Now as you get old just suck it up and recognize your fellow citizens have concluded you have lived too long, taken advantage of the system for too long and no longer deserve respect that being gray historically brought. It is a new age of youthful rebellion and blame 'scaping.'
Of course, politicians can serve in Congress forever and become revered and wealthy elder statesmen (forgot about PC'ism, should have written statespersons.)
So if you don't like it, get thee to Wall Street and argue with the street gangs and good luck!
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Obama campaign ads should always display the AFLAC Duck as Obama ducks again as he has throughout this legislative career by voting present. He had a choice to make - Greens or jobs and he chose to defer.
About 20,000 well paying jobs postponed and our energy dependency remains as Iran becomes nuclear and could threaten Hormuz.
However, he demands Congress spend another $425 billion so he can buy more jobs and votes with tax payer funds but does not have the guts to vote on a program that would employ people in legitimate well paying jobs. What a wimp! (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Obama and Plouffe have some head scratching to do over Virginia results. The press and media dolts will downplay the significance because they must protect their anointed one but they are generally wrong because they are out of touch with what most Americans feel and think. (See 2 below.)
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Allen West has his head screwed on but is anyone listening or wants to listen because it so it would make them appear gutless if they ignored West's warnings. In fact, most in Congress, The State Department and Administration constantly display weakness when it comes to facing truths and challenges? (See 3 and 3a below.)
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I was sent this article by a disgruntled and frustrated friend and fellow memo reader and who made this comment about the article: "We really are a screwed up nation. The high school dropout rate in some urban cities is 60%, so millions of people can't even make change working at McDonalds. So obviously they could not read necessary blue prints to build or repair anything.
And, our education system has systematically dumbed down entire generations of young people.
Those that were smart enough to learn also were encouraged to go to college, and what did many of them take as a major? Certainly not math, physics, biology, economics, finance, accounting, business, nursing, etc. So we have millions of supposed educated college graduates who cannot find jobs because they have the wrong education and no practical skills as described in this article.
And YUP, it is the fault of the corporations and the Fat Cats in banking and Wall Street----yeah right!
In the meantime our businesses and corporations can't find "10 Million Skilled Workers", so what do they have to do. They take their jobs to China, India, Indonesia, wherever! And what is the country, for the most part, doing about it?
Not much apparently.
This is a perplexing situation, because unless there is broad realization nationally that we DO HAVE THIS problem, it can never be solved. Even where there are minor clusters of communities trying to do something about it-----the impact will be so small as to be practically non-existent.
So where are we? La de da------our collective heads in the sand, unaware, uninformed, don't care, not my problem, etc., etc.
And I do not see where the politicians can or are trying to do anything about it-----they spend most of their time and our money trying to get re-elected,IGNORING the deficit, ignoring fundamental education, ignoring finances and economics of the country because, as studies have shown, most have NO real knowledge about finance, economics, management, or anything else of importance. But most of them can TALK themselves into winning because the masses seem to believe anything politicians say.
It is all so overwhelming, sometimes I wonder why I even bother-----probably wasting my time and yours---DUH/HUH. "
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Implications of Dennis Ross' departure. Though Ross was very knowledgeable, I did not always agree with his thinking but he was an honest broker. (See 4 below.)
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Sent by a friend and fellow memo reader with these comments: "I don't know this guy 'Jack Wheeler'. I Googled him and found out he is a real person with many accolades but it's hard for me believe anyone can have the insight into world politics as he does. I plan to hang on to this for years (maybe) just to see how much comes true.
The following is as received. ... an article, with the authors approval, from the October 14,
2011 issue of To The Point news, by Dr. Jack Wheeler. He was an advisor to President Reagan, including the policy leading to the winning of the "cold war". His weekly newsletter is packed with geo-political news/articles by Dr. Jack and other noted authors regularly in the news!"(See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)U.S. (Obama) Delays Pipeline Decision
Administration to Explore Rerouting Keystone Project Amid Environmental Concerns.
By DEBORAH SOLOMON
WASHINGTON—The Obama administration said Thursday it would seek to reroute a portion of a proposed Canada-U.S. oil pipeline, postponing until after the 2012 election a decision on an issue that has divided the Democratic Party's environmental and union supporters.
While the Keystone XL pipeline could still be built in 2013 or later, environmentalists called the delay a clear victory. Industry and labor groups, which argue the pipeline would create thousands of jobs and allow the U.S. to increase its imports of oil from a friendly neighbor, issued swift denunciations.
The decision highlighted President Barack Obama's difficult choices on environmental issues as he heads into an election where he has little margin for error. Republicans and the oil industry say his policies are hindering economic growth, while enthusiasm for the president among environmentalists waned after he put off tighter curbs on smog-forming emissions.
Mr. Obama said a delay was needed to ensure environmental concerns were adequately addressed. "Because this permit decision could affect the health and safety of the American people as well as the environment, and because a number of concerns have been raised through a public process, we should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood," he said in a statement.
The decision could reshape the North American energy industry, given the project's importance for Canadian oil producers looking to the U.S. market and for refiners that have spent billions of dollars to handle the influx of heavy Alberta crude, one of the world's most promising sources of fuel. Canadian officials and oil-industry executives have recently hinted they would go elsewhere to sell their oil.
Terry O'Sullivan, general president of the Laborers' International Union of North America, said the move would "inflict a potentially fatal delay to a project that is not just a pipeline, but is a lifeline for thousands of desperate working men and women. The administration chose to support environmentalists over jobs—job-killers win, American workers lose."
