Obama can take credit for one accomplishment: His economic policies have solved Arizona's illegal immigration problem. No work no illegals!
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Last night went to see our local baseball team play a team from a neighboring city. We won 1 to zip, spirited game, good pitching and fielding.
Sign of the times - mostly everyone playing America's national sport had Spanish names.
Now that is change!
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Newt may not know how to run a campaign but he remains articulate and his comments are worth reading. (See 1 below.)
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Most Jews remain politically brain dead but the tide is turning if ever so slowly. Once again a few, including yours truly, saw the light decades ago but it takes a very long time for dripping water to erode granite thinking and slave mentality.
I grew up in a family that worshipped Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy but I went to Wharton and had some clear eyed conservative professors who helped me understand about free lunches and government Ponzi programs. Then my father, seeing that I had a mental transformation, bought me: "The Limits of Government" written by a relative of his friend, Fourney Johnson. From there I introduced myself to Rand and Hayek and then to Horowitz and Kirk and the liberal barn door closed behind me and remains forever shut. Not because I am immune to ideas just those that empirically prove they do not work!(See 2 and 2a below.)
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Sarkozy and Obama have a plan for Israel and the Palestinians and Netanyhu has agreed subject to Obama doing what Netanyahu asks of him. To wit, agree to sign and publicly endorse GW's letter to Sharon and base land swaps on UN Resolution 242.
Netanyahu must realize Obama is desperate for a deal that could help his re-election but Obama has proven time and again he will say the say but not walk the walk. Shake Obama's hand and then count your fingers, Netanyahu! (See 3 below.)
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As the pressure mounts and the liberal superstructure, pasted together over a long period, collapses from the weight of its cost another tact is developing to overcome the calamity in Wisconsin.
Inflaming passions, through class warfare, is one of the tactics and, I bet, it will only be a matter of time before Obama reintroduces the race card.
As 'Ole Slick Bill' once said, "You gotta do what you gotta do." (See 4, 4a, 4b and
4c below.)
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Wall Street Journal editorial suggests Republicans quit loafing, accept half a loaf and call 'abulia' Obama's bluff.
The risk of caving is that any commitment from Obama is like buying a bottle of snake oil. The liquid in the bottle falls short of the words on the bottle.(See 5 below.)
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Gary Shilling says commodities are going to come crashing down because China's boom, near term, has ended. Jim Rogers disagrees and says China may slow but no crashing down.
A steep decline in commodities could help consumers and reinforce Fed's view that inflation is not a problem. Stay tuned!
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Has prospective candidate Texas Gov. Perry and his staff taken over the GW pinata from Obama? (See 6 below.)
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Maybe Obama would allow Arizona to hire Israel to police and protect our borders. But then, with Obama's economic policies we may remain in a depressed business atmosphere for the foreseeable so no new employment for illegals would be created. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)A Diplomatic Defeat for President Obama and America
By Newt Gingrich
The elite media largely ignored an astounding defeat recently for the United States and for the cause of freedom.
The Iranian dictatorship hosted an anti-terrorism conference in Tehran.
That's right. The world's leading state sponsor of terrorism--the country that funds and trains Hamas and Hezbollah and sends arms to the Taliban--simply stole our language and held a conference that professed to oppose terrorism.
Under the Iranian definition of that term, the United States and Israel are the primary supporters of terrorism in the world.
Amazingly, sixty countries--yes, sixty--participated in the Iranian conference.
In a scene worthy of a Kurt Vonnegut satire, the North Koreans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Palestineans and other enthusiastic supporters of anti-American activities all showed up.
Even more alarmingly, our so-called allies Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were also in attendance. After billions of dollars spent and thousands of Americans lost, these "allies" ignored our requests and dignified the dishonest event and a country that is funding terrorism worldwide.
Cliff May captured the disaster in the National Review.
"A few days ago, the regime that rules Iran, designated by the U.S. State Department as the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism, held what it called the First International Conference on the Global Fight against Terrorism. The U.S. and Israel were singled out as "satanic world powers" with a "black record of terrorist behaviors." This should have been the subject of scorn and ridicule from the "international community." But senior officials from at least 60 countries attended and U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon delivered a message via special envoy expressing his appreciation to Tehran. Apparently he was not bothered by the fact that Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court, was among those attending."
As an example of how bad some of the participants were who showed up to accuse the U.S. of "terrorism," consider the indictment of the Sudanese President: Omar al-Bashir was charged with genocide, with crimes against humanity (including murder, extermination, forcible transfer of civilian populations, torture, and rapes), and with war crimes (including intentional attacks against civilians and pillaging).
This is the company our so-called allies are comfortable with?
To make this outrageous situation even worse, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon sent a special envoy to Tehran to deliver a message supporting the conference.
Perhaps nothing should have surprised us after Iran won a vice-presidency of the U.N. General Assembly recently. An organization founded to preserve peace has now elevated the world's top state sponsor of terrorism to a leadership role.
Unfortunately, also like a Vonnegut novel, these stories represent a reality that is less humorous than it is distressing.
The participation of allies like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the anti-American charade in Tehran is just the kind of sight that could become more common in the future amid questions about the United States' commitment in the region.
As the Obama Administration's policy--which appears to be "weakness and abandonment"--becomes clearer, allies will revaluate and reorient away from the United States and toward Iran. After all, the U.S. is leaving, and Iran is an increasingly powerful force in the region--and it will soon be armed with nuclear weapons.
The elite media has largely ignored this unfolding disaster. Yet the dangers of this realignment are serious. The radical Islamists that countries like Iran arm, train, and support while claiming to oppose terrorism are no small threat. They aim to destroy the United States and Israel, and to halt the cause of freedom wherever they can.
