Thoughts About The Albatross Problem We Created and Have Yet to Solve!

Government philanthropy is creating a nation of 'moochers' and not the 'Minnie' but the 'many'variety. (See 1 1a below.)
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Star Parker is a black author and has some advice for Romney. (See 3 below.)

This brings up another matter which some will see as racist but if you take off your rose colored progressive blinders and look behind the words for the meaning perhaps you will discover the essence of what I am about to say.

I AM ENTITLING THIS ESSAY: "SHOULD We HAVE PICKED OUR OWN COTTON?"

Last night I had the good fortune to attend a lecture on African Artifacts and Culture. The lecture was given by a professor from SCAD, a local merchant of such items and a friend who is an avid collector.

The SCAD professor began his presentation explaining the difference between how Americans think about right/good and wrong/evil and how Africans think about the impact of positive/good and negative/evil influences and happenings effecting and impacting their community life and the practical and mythical cultural role of African artifacts..

All three agreed, African society produces outstanding objects but unlike our own, which collects them for their beauty, they are made for utilitarian and ceremonial purposes, ie. a beautiful metal spear with carvings is used for hunting etc. (We own one and display in a lucite frame we had made for that purpose.)

The discussion continued as we were given a more in depth insight into African culture and pictures were shown of the various artifacts etc. I thought about the impact of the African culture on our own from a political/societal view point and ours on theirs.

Slavery was an immoral and ghastly travesty. It was the personification of 'man's evil against his fellow man.' African slaves were not brought here to be integrated into our society. Constitutionally they were not even deemed a whole person. Thus the meshing of the two cultures did not take place for decades and decades. In fact the two cultures are so distinctly different problems remain to this day.

Africa Tribal culture is more verbal, not as written as ours and yet we took them from their homes, from their element, from where they had a richly developed culture that served their needs and brought them here, then enslaved and excluded them.

Now we are trying to rectify these moral wrongs and an entire new set of problems have been created in the process. Either because of guilt, wrong headiness, or worse, a more subtle desire to re-enslave, progressive thinking and policies have broken the black family's historical close knit units,their historical attachment to their church oriented life and, in far too many instances, broken their spirits while demeaning them - and most particularly the black male.

Many have overcome these imposed tragedies and have made significant and unique contributions to our own culture and nation but in far too many instances our own culture has embraced negative aspects of the changes culture our actions imposed upon them.

Yes, America remains a melting pot, an experiment still evolving. Whether it can work and sustain itself as it tries to integrate its varied peoples remains a legitimate question. We continue to pay for the sins of the past and no rational and meritorious solution seems in sight though progress has been made. That said, a disproportionate number of black Americans remain unemployed, lack essential skills in a technological society and they are not being properly encouraged to seek an education that, hopefully, will lift them out of their socio-economic circumstances.

Government assistance, though perhaps well intended, has inappropriately, and far too often, supplanted the black husband while Affirmative Action, which may initially have served to provide leverage, eventually turned into a vicious fraud.

I wish I had an answer. It would be wonderful if we could turn back the clock but alas we must go forward and the albatross we created continues to haunt us and if allowed to remain unresolved it can cripple our once prosperous nation. 


The question is can the problem our immorality created  be resolved and if so how when the 'roots' of our cultures are so disparate?


(See what this Black American comments: "ZoNation: Black History Month Is Just Another Form of Segregation. If a White History Month would be racist, then why is Black History Month acceptable? Zo points out the role of the Democratic Party when it comes to segregation, and he explains why Black History Month is just another way for Democrats to garner support of black voters.)

Then we have Krauthammer talking about Obama's gospel. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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It ain't over til its over so now it might be over. (See 4 below.)
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According to Warren, don't get 'buffeted' in bonds and currency. Rates too low and inflation ahead.

Also, Porter Stansberry's thoughts parallel my own.(See 5 and 5a below.)
o
Meanwhile, don't know whether this was written by the former mayor but even if not, I wish I would have written it. But then, I don't live in California. (See 5b below.)
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Dick
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1)A nation of moochers
Availability of lavish federal benefits destroys work incentive
By Nita Ghei

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Tuesday against both raising taxes and cutting spending. In testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, Mr. Bernanke said we must protect the fragile economic recovery, which saw some 243,000 jobs created in January. The problem with his line of thinking is that it adds to our ever-increasing debt, which is not only a burden for the current generation but also means higher taxes on our children and grandchildren. It is hardly a sustainable fiscal future.