"This is clearly about politics and keeping a radical constituency opposed to any and all oil and gas development in the president's camp for 2012," said Jack Gerard, director of the American Petroleum Institute.
Environmental groups praised the delay and called on the administration to reject the pipeline outright. "It doesn't make sense for America to be building infrastructure for dirty oil for the next five decades," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, a director with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
TransCanada Corp., the company which has applied for a permit to build the pipeline, said it believed the project would ultimately be approved. "If Keystone XL dies, Americans will still wake up the next morning and continue to import 10 million barrels of oil from repressive nations, without the benefit of thousands of jobs and long-term energy security," said Chief Executive Russ Girling.
The move is something of an about-face for the administration, which had said it would make a decision on the 1,700-mile pipeline by the end of the year. Just as it seemed headed toward green-lighting the project, a firestorm of protest emerged, with environmental groups and concerned citizens protesting at rallies and public hearings. On Sunday, thousands of protesters formed a human chain around the White House. The outcry surprised the White House, which hadn't expected the pipeline to become such a flashpoint, administration officials said.
On Thursday, State said it would seek an alternative route for a small portion of the pipeline that runs through an environmentally sensitive part of Nebraska known as the Sand Hills. That will require a new environmental review that will take until at least the first quarter of 2013, the department said.
Department officials said the decision was influenced by recent public hearings in Nebraska, where ranchers, farmers and others pleaded with the administration to avoid the Sand Hills area, which sits atop an aquifer supplying fresh water to Nebraska and other states.
The State Department had previously considered alternative routes to bypass the Sand Hills but concluded they were either economically or environmentally impractical. Ms. Jones said the new analysis would look only at alternative routes that bypass the Sand Hills but remain within Nebraska.
Canadian government spokesman Andrew MacDougall said the country was disappointed with the U.S. decision to delay approval but "we remain hopeful the project will be decided on its merits and eventually approved."
—Ben Lefebvre and Angel Gonzalez contributed to this article.
1a)Keystone Cop-Out
President Obama used to be fond of "shovel-ready projects." He's also demanding that Congress pass his jobs bill immediately because 9% unemployment is a crisis, and, by the way, he's for making the U.S. less reliant on energy from tyrants. So how about putting 20,000 Americans to work on a North American energy project that's as shovel-ready as they come? Sorry, Mr. Obama is voting present.
The $7 billion project is TransCanada's Keystone XL, a 1,700-mile underground pipeline that would deliver 830,000 barrels of heavy crude oil a day from Alberta to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. TransCanada filed an application to build the pipeline in September 2008 with the State Department, which must approve it because the pipeline would cross the 49th parallel. In April 2010 and again this August, State produced multivolume environmental impact statements that concluded the pipeline would have "no significant impacts" on the environment. That should have ended the matter.
But the President's environmentalist friends have decided to make Keystone a test of his green virtue. "We'll see if [Mr. Obama] is an oil guy or a people guy," eco-agitator Bill McKibben recently warned at an Occupy Wall Street event, and the Sierra Club has threatened that it won't "mobilize the environmental base" in 2012 if he approves the project. Various Hollywood worthies have marched in front of the White House in protest.
And, what a surprise, suddenly the government is finding new reasons to delay its decision. The State Department's inspector general announced Monday that he is ordering a special review to examine alleged irregularities in the drafting of the impact statements. Then yesterday the White House said it would postpone any decision in order to "undertake an in-depth assessment of potential alternative routes in Nebraska." Expect that assessment to arrive after November 2012.
The Administration is taking cover behind some not-in-my-neighborhood gripes by Nebraska politicians. But those politicians seem to have no problem with some 25,000 miles of pipeline that already crisscross the Ogallala Aquifer that is supposedly at the center of the Administration's concerns.
As for the claim that extracting bitumen from the Alberta tar sands is a carbon catastrophe, if the Keystone XL project doesn't go forward TransCanada will simply load the oil on railroad cars for trans-shipment from British Columbia to other countries, like China. Maybe there's an impact statement to be done on that carbon footprint.
We're guessing this decision to abdicate was really made by President Plouffe, as in David Plouffe, the White House political aide who seems to be running most of the executive branch these days. The Keystone cop-out couldn't be a clearer expression that this Administration puts its anticarbon obsessions—and Big Green campaign donors—above job creation and blue-collar construction workers. He's President of the 1%.
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2) Obama's Virginia Defeat Democrats were trounced in Tuesday's state legislature election, despite the president's heavy investment of time in the state.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSELLike
Of all the noise of this week's state election results, what mattered most for Election 2012 came out of Virginia. It was the sound of the air leaking out of the Plouffe plan.
That would be David Plouffe, President Obama's former campaign manager and current senior strategist, who is focused today on how to cobble together 270 electoral votes for re-election. That's proving tough, what with the economy hurting Mr. Obama in states like Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania that he won in 2008. The White House's response has been to pin its hopes on a more roundabout path to electoral victory, one based on the Southern and Western states Mr. Obama also claimed in 2008.
States like Virginia. Mr. Obama was the first Democrat to win Virginia since 1964; he beat John McCain by seven percentage points; and he did so on the strength of his appeal to Northern Virginia's many white-collar independents. Along with victories in North Carolina, Colorado and Nevada, the Obama Old Dominion win in 2008 inspired a flurry of stories about how Democrats had forever altered the political map.
So the White House is pouring resources into what Tim Kaine, the state's former Democratic governor, now pridefully refers to as Democrats' "New Dominion." The Obama campaign has held some 1,600 events in the state in the last half-year alone. Only last month Mr. Obama hopped a three-day bus trip through Virginia and North Carolina. Obama officials keep flocking to the state, and Tuesday's election was to offer the first indication of how these efforts are succeeding.