Radical Islamism is dangerous given weak state sponsors, and it will be even more serious when backed by a large regional power such as Iran is becoming.
The Obama Administration, meanwhile, remains blind to the forces threatening us.
Consider this additional report from Cliff May regarding a young Marine who was charged last month for repeated shooting attacks on the Pentagon and was arrested, in Arlington Cemetery, with explosives materials and literature referencing Al Qaeda:
"Yonathan Melaku was charged in federal court with shooting at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The officials who arrested him later searched his home and found a videotape in which he is shouting "Allahu Akbar!" They also found a notebook in which he'd written about Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda , the Taliban, and The Path to Jihad, a book of lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Islamic cleric who was widely considered a moderate before he fled to Yemen where he is now a top Al Qaeda commander.
"So it's pretty obvious what Melaku was up to, right? Not if you're a federal employee, it's not. "I can't suggest to you his motivations or intent," James W. McJunkin, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, told reporters at a news conference. "It's not readily apparent yet."
"Many in the mainstream media also expressed befuddlement. A Washington Post story carried the headline: "Pentagon Shooting Subject Not Known to Law Enforcement." (Really? That's the news here?) The article told readers that "a motive for the shootings -- and why Melaku had possible bomb-making materials -- remains elusive." So does that mean we can't rule out a crime of passion -- or a paint-ball competition that got out of hand?"
In case after case, we have leaders who are determined to ignore obvious truths.
Not since the 1930s have our leaders so willfully deceived themselves about a growing threat to our survival.
Your Friend,
Newt
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2)Op-Ed: Jews becoming commonplace in conservative ‘new media’
By Benyamin Korn · July 4, 2011
PHILADELPHIA (JTA) -- Many reviews already have appeared of "The Undefeated," the soon-to-be-released documentary about Sarah Palin’s tenure in Alaska. Yet none of them -- even in The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post or Politico.com -- mentions that nearly all of the film’s many pro-Palin media talking heads are Jews.
The dominant meme that Jews as a group are uncomfortable with Palin or her views seems less than convincing after viewing prominent Members of the Tribe defend her politics and record in elected office. Internet news mogul Andrew Breitbart, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin and L.A.’s radio phenom Tammy Bruce, a gay Jewish Palinista with a Tammy’s Army of followers, all deliver full-throated tributes to one of America’s most conservative political figures.
Following a recent Manhattan screening of the director's cut of "The Undefeated," I mentioned this to filmmaker Stephen Bannon. He replied that he had not taken note of their Jewishness in choosing to include them. That in itself is significant: Jews have become so commonplace in the conservative new media that the fact of their Jewish identity fails to garner much notice.
One reason may be that Jews tend to be “early adopters” of innovations and were present at the birth of the conservative new media.
Start with Maryland-born muckraker Matt Drudge, the granddaddy of the conservative new media. Since his website’s launch in the mid-1990s, the Drudge Report has retained its place at the top of the new media right and now averages an astounding 30 million “hits” daily, or close to a billion a month. It has a huge influence in setting the agenda for national talk radio and for the conservative commentariat in general.
But Drudge’s influence doesn’t stop there. A Washington Post editor recently conceded that 10 percent to15 percent of his newspaper’s daily online traffic is driven by links from Drudge.
Soon after, conservative voices began emerging within explicitly Jewish new media precincts themselves, notably the pioneering Jewish World Review, started in the mid-1990s by Binyamin Jolkovsky, and IsraelNationalNews.com, an organ of the settlement movement, which had also operated a pirate radio network.
Significant relative newcomers include bloggers such as Ted Belman of IsraPundit, Dan Greenfield of SultanKnish and Ruth King of Ruthfully Yours, along with sites such as Israel Matzav, YidWithLid, Yeshiva World News and the Yiddish-titled but English-language Vos Iz Neias? (What’s New?).
Since the emergence of conservative talk radio in the 1980s, Jews again are playing a prominent role. Besides Levin and Bruce, and the top-rated Michael Savage, two of the national talk hosts on the Salem Radio affiliate where I broadcast -- Dennis Prager and Michael Medved -- are Jewish, and both serve on the board of the GOP-oriented Jewish Policy Council, along with a third Salem host, Bill Bennett, who “happens to be a Catholic.”
The nation’s largest talk station, New York’s WABC -- home base for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Mark Levin -- now features a highly rated Sunday program with investigative journalist Aaron Klein, who once edited the Yeshiva University Commentator and now reports from Tel Aviv, and for about a year featured Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (politically centrist, but with an Orthodox point of view), who got his start as a Lubavitch emissary, founding the immensely popular L’Chaim Society at Oxford University.
Recent years also have witnessed the emergence of a whole class of crusading Internet journalist-activists, many of them Jews, such as Klein, who is also senior correspondent for the mega-site WorldNetDaily, anti-Islamist activist Pamela Geller (AtlasShrugs.com) and repentant “Radical Son” David Horowitz (FrontPageMag.com).
Probably the most high profile of these crusaders today is Breitbart, a leading publisher of conservative websites such as BigGovernment.com (focusing on national politics), BigPeace.com (foreign policy), BigHollywood.com (the film industry) and BigJournalism.com (the Fourth Estate). It was Breitbart who pursued the Anthony Weiner affair and caused the corruption-tainted voter and housing activist group ACORN to lose billions in federal funding.
Industry insiders say Breitbart is now looking to launch a site that would be devoted to Middle East coverage named -- what else? -- BigJerusalem.com.