The more we delay bringing our books into balance, the closer our problems resemble those that have crippled Europe. Going by the latest Index of Dependence on Government, released by the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday, we may already be a lot closer to Greece than we thought.
The Heritage study found more than 70 percent of federal spending goes to dependence programs, which it divides into health care and welfare, housing subsidies, retirement, higher education and agricultural subsidies. The index grew a dramatic 8.1 percent in 2010 alone. Growth in agricultural subsidies is perhaps the most egregious example of subsidizing the rich. Farm incomes grew by $7,271 in 2010, while the average non-farm American household saw income drop by $500. Despite the improved situation, farm subsidies have not declined.

Worse, the number of people who do not pay federal income taxes and are not claimed as dependents by someone else skyrocketed from a modest 14.8 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009. Almost one-half, more than 151 million tax filers, pay no taxes. Many of those people are on the dole.
Government benefits have become increasingly generous over time. The outlay for food stamps nearly doubled from $39.3 billion to $75.3 billion between 2008 and 2010, bringing the average per capita monthly benefit to $134. This all adds up. The total amount of government support per capita jumped from $7,314 in 1962 to $32,748 in 2010 (using constant 2005 dollars). Why work when you can do better simply living off government programs?

Therein lies the danger of government dependence. It reduces the incentive to seek employment and sets up a tension between those who pay taxes and those who receive benefits. The fiscal balance also worsens as politicians boost the freebies, hoping grateful recipients will deliver votes to keep them in office.

The growing role of government in providing services that were largely the domain of private philanthropy also weakens the fabric of civil society. When temporary assistance is provided to someone who is homeless or unemployed, there is a strong incentive for that person to find a job and for the assistance to remain temporary. When such assistance is provided via a government bureaucracy, through a welfare program or through housing assistance, there are few, if any, incentives to reduce the number of “clients.”

We urgently need to scale back this culture of dependency. Doing so requires holding the line against tax increases while simultaneously cutting spending and encouraging work. As the European experience has shown, doing any less is a one-way ticket to bankruptcy.

Nita Ghei is a contributing Opinion writer for The Washington Times.


1a)$25 Billion Bank Job
The Barker Gang would have loved this housing caper.


Obama Administration officials and various state Attorneys General looked gleeful yesterday announcing a $25 billion settlement with five big tobacco—er, banks—and why not? The bankers coughed up shareholder money to settle a pseudo-foreclosure scandal, while the White House moved closer to its political goal of guaranteeing every home mortgage.

Rarely have so many politicians cashed in so blatantly on so little wrong-doing. In 2010, a group of AGs led by Iowa's Tom Miller spotted political gold in reports that some bank employees had approved legal documents without proper review. They quickly spun this into the fairy tale that evil banks were kicking borrowers out of their homes for no good reason. Former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who parlayed his scare campaign into a job running the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said banks had "a business model based on fraud."

But no matter. Let’s assume that Obama has biblical authority for hiking the marginal tax rate exactly 4.6 points for couples making more than $250,000 (depending, of course, on the prevailing shekel-to-dollar exchange rate). Let’s stipulate that Obama’s prayer-breakfast invocation of religion as vindicating his politics was not, God forbid, crass, hypocritical, self-serving electioneering, but a sincere expression of a social-gospel Christianity that sees good works as central to the very concept of religiosity.

Fine. But this Gospel according to Obama has a rival — the newly revealed Gospel according to Sebelius, over which has erupted quite a contretemps. By some peculiar logic, it falls to the health and human services secretary to promulgate the definition of “religious” — for the purposes, for example, of exempting religious institutions from certain regulatory dictates.

Such exemptions are granted in grudging recognition that, whereas the rest of civil society may be broken to the will of the state’s regulators, our quaint Constitution grants special autonomy to religious institutions.

Accordingly, it would be a mockery of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment if, for example, the Catholic Church were required by law to freely provide such “health care services” (in secularist parlance) as contraception, sterilization and pharmacological abortion — to which Catholicism is doctrinally opposed as a grave contravention of its teachings about the sanctity of life.

Ah. But there would be no such Free Exercise violation if the institutions so mandated are deemed, by regulatory fiat, not religious.

And thus, the word came forth from Sebelius decreeing the exact criteria required (a) to meet her definition of “religious” and thus (b) to qualify for a modicum of independence from newly enacted state control of American health care, under which the aforementioned Sebelius and her phalanx of experts determine everything — from who is to be covered, to which treatments are to be guaranteed free of charge.

Criterion 1: A “religious institution” must have “the inculcation of religious values as its purpose.” But that’s not the purpose of Catholic charities; it’s to give succor to the poor. That’s not the purpose of Catholic hospitals; it’s to give succor to the sick. Therefore, they don’t qualify as “religious” — and therefore can be required, among other things, to provide free morning-after abortifacients.