Let's just say the New Dominion is looking an awful lot like the Old Dominion. If anything, more so.
Virginia Republicans added seven new seats to their majority in the House of Delegates, giving them two-thirds of that chamber's votes—the party's largest margin in history. The GOP also took over the Virginia Senate in results that were especially notable, given that Virginia Democrats this spring crafted an aggressive redistricting plan that had only one aim: providing a firewall against a Republican takeover of that chamber. Even that extreme gerrymander didn't work.
Every Republican incumbent—52 in the House, 15 in the Senate—won. The state GOP is looking at unified control over government for only the second time since the Civil War. This is after winning all three top statewide offices—including the election of Gov. Bob McDonnell—in 2009, and picking off three U.S. House Democrats in last year's midterms.
Topline figures aside, what ought to really concern the White House was the nature of the campaign, and the breakout of Tuesday's election data. Mr. Obama may have big plans for Virginia, but the question is increasingly: him and what army?
Elected state Democrats—who form the backbone of grass-roots movements—couldn't distance themselves far enough from Mr. Obama in this race. Most refused to mention the president, to defend his policies, or to appear with him. The more Republicans sought to nationalize the Virginia campaign, the more Democrats stressed local issues.
State House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong felt compelled to run an ad protesting that it was a "stretch" for his GOP opponent to "compare me to Barack Obama." After all, he was "pro-life, pro-gun and I always put Virginia first." (Mr. Armstrong lost on Tuesday.)
Virginia Democrats were happy to identify with one top official: Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who is providing a lesson in the benefits of smart GOP governance in battleground states. Criticized as being too socially conservative for Virginia when he was elected in 2009, Mr. McDonnell has won over voters by focusing on the economy and jobs. His approval ratings are in the 60s, and he helped raise some $5 million for local candidates. He's popular enough that Democrats took to including pictures of him in their campaign literature, and bragging that they'd worked with him.
Mr. McDonnell has been particularly adept at connecting with the independent, white-collar voters Mr. Obama used to win Virginia in 2008. That crowd lives in North Virginia's booming exurb counties of Prince William and Loudoun, and presidential races hinge on their votes. Mr. Obama's 2008 victory in Virginia rested on his significant wins in both Loudoun (8%) and Prince Williams (16%).
Yet Tuesday's results showed the extent to which that support has reversed. Loudoun in particular proved an unmitigated rout for Democrats. Republicans won or held three of four of the county's Senate seats. It swept all seven of the county's House seats. It won all nine slots on the county's Board of Supervisors, and pretty much every other county office. In Prince William, the story was much the same. This is what happens when a recent Quinnipiac poll shows Mr. Obama's approval rating among Virginia independents at 29%.
Democrats are now arguing that turnout (about 30%) was too low to prove anything, but then again, the particularly low Democratic turnout suggests that, on top of everything else, the White House really does face an enthusiasm gap. It's still got time to try to remedy that problem, and some other Virginia fundamentals. But going by Tuesday's results, Mr. Plouffe might need to start considering Electoral Plan C.
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3)Allen West: US Must 'Absolutely' Support Israel in Iran Attack
By Jim Meyers and Kathleen Walter
Rep. Allen West tells Newsmax that the cuts in Pentagon spending that would be required if the congressional supercommittee fails to reach a compromise would “gut” the U.S. military and leave Americans unable to protect and defend themselves.
The Florida Republican also warns that “the clock is ticking very fast” toward Iran becoming a nuclear-armed threat, and says the United States should “absolutely” support the Israelis if they launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
West was first elected in 2010 and is a member of the Tea Party Caucus. He is also an Army veteran who served for more than 20 years, with postings in several combat zones, and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
If the supercommittee charged with devising deep cuts in the nation’s budget deficit does not reach an agreement this month, the Pentagon would automatically be required to cut at least $500 billion from its budget in the coming years. In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, West was asked what would be the consequences of those cuts.
“The Army, which is today at 569,000, would go down to 426,000,” he says.
“The Marine Corps, which is at 202,000, would go down to 145,000. Navy ships, which are 288, would go down to 238. Air Force fighters, which are 1,990, would go down to 1,512.
“Basically you’re gutting our military. It becomes hollow, especially at a time when we find out from the [International Atomic Energy Agency] report that we have the number one threat to peace and stability in the world, Iran, getting close to having a militarized nuclear device.”
If those cuts are implemented, “you will not be able to take care of United States’ national security. We will not be able to contend with the various contingencies we have,” West warns.
“We are talking about pulling out all troops from Iraq. Iran has got a green light now. What does that mean in terms of our being able to reinsert ourselves and also support Israel in case they decide to take action against those nuclear facilities?”
Asked if the U.S. would be able to “adequately protect and defend ourselves” with those levels of military cuts, West stated: “No, we would not be able to.”
Discussing recent reports asserting that the U.S. is preparing for strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, West tells Newsmax: “I think you have to understand in that part of the world the only thing they recognize is strength.
“This is a Chamberlain-Churchill moment for the United States of America. You cannot compromise with and appease a dictator, a despot, a theocrat, and an autocrat, and that’s exactly what you have in Iran. And we’re giving them so many signals to say they’ve got a green light.
“Sanctions are going to work when you have people who care about the standard of living of their people, but in Iran they don’t care about that standard of living. And furthermore, the mutually assured destruction theory, the MAD theory that we had with the Soviet Union, that’s out the window now with Iran.”