Another important development is the shift of Jewish "old media" conservatives to new media platforms. William Kristol is now better known as a Fox Television commentator than in his role as founding editor of The Weekly Standard. Charles Krauthammer also reaches a far larger audience at Fox than even as a syndicated columnist based at The Washington Post. Jennifer Rubin, formerly of Commentary, now reaches a much larger readership with her Right Turn blog at The Washington Post, and Jonathan Tobin, executive editor of Commentary, has transitioned to being full-time editor of its web log, Contentions.
In Israel, Jerusalem Post deputy editor and columnist Caroline Glick last year launched Latma TV, already a highly popular political satire site, whose send-up of the Gaza flotilla radicals -- “We Con the World” -- had 3 million “hits” in one week during last year’s crisis.
Certainly there is another reason why Jews, per se, have attracted so little notice in the conservative new media: the change in American conservatism itself. Ethnically diverse and intellectually formidable, today’s conservatism is reliably pro-Israel, comfortably Judeo-Christian and for the most part promotes a nuanced social conservatism.
In a movement that is credible and hospitable to American Jews, and from which the ethno-centrism of yore is largely absent, Jewish journalists will flourish.
2a)Exposing the Mindset of Modern Liberalism
By Peter Wehner
On ABC’s “This Week”, George Will was on a panel with Georgetown University’s Michael Eric Dyson, Harvard’s Jill Lepore, and Time magazine’s Richard Stengel, all of whom discussed Obamacare and the Constitution.
In the course of the conversation, Will said this:
The question is, has the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce been so loosely construed that now Congress can do anything at all, that there is nothing it cannot do. Let me ask the three of you. Obviously, obesity and its costs affect interstate commerce. Does Congress have the constitutional power to require obese people to sign up for Weight Watchers? If not, why not?
The other panelists tried to duck Will’s question. To his credit, Will doesn’t allow them to be evasive. In pressing his point, Will elicits some remarkably illuminating answers. “I don’t know the answer to that,” Stengel admits. “It’s open,” according to Dyson.
Will did us the service of exposing the mindset of modern liberalism in the course of roughly two minutes. Two leading progressive are totally at sea when asked whether Congress has the constitutional power to require obese people to sign up for Weight Watchers.
Call it the Nanny State in a nutshell.
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3)US-French plan Israeli-Palestinian Paris peace summit Sept. 2.
The Obama and Sarkozy administrations are working together on a plan to convene an Israel-Palestinian peace summit in Paris on Sept. 2 shortly after the Libyan war is brought to a close, Washington and Paris exclusive sources disclose. If they can pull it off, Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy will join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at a summit in the French capital to announce the restart of Israel-Palestinian peace talks, thereby calling off the unilateral Palestinian request for UN recognition of an independent state.
President Obama's Special Adviser Dennis Ross and senior French diplomat Jean-David Levitte are leading the effort to get this summit off the ground. According to the US-French plan, it will take place shortly after the Libyan war is brought to a close – ideally by a four-way accord between the US, France, Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan rebels or, failing agreement, by a crushing NATO military blow in which the United States will also take part. The proposed accord would be based on Muammar Qaddafi's departure and the establishment of a power-sharing transitional administration in Tripoli between the incumbent government and rebel leaders.
The US and French presidents hope to be credited at home and in the Middle East with a triple feat: two diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East and a US-French victory in Libya.
To this end, negotiations are going forward with the concerned parties. Russia and the African Union have been drawn into the drive to end the war in Libya. One stumbling block still remaining is Qaddafi's demand for his sons to be part of the proposed transitional administration in Tripoli.
To clear the way for the Paris summit, Ross recently put before Netanyahu Obama's revised formula for the starting-point of negotiations with the Palestinians: Israel would accept the 1967 borders with territorial swaps in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. Just this week, the Israeli prime minister said that if the Palestinians recognized Israel as the Jewish homeland, the other outstanding issues could be easily and quickly resolved.
However, it is not clear whether the revised formula had won prior Palestinian approval before it was presented in Jerusalem or Washington intended to later squeeze this concession out of Mahmud Abbas and so drive a crack in the deadlock which has frozen the peace track for more than seven months.
Netanyahu's reply was qualified. He accepted the new US formula in principle, but batted the ball back into the White House's court. Sources in Jerusalem and Washington disclose Bibi made acceptance contingent on President Obama publicly and formally affixing his signature to President Bush's letter of April 2004 to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. This letter constituted a presidential commitment to support negotiations with the Palestinians based on UN Resolution 242 (which promised Israel defensible borders), to refrain from demanding Israel's return to the 1949 lines, and to acknowledge the existence of major Jewish population centers on the West Bank as demographic changes occurring in the years since the Six-Day War.
The prime minister is now waiting for an answer from the White House.
Sources in Jerusalem explain this exchange encapsulates the US-Israeli-Palestinian debate over how much territory the land swaps would leave Israel and the Palestinians respectively in future agreements on their borders.
Up until now, Palestinians have insisted on a ratio of one kilometer in pre-1967 Israel for every kilometer awarded Israel on the West Bank. This ratio Jerusalem finds unacceptable. A comprehensive study commissioned by the prime minister's office from the National Security Council found that the big settlement blocs on the West Bank cover roughly 8 percent of West Bank area. Giving up an equal area of Israeli territory would imperil its security no less than a flat return to the 1967 borders. Israel cannot therefore afford to cede more than 4 percent of its sovereign territory at most. The Palestinian demand for parity in the mutual exchanges of land is therefore rejected by Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is reverting to the Bush letter and its reaffirmation of UN Resolution 242 – not just because it better addresses Israel's security needs more advantageous, but also because, "You can't just toss out UN Resolution 242 and Bush's letter to Sharon," Netanyahu has been saying in recent private talks. In his view, the Obama White House cannot simply ignore a presidential commitment given by his predecessor personally to an Israeli prime minister.