Criterion 2: Any exempt institution must be one that “primarily employs” and “primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.” Catholic soup kitchens do not demand religious IDs from either the hungry they feed or the custodians they employ. Catholic charities and hospitals — even Catholic schools — do not turn away Hindu or Jew.

Their vocation is universal, precisely the kind of universal love-thy-neighbor vocation that is the very definition of religiosity as celebrated by the Gospel of Obama. Yet according to the Gospel of Sebelius, these very same Catholic institutions are not religious at all — under the secularist assumption that religion is what happens on Sunday under some Gothic spire, while good works are “social services” properly rendered up unto Caesar.

This all would be merely the story of contradictory theologies, except for this: Sebelius is Obama’s appointee. She works for him. These regulations were his call. Obama authored both gospels.

Therefore: To flatter his faith-breakfast guests and justify his tax policies, Obama declares good works to be the essence of religiosity. Yet he turns around and, through Sebelius, tells the faithful who engage in good works that what they’re doing is not religion at all. You want to do religion? Get thee to a nunnery. You want shelter from the power of the state? Get out of your soup kitchen and back to your pews. Outside, Leviathan rules.



2a)Massive U.S. Military Buildup Reported Around Iran; Up to 100,000 Troops Ready By March
By Mac Slavo

While President Obama’s supporters hailed his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as the end of the war in the middle east, behind the scenes the Pentagon has been quietly massing troops and armaments on two islands located just south of the Strait of Hormuz, and within easy striking distance of Iran.

In addition to some 50,000 U.S. troops currently in the region waiting for orders (apparently they won’t be home by this past Christmas as was originally promised), Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama is deploying an additional 50,000 soldiers to be ready for ‘any contingency’ by March:

President Barack Obama is reported exclusively by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and Washington sources to have secretly ordered US air, naval and marine forces to build up heavy concentrations on two strategic islands – Socotra, which is part of a Yemeni archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and the Omani island of Masirah at the southern exit of the Strait of Hormuz.

Since 2010, the US has been quietly building giant air force and naval bases on Socotra with facilities for submarines, intelligence command centers and take-off pads for flying stealth drones, as part of a linked chain of strategic US military facilities in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.

The Socotra facilities are so secret that they are never mentioned in any catalogue listing US military facilities in this part of the world, which include Jebel Ali and Al Dahfra in the United Arab Emirates; Arifjan in Kuwait; and Al Udeid in Qatar – all within short flying distances from Iran.

Additional US forces are also being poured into Camp Justice on the barren, 70-kilometer long Omani island of Masirah, just south of the Hormuz entry point to the Gulf of Oman from the Arabian Sea.

…
Western military sources familiar with the American buildup on the two strategic islands tell DEBKA-Net-Weekly that, although they cannot cite precise figures, they are witnessing the heaviest American concentration of might in the region since the US invaded Iraq in 2003.

Then, 100,000 American troops were massed in Kuwait ahead of the invasion. Today, those sources estimate from the current pace of arrivals on the two island bases, that 50,000 US troops will have accumulated on Socotra and Masirah by mid-February. They will top up the 50,000 military already present in the Persian Gulf region, so that in less than a month, Washington will have some 100,000 military personnel on the spot and available for any contingency.

US air transports are described as making almost daily landings on Socotra and Masirah. They fly in from the US naval base of Diego Garcia, one of America’s biggest military facilities, just over 3,000 kilometers away. The US military presence in the region will further expand in the first week of March when three US aircraft carriers and their strike groups plus a French carrier arrive in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea: They are theUSS Abraham Lincoln, USS Carl Vinson, USS Enterprise and the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

A fourth US carrier will be standing by in the Pacific Ocean, a few days’ sailing time from the water off Iran’s coast.

Still holding out hope that we won’t go to war with Iran?

There’s already reason enough for the powers-to-be to invade Iran based on the accusations that they are in the process of manufacturing nuclear weapons. Whether true or not makes no difference, as we saw with weapons of mass destruction that have yet to be found in Iraq.

Similarly, like Saddam Hussein before them, Iran’s leadership is attempting to trade their oil without going through the proper channels – in essence attempting to bypass the United States and Europe by striking deals with China, India, and Russia that will not require the exchange of oil for US dollars, but rather, Yuan, Rupees and Gold.

It may very well be that nuclear weapons, like WMD in Iraq, are simply the pretext, rather than the real reason, that will be used to crush those who oppose the financiers, politicians and influencers behind the new world order paradigm.

Make no mistake: this is serious business. They will kill as many as is needed (on our side and theirs) in order to push the agenda forward.