West was asked how much longer the U.S. can afford to wait before striking Iran.
“I think that the clock is ticking very fast right now,” he responds.
“I believe when you have a complete reduction of all forces in Iraq by 31 December, that is really going to hasten Iran going toward that device. And it also puts a constraint on Israel because now you have to be concerned about overflight and aerial refueling.
“When I was over in Israel in August we had a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and one of his concerns was not having a credible U.S. force in Iraq and the Middle East that would keep Iran at bay, and we’re about to have that happen.”
Asked if the United States should act before the year’s end, West says: “I think we should strike when we have the right kind of conditions. I don’t want to tip anyone’s hand.”
He was also asked if the United States should support the Israelis if they strike Iran.
“Absolutely,” he declares. “And I think the greatest concern is not so much about logistical support but also the material support.
“And then what happens if Israel does strike, because you’ve got 50,000 rockets and missiles. Hezbollah has completely rearmed and refitted. All these rockets and missiles are facing south to Israel. Every single city can be struck. Hamas is just as strong as ever. The situation in Egypt is getting terrible.
“And the worst thing is that there are 30,000 shoulder-fired missiles that are missing from Libya, and I just cringe to think where they could end up.”
Turning to the American economy, West asserts that President Obama “has to understand that his economic policies have failed. We’ve gone from $10.6 trillion in debt when he took over to almost $15 trillion.
“This $447 billion stimulus package that he’s proposing is just going to be another failure. It was a failure with the first trillion-dollar stimulus package.”
West adds that as president Obama has “unequivocally” been a failure.
Some in Congress have been calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to resign over the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal. West agrees.
“Yes, he has to resign. And if the president does not ask for Eric Holder to resign, then I think that he’s complicit and is very rewarding of that type of behavior from our attorney general.”
Referring to the clamor over accusations from several women of inappropriate sexual behavior by Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, West was asked if Cain would be receiving the same level of scrutiny from the media if he were white.
“That does come into play in this somewhat,” West says.
“There are many parallels to what happened to Justice Clarence Thomas. There’s no doubt about it that when you are a black conservative you are very threatening to the liberal progressive establishment. I ran into that myself.”
West is the number one Republican congressman that the Democratic National Committee has targeted for defeat.
“It’s an incredible badge of honor,” West says.
“The fact that a person who has never been in politics in their life” is the “number one target, that means that our message is very effective.”
3a)If Iran Gets the Bomb
The world immediately becomes a far more dangerous place..
The International Atomic Energy Agency this week released its most detailed assessment to date about Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, and if "Paranormal Activity 3" wasn't enough to keep you awake at night, the report's 14-page annex detailing the state of Iran's weapons work should do the trick. It lays to rest the fantasies that an Iranian bomb is many years off, or that the intelligence is riddled with holes and doubts, or that the regime's intentions can't be guessed by their activities.
So much, then, for the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which asserted "with high confidence" that Iran had abandoned its nuclear-weapons work in 2003 and ended any chance that the Bush Administration would take action against Iran. So much, too, for the Obama Administration's attempts to move Iran away from its nuclear course, first with diplomatic offers and then with sanctions and covert operations.
The serious choice now before the Administration is between military strikes and more of the same. As the IAEA report makes painfully clear, more of the same means a nuclear Iran, possibly within a year.
It's time, then, to consider carefully what that choice means for the United States. In the run-up to the war in Iraq, we wrote that "the law of unintended consequences hasn't been repealed," and that "no war ever goes precisely as planned." That was obviously true of a boots-on-the-ground invasion, but it would also be true of an aerial campaign to demolish or substantially degrade Iran's nuclear facilities.
Planes could be shot down and airmen taken prisoner. Iran could close the Straits of Hormuz, sending energy prices upward. It could conduct a campaign of terror throughout the world, or attack shipping in the Persian Gulf, or fire missiles against U.S. military installations in the region, or spark a war with Israel or another insurgency in Iraq. These are among the contingencies that military planners would have to anticipate, though Iranian leaders would also have to think twice before responding to a strike with attacks that could mean further escalation.
Yet these risks need to be weighed against the consequences of a nuclear Iran. This is a regime that took 52 American diplomats hostage and dared the Carter Administration to do something about it. It used its surrogates in Beirut to kill 258 American diplomats and Marines in 1983. The FBI believes it was behind the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. airmen. It supplied IEDs to anti-American militias in Iraq, killing hundreds of U.S. soldiers. And only last month, the Obama Administration accused Iran of seeking to blow up the Saudi ambassador in a Washington, D.C., restaurant.
These acts were perpetrated by Tehran without a nuclear umbrella. What would Iran's behavior look like if it had one?
Advocates of a "containment" strategy toward a nuclear Iran argue that its behavior would differ little from what it is today. By this logic, the U.S. and its allies would warn Iran that it would face nuclear annihilation if it crossed certain red lines, such as passing a bomb to terrorists, and Iran wouldn't dare breach them.
But those red lines would be hard to credit once the U.S. squandered its credibility by allowing Iran to go nuclear after spending a decade warning that such an outcome was "unacceptable." Would the U.S. really risk nuclear war with a fanatical regime for the sake of, say, Bahrain, or even Israel? We doubt it, and so would every power in the region.
One certain result would thus be a nuclear proliferation spiral in the Middle East, in which Saudi Arabia, Turkey and probably Egypt would acquire nuclear arsenals of their own. That would be an odd outcome for an Administration that has made nuclear arms control a cornerstone of its foreign policy.
