This Professor better be tenured. (See 1 below.)
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It's Obama by .3% if the economy is tepid according to this professor's voting technology but he does not explain how this breaks down according to the electoral college. (See 2 below.)
Then there is this fudging employment matter which you know is being manipulated so it will soon be below 8%. After all figures never lie and for sure government figures are always to be trusted. That's why they teach "Civics" in grade school to our 'little darlings'. (See 2a below.)
Catholics and Catholicism's view on birth control be damned. The president is indifferent to your religious views because he is simply in the business of counting noses.
He does not give a fig about some Constitutional concept of separation. It's re-election time and 'you gotta do what you gotta do!' (See 2b below.)
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Bold alligators abound beyond The Landings? (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Words are cheap and when it comes to Syria they have been cheapened further by this Administration and the same applies to Iran. In fact, most rhetoric out of this administration is hot air.
If Netanyahu relies upon Obama/Clinton/Panetta's words he is a fool. (See 4 below.)
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Fair is fair except when fairness questions are posed of this president. Then things get sticky.
This is why the president needs to be re-elected so he can figure how to overcome his hypocrisy. (See 5 below.)
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Un-trusting wife? (See 6 below.)
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Sowell's thoughts on 'Minimum Wage' and Romney do not require rocket science!
If you get maximum work from minimum wage then why stop at any price?(See 7 below.)
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Sweet Tammy's organizes for the future and since this up date may have hired another husband and wife team to run the retail and web page operation. (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1) Israel and Iran on the Eve of Destruction in a New Six-Day War
There are plenty of arguments against an Israeli attack on Iran. And all of them are bad.
By Niall Ferguson
It probably felt a bit like this in the months before the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel launched its hugely successful preemptive strike against Egypt and its allies. Forty-five years later, the little country that is the most easterly outpost of Western civilization has Iran in its sights.
There are five reasons (I am told) why Israel should not attack Iran:
1. The Iranians would retaliate with great fury, closing the Strait of Hormuz and unleashing the dogs of terror in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq.
2. The entire region would be set ablaze by irate Muslims; the Arab Spring would turn into a frigid Islamist winter.
3. The world economy would be dealt a death blow in the form of higher oil prices.
4. The Iranian regime would be strengthened, having been attacked by the Zionists its propaganda so regularly vilifies.
5. A nuclear-armed Iran is nothing to worry about. States actually become more risk-averse once they acquire nuclear weapons.
I am here to tell you that these arguments are wrong.
Let’s take them one by one.
Why Israel has a strong case for striking Iran
The threat of Iranian retaliation. The Iranians will very likely be facing not one, not two, but three U.S. aircraft carriers. Two are already in the Persian Gulf: CVN 72 Abraham Lincoln and CVN 70 Carl Vinson. A third, CVN 77 George H.W. Bush, is said to be on its way from Norfolk, Va.
Yes, I know President Obama is a noble and saintly man of peace who uses unmanned drones only to assassinate America’s foes in unprecedented numbers after wrestling with his conscience for anything up to ... 10 seconds. But picture the scene once described to me by a four-star general. It is not the proverbial 3 a.m. but 11 p.m. in the White House (7 a.m. in Israel). The phone rings.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Mr. President, we have reliable intelligence that the Israeli Air Force is in the air and within an hour of striking suspected nuclear facilities in Iran.
POTUS: Damn. What should I do?
CJCS: Mr. President, I want to recommend that you provide the Israelis with all necessary support to limit the effectiveness of Iranian retaliation.
POTUS: But those [expletives deleted] never ran this past me. They went behind my back, goddammit.
CJCS: Yes, sir.
POTUS: Why the hell should I lift a finger to help them?
CJCS: Because if the Iranians close the Strait of Hormuz, we will see oil above $200 a barrel.
POTUS [after a pause]: Just a moment. [Whispers] How am I doing in Florida?
David Axelrod [also whispering]: Your numbers suck.