In the opinion of the prime minister and his advisers, the formula incorporated in Obama's May 19 speech requiring Israel to return to the 1967 borders with mutual land swaps and accept a non-demilitarized Palestinian state is tantamount to giving up on secure borders. The UN 242 and the Bush commitment upheld this principle and is therefore the option preferred in Jerusalem.
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4)July is make or break for Obama 2012
By Sam Youngman
The yellow light isn’t blinking only on getting a debt-ceiling deal done — it’s flashing on President Obama’s reelection hopes, too.
If Obama and the debt deal face a yellow or red light at the end of July, voters might not be willing to give him the green light to go ahead with a second term.
White House officials acknowledge that July is a critical month for Obama and his 2012 campaign, and they are well-aware the outcome of the debt-ceiling debate could determine his reelection chances next year.
Obama can’t win reelection this month, but he can lose it if the deal to raise the debt ceiling hurts him with either Democrats or independents. He could also lose if negotiations fail altogether and the economy is left in a shambles.
Obama’s fate is tied to the economy, and without a debt deal, markets could go haywire, with potentially catastrophic damages to the economic recovery, according to Obama’s economic team.
With a deal, the economy gets a needed boost and Obama shows Wall Street and independents that he is a leader who brings people together and solves problems.
“The economy is key to the president’s reelection, and a sensible budget deal is key to the economy, because there simply isn’t much confidence right now that Washington can get it right,” said Democratic strategist Steve Murphy.
“President Obama has to maintain the strong stance he established in his press conference and demand a balanced approach to cutting the deficit. And he’ll win in the end, because independent voters are fed up with all the ideology.”
It’s pretty simple for the president: All Obama has to do is forge a deal with Republicans that cuts trillions from the deficit and saves the economy from going off another cliff, all while convincing his base that he is not selling them down the river again.
It’s that last part that might be the most difficult piece for this president.
Obama has repeatedly shown an ability to get a deal done, but in doing so he has seriously damaged his credibility with the left.
Liberals wanted to believe that the president was really mad at last week’s press conference. They’ve wanted to believe that for a long time.
But time and again, liberals have seen Obama cave — in order to keep the federal government working or to ensure tax cuts for the middle class — and that has left them more skeptical of Obama than they’ve ever been.
As a result, it will be hard for Obama to give ground on the key stumbling block to the talks: whether a deal will include the elimination of some targeted tax breaks.
Liberals say a deficit deal can’t be built only on spending cuts, but the GOP has all but warned it will allow the U.S. to default on its debt before agreeing to a deal that includes any tax increases.
If Obama gives in to the GOP and blinks in order to help the larger economy, liberals won’t be spending the rest of the summer and fall getting over hurt feelings from the last two years and knocking on doors for the president. They’ll fall into full-on revolt.
In this fight, liberals say Obama shouldn’t worry about independents. He should worry about the left.
Rightly or wrongly, they say Obama is in a stronger position to negotiate than Republicans, who they argue rely more on Wall Street for fundraising.
“One way or another, Wall Street will make sure the debt ceiling is raised — Democrats don’t have to do their work for them,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “What’s important is that President Obama does not agree to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefit cuts — which would hurt millions of Americans, muddy the brand of the Democratic Party and hurt every Democrat on the ballot in 2012. Americans don’t want a ‘deal’ — they want a strong president who fights for working families.”
White House officials wouldn’t say this week if Washington should expect to see more of the aggressive Obama from last week.
That will depend largely on whether Republicans come back to the negotiating table, and on what’s being said in closed-door meetings.
The hope on the left is that the new Obama is here to stay. But that’s up to Obama.
How Obama moves forward will say much about what constituency the president values the most.
If Obama gives in, it will send a clear signal that the president values independents above all others.
If he stares down the GOP and comes up with a deal that makes his base happy, Obama will be showing that he remembers two of the first rules of politics:
Dance with the one who brought you — and don’t go to war without your army.
Youngman is the White House correspondent for The Hill.
4a)Democrats Unveil the Weapon of the Future
By J.R. Dunn
What do the political battles in Wisconsin and the Spanish Civil War have in common? A disturbing characteristic.
The Spanish Civil War is one of those events that are on the way to becoming forgotten history. The term "civil war" is a bit misleading, since the conflict internationalized itself in short order, with Hitler and Mussolini lining up with the rebels, or "Nationalists", and Stalin backing the "Republicans" (actually a motley gaggle of various left-wing elements). The dictatorships utilized Spain as a proving ground for new tactics and weapons, including the Me-109, fighter-bomber, the Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber, along with Rotte fighter tactics and area bombing raids, such as that carried out against Guernica. The war ended in 1939 with the defeat of the Republicans, even as World War II was looming. The Germans learned quite a lot in Spain that they applied to the Blitzkrieg campaigns against Poland and France. (Uncle Joe might have picked up a few things if he hadn't decided to have most of the officers sent to Spain shot on their return.)
Something similar, though on a much lower key (no massacres or bombing raids yet) has been occurring in Wisconsin over the past few months: a nearly open civil war instigated by the left in order to test an array of new tactics.
Last February, newly-elected governor Scott Walker signed a budget containing minor reforms aimed at the public-employees unions. Union members would be required to pay small amounts into their pension and health-care funds. Collective bargaining was curtailed on this and other matters in order to assure that these reforms would remain permanent.
Wisconsin's civil war started then and there. The Democratic senators fled the state to deprive Walker of a quorum. Shortly afterward, tens of thousands of union members -- many imported from out of state -- laid siege to the capitol. They remained for weeks, engaging in vandalism, menacing state officials, and uttering death threats against anyone voting in favor of the reforms.