Then again, not every country in the region would have the will or wherewithal to stand up to Iran. Some could no doubt be bullied or induced to cooperate with it, especially as the U.S. presence in the region diminishes after withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. Those Iranian neighbors could fall into its orbit, thereby extending Tehran's strategic reach from Kabul to Beirut.
Containment advocates also assert that Iran would never use its nuclear weapons, since it would invite devastating reprisals. But the power of nuclear weapons lies in the fact of their possession even if they are never used. Iran could use ambiguous threats or work through proxies to both provoke and deter its adversaries in the region, including the U.S. Iran's prestige would also be immensely bolstered, both at home and abroad, by developing nuclear weapons in the teeth of international opposition.
It is perilous, in any case, to assume that Iran is a "normal" regime that wouldn't dare use nuclear weapons. Iran's regime was born in revolutionary religious fervor and routinely vows to annihilate Israel and its "Great Satan" protector, the U.S. Iran is also a regime shaped by a messianic cult of martyrdom, one that sent thousands of children to clear mine fields during the Iran-Iraq war. Sometimes such governments mean what they say even if the rest of the world won't believe it. The Nazis did.
In the case of the assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador, one plausible explanation is that the strike was ordered by a faction within the regime trying to undermine its internal rivals. What does that say about the unity of command needed to secure a nuclear arsenal?
Another argument for containment is that the Iranian regime is destined to collapse and so we can afford to wait it out. But tyrannical regimes with a fanatical will to power have a way of holding on against the odds: Look at the Kim dynasty in North Korea. Nuclear weapons would not save the mullahs from an internal uprising in the Libyan mold, though it's worth noting that Gadhafi would still be in power had he not abandoned his nuclear programs. It's also worth wondering what a regime faced with such an uprising would do with its nuclear weapons if it believed it was on the verge of collapse.
All of this adds up to far more dangerous world—in which Iran becomes a regional hegemon, Israel faces a threat to its very existence, the Middle East embarks on a nuclear arms race, America's freedom of action is curtailed, and the dangers of a nuclear exchange rise to levels above what they were even during the early Cold War.
The question for the world, and especially for the Obama Administration, is whether those dire consequences are worse than the risks of a pre-emptive strike. We think we know what the Israelis will decide, especially if they conclude that President Obama stays on his current course.
Opponents of a pre-emptive strike say it would do no more than delay Iran's programs by a few years. But something similar was said after Israel's strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, without which the U.S. could never have stood up to Saddam after his invasion of Kuwait. In life as in politics, nothing is forever. But a strike that sets Iran's nuclear programs back by several years at least offers the opportunity for Iran's democratic forces to topple the regime without risking a wider conflagration.
No U.S. President could undertake a strike on Iran except as a last resort, and Mr. Obama can fairly say that he has given every resort short of war an honest try. At the same time, no U.S. President should leave his successor with the catastrophe that would be a nuclear Iran. A nuclear Iran on Mr. Obama's watch would be fatal to more than his legacy.
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4)MORRIS: Wanted: 10 million skilled workers
Nonpartisan campaign hopes to prepare next generation of nation builders
Our nation is facing a perplexing dichotomy today. Millions of Americans can’t find jobs - some have even given up looking - yet employers are saying they can’t find the skilled workers they need to fill critical positions.
To some degree, our current unemployment problem is cyclical. To a considerable extent, however, I believe it is structural. This mismatch between abilities and available jobs is a clear sign that yesterday’s skills don’t meet the requirements of today’s workplaces.
From the crews erecting the new World Trade Center in New York City to hospital technicians and aircraft mechanics, America relies on its skilled workers to provide essential services.
In our business, we couldn’t keep electricity flowing to our 5.3 million customers without skilled workers such as line mechanics and power plant operators. When a power plant needs maintenance, we call upon highly skilled individuals such as electricians, pipefitters, boilermakers and dozens of critical disciplines.
Particularly problematic is the fact that many of our nation’s skilled workers are members of the baby boom generation and are rapidly approaching retirement; some have retired already. According to a recent survey by Manpower, skilled trades rank No. 1 in the nation for “difficulty of filling jobs due to the lack of talent.”
That’s why American Electric Power wholeheartedly supports a national campaign to encourage 1 million Americans to sign a pledge and take action in their local communities to support training opportunities for the next generation of skilled workers.
The Center for America’s “10 By 20 Pledge for America Campaign” has a long-range goal of inspiring efforts in communities across America to train 10 million skilled workers in the United States by 2020. It is a nonpartisan, nonpolitical campaign to raise awareness and generate grass-roots support for training skilled workers through education and collaborations between business and labor.
A number of years ago, our company recognized that skilled workers in the baby boom generation were nearing retirement age and there would have to be a concerted effort to replace them. We’re involved in a number of initiatives to develop the next generation of skilled workers, including partnerships with career centers, two-year and four-year colleges, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the building-trade unions. We are also active participants in the Center for Energy Workforce Development. Obviously, though, our nation will need many more skilled workers than just the ones essential for the electric utility business.
We need more collaboration between technical schools, colleges and businesses. We need high-school guidance counselors to tell students about the opportunities these types of positions provide. We need friends and family members to mention skilled occupations when someone is trying to decide on a career - or perhaps transition into a second career.
A shortage of skilled workers in the future could easily cause unthinkable delays and bottlenecks in American commerce. I hope millions of Americans will take the 10 By 20 Pledge and support this vitally needed effort to engage in training a brand new generation of skilled workers.
Michael G. Morris is chief executive officer of American Electric Power.
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4)FW: The Departure Of Dennis Ross
The announcement that Dennis Ross is leaving his post creates a serious problem for the Obama administration.