POTUS: OK, General, line up those bunker busters.
The eruption of the entire Muslim world. All the crocodiles of Africa could not equal the fake tears that will be shed by the Sunni powers of the region if Iran’s nuclear ambitions are checked.
The double-dip recession. Oil prices are on the way down thanks to concerted efforts of Europe’s leaders to reenact the Great Depression. An Israel-Iran war would push them up, but the Saudis stand ready to pump out additional supplies to limit the size of the spike.
The theocracy’s new legitimacy. Please send me a list of all the regimes of the past 60 years that have survived such military humiliation. Saddam Hussein’s survival of Gulf War I is the only case I can think of—and we got him the second time around.
The responsible nuclear Iran. Wait. We’re supposed to believe that a revolutionary Shiite theocracy is overnight going to become a sober, calculating disciple of the realist school of diplomacy ... because it has finally acquired weapons of mass destruction? Presumably this would be in the same way that, if German scientists had developed an atomic bomb as quickly as the Manhattan Project, the Second World War would have ended with a negotiated settlement brokered by the League of Nations.
The single biggest danger in the Middle East today is not the risk of a six-day Israeli war against Iran. It is the risk that Western wishful nonthinking allows the mullahs of Tehran to get their hands on nuclear weapons. Because I am in no doubt that they would take full advantage of such a lethal lever. We would have acquiesced in the creation of an empire of extortion.
War is an evil. But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement. The people who don’t yet know that are the ones still in denial about what a nuclear-armed Iran would end up costing us all.
Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His Latest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, has just been published by Penguin Press.
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2)Will We Have a 'Fair' Election in 2012?
By Gene Schwimmer
The two questions GOP primary voters are trying to answer -- and balance -- are the same two that dominate every primary season: (1) which candidate best represents the one's principles, and (2) which has the best chance of beating the Democrat?
But here's a third question that no one seems to be asking: what if it doesn't matter?
Ray C. Fair is an economics professor at Yale and the creator of the Presidential Vote Equation. Professor Fair has been actively using his equation, back-tested on presidential elections going back to 1916 and continuously tweaked, since the election of 1980 to predict which party would win the White House (or to be more precise, whether the Democratic Party would win or lose, meaning that the GOP would lose or win, respectively). And as the accompanying chart shows, he has done so with an impressive record of accuracy.
Of eight elections predicted, Fair's equation got six, or 75 percent, "right." But note that the only significantly wrong prediction was Bush-Clinton '92, where Fair's equation was off by 10.5 percent -- an election that included a strong third-party candidate, Ross Perot, which conceivably could have "polluted" the predictability of an equation formulated on the assumption of a two-candidate race. Indeed, the equation did much better on the only other "mispredicted" election, Bush-Gore 2000. Yes, Fair's equation got that one "wrong," but look at the error: just 0.5 percent. Given an error that small in an election as nail-bitingly close as Bush-Gore 2000, where one candidate won the popular vote and another the electoral vote, I think we can fairly cut Professor Fair some slack here, too.
Bottom line: vote for the candidate of your choice (indeed, Professor Fair voted for Kerry in '04, at the same time that his equation was predicting a Bush victory), but absent a close election, I would take whatever result the PVE predicts for 2012 very, very seriously.
And what does the Presidential Vote Equation predict for 2012? I'll reveal the answer presently, but first, an important fact to understand about the PVE. The equation uses only economic data and the length of time the incumbent party has held the White House. The equation does not look at public opinion polls; it takes no notice of geopolitical events (with the major exception of whether the nation is at peace or war), nor does it consider scandal or anything else, including the candidates' political philosophies and positions on particular issues.
When James Carville famously said in Bush-Clinton '92 that "it's the economy, stupid," he didn't know the half of it. For the clear message of Professor Fair and his PVE is that not only is it the economy, stupid. It is always the economy, in every election.