2b) By Matt Patterson, (columnist - Washington Post, New York Post, San
> > Francisco Examiner)
> >
> > Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as
> > an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed
> > of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How,
> > they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment
> > beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy,
> > direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most
> > consequential job?
> >
> > Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered
> > into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores
> > along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as
> > a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly
> > devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an
> > unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of
> > which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. He left no academic legacy
> > in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator.
> >
> > And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the
> > white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's
> > "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's
> > colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian
> > looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president?
> >
> > Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed
> > the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:
> >
> > To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken
> > hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill
> > Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and
> > therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with
> > protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit
> > extreme, he was given a pass.
> >
> > Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard --
> > because of the color of his skin. Podhoretz continues:
> >
> > And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so
> > articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all
> > of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and
> > thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?
> >
> > Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama
> > phenomenon -- affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But
> > certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and
> > regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and
> > especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.
> >
> > Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on
> > the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are
> > not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor
> > performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don't care if
> > these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the
> > emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist
> > policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist.
> >
> > Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his
> > skin -- that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism,
> > then nothing is. And that is what America did to Obama.
> >
> > True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why
> > would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for
> > Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was
> > good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was
> > told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the
> > Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good
> > enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What
> > could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time
> > Obama speaks?
> >
> > In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless
> > raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those
> > people -- conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The
> > man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his
> > teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely
> > think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth
> > -- it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over
> > again for 100 years.
> >
> > And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and
> > everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited
> > this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his
> > own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really,
> > what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so
> > how do we expect him to act responsibly?
> >
> > In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the
> > temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that,
> > and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and
> > prosperity make sense! It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in
> > the Oval Office.
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3)Memo to Romney: Whole Nation Is On Government Plantation
By Star Parker


Here’s free advice for Mitt Romney.

Before bringing up the poor again, read my book “Uncle Sam’s Plantation.”

Romney has been taking a drubbing about his remarks in a CNN interview that he is “not worried about the very poor…we have a safety net there…If it needs a repair, I will fix it.” And then going on to say it is “..middle income Americans…that are really struggling…” that are his concern.

What the now Republican presidential frontrunner missed in his off-the-cuff economic analysis of American class is that the cause driving the struggle among both low and middle income Americans is the same.

Economic stagnation and social breakdown caused by welfare state socialism.

As I explain in “Uncle Sam’s Plantation,” America’s inner cities offer laboratory results for what is wrong today with the whole country.

If you want to know why America is failing, look at why our inner cities are failing.

Governor Romney is incorrect to label as a safety net welfare state programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training, Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children, Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps.

A safety net is what is provided when a free person, acting on their own initiative, falls and we offer assistance to help them get back up and start again.

The welfare state amounts to wholesale takeover of individual lives. As opposed to government stepping in to soften the blow, the welfare state assumes from the start that individuals won’t make it without government managing their lives.

It is not an accident that despite some ten trillion dollars spent on anti-poverty programs since the 1960’s there is little discernable change in our poverty rate.

The problem was made worse because the broken families and broken spirits resulting from government plantation dependence have institutionalized inner city poverty.

If America is going to get back on track, we must appreciate that we are doing to our whole country what we did to America’s poor.

Seventy percent of government spending today consists of transfer payments – government redistributing funds from one set of individuals to others.

Even before the Obamacare government takeover, our health care market was already dominated by government. About ten percent of our healthcare expenditures today are out-of-pocket expenditures by individuals. About half of health care expenditures in 1960 were individual out-of-pocket expenditures.

Despite the central role that government sponsored enterprises – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – played in the recent housing collapse, their role in the housing market today has become even greater.

In 2011, 95% of all new mortgages were bought or guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or FHA.

And, of course, just about every working American is part of Social Security and Medicare, both of which are now fiscally untenable.

Now layer on to all this Obamacare, a trillion dollars in spending on stimulus programs, and bailouts of banks and auto companies. And five trillion in new debt, a 45 percent increase, over the last four years as a down payment on it all.

The bigger role government plays in our lives, the more America resembles the Post Office rather than FedEx.

And the bigger role government plays, the harder it is to fix the problem because individuals become used to these programs and fear fundamental change.

Mitt Romney touts his business experience as his qualification for the presidency.

That business experience amounted to turning companies around, improving their performance by making more efficient use of their assets.

This is exactly what our country needs today. A reallocation of our assets from government to private sector efficiency.

Getting off Uncle Sam’s Plantation is no longer a problem limited to our poor. It is a problem and challenge for the whole country.


Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.
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4)The Peace Process is over. Finally
By Caroline B. Glick


It is a testament to the weakened state of the US in the region that in his hour of distress, Abbas opted to turn to Hamas

On Monday afternoon, the Palestinians destroyed officially whatever was left of the concept of a peace process with Israel.

When PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas signed a deal with Hamas terror-master Khaled Mashaal in Doha, Qatar, the notion that there is a significant segment of Palestinian society that is not committed to the destruction of Israel was finally and truly sunk.
But before the ink on the agreement had a chance to dry, the peace processors were already spewing bromides whose sole purpose was to deny this inarguable conclusion. Both the Obama administration and the EU claimed that the agreement is an internal Palestinian issue. The EU actually welcomed the deal.

As Foreign Policy Commissioner Catherine Ashton's spokesman put it, "The EU has consistently called for intra-Palestinian reconciliation behind President Mahmoud Abbas as an important element for the unity of a future Palestinian state and for reaching a two-state solution."

The Israeli Left was quick to blame the agreement on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
In an apparent bid to inject a bit of reality into the delusional discourse, Netanyahu condemned the pact. As he put it, "If Abbas moves to implement what was signed today in Doha, he will abandon the path of peace and join forces with the enemies of peace."

Netanyahu added a personal appeal to his supposed partner in peace saying, "President Abbas, you can't have it both ways. It's either a pact with Hamas or peace with Israel. It's one or the other."

Netanyahu's statement was a nice start. But it didn't go nearly far enough. In speaking as he did, Netanyahu obscured the fact that Abbas already made his choice. He has cast his lot and that of Fatah with Hamas. In so doing Abbas once more exposed the dirty secret that everyone knows but no one likes to discuss: Fatah and Hamas share the same strategic goal of destroying Israel. Fatah is not a moderate force that accepts a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. It is a terrorist organization and a political warfare organization. Fatah's strategic goal remains what it has been since it was founded in 1959: The obliteration of the Jewish state.

In truth, Monday's agreement is nothing new. Fatah and Hamas have worked together since at least 1994. In November 1994, Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement in Cairo. The agreement set out each side's sphere of responsibility. Fatah would negotiate with Israel and Hamas would attack Israel.
That Cairo agreement was but the first in a line of agreements between the two groups. Each new agreement in turn reflected both their shared goal of destroying Israel and their changing tactical preferences.

In 2000, for instance, when Fatah returned to active terrorism against Israel, Fatah and Hamas set up joint terror cells they called the Popular Resistance Committees.

In 2007, they signed their first unity government deal after Hamas defeated Fatah in the 2006 legislative elections. That deal not only set the terms for cooperation in the PA. It paved the way for Hamas's inclusion in the PLO. Since the PLO rather than the PA or Fatah is the signatory to the agreements with Israel, the 2007 agreement signaled Fatah's willingness to abrogate its treaties with Israel.

After Hamas ousted Fatah personnel from Gaza in June 2007, the unity deal was left unimplemented. But even as their gunmen shot at one another on the streets, Fatah and Hamas remained strategic allies. Fatah continued to finance Hamas and provide political support for its continued missile and terror war against Israel.

Last May, Abbas signed another unity deal with Hamas. Like the 2007 deal, the pact set the conditions for Hamas's integration into the PLO and so placed the Palestinians on course for canceling all the agreements that the PLO has signed with Israel since 1993. In the months that passed since, the sides have been diligently working out the means of enacting their unity deal. Those contacts brought about another agreement signed in Cairo in December. That pact laid out the steps for integrating Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the PLO. The first step involved setting up a temporary PLO leadership. This step was implemented last month. The transitional leadership is now organizing new elections to the PLO's legislative body, which in turn will appoint the executive.
December's agreement also set out the basis for the interim unity government agreement that was signed on Monday. The sole charge of the transitional PA government is to organize elections for the PA's legislature and its chairmanship.


SO MONDAY'S agreement doesn't represent a break with past Fatah behavior, but a continuation of it. The notable aspect of Monday's agreement is that it shows just how drastically the balance of power has tilted towards Hamas and away from Fatah since 1994.

Since Monday, the usual crowd of peace processors has come up with a number of arguments to deny the significance of the latest Hamas-Fatah rapprochement. One of their favorite claims is that the deal with Fatah is proof that Hamas is becoming more moderate.

For instance, Shlomo Brom, an inveterate peace processor from the Institute of National Security Studies, told JTA, "Hamas is moving away from Syria and Iran, and to a certain degree from Hezbollah, and is repositioning itself in line with the popular movements behind the Arab Spring and the democratization process, particularly in Egypt and Tunisia. A renewed push for reconciliation with Fatah should be seen as part of this reorientation."