Ross has spent decades working on the “peace process” and knew almost every influential Israeli and Palestinian official. He also knew almost every influential American Jewish leader.
The former pattern of acquaintances has not enabled Ross to get anywhere in the Middle East due mostly to errors made by President Obama and his initial Middle East envoy George Mitchell. Once they posited that a total Israeli construction freeze, including in Jerusalem, was a necessary precondition for negotiations, the possibility of talks was gone. The Palestinians could henceforth accept no less, but no Israeli leader could offer such a freeze.
There have been many other errors, and both Israeli and Palestinian leaders have been saying off the record for about two years that they did not understand what the White House was up to. The good personal relations that President Bush maintained with top Israeli and Palestinian officials were lost. And it seems clear now that there will be no progress in the “peace process” next year– a year in which there will be an American election, very likely an Israeli election, and even possibly a Palestinian election (though history suggests betting against that one).
But with the diplomacy frozen, Ross’s departure is not a diplomatic problem for the White House; it is instead a problem for the Obama re-election campaign. For Ross was the only official in whom most American Jewish leaders had confidence. As most of them are Democrats who have long accepted Ross’s faith in the “peace process,” they viewed his role as the assurance that a steady, experienced, pro-Israel hand was on or near the tiller.
When the White House did something that clearly harmed U.S.-Israel relations (such as the recent Sarkozy-Obama exchange on how difficult it is to deal with Prime Minister Netanyahu, where Sarkozy called Netanyahu a liar and Obama appeared to agree), or made foolish demands of Israel (such as the 100% construction freeze), and when the tone of the relationship clearly became far worse than it had been under Clinton or Bush,
Jewish leaders comforted themselves that Dennis was still there. He was the person to whom they reached out, or who reached out to them and comforted them; he explained that things were not so bad really and that the President really cared about all this and had the warmest concern about Israel.
No one else in this administration can now fill that role, as the President enters an election year with a powerful need to maintain the 78% support he had last time in the Jewish community. Thus the political problem. While as noted Ross’s departure does not in itself create a diplomatic problem, it does highlight once again the degree to which this administration has mismanaged affairs in the region.
It has lost the confidence of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and more broadly of Arab leaders, all of whom believe that American influence in the region is declining. It has presided over three years in which Israelis and Palestinians have not even been sitting together at the table, which would have calmed nerves even if it produced little or no progress.
And it does not seem to know where to go next. The dates the Quartet has suggested for the Israelis and Palestinians to move forward–territorial proposals in January, and a final agreement by the end of 2012–seem designed to get everyone through the Christmas/New Year’s holidays and the round of 2012 elections. I don’t know why Mr. Ross is leaving and leaving now, but with the diplomatic situation that grim, who can blame him? And who can blame him if he has tired of being the facade of wonderful Obama-Israel relations behind which the actual political and diplomatic relationship steadily became colder and more distant.
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5)The To The Point
By Dr. Jack Wheeler:
I've been asked by friends of a particular candidate to provide him with a private briefing on the most critical foreign policy issues America faces. What follows is not the usual HFR but a condensed summary of that briefing, which contains much of my Map of the Future talk at Rendezvous XI last weekend.
Russia. Putin is an ersatz macho-man, all hat and no karovi. Russia's navy is made of rust. Russia's ill-trained army of drunkards couldn't conquer Romania. Russian male life expectancy is lower than that of Bangladesh. Russia is a mafiacracy with a doomed economy dependent on oil & gas exports that fracking in Europe & the US will make uncompetitive. Do svidanya.
China. No wives, no water, no banks - and a hyper-dangerous military.
Much of China is uninhabited - deserts, mountains, and wastelands.
Habitable China is about the size of the US east of the Mississippi, with over a billion people squeezed into it. Northern China is turning into a waterless dust bowl. Scores of millions of Chinese men will never get married due to the Chicom's idiotic one-child policy and resultant mass female infanticide.
100 million bachelors are explosively dangerous. Chinese state banks are insolvent after going on a post-2008 loan binge with debt and credit in China now (according to the IMF) above 200% of GDP. A sharp economic contraction (increasingly likely) plus all those angry unmarried men equals war, the history-honored scapegoat diversion of tyrants.
The obvious Chicom choice for war would be Taiwan. But the Formosa Strait is 100 miles wide and China has no amphibious capacity. Taiwan is on the northern rim of the South China Sea, rapidly becoming one of the most jeopardous flash points in the world. Bordered by Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, and China, over 50% by value of the world's shipping traverses it - and China claims all of it, the entire South China Sea, as its own territorial waters.
This cannot stand. China must be publicly informed by the next president that the South China Sea is international waters, period, there will be no discussion or negotiation. What is to be negotiated is the cooperative exploitation of what resources, such as oil, it may contain. No amount of Chicom bullying and saber-rattling will do any good. Every other country on the sea will join the US in this - and so will India and Japan.
Further, the Chicoms need to grasp that any aggression of theirs in the South China Sea will be naval only, and thus does nothing to occupy all their angry young bachelors. They need to go some place, a place with lots of water and lots of room for them, a place where the women prefer them to the local men who are drunks and beat up their wives, ideally a place once belonging to China but stolen by a foreign aggressor - so to get it back would give them a mission. Maybe even a wife.
There is such a place. It's called Siberia - specifically what China called its Maritime Provinces and Russia, after it seized them in 1860, calls the Russian Far East.
It's only a matter of time, at most a decade or two, before Beijing converts most all of eastern Siberia into Chinese Siberia. There is simply no way a dying Russia can hold on to it. Might as well divert the Chicoms toward it and away from Taiwan and the South China Sea.