Am I forgetting something? Ah, yes: the PVE's prediction for Election 2012. Now keep in mind that between now and Election Day, Fair will constantly monitor the economic data that fuel his equation and re-run the equation as the variables change. I therefore highly recommend that interested American Thinkers visit Fair's site occasionally for the equation's latest prediction.
And now, here, on our stage, as promised (drum roll, please), is what the PVE is predicting for 2012 as of January 28 (emphasis mine):
For a moderately growing economy, which the US model is now forecasting, the election is predicted to be close. The current US model forecast is probably somewhat more optimistic than consensus, but with slightly slower growth in 2012, the election would still be predicted to be close. If the economy suddenly starts to boom -- say 5 or 6 percent growth -- Obama would be predicted to win by a comfortable amount. If the economy suddenly goes into another recession -- say minus 5 or 6 percent growth -- the Republicans would be predicted to win by a comfortable amount. As of this writing the economy in 2012 looks like it will be ok, but not great, which means a close election -- essentially too close to call. If the economy does turn out to be ok, but not great, and if the election is close, the voting equation will have done well. If instead in this case the election is not close, the equation will have made a large error.
Specifically, the PVE currently projects the Democrat to win 50.3 percent of the "Presidential Vote Share" (VP).
Professor Fair also adds a caveat regarding the recently negotiated payroll tax cut extension, slated to expire this month. Fair's current prediction is predicated on the assumption that Congress will not allow the cut to expire, but instead extend it to the end of 2012. Not extending the payroll tax cut, however, says the PVE, will cost Obama 1.3 points of vote share. And this caveat alone demonstrates the PVE's potential practical value for political strategizing. If congressional Republicans allow Democrats' and the MSM (forgive me if I repeat myself)'s demagoguery to pressure them into extending the payroll tax cut, they could actually be helping Obama and hurting his GOP opponent.
But getting back to the PVE's prediction, delve into the numbers in Fair's paper, and the magic number appears to be 3. If the economy is growing at over 3 percent on Election Day, Obama wins; if it's growing at minus 3 percent, he loses. And at exactly 3 percent, it's anyone's guess -- too close to call.
And herein, if we take the PVE seriously, lies both a dilemma and a warning for congressional Republicans. The dilemma is that, of course, the country must always come before politics. Therefore, if President Obama and the Democrats propose policies and legislation that will substantively, over the long term, boost economic growth and create jobs, we Republicans obviously will have no choice but to support those policies, even if it guarantees a second Obama term.
Not that this writer seriously expects that to happen, and thus the following warning: from this moment until Election Day, congressional Republicans must be on their guard for, and do everything in their power to prevent the enactment of, any temporary measures designed artificially to skoosh the growth numbers up just high enough, and just long enough, to get Obama through the election, after which the economy slows again.
It will especially behoove congressional Republicans to watch for temporary fixes masquerading as permanent ones. Republicans need to be ready to expose such temporary "Band-Aids" for what they are, while at the same time proposing and publicizing, through every available means -- including, one would hope, the GOP presidential candidate, on the campaign trail -- alternative permanent solutions, lest the public clamor for the temporary ones. So if the Democrats propose extending the payroll tax past Election Day, Republicans should at the very lease oppose it. But a much better strategy would be for House and Senate Republicans to introduce legislation making the payroll tax cut permanent and push the Democrats, who will surely balk, into exposing their own proposal as just a temporary election-year ploy.
I would also admonish Republicans to do a better job of exposing the "numbers behind the numbers" whenever Obama and his MSM sycophants tout impressive, but misleading, economic figures. (See here, here, here, here and here.)
Fail to do that, and we face the prospect of a second Obama term and a return to a "pre-manipulation" economy -- but with, I confidently predict, a lot more debt. And remember: government spending counts as a factor in GDP. If the federal government "invests" a gazillion dollars in a bridge to nowhere, it adds a gazillion dollars to GDP. Ditto for earmarks, so let's not vote for any between now and November, okay?