To make this claim, Brom had to ignore the fact that "the popular movements behind the Arab Spring" are jihadist movements from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since December, all of Hamas's leaders have made public statements underscoring that the movement's goal remains the destruction of Israel and that its chosen means of attaining that goal is terrorism and war.

Hamas's leaders have also been clear that they view their current rapprochement with Fatah as a means to overwhelm and defeat Fatah. As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs' senior researcher Jonathan Halevi showed in recent studies of this week's deal and the December agreement, Hamas's goal in entering the PLO is to abrogate the PLO's treaties with Israel. Its goal in joining a unity government with Fatah is to organize elections. Hamas is expected to win both the PA's presidential and legislative elections in a landslide.

Another argument that the Left is making is that since Monday's deal made Abbas the PA prime minister as well as its president, the agreement is proof that he is strong and therefore, it's terrific. As Haaretz editorialized on Wednesday, Netanyahu is irresponsible and destructive because, "Instead of welcoming the bolstered status of a leader who signed the Oslo Accords and reined in terror in the West Bank, Netanyahu opted to present the deal as a capitulation by the PA to a terrorist organization."

This argument ignores the inconvenient fact that Abbas had no choice other than to take on the title of prime minister because Hamas forced him to fire Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Both the US and the EU view Fayyad as a moderate and the only way to avoid a backlash from firing him was for Abbas to replace Fayyad with himself.


A THIRD argument that has received substantial attention is that the agreement is nothing more than a survival pact between two weakened leaders. Mashaal, it is argued, was weakened by his forced departure from Damascus. He made the deal to strengthen his position vis-a-vis Hamas's leaders in Gaza.

While it may be true that Mashaal's stature has taken a hit in comparison to Hamas terror master Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, the shift in power between the two arch-terrorists is immaterial.
With their Muslim Brothers taking power in Egypt, both men are far more powerful today than they ever were before. Moreover, Mashaal's transitional power-sharing agreement with Abbas is remarkably similar to the deal the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood wrought with Egypt's military junta in the lead-up to the recent elections.

Unlike Hamas, Fatah has certainly been weakened by recent events in Egypt. As Mashaal's Egyptian patrons take power, Abbas's chief patron Hosni Mubarak is on trial and dying under house arrest.
What is notable about the claims that the agreement is nothing more than a deal between two weak leaders is that they presuppose that it is perfectly understandable that Abbas would turn to Hamas in his moment of weakness in the hopes of strengthening his position.
From Haaretz's perspective, Abbas is outsmarting Hamas by signing an agreement with Mashaal. According to this line of thinking, Abbas is riding Hamas to increase his power. Since Haaretz is convinced that Abbas is interested in peace, the paper's editorialists are certain that once he gains strength he will renege on his agreement with Hamas. That is, Haaretz thinks the deal is terrific because Abbas is a liar.

The problem is that it isn't terrific that Abbas is a liar. Because what that means is that he can't be trusted to keep his word. Just as Haaretz seems to think he won't keep his word with Hamas, so, Israel has every reason to believe that he won't keep its word with it. And indeed, he has a proven track record of lying to Israel. In 1996, he signed an informal "peace deal" with then-deputy foreign minister Yossi Beilin. The Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement was the basis of Ehud Barak's peace offer to Yasser Arafat in 2000. When Arafat rejected Barak's offer, Abbas denied he had ever signed the agreement with Beilin.

In 2008, Abbas negotiated with Ehud Olmert, giving the premier the impression that he was interested in peace. But after Olmert offered him unprecedented Israeli concessions, not only did Abbas reject the offer, he announced that he does not recognize Israel's right to exist.
The most troubling aspect of Abbas's decision to turn to Hamas in his moment of weakness is what it says about the relative balance of regional forces. Twenty years ago, when Arafat was weakened and isolated due to Israel's defeat of the Palestinian uprising, and Arafat's decision to support Saddam Hussein against the US in the Gulf War, the PLO chieftain decided that the only way to rebuild his strength was to gain recognition from the US. And 20 years ago, Arafat knew that the road to Washington went through Jerusalem. So he agreed to enter into peace talks with Israel.
It is a testament to the weakened state of the US in the region that in his hour of distress, Abbas opted to turn to Hamas. Not only does this signify that Washington is no longer considered a serious power broker. It indicates that for weakened leaders, peace with Israel is a far less attractive option than peace with jihadists.

Like Abbas, Arafat was a liar. The consequence of Arafat's move towards Washington was a two-decade-long phony peace process that left Israel in a strategic position far weaker than that it enjoyed in 1992.