North Korea. The Norks have no nukes. The half-kiloton yield in their tests means they failed to make weapons-grade plutonium. So they are no threat to us. They are a threat to South Korea with 11,000 artillery tubes aimed at the 17 million people of Greater Seoul. There is no need for American soldiers to be hostages to this. South Korea is a rich country with a powerful military capable of taking care of itself. We do not need to be there any longer.
India. The world's largest democracy is prickly, but the only country in Asia capable of standing up to China. The Chicoms are building naval bases in India's Indian Ocean neighbors such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Burma, which they call their "String of Pearls" around India's neck. India is countering with a growing alliance with China's ancient neighbor enemy, Vietnam.
The next president should build on President Bush's initiative for military and economic ties between the US and India. That could include a joint India-US naval base in Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam on the South China Sea. The Vietnamese would welcome us. Among nations, there are no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.
The Great Game of the 19th century was between the Russian and British Empires colliding in Asia. The 21st century players of this game are China and India. It's in our interests to be on India's side.
Pakistan/Afghanistan. Both are make-believe countries with no legitimate rationale for sovereignty. The key problem in both is Pakistan's "government within a government" spy agency, the ISI - Inter-Services Intelligence. It is radical hate-America jihadi Islamist. It created and is in the heroin business with the Taliban.
The first necessary condition towards any solution in this region is its dismantlement.
The other key problem is our State Department's anaphylactic allergy to regime and border changes. The best solution for Afghanistan would be for it to cease to exist as presently constituted. Actually, the same for Pakistan.
The Baluchis of southern Afghanistan and southwest Pakistan want their own Baluchistan (they have a marvelous harbor and the biggest gold deposits in the world according to BHP Biliton). They'd be joined by the Baluchis of southeast Iran and most likely by the Sindhis of adjoining Sind in southern Pakistan with the big city of Karachi.
The Tajiks of northern Afghanistan do not want their lives run by Pushtuns. They'd much rather secede and join Tajikistan - which wants our help to stabilize and protect it from Russia. The Pushtuns straddle the Af-Pak border. They dream of being united in a separate Pushtunistan. Pakistan's ruling group, the Punjabis, would retain the Punjab.
But basically, as with the Koreas, this no longer should be our problem to solve. Af-Pak should be India's problem to solve - Pak nukes, after all, are aimed at India, not us. There is no real nation to build in Afghanistan, and our troops have no purpose dying for it.
Terrorist threats are the business of the CIA and spec-ops teams, not the Marines or Army.
Again, we need to ally with India and assist them in what is their problem, not ours, to solve.
Iran. This week we learned that Iran's government planned an act of war against us in our own capital. It is hard to overestimate the number of problems in the world that would be solved with this government gone. And that's the solution: regime change. Apply a straightforward Reagan Doctrine strategy to overthrow Iran's mullah regime by sponsoring - with money and weapons - insurrections throughout the country.
Of Iran's 78 million, over 20 million are ethnic Azeri - almost three times the number of Azeris in Azerbaijan next door, whom they would love to join in a Greater Azerbaijan. There are at least eight million Kurds, who would fight tooth and nail against their Tehran oppressors if we gave them support. There are three million Ahwazi Arabs who populate Iran's oil patch, Kuhzestan, across the border from southern Iraq.
And of course there are the Persians themselves, some 33 million, whose mass street protests have been so brutally suppressed (and which the current president did not lift a finger or say a word to support).
A president determined to effect regime change in Iran would succeed quickly. The world's main state sponsor of Islamic terrorism would be no more. Iraq would be free to flourish, Syria would be quickly liberated, the threat to the Saudi and Gulf oil fields would be removed, and of course, Iran's nuclear program would be destroyed in the process (Israeli spec-ops would see to that).
It's a long list of positives and few if any negatives. All it needs is a president with the courage of Ronald Reagan.
Israel. The pre-1967 demarcations our current president demands Israel return to were not borders - they were cease-fire lines where Israel was able to stop the Arab invasions after declaring its independence in 1948. The Six-Day War recaptured Israel's legitimate territory, and that territory, including Golan and Judea-Samaria (the so-called "West
Bank") should remain so.
The Palestinians need to be told to STFU, that they no longer will be coddled and treated like spoiled children. They will recognize the state of Israel as legitimate and Jewish, or they can move to the Sinai, where Egypt will give them a Palestinian State since the Egyptians love Palestinians so much (the dirty secret is that the rest of the Arab world despises Palestinians and calls them rafida, Arabic for the N-word). Arabs and Euroweenies who object can shove their Nazi Anti-Semitism up their noses.
That's the way a pro-American pro-Israel president would deal with Israel and the Arabs. Then there's Turkey.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (air-doh-wan) is an Islamist megalomaniac fantasizing about recreating the Ottoman Caliphate. He is constantly threatening Israel, pretending his high school navy is a match for Israel's NFL navy. Yet he has gutted the Turkish officer corps and filled it with incompetent stooges.
Erdogan needs a US president to explain to him that any duke-out between Turkey and Israel will result in his total humiliation, causing his overthrow and Turkey's expulsion from NATO.
Islam. In addition to the above re: Israel and Iran, the next president should make a clear and public distinction between Islam the religion and Islamism the political ideology masquerading as a religion. That Islamism will no longer be accorded the respect due an actual religion but treated with the contempt due any fascist ideology such as Communism or Nazism.