The bill was finally passed thanks to a clever parliamentary maneuver, only to be set aside by Maryann Sumi, a county judge attempting to punch well above her weight, on procedural grounds. It developed that Judge Sumi was closely entwined with the unions through family connections.
At the same time a campaign to recall Republicans who had voted for Walker's budget was put into motion. (A smaller number of the Democrats who fled were also targeted.) These recall elections are still overhanging the senators.
With the bill headed for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the left next targeted an ordinary state Supreme Court election, importing hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to defeat incumbent David Prosser, a centrist conservative, in favor of Joanne Kloppenberg. Thanks to a comically inept local election official, it seemed at first that they had succeeded, but when the smoke cleared, Prosser had won by a healthy 7,000 votes.
And finally, we have the latest purported incident, in which we are asked to believe that Justice Prosser, in the midst of a discussion in the chambers of his liberal opposite number Ann Walsh Bradley, suddenly and apropos of nothing bounded across the room and attempted to strangle her in front of most of the other justices. The man is even worse than Clarence Thomas.
This is an extraordinary series of events, of a type that we haven't witnessed before. Even more singular is the legacy media's insistence on covering the story (with the exception of the siege of Madison, which got the standard "unions unbound" treatment) as if it were commonplace to the point of boredom. It is no such thing; it is an ideological campaign of a magnitude and breadth that we have not seen in quite some time, if ever.
What all this amounts to is the baptism of fire of what I have taken to calling the "liberal superstructure." This superstructure is the vast constellation of advocacy groups, think tanks, single-issue outfits, unions, and various other flotsam constructed by the left over the past half-century or so. There are literally thousands of these groups, ranging from the ACLU and the Sierra Club with their hundreds of thousands of members to the local "Friends of the People's Venezuela" outfit which amounts to a retired feminism professor and her six cats. These organizations are ubiquitous, universal, and networked to a fare-thee- well. They are also liberalism's last great hope of controlling politics in the United States.
It's scarcely arguable that, in the political sense, liberalism is on the ropes. Obama spent their last nickel. They have lost the House and will lose the Senate, with little chance of regaining them in the near future. The same is true of the White House once the messiah gets the bum's rush come 2012. Liberalism is on the skids, its programs uniform failures, its ideology barren, its slogans worn out, its long hold on the independents being relentlessly pared down by the Tea Parties.
So what is a political movement to do, particularly one as fanatic and apocalyptic as this one? Well, if you have an alternate system made up of outside organizations not subject to governmental oversight, a system populated with self-selected fanatics and true believers, a system poised and ready to march, you can do what was done in Wisconsin. You can turn the superstructure loose to threaten the public peace, smash things up, abuse the electoral process, create a media spectacle, and pressure the state to do things your way. You can use nonpolitical organizations (in the electoral sense) to get a political result.
All the groups involved in the Wisconsin campaign were superstructure groups. The unions, the very core organizations of the superstructure, without which it's no more than a pack of vegetarians and aging hippies. The media, which serves as its propaganda arm. And the judiciary, which is broadly infiltrated by leftist partisans whose allegiance has been awarded to something other than the law.
But it's when we review the Prosser accusations that the picture attains clarity. According to Byron York, the story (which had been held back for nearly two weeks) was first reported by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism working with Wisconsin Public Radio. (Two guesses as to which end of the spectrum they lean toward.) The Prosser story was billed as the result of a project funded by the Open Society Institute to enlighten the public about Wisconsin government.
The report was picked up by ThinkProgress, the strike force for the Center for American Progress, which both tweeted and posted the story, as well as calling for Justice Prosser's ouster.
The interesting thing here is that the Open Society and the Center for American Progress are the flagship organizations of the liberal superstructure, the outfits that call the shots, handle the funding, and coordinate efforts. They are also funded by Old Spooky himself, George Soros. The left rolled out their big units for this effort. Why? To wreck the career of a junior state Supreme Court justice? To take control of the Dairy State? Perhaps so, but I believe it was also in hopes of testing out the superstructure as a political delivery system in a relatively closed environment.
If that's the case, they'll need to reevaluate, because the effort has blown up in their faces. Take a closer look at the Prosser accusation, which fell apart as soon as a little basic reporting was carried out. Almost every point made in the story released by the Soros groups turned out to be false:
•Prosser was not inside the room, but standing in the doorway -- no minor point considering how matters developed.
•He had made a heat-of-the-moment remark about Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson after being put on the spot concerning an overdue decision. Prosser had agreed to delay the decision to avoid an appearance of undue haste, only to hear the chief justice announce another delay on no grounds whatsoever. This prompted Prosser to state that he had "lost confidence" in Abrahamson. (What was the decision, you ask? Why, the one dealing with Judge Sumi's interference with Governor Walker's budget. Funny how this all dovetails, ain't it?)
At which point Justice Bradley attacked Prosser, fists flailing -- not the other way around.
•Justice Prosser fended her off, perhaps grazing her neck in the process. Bradley started screaming that he was choking her. Another justice stated, "You were not choked."
This is quite a different scenario, with Justice Prosser coming out more as victim than perpetrator. No wonder the legacy media refused to touch it, instead choosing to await an official report. It seems that that Spooky George's money was wasted this time around. But that's the case with a lot of things he gets involved with -- consider Project Obama for another example.
The superstructure's debut as a political weapon has been less than impressive. It failed to overawe the Wisconsin state senate. It failed to halt Gov. Walker's bill. It failed to vote Justice Prosser out of office, and it has now failed to enmesh him in a faked criminal incident. All that remains is the recall efforts, and they will likely be an overall failure too.
