim states is without exception one of autocracy, nothing in the nature of Islam makes it impermeable to the development of democratic institutions or the increasing desire for freedom.
There's a lot more to History of the Future, including some sharp insights about the nature of work in the coming decades and about the West's looming demographic problems. It's good stuff, and worth reading carefully. This is a book that should be required reading for every foreign minister, every intelligence chief, and every head of state.
And it should be read by every American conservative, precisely because History of the Future offers so much hope for a better world. Today in Washington, on talk radio, and on the cable news channels, it's conservatives who are coming across as the pessimists. We're the green eyeshade numbers-crunchers who keep explaining why tomorrow is going to be more miserable than today. Fair enough; the debt crisis really is awful, and our left-wing ideologue of a President seems determined to foment an economic crisis he can turn to his political advantage. And his interest in actually fighting and winning the war against radical Islam seems close to zero.
But if there's one thing we should have learned from President Reagan, and which too many of us seem to have forgotten, it's that while pessimism may be justified it's the optimists who usually win.
History of the Future points the way to victory, not merely for Republican or conservative candidates but for humanity. It's a knockout.
Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence and vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council. He is author of How to Analyze Information and The Cure for Poverty
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4) Top European public relations professionals visit Israel in bid to change global view of state
By Sarit Sardas-Trotino
A delegation of 11 European public relations experts visited Israel recently, at the request of the Foreign Ministry.
They were hired by the ministry to oversee Israel's public relations campaign throughout Europe, with the aim of using their specific expertise to boost Israel's image across the continent and worldwide.
David Saranga, who serves as Israel's consul to the European Union, is the man behind the initiative. As the former consul for media and public affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York, Saranga is familiar with the inner workings of the PR world, and spent six months putting together just the right team.
"We're used to thinking of Europe as a single entity, but the reality is very different," he said. "Local PR professionals know how to push the right agenda with the right media outlets, which social networks to be present on, and how much media presence is needed in their country.
"Each publicist will work with the embassy in their country and will manage the Israeli portfolio in collaboration with Foreign Ministry personnel," Saranga said.
But why hire PR experts when the Foreign Ministry has so many diplomats at its disposal?
"The Foreign Ministry's diplomats are trained to address political issues," Saranga said. "Over the past few years, we've come to understand that we need people with greater professional expertise… to leverage our advantage in fields such as science, medicine or the environment. Seeking the assistance of PR professionals was the natural thing to do."
The Foreign Ministry has always worked closely with PR experts, he said, "but there are certain content worlds that require specific savvy, and PR firms know exactly how to utilize them."
"The point here goes beyond boosting tourism," Saranga stressed. "It's about changing Israel's image among leaders of public opinion."
'Ignorance is main problem'
Israel is hardly the first nation to seek the help of professional publicists – on the contrary: The US, as well as European nations the likes of Italy, Spain, Turkey and Poland, in addition to many Arab countries, spend millions on crafting their global image – which top PR professionals toil over.
The mission was treated to three days of intense activities, meant to give them a crash course in "all things Israel": They traveled all across the country and met with key figures in the fields of finance, science, technology, medicine and agriculture; as well as with leaders of the Israeli design, art, wine and culinary worlds.
"A big part of the problem is 'selling' Israel's image in the media - which has to do with ignorance," Nathalie Biderman, a French PR expert, told Yedioth Ahronoth.
"I'm not really sure how familiar the French are with Israel. We can put aside everything that has to do with the (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict and address the other interesting aspects here to change the perception of Israel.
"In 72 hours, we've been exposed to so many innovations," she said. "For me, talking to journalists about politics is a waste of time. I want to teach our journalists that the reality in Israel is completely different than what they think it is."
Yigal Caspi, deputy director general of media and public affairs at the Foreign Ministry, knows exactly how to measure the project's future success: "We'll see how many reporters arrive here to cover events that have nothing to do with the conflict, how much advertising space we were given, and what kind of media exposure we received.
"This move doesn't have a down-side… For a year we've been explaining our political policies and virtually ignoring everything else. I'm not sure that the first thing Europeans want to see when they open their morning newspaper is news about the conflict with the Arab world.
"If we tell them about all the other interesting things here – about culinary and fashion, agriculture, innovations and high-tech – they'll see us differently," he concluded.
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5)U.S. Pays Salaries to Palestinian Terrorists
By Jonathan Tobin
U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority has become an increasingly controversial matter in the wake of the group's decision to bypass peace negotiations and go to the United Nations for recognition of an independent state. But the outlay of funds to the Palestinians may become even more toxic after the release of a report by a media watch organization detailing the payment of salaries from the U.S.-funded PA to imprisoned terrorists.
The report from Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli-based organization that monitors the Palestinian media and culture, said that more than 5,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are getting salaries from the PA. Though Palestinians held by Israel on charges of terrorism have always received stipends from the PA, the practice was formalized this past April when a new law to that effect was promulgated. The law was reported in the Palestinian official press but went unnoticed by the international media. Given that the United States gives more than $600 million to the Palestinians each year, including $225 million that goes directly to the PA, the payment of these salaries is a violation of U.S. law.