Finally, keeping the all-important 3-percent figure in mind, I leave you with the most recent GDP numbers and their message, which is mixed. In fiscal 2011, the economy grew at 1.7 percent -- according to Fair's equation, not even close to the number needed to reelect Obama. But in the final quarter, it grew at a rate of 2.8 percent. Not enough to guarantee an Obama win, but more than enough to give this writer and, I suspect, a lot of other folks a few sleepless nights between now and November.
On the other hand, as James Pethokoukis reports, replace last quarter's 2.8-percent growth rate with a 2-percent rate, and Obama's predicted 50.3-percent vote share drops to a 47.8 percent and, very probably, a GOP victory.
So stay sharp, keep an eye out for Democratic statistical mischief -- and watch the PVE!
Gene Schwimmer is the pundit-proprietor of Schwimmerblog and the author of The Christian State.
2a)The entire 2012 presidential election could well hinge on one number: the unemployment rate.
Here's my prediction: Some time around July or August, the official unemployment rate will dip below 8.0%. At that point, Obama will say that "unemployment is lower than when I took office" and will ride this one statistic to re-election. That theme has already been launched with the media touting that the January unemployment rate was the "lowest in years."
What Obama and the media won't tell you is that the unemployment numbers have two built-in, huge fudge factors that are hiding the real unemployment situation in our nation.
First, the numbers are "seasonally adjusted," which is why the actual number of employed persons could decrease from December to January by 737,000 and the Obama team can report an increase in total employment of 847,000. I'm sure this "seasonal adjustment" figure is very complicated and requires hundreds or perhaps thousands of highly trained bureaucrats to even understand let alone calculate. So I'll move on to the second fudge factor: the "labor force participation rate."
Simply put, the labor force participation rate includes those who are working and those looking for a job. This rate defines the "civilian labor force" which is the basis for the unemployment rate.
Apparently, if you are so discouraged by the Obama Recession that you quit looking for a job altogether, you are no longer counted. And you effectively cause the unemployment rate to drop. Go figure.
From January 2005 to January 2009 (during Bush's last term), the "participation rate" changed very little (65.8% to 65.7%). In just three years under Obama, the labor force participation rate has reportedly dropped to 63.7%. This two percentage point drop brings the participation rate to the lowest in nearly three decades and makes all the difference.
If the participation rate had stayed the same, even using the "adjusted" employment numbers for January, the unemployment rate would have been 11%. If the labor force participation rate dropped 1% to 64.7%, the adjusted unemployment rate would be 9.7%. If we use the non-seasonally adjusted numbers and a static participation rate over the past three years, the unemployment rate looks even worse.
Obama can't get re-elected at 11% unemployment or 9.6% unemployment. He needs that number to be under 8%. So they count a smaller and smaller percentage of the population as actually being in the workforce. And an election is won.
2b)Obama not worried that birth-control move will hurt his re-election chances with Catholics, other faithful
By Kathleen Hennessey and Christi Parsons
President has chosen sides. Democratic strategists explain his thinking
Even as angry Catholic leaders vow to fight a new federal requirement that most employers include contraceptives in their health insurance coverage, the Obama administration believes any political damage will be limited because it's on the side of women's rights.
Democratic strategists think voters who oppose President Barack Obama because of the birth-control rule wouldn't have voted for him anyway. The strategists think most Catholic women - like most other American women - believe that birth control should be affordable and available.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation can attest to the volatility of family-planning politics. After saying it would cut off most funding to Planned Parenthood, Komen reversed itself last week in the face of public outcry.
"I think we saw with Komen that this is a country where voters, and particularly women voters, support affordable access to birth control, and that is true among Catholic women as well as women who are not Catholic," said Geoff Garin, a pollster for Democrats and Planned Parenthood.