So there will be no liberal Blitzkrieg coming out of the Wisconsin civil war. But these are early days, and this is the first effort to utilize this enormous and complex system. It remains pregnant with possibilities, with its millions of members and effectively infinite levels of funding. It is also the only thing that the liberals have left. We will encounter it again, perhaps in a more liberal-friendly environment in the Northeast or on the West coast.
Along with the first major defeat of the public-employee unions, Wisconsin may have given us a clear warning of an emerging threat from the left. Not a particularly impressive threat, as yet, but a threat all the same, and one that deserves closer attention than it has gotten.
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker. He is the author of Death by Liberalism, dismissed by Frank Rich as a "demented right wing screed."
4b)Obama's Class Warfare Harms America
By Steve McCann
Americans are once again being confronted with irresponsible demagoguery unleashed by the President of the United States. Mr. Obama, in a truly despicable effort to maintain his and his party's supremacy (which is the power of the purse), spared no rhetoric in his recent press conference to exploit class envy as a means of garnering votes.
Unfortunately this approach plays well among the less enlightened and Obama's left-wing base, in the thrall of class warfare. Enflaming passions and potential violence solely to keep the Democrats and their allies in power. The reality is these Obama talking points will not solve but will instead exacerbate the current economic woes the country is experiencing.
The wealth of Americans is an obsession with the Left -- even as many are themselves quite wealthy. The last time the IRS published any statistics on that matter was in 2004, when the economy was doing far better than it is today. At that time there were 2.7 million adults in the United States with a net worth (total value of all assets less debts and liabilities) in excess of $1.5 million for a total of $10.2 Trillion. The IRS reference can be found here; Data Table: All top wealth holders by size of net worth.
If the government were to decide that no one should have a net worth above $1.5 million and would confiscate all wealth above that level, then there would be a one-time windfall of $6.1 Trillion to the Treasury. As the total national debt is nearly $14.5 Trillion, this action would result in the reduction of the debt to $8.4Trillion.
The long term devastation to the economy would be unfathomable, as who would create jobs and wealth if they knew their assets would be seized above a certain point.
President Obama and his fellow-travelers know that this tactic of seizing wealth would be counterproductive -- but his class warfare rhetoric made for great sound bites on the nightly news. Additionally the many on the Left that have a substantial net worth would never willingly sacrifice their resources so easily, as wealth accumulation is second only to amassing political control.
Instead their argument turns to having the wealthy pay more income taxes every year as a major means of reducing the annual deficit and minimizing the amount of spending cuts necessary to rhetorically balance the budget. The implication being that if Washington could just get those evil high income earners to pay a little more in taxes all of the spending and deficit problems would be solved. But would they?
As a starting point lets us stipulate that the projected budget deficit for the current fiscal year is $1,665.0 Billion. Per the Obama Budget it will be $1,100.0 Billion next year. The IRS data for the following exercise is found as follows: Section: Tax Generated; subsection, Tax and size of Adjusted Gross Income (2008): Table 3.5
The tax year of 2008 was the last to date that the IRS has done this kind of analysis. In 2008 the highest marginal tax rate of 35% applied to all AGI above $357,700.00. In that year the total amount of AGI subject to the highest rate was $662.8 Billion. The government collected in taxes $218.0 Billion (35%).
Assuming no change in behavior and a general eagerness to pay more, and were Obama and the Democrats to raise taxes on the so-called rich then the potential increase in revenue would be as follows. If the highest rate of 35% were raised by a factor of 29% to 42%, the additional revenue would be $43.5 Billion, not much of a dent in the $1,665 Billion deficit. If the rate were raised by a factor of 50% to 52.5%, the additional revenue would be $108.9 Billion. Still nowhere near enough, so let's just tax it at a rate of 100% thus bringing in an additional $404.8 Billion. Unfortunately the country is still $1,260.0 Billion in the hole for the year.
Obviously there is a point at which the so-called rich would cease to have any incentive to earn above the highest tax threshold, particularly as the above exercise does not take into account state and local income taxes as well as a myriad of other "revenue enhancers."
From 1995 to 2008 the total tax revenue to the Federal Government has averaged 18.4% of GDP. The highest level in history was in 1944(World War II) when it hit 20.9%. Due to the recession and Obama's failed policies, in 2009 and 2010 that level sank to 14.9% and is projected to be only 14.4% in 2011.
Over the period 1995 to 2008 actual Federal Government spending averaged 20.9% of GDP, while in 2011 spending will account for 25.3%. The historical lesson: there is simply no way the Government will change the way the people pay their taxes short of outright confiscation. The dilemma is spending not taxation.
The Left will argue that the wealthy should pay more even if it only makes a slight impact on the deficit. Why, other than out of spite?
Lastly, the American economy is driven by consumer spending which represents nearly 70% of all economic activity. The top 5% of wage earners (above $159,619.00 in annual income) account for 37% of all consumer spending. Additionally they also pay 58.7% of all income tax revenue to Washington D.C. Among the reasons there has not been a typical recovery from recessions past is that the upper income spending has not recovered. Spending by this group is still down 32% from 2008 levels. This is in great part due to uncertainty with Obama and the Democrats in control.
This reluctance is well founded, as it is this income sector that is being targeted again for more taxes, potentially reducing their ability to spend and invest as well as start-up new small businesses, all of which are a major factor in the creation of jobs.
Obama and the Democrats, in league with the Unions and the radical Left, continue berating the so-called wealthy, their mantra the need to make the rich pay their fair share. Their diatribes do not offer a viable solution to the country's fiscal woes. It serves their purpose of dividing the people against each other to maintain their power base. Their actions and words are despicable and will only serve to dramatically reduce, over time, the American standard of living.