The consequences of Abbas's move towards Hamas will in all likelihood be far worse.
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5)Buffett: US Bonds Are Dangerous, Should Have 'Warning Label'

Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said low interest rates and inflation should dissuade investors from buying bonds and other holdings tied to currencies.

“They are among the most dangerous of assets,” Buffett said in an adaptation of his annual letter to shareholders that appeared Thursday on Fortune magazine’s website.

“Over the past century these instruments have destroyed the purchasing power of investors in many countries, even as these holders continued to receive timely payments of interest and principal.”

Buffett, 81, who built Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire from a failing textile maker into a firm selling insurance, energy and jewelry through acquisitions and stock picks, echoes Laurence D. Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc.

Fink said this week that investors should be 100 percent in equities, because of depressed stock valuations and the Federal Reserve’s pledge to keep interest rates low.

“High interest rates, of course, can compensate purchasers for the inflation risk they face with currency-based investments — and indeed, rates in the early 1980s did that job nicely,” Buffett wrote.

“Current rates, however, do not come close to offsetting the purchasing-power risk that investors assume. Right now bonds should come with a warning label.”

The Fed has kept borrowing costs near zero, and said last month that economic conditions may warrant “exceptionally low levels” for rates through at least late 2014 to boost the economy and put more Americans back to work.

Berkshire still holds bonds, primarily Treasurys, for liquidity, and has a preference to invest in companies by buying them outright or acquiring stock, Buffett said.

The firm purchased Lubrizol Corp. for about $9 billion and took a more than $10 billion stake in International Business Machines Corp. last year.

Berkshire had more than $68 billion of equities as of Sept. 30 including the largest stakes in Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. bank by market value. Fixed-maturity investments of about $34 billion included holdings of government debt, corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities. Cash and cash equivalents were about $34.8 billion.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has climbed 7.3 percent this year through yesterday after being little changed in 2011. Yields on 10-year Treasurys rose above 2 percent for the first time in two weeks yesterday after touching a record low of 1.67 percent in September.

Buffett said investors should avoid gold, because its uses are limited and it doesn’t have the potential of farmland or companies to produce new wealth.

Achieving a long-term gain on the metal requires an “expanding pool of buyers” who believe the group will increase further, he said.

“What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow,” he wrote. “During the past decade that belief has proved correct. Beyond that, the rising price has on its own generated additional buying enthusiasm, attracting purchasers who see the rise as validating an investment thesis. As ‘bandwagon’ investors join any party, they create their own truth — for a while.”

Gold prices have climbed to more than $1,700 an ounce from less than $300 in the last decade, as investors sought safety in bullion.

Buffett uses his annual letter to Berkshire shareholders to opine on the economy, the firm’s operating units, corporate governance and other issues.

The full document accompanies financial statements and will probably be released later this month.

© Copyright 2012 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.



5a) "...Global central banks have printed trillions of dollars to boost their economies. These bailouts usually solve the immediate crisis, i.e. keeping a bank from collapsing. But they've failed to resolve the larger issues, like high unemployment and falling home values… And worse, this cheapening of global currencies is punishing savers and forcing money into longer-dated and riskier assets.

Interest rates are already near zero. And they'll stay there through at least 2014, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He also said the Fed would consider more quantitative easing should the economy not improve from here.

Even Bernanke admits the folly of his ways, though he's in denial of the current situation… "[O]n current, reasonable expectations about policy… the U.S. federal deficit will be unsustainable within 15 or 20 years at the most," Bernanke told the Senate Budget Committee. He urged Congress to clarify the U.S. fiscal plan as soon as possible.

It's clear we have no hope of sustaining our current deficit spending. From Porter's October 2011 issue of Stansberry's Investment Advisory…

The European crisis is far from over. And as I've said many times, the endgame will be a bailout of the entire European banking system organized and financed by the Federal Reserve. Such an action would be hugely inflationary and could have severe political consequences in the U.S.

Likewise, I don't believe we have even begun to scratch the surface of the real financial problems we face in the United States. Think about the big picture… As of today, Americans owe $55 trillion in combined federal, state, local, corporate, and personal debt. The interest on these debts comes to more than $3.6 trillion each year – more than the entire federal budget. I don't believe debts of this magnitude (almost 400% of GDP) can ever be repaid – or even financed – with sound money on legitimate terms.

The resolution of these debts will be painful – whether it's through inflation (which seems to be the path today) or default. I believe it's a fatal mistake for investors to forget that these challenges remain unmet. Rather than beginning to reduce our debts, we continue to add to them at the federal level at the fastest pace in peacetime history. We are a nation that has become completely addicted to debt. And those kinds of addictions do not end happily..."