Democratic strategists point to statistics showing widespread approval of birth control among Catholic voters, suggesting a gulf between clergy and parishioners. Catholic doctrine opposes birth control, but surveys show many Catholics use contraceptives.
The new rule stems from the 2010 health care law, which requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives to patients who want them. Churches and other houses of worship are exempt, but Catholic hospitals and universities are not. Bishops call the rule an affront to religious freedom.
The rule doesn't force doctors who object to contraception to prescribe it.
As the Komen Foundation discovered last week, public opinion can be hard to predict. After the breast cancer charity decided to stop funding about $650,000 in breast-health services at 16 Planned Parenthood affiliates, a public uproar ensued, and Komen reversed itself within days.
The controversy underscored broad support for access to birth control, prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and cancer screenings for women, which altogether totaled 86 percent of Planned Parenthood's services in 2010, according to the group's website. Abortion accounted for 3 percent.
Still, angering Catholic voters - or doing anything that appears to restrict religious freedom - in swing states could come back to bite Obama. At least one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin III, a moderate and a Catholic in a tough re-election fight in West Virginia, came out against the administration's plan.
"This is America. Under our Constitution, religious organizations have the freedom to follow their beliefs, and government should honor that," Manchin said in a statement. "The Obama administration's position on this mandate is wrong and just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm talking to my Democratic and Republican colleagues about any ways we can fight this misguided decision."
House Speaker John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican and Catholic, has urged the administration to reconsider, saying the regulation violates the Constitution. Some bishops and priests have urged parishioners to pressure lawmakers.
Religious groups see the fight as about more than birth control. Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, argued that the rule potentially establishes a new test for what is and isn't a religious institution - one separate from the Internal Revenue Service definition and one that could have implications for other policies, on issues such as covering abortion.
"We have a long history in this country of ensuring that religious groups' issues are respected," Keehan said. "It's always a challenge in a pluralistic society to be sure that that's done in the appropriate way. But all of a sudden we no longer qualify, and that was a jolt."
Administration officials say that the exemptions mean religious organizations don't have to do anything that violates their beliefs, and that the law's intent is to protect the rights of employees who work for Catholic-owned institutions, many of whom are not Catholic.
Though Obama won the overall Catholic vote in 2008 by 9 percentage points, he lost among those voters who attend church weekly by 8 percentage points. Sen. John McCain won white Catholics by 5 percentage points.
Aligning himself with the interests of women is crucial if Obama is to win a second term. He garnered 53 percent of women voters in 2008, besting McCain by 13 percentage points.
In 2010, when Republicans took control of the House, that edge evaporated and women were essentially evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Recent polling shows the gender gap in Democrats' favor has reemerged.
Among voters in the Republican primary, where opposition to abortion motivates a key slice of the electorate, front-runner Mitt Romney is voicing his objections to the rule on grounds that it violates religious liberty.
Romney is committed to repealing the whole Obama healthcare law, and the birth control rule along with it, said Amanda Henneberg, a campaign spokeswoman.
"This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency," she said.
Garin said Romney's position was unlikely to hurt Obama but risks placing the former Massachusetts governor at odds with the majority of women voters.
"It is reasonable to think that the Catholics who are opposed to birth control are unlikely to be Obama supporters for a whole host of other reasons," Garin said. "But for the significant majority of the electorate, being identified with increasing access to affordable birth control is a clear-cut positive."
The administration pledges to stand behind its decision, with the White House seeing a different moral issue at stake: access to preventive healthcare.
"We need to make sure that those employees of all different faiths have access to contraception," said White House press secretary Jay Carney. "That's why we sought what we believe is an appropriate balance."
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3) LTE: "If The Landings Association is responsible for all wild animals that abound out here then I would assume we better start killing deer who run into cars and possums who cross the road at untimely times causing motorists to brake suddenly or swerve out of the way etc..
I would also think the Cruelty to Animal Folks will soon be invading The Landings and we will have to shoot them as well."