The next president should draw a distinct line between all variants of Islamism, such as Wahhabis, Deobandis, Khomeini Shias, and other forms of Jihadi and Sharia Islam, with peaceful and tolerant forms of Islam such as practiced by Sufis and Ismailis. It is with the latter that the future of Islam lies.
And for any Moslem in the US who agitates for Sharia law, he is welcome to do so - in a country that practices it, not in America. As for Islamic terrorism, its practitioners should receive a drone strike -a policy of the current president that should be continued.
The current president has, however, utterly failed to champion the rights and religious freedom of Christians in the Moslem world. A truly American foreign policy would do so.
Europe. It's Old Europe, now known as the Eurozone, serving as an object lesson of the scam of the welfare state versus New Europe, the liberated former colonies of the Soviet Union who learned the hard way the evils of socialism and the virtues of capitalism.
A new president would focus attention on the Baltics, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Croatia, and Slovenia. And he would politely educate the lands of Old Europe on welfare state socialism as a religion of envy. Ireland is already figuring this out and is recovering thereby.
Mexico. As Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty significantly helped bring freedom to Soviet Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the next president could institute a Radio Free Mexico (including satellite television and web sites) teaching free market and small business economics to Mexicans.
Mexico is the land of crony corrupt corporate fascist capitalism. As a result, most Mexicans live in medieval poverty while the richest man in the world is a Mexican - Carlos Slim - whose wealth was gained with state-protected monopolies. A true free market economy would enable Mexicans to become prosperous in their own country.
The only real solution to the US illegal alien problem is for those aliens to want to stay in or go back to their own country where they are free to prosper.
In the meantime, the next president can use the National Guard, seriously armed, to secure our borders. And if drone strikes are so good at killing terrorists, they should be equally good at killing leaders of the Mexican drug cartels.
America and the World. The next president's foreign policy should be based on the opposite of the current president.
The current president is embarrassed to be an American. The next president should be bursting with pride to be an American. The current president has a compulsion to apologize for America, a compulsion to appease those who envy America and her historically unparalleled success. The next president should feel America has nothing whatever to apologize for, and could not care less about those who envy her.
The next president, as opposed to the current one, should have no qualms in laughing at the lunacy of Warmism, the theory of human CO2 production causing global doom. Warmism is the Fascist Left's replacement for Marxism as a rationale for their seizure of power over our lives.
CO2 is a trace greenhouse gas (95% of the world's atmospheric greenhouse gases is water vapor), and our human production is a trace of that. One tenth of one percent of greenhouse gases are made by man.
Humans do not cause global warming, period.
Explaining and rejecting this removes the obstacles to the world's most game-changing technology today - hydraulic fracturing or fracking of shale gas and shale oil deposits. Once the political shackles on this technology are removed, America will not only be fully energy independent, but a major energy exporter to the world. The crony capitalist scam of "renewable energy" will be dead -no more Solyndras, wind farm boondoggles, and ethanol subsidies.
Oh, Russia's energy stranglehold on Europe will disappear and Israel will be an energy exporter. Exposing the Fascist Left's hoax of Warmism and fully utilizing fracking technology will enable America and much of the world to live in an era of cheap and abundant energy - providing the material foundation for an ever-growing widespread prosperity.
Lastly, the next president needs to explain that America really does need to be the world's policeman. As America apologizes and retreats from the world, the wolves emerge from the forest, from China to Iran.
Only America can keep the world's wolves at bay.
We do not need to nation-build. We do not need our soldiers in Afghanistan. We do not need our soldiers in South Korea. We do not need our soldiers in Europe - Russian tanks (however many can still
run) are not going to charge through the Fulda Gap. Once we effect regime change in Iran, we will not need our soldiers in Iraq.
We do need a strong, well-equipped and trained military, an army, an air force, and coast guard. But what we need most of all is an immensely strong navy, along with special forces - Marines, Rangers, SEALs, Delta, et al. Without that, the world's wolf packs run wild and unchecked.
The American Economy and Foreign Policy. A strong America obviously requires a strong and flourishing economy. This can only be achieved by getting the government out of the way of it.
This cannot be done by a smooth-talking sophist who believes in Warmism (thus renewable energy crony capitalist scams), and whose health care program served as the model for the abomination of Obamacare.
This cannot be done by a Johnny One Note who can only talk about his tax reform plan that will take years to implement (if ever), and thus will do absolutely nothing to immediately revive the economy and create massive job growth.
This cannot be done by anyone pretending his business experience can be applied to running a government. Governments and their bureaucracies are the opposite of a for-profit business and cannot be run on business principles. Governments, the federal government in particular, can only be run on Constitutional principles, which means eliminating all federal activities, programs, agencies, and departments not enumeratedly authorized by the Constitution. (Not all at once but in an orderly manner - Rome wasn't torn down in a day.)
This can be done only by someone with successful executive government experience who is committed to those Constitutional restrictions, most particularly those embodied in the 10th Amendment.
I wish that person well in the debate next Tuesday and in the months of campaigning to come. The 2012 GOP nomination campaign will be a test of endurance. It will not and mathematically cannot be won quickly.
30 states hold their GOP primaries before April, which are by new RNC rules proportional. A candidate who wins a majority or plurality of votes in these primaries only gets his proportion of the delegates - it's not winner-take-all. 55% of the votes, say, gets you 55% of the delegates, no more.
Further, because they are in violation of RNC rules for insisting on ridiculously early primaries, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan will be penalized with a loss of half of their delegates. Iowa is a non-binding caucus so it's just a pr show.
The race will not be won until deep into April - and thus will be won by the best funded, best organized, and most determined never-give-up persistent candidate. For America's sake, let that candidate be also the most Constitutionally principled.
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