As the authors of the report pointed out when they presented their findings to members of Congress on Tuesday, the 2010 legislation that authorized aid to the PA said the State Department must "take all appropriate steps to ensure that such assistance is not provided to or through any individual, private or government entity, or educational institution that the Secretary knows or has reason to believe advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in, or has engaged in, terrorist activity."
The PA's payment of salaries to convicted terrorists is a clear violation of this law. In addition to speaking of the cash layouts to terrorists (which actually exceed the salaries paid to Palestinian civil servants), the report also discussed the incitement against Israel and Jews that is published and broadcast by the Palestinian official media. Another egregious example of Palestinian incitement was the fact that a summer camp sponsored by PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad divided children into three groups-each named for terrorists.
For those who have followed the history of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, this is familiar stuff. Ever since the original Oslo Accords, the State Department has made it a practice to either ignore or to deny all reports of PA support for terror or glorification of terrorists. Throughout this period, such outrages have been swept under the carpet by diplomats intent on pursuing an agenda of appeasement of the Palestinians in the vain hope this will cause them to make peace. But the United States has not been rewarded for its generosity.
We can only hope this latest evidence of Palestinian treachery will finally motivate Congress and the White House to hold the PA accountable and stop the flow of money from American taxpayers to terrorists.
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6)Why Netanyahu is suddenly unpopular in Israel
By Joshua Mitnick
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been put firmly on the defensive for the first time since his election, with tens of thousands of people protesting the surging cost of housing.
With his approval ratings in a double-digit dive, Mr. Netanyahu canceled a trip to Poland today to unveil a series of measures aimed at cooling off real-estate prices that have risen by more than one third since 2007.
But demonstrators rejected the reform package as too narrow, focusing too heavily on students even as the protest movement burgeons well beyond the young people who set up tents in Tel Aviv two weeks ago.
The increasingly mainstream character of the demonstrations reflects an Israeli middle class that is struggling to make ends meet despite robust growth and an all-time low in unemployment.
A wide swath of Israelis blame Netanyahu for not doing enough to address social gaps that have emerged in the wake of Israel's shift from a socialist economy to a more freewheeling, capitalistic society.
"Netanyahu is paying a price for not being seen as socially conscious enough. It is easy to blame him for not caring about the average person," says Shmuel Rosner, a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute.
"There is a problem that people who earn decent salaries feel their lives are becoming more economically challenging; prices are rising and salaries are not rising," he adds. "Israel's economy is great, but not all sectors of Israeli society share the feeling of a more prosperous economy."
APPROVAL RATING PLUMMETS 19 POINTS
The prime minister has received broad public backing for a confrontational foreign policy toward the Palestinians and a critical stance toward the Obama administration — his approval rating stood at 51 percent after crossing swords with the US president this spring.
But the growing socioeconomic malaise has caused his approval rating to plummet to 32percent, according to a poll published by the liberal Haaretz newspaper.
The survey numbers reflect fallout from a nearly two-week tent protest on Tel Aviv's tony Rothschild Boulevard that brought some 20,000 demonstrators into the streets Saturday night. On Sunday, hundreds of protesters marched to theKnesset in Jerusalem, while university students led solidarity tent protests around the country.
The prime minister has pressed cabinet members to come up with proposals that will show the government is responding, and pledged today to build more dorms for students and allocate more new building for middle-class buyers and renters. Netanyahu also faces a festering labor dispute with state-employed doctors and complaints over runaway prices for gas and dairy products.
Knesset members and ministers from the governing coalition have expressed concern about political fallout with the Likud's blue-collar constituents.
"It will leave a stain," says Shlomo Madmon, a long-time Likud activist. "People are who are dedicated Likudniks are protesting that they will never [again] vote Likud."
LULL IN PALESTINIAN VIOLENCE TURNS ISRAELIS'
ATTENTION TO POCKETBOOK ISSUES
Netanyahu has touted himself as an responsible economic leader who supports liberalization amid a globalized economy, but the public also remembers him cutting social-welfare payments and pushing privatization of state companies as finance minister in the first half of the 2000s.
"The housing is a symptom …. Although there is a really good macroeconomic aggregates like GDP [gross domestic product] growth and unemployment, the problem is that we have very large income inequality," says Momi Dahan, an economics professor at Hebrew University.
He says that such issues are coming to the fore because of a relative low in Palestinian violence.
"When it is quiet in the area of security, then all of the other problems come to the surface," Prof. Dahan says. "People are sick of the rules where some people get a six-digit salary, and a cleaning woman or a cashier has a hard time feeding their kids,."--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7)Upcoming Mubarak trial a prism for Egypt's contending passions
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Most Egyptians regard toppled President Hosni Mubarak, 83, as a patriot turned tyrant. Others see an ill man overwhelmed in later years by the country's rising problems
It's a dangerous time to bring Hosni Mubarak to justice.