5b)California Not Dreaming by Roger Hedgecock (former Mayor of San Diego)

I live in California . If you were wondering what living in Obama's second term would be like, wonder no longer. We in California are living there now.

California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democratic Left enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and state government is run by and for the public employee unions. The unemployment rate is 12%.

California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, has added so many benefits and higher rates to Medicaid that we call it "Medi-Cal." Our K-12 schools have more administrators than teachers, and smaller classes but lower test scores and higher dropout rates with twice the per-student budget of 15 years ago. Good job, Brownie.

This week, the once and current Gov. Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown had to confess that the "balanced" state budget adopted five months ago was billions in the red because actual tax revenues were billions lower than the airy-fairy revenue estimates on which the balance was predicated.
After trimming legislators' perks and reducing the number of cell phones provided to state civil servants, the governor intoned that drastic budget reductions had already hollowed out state programs for the needy, law enforcement and our schoolchildren. California government needed more money.

Echoing the Occupy movement, the governor proclaimed the rich must pay their fair share. Fair share? The top 1% of California income earners currently pays 50% of the state's income tax.
California has seven income tax brackets. The top income tax rate is 9.3%, which is slapped on the greedy rich earning at least $47,056 a year. Income of more than $1 million pays the "millionaires' and billionaires'" surcharge tax rate of 10.3%.

Brown's proposal would add 2% for income over $250,000. A million-dollar income would then be taxed at 12.3%. And that's just for the state.

Brown also proposed a one-half-cent sales tax increase, which would bring sales taxes (which vary by county) to 7.75% to 10%. Both tax increases would be on the ballot in 2012.

The sales tax increase proposal immediately brought howls of protest from the Left (of Brown!). Charlie Eaton, a sociology grad student at UC Berkeley and leader of the UC Student-Workers Union, said, "We've paid enough. It's time for millionaires to pay."

At least five other ballot measures to raise taxes are circulating for signatures to get on the 2012 ballot in California . The governor's proposals are the most conservative.
The Obama way doesn't end with taxes.

The governor and the state legislature continue to applaud the efforts of the California High Speed Rail Authority to build a train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco . Even though the budget is three times the voter-approved amount, and the first segment will only connect two small towns in the agricultural Central Valley . But hey, if we build it, they will ride.

And we don't want to turn down the Obama bullet-train bucks Florida and other states rejected because the operating costs would bankrupt them. Can't happen here - we're already insolvent.
If we get into real trouble with the train, we'll just bring in the Chinese. It worked with the Bay Bridge reconstruction. After the 1989 earthquake, the bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco was rebuilt with steel made in China . Workers from China too. Paid for with money borrowed from China . Makes perfect sense.

In California , we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in Hollywood and in sports, and in drug dealing). But we love people who have broken into California to eat the bounty created by the productive rich.

Illegals get benefits from various generous welfare programs, free medical care, free schools for their kids, including meals, and of course, instate tuition rates and scholarships too. Governor Perry , California has a heart. Nothing's too good for our guests.

To erase even a hint of criticism of illegal immigration, the California Legislature is considering a unilateral state amnesty. Democrat State Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes has proposed an initiative that would bar deportation of illegals from California .

Interesting dilemma for Obama there. If immigration is exclusively a federal matter, and Obama has sued four states for trying to enforce federal immigration laws he won't enforce, what will the President do to a California law that exempts California from federal immigration law?
California is also near fulfilling the environmentalist dream of deindustrialization.

After driving out the old industrial base (auto and airplane assembly, for example), air and water regulators and tax policies are now driving out the high-tech, biotech and even Internet-based companies that were supposed to be California's future.

The California cap-and-trade tax on business in the name of reducing CO2 makes our state the leader in wacky environmentalism and guarantees a further job exodus from the state.
Even green energy companies can't do business in California . Solyndra went under, taking its taxpayer loan guarantee with it.

No job is too small to escape the regulators. The state has even banned weekend amateur gold miners from the historic gold mining streams in the Sierra Nevada Mountains .

In fact, more and more of California 's public land is off-limits to recreation by the people who paid for that land. Unless you're illegal. Then you can clear the land, set up marijuana plantations at will, bring in fertilizers that legal farmers can no longer use, exploit illegal farm workers who live in hovels with no running water or sanitation, and protect your investment with armed illegals carrying guns no California citizen is allowed to own.

The rest of us only found out about these plantations when the workers' open campfire started one of those devastating fires that have killed hundreds of people and burned out thousands of homes in California over the last decade.

It was said after California 's Proposition 13 in 1978 cut property tax rates and was copied in other states, that whatever happened in California would soon happen in your state.
You'd better hope that's wrong.
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