4c)COMMENTS ON THE CAPITAL MARKETS
I VOTED AGAINST IT BEFORE I VOTED FOR IT!:
President Obama must have had a revelation somewhere along the line on his way to
the Presidency for clearly when he was a Senator… for a rather short period of time as we recall; only a few months less than his time served in the Illinois legislature… he was a fiscal conservative if we are to believe some of the things he said when serving in the Senate. Concerning his position back in ’06 regarding the debt limit, which he is now openly and consistently in favour of raising, what he said then seems to be somewhat contradictory to what he is saying now.
Then he said: The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on on-going financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies…. The cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal Budget.
This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they havecounted upon…
Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities. Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all
Americans—a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about. If Washington
were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning toresponsible fiscal policies.
Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership
means that “the Buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad
choices onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem
and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
We cannot possibly agree with the President more. We do indeed have a debt problem here in the US, brought about by spending programs that are out of control and
must be brought under control. We agree that we are leaving these problems to our children and grandchildren unless we address these problems swiftly and with
almost recklessness. We agree with the President that the debt ceiling is a sign of “leadership failure” but we believe that the problem and failure is now his. As the junior Senator from Illinois, Barrack Hussein Obama was a bright young man intent, apparently, upon doing the right thing; as a President, it appears he’s forgotten everything he and we knew to be true. As the junior Senator from Illinois he knew that “The Buck stops here,” but as the President he knows only that “Bucks inflate here.”
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5)A Debt-Limit Breakout
Republicans should call Obama's bluff on tax increases.
The debt-limit talks in Washington are bogged down in the hedgerows, with some Republicans insisting on a balanced budget amendment that can't pass Congress and President Obama insisting on tax increases that Republicans oppose. What this debate needs is a breakout strategy—to wit, Republicans should answer Mr. Obama's tax call by accepting his business tax increases in return for a lower corporate tax rate.
We've long favored such a reform, and last year so did the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission and the White House economic advisory council headed by Paul Volcker. But the cause has now acquired no less a convert than Bill Clinton. Speaking Saturday at something called the Aspen Ideas Festival, the former President admitted that he had once raised tax rates on corporations.
"It made sense when I did it. It doesn't make sense anymore. We've got an uncompetitive rate," he said. "We tax at 35% of income, although we only take about 23%. So we should cut the rate to 25%, or whatever's competitive, and eliminate a lot of the deductions so that we still get a fair amount, and there's not so much variance in what the corporations pay."
We opposed Mr. Clinton's tax increases, not least because corporations don't pay taxes so much as they serve as a collecting agent. But on the rest of Mr. Clinton's riff, Milton Friedman and Robert Mundell couldn't have put it better, though perhaps they'd think that 25% is still too high.
The cause for a lower corporate tax rate has now acquired Bill Clinton as a convert.
.We'd prefer 15% ourselves, but Mr. Clinton is exactly right on the failure of the 35% rate (39% on average including the states) to capture that share of corporate income in government revenue. We wrote earlier this year about Whirlpool, which had an effective tax rate of zero due to its many write-offs. Everyone knows the notorious case of GE.
The average effective corporate rate varies by industry but is far less than the 35% rate, and the injustice is that some pay much less than others if they can afford lobbyists to write loopholes or they invest in politically correct purposes. Anyone not in thrall of class-war symbolism understands that the U.S. corporate tax code provides the worst of both worlds: It makes U.S. companies less competitive even as it is raises much less revenue than advertised. Mr. Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner have acknowledged this in the past, the President as recently as this year's State of the Union address.
As for the debt-limit politics, this is also a winner. Democrats and Republicans say they've agreed privately on sizable spending cuts over a 10-year budget window. No doubt some of those cuts are less real than others, and future Congresses could rewrite any enforcement provisions passed this year. But Republicans still have an incentive to set spending on a downward path, and Mr. Obama has an incentive to show he is no longer a hostage of Nancy Pelosi as he runs for re-election.
The political sticking point is Mr. Obama's desire for some Republican buy-in on raising revenues. His political left is still sore that he agreed to extend the Bush tax rates through 2012. Thus he's pounding Republicans to agree to eliminate certain business tax deductions that political advisers David Axelrod and David Plouffe have told him will be hard for Republicans to defend. Corporate jets. Carried interest for private equity. Oil and gas. Even LIFO accounting, which few understand but can be made to sound nefarious.
Whatever their individual merits, each of these would be a tax increase on business, and Republicans campaigned last year on not raising taxes. But the politics is different if they can offset these revenue raisers with lower tax rates. That would let Republicans honestly claim they didn't support a net tax increase, even as Mr. Obama could say he raised revenue.
Our own guess is that such a reform would raise far more money than the official scorers would predict, since it would lead to a more efficient allocation of capital and less tax evasion. This would also promote economic growth, breaking out of the austerity mentality driven by debt reduction. If Mr. Obama really is worried that lower federal spending will hurt the economy, then this tax reform is also his best growth policy.
In offering his grand bargain on Saturday, Mr. Clinton included the caveat of "how can they do that by August 2?" Mr. Geithner says that is the date when he can no longer finagle federal finances to escape a potential default on the debt, or must at least cut some federal spending, to avoid breaching the $14.3 trillion debt limit.
But where there's political self-interest there's always a way. Both sides could agree to a short-term debt-limit reprieve of a month or two with some spending cuts that everyone agrees on. That would give them more time to cut a larger deal that includes corporate tax reform.