The toppled Egyptian president is supposed to go on trial next week on charges of stealing millions of dollars from the state and ordering a crackdown that killed more than 800 protesters during last winter's uprising. A guilty verdict could result in the death penalty.
Trying the man who ruled Egypt with almost unfettered power for three decades is risky for the military council that replaced him. The proceedings are certain to offer a glimpse into the financial dealings and political alliances that allowed Mubarak to control the country, and the prospect of revealing state secrets has led to widespread belief that the generals will find a way to postpone the trial.
But any move that appears to allow Mubarak to slip from justice is sure to provoke an outraged backlash from Egyptians who regard their former leader as a tyrant. They want him called to account for filling jails with political opponents and running a government that enriched tycoons and friends in the ruling party.
That sentiment is potent in Cairo's Tahrir Square, where protesters march beneath banners depicting the deposed president with a noose around his neck.
"Mubarak brought corruption, ignorance, chronic diseases to millions of Egyptians, poverty," said Ahmed Saied Badawi, a 21-year-old university student. "He is the man behind every bad thing this country is facing, and that's why he should be tried for everything he did. It would be a great symbol for this country's future, that whoever mistreats his people will go through the same fate."
Few would have imagined months ago that the 83-year-old leader with the aloof air and hidden palaces would ever appear before a judge. But Mubarak is now under house arrest, his health reported to be worsening after suffering a heart attack in April. His condition means his trial may be held in the hospital room along the Red Sea where he is now ensconced.
His declining health evokes less rancor from some Egyptians, who see an ill man overwhelmed in later years by the country's rising problems, the death of a grandson and pressure from his wife, Suzanne, to prepare his son Gamal for succession.
"I think the president was looking at the macro picture of Egypt as if glancing down from an airplane," said Tarek Selim, an economics professor at the American University in Cairo. "He didn't see his country from the ground. The people close to him didn't tell him what was going on. He was aging and his wife wanted Gamal to be the center of attention."
But the prevailing view is that the reports of poor health are a ruse, with Egyptians believing his ailments, including reports that he has stomach cancer, slips in and out of comas and refuses to eat, are theatrics to save him from prison. Many are skeptical that Mubarak and former Interior Minister Habib Adli, who is also charged with the murder of protesters, will be tried beginning Aug. 3. The holy month of Ramadan begins next week, and some say Mubarak's lawyer will announce a new health crisis in the hours before the judge is to take the bench.
The charges of financial crimes suggest that Mubarak hid a fortune of at least $470 million in international bank accounts. Much of it is said to have been amassed beginning in the 1990s, when party officials and businessmen profited from privatization and the regime's craving for real estate. But legal experts predict that convicting Mubarak of financial crimes may be difficult because documents and other evidence were probably destroyed during the regime's final days.
One of the gambits that has enraged Egyptians was a contract given to East Mediterranean Gas Co. to sell natural gas to Israel at reduced prices. Mubarak confidant Hussein Salem was a major shareholder in the company. Prosecutors say the inside deal cost Egypt more than $700 million. Salem, who was arrested in Spain last month, allegedly pocketed millions of dollars on the contract and by manipulating the higher price of gas sold to Egyptians. Prosecutors are also investigating charges that Salem gave Mubarak five mansions, including a villa worth at least $4 million.
Such allegations epitomize a regime that underwent a shift as Gamal Mubarak, who is in prison awaiting trial, rose in the National Democratic Party. Gamal's championing of privatization spurred economic growth, but authorities say he also created a corrupt universe for the wealthy, such as Hisham Talaat Mustafa, a billionaire real estate developer convicted of planning the 2008 murder of his former girlfriend, a Lebanese pop diva.
"Since 2005, Mubarak wasn't even ruling the country," said Mustafa Bakri, a newspaper editor and former member of parliament. "Egypt had become a marriage between money and political power run by Gamal Mubarak and businessmen loyal to him. It wasn't a government. It was a gang. When the president's grandson died in 2009, that was the final punch. Mubarak grew jaded and lost interest in ruling the country."
The 12-year-old grandson, Mohamed, reportedly died from a brain hemorrhage. He was the child of Mubarak's elder son, Alaa, who has also been arrested on corruption charges.
A government investigation released in April concluded that Mubarak was responsible for the violent response by police that led to the deaths of at least 846 people during the revolution. Snipers, police officers and government-paid thugs were described in the report as "firing bullets at the head and chest." Only Mubarak, the investigative panel's leading judge said, could have given such a command.
Mubarak's authority flowed from a constitution amended over the years to concentrate his hold on the nation. It is this grip on Egypt's institutions, especially the Interior Ministry, that may now become the greatest obstacle for his legal defense.
"Mubarak is more likely to be indicted for killing protesters than for financial corruption," said Tarek Awady, a lawyer at the Egyptian Court of High Appeals. "The previous constitution was clear that Mubarak was the only person entitled to give, and directly responsible for, orders to shoot protesters."
The former leader has denied wrongdoing: "I would never participate in the killing of Egyptian citizens," he told prosecutors, according to leaked interrogation transcripts. "I gave orders to deal with protesters without violence, peacefully."
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