Think about it. On the current path both sides are headed at best for a de minimis deal that makes everyone look bad, at worst for a major political crack-up. Perhaps Mr. Obama wants a crack-up to portray Republicans as extreme. But Republicans should at least call his bluff and answer his demands for fewer business tax deductions by saying yes—in return for lower tax rates.
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6)Bush Team Warns Perry About Criticism
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s political critiques of one of his predecessors, former Lone Star State Gov. and President George W. Bush, are coming back to haunt him as he contemplates seeking the Republican nomination for president himself. Members of Bush’s old team are warning Perry cool the anti-Bush rhetoric or they will give him the cold shoulder if he runs, according to The New York Times.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is "risking a guerrilla campaign against him by the former president’s inner circle," The New York Times reports. Indeed, a close Bush associate has a message for Perry, conveyed anonymously to the Times to avoid a confrontation with Perry: “If you’re really trying to be the nominee and want to go the distance, you don’t want the former president and his people working against you.”
Propelling the warning is Perry’s string of criticisms, questioning of some of Bush’s policies, challenging his credentials as a fiscal conservative, accusing him of going on “a big-government binge,” and even downplaying some of Bush’s accomplishments in Texas compared with his own, according to the Times.
Perry’s statements “exposed a long-simmering little known rivalry unknown outside the political fraternity and underscores the rightward drift of the Republican Party since Mr. Bush was president. More acutely, Mr. Perry’s criticism holds both potential peril and benefit should he campaign for president. Why? Because it would allow him to establish an identity distinct from Mr. Bush but by doing he would risk a guerrilla campaign against him by the former president’s inner circle,” says the Times.
Perry, whose aides say he will make a decision on whether to run within weeks, has been trying to cultivate potential fundraisers in forays throughout the country.
Perry’s criticisms of government spending, immigration, and education, have culled favor among conservatives, especially among tea party voters who blame the former president for spending and government growth, the Times reports.
But they have riled the Bush team. Another Bush associate, also speaking anonymously, told the Times: “He’s going to need all the help he can get from all the Republicans he can muster, so he should be prudent.”
Perry’s chief political strategist, David Carney, told the Times the two are friends who are similar in more ways than they are different however, 'Though they are in the same church, they are in different pews.'
Neither Bush nor Perry would consent to an interview for the story in the Times, which acknowledged the rivalry simmers more between their aides than between themselves.
Meanwhile, Perry spokesman Mark Miner told The Hill, Perry will decide within the next several weeks whether he will seek the GOP nomination for president.
"There is no specific timeline," The Hill quotes Miner as saying.
Recent polling suggests he could be a strong candidate, The Hill notes, citing a McClatchy-Marist poll last week ranking Perry a top choice of tea party voters.
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7)3 'air flotilla' activists landing in Israel to be deported
By YAAKOV LAPPIN
French, Belgian activists arrested and are in process of deportation; 5 activists believed to have gotten past security into the country; police deployed at B-G airport anticipating further W. Bank-bound demonstrators.
Three activists involved in the "aerial flotilla" to Ben-Gurion Airport have been arrested upon entry to Israel and are in the process of being deported. The activists are from France and Belgium.
Dozens of police officers on Wednesday were deployed to Ben-Gurion International Airport, in preparation for the arrival of further pro-Palestinian activists expected to be on board planes from New York and Moscow.
Earlier Wednesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu toured Ben Gurion International Airport along with Police Insp.-Gen. Yochanan Danino and Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch to discuss preparations for the arrival of hundreds of Gaza activists arriving from Europe starting Friday, Army Radio reported. Following the tour, the prime minister headed to Romania and Bulgaria.
Keeping the airport functioning as usual will be the most important goal for security officials as activists arrive, most of whom will likely be difficult to identify, Army Radio said.
One protester, speaking to Army Radio Wednesday, said that he and other protesters were planning on arriving at Ben Gurion Airport as tourists destined for the West Bank.
According to the activist, the difference between him and any other tourist visiting Israel is that he and other demonstrators will tell security officials that they plan on visiting Palestinian cities.
Netanyahu said of plans to stop the activists, "Every country has the right to prevent the entry of provocateurs and trouble-makers into its territory. That is how all countries behave and that is how Israel will act. We must prevent the disruption of normal life for Israeli citizens."
By Tuesday, Police had already completed preparations to halt a plan by some 700 pro-Palestinian activists who have purchased tickets to fly into Ben-Gurion Airport on Friday.
Police plans are based on the assumption that some activists seeking to embark on an ‘aerial flotilla’ might be able to land in Israel since their names are not on any security watch list, allowing them to evade preemptive flight bans.
The emphasis is on keeping Ben-Gurion Airport functioning normally, and preventing extremists from creating a provocative incident that could cause disruption,†Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Special patrol units will be at the airport from Friday to Sunday to provide assistance if needed.
The increased preparedness is due to go into effect from Friday and last through into the weekend, Rosenfeld added.
The activists, mostly European, are participating in an event that is supported by 40Palestinian non-governmental groups, called “Welcome Palestine.†They are hoping they will be able to get on their flight, land in Ben-Gurion Airport and explain to the Israeli customs officials that they have come to visit “Palestine.†If they are allowed to pass through customs, they plan to spend a week in the Palestinian territories engaging in a series of solidarity activities in support of Palestinian statehood.
If they are halted before getting on their flights or are deported once they have arrived, they hope that the spectacle of authorities dealing with 700 activists will publicize the difficulties Palestinians and their supporters face with regard to freedom of movement and access in and out of the West Bank. The organizers said that their actions are not connected to the Gaza flotilla or the naval blockade of Gaza.
In the past, Israel has denied entry to international activists that it believes are planning to create disturbances while they are here.
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