3a) "Bold Alligator 2012" drills 20,000 troops on US East Coast for Persian Gulf action
Some 20,000 marines, seamen and air crews from half a dozen countries, a US nuclear aircraft carrier strike group and three US Marine gunship carriers are practicing an attack on a fictitious mechanized enemy division which has invaded its neighbor. It is the largest amphibian exercise seen in the West for a decade, staged to simulate a potential Iranian invasion of an allied Persian Gulf country and a marine landing on the Iranian coast. Based largely on US personnel and hardware, French, British, Italian, Dutch, Australian and New Zealand military elements are integrated in the drill.
Bold Alligator went into its operational phase Monday, Feb. 6, the same day as a large-scale exercise began in southern Iran opposite the Strait of Hormuz. This simultaneity attests to the preparations for a US-Iranian showdown involving Israel behind the words on Feb. 5 of US President Barack Obama ("I don't think Israel has decided whether to attack Iran") and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb. 3 ("The war itself will be ten times as detrimental to the US.").
Monday, Feb. 6, the US president ordered the tightening of sanctions by freezing Iranian assets in America and blocking the operations of Iranian banks including its central bank.
US Rear Adm. Kevin Scott and Brig. Gen. Christopher Owens are coordinating the exercise over large stretches of coastal terrain in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida and Atlantic Ocean from the USS Wasp amphibian helicopter carrier. It is led by the USS Enterprise nuclear carrier with strike force alongside three amphibian helicopter carriers, the USS Wasp, the USS Boxer and the USS Kearsage. On their decks are 6,000 Marines, 25 fighter bombers and 65 strike and transport helicopters, mainly MV-22B Ospreys with their crews. Altogether 100 combat aircraft are involved.
The exercise is scheduled to end on February 14, a week before the winding up of the Iranian drill, after which the participants are to be shipped out to Persian Gulf positions opposite Iran. Altogether three American aircraft carrier strike groups, the French Charles de Gaulle carrier and four or five US Marines amphibian vessels will be posted there, DEBKAfile's military sources report.
On Feb. this site first disclosed a flow in unprecedented numbers of US military strength to two strategic islands, Yemeni Socotra and Omani Masirah, within range of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran.
US naval officials insist that the exercise has nothing to do with Iran, but the scenario is a giveaway. A mechanized division from the fictitious hostile country of Garnet (Iran) has invaded its neighbor, Amber (Saudi Arabia), which has asked for coalition assistance to halt the enemy's northern advance. Garnet has already mined harbors (Hormuz) and established anti-ship missiles on its coastline.
Coalition forces are required to develop strategy for defeating the enemy and carry the combat onto its (Iranian) soil. Hence, the preponderance of amphibian Marines in the exercise.
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4)Obama's rhetorical storm
By Caroline B. Glick
Like a skilled surgeon, the author, one of the most astute Middle East analysts, dissects words that appear to calm but could ultimately kill
The Obama administration is absolutely furious at Russia and China. The two UN Security Council permanent members' move on Saturday to veto a resolution on Syria utterly infuriated the US's President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice. And they want us all to know just how piping mad they really are.
Rice called the vetoes "unforgivable," and said that "any further blood that flows will be on their hands." She said the US was "disgusted."
Clinton called the move by Moscow and Beijing a "travesty." She then said that the US will take action outside the UN, "with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people's right to have a better future."
The rhetoric employed by Obama's top officials is striking for what it reveals about how the Obama administration perceives the purpose of rhetoric in foreign policy.
Most US leaders have used rhetoric to explain their policies. But if you take the Obama administration's statements at face value you are left scratching your head in wonder.
Specifically on Syria, if you take these statements literally, you are left wondering if Obama and his advisers are simply clueless. Because if they are serious, their indignation bespeaks a remarkable ignorance about how decisions are made at the Security Council.
Is it possible that Obama believed that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would betray Bashar Assad, his most important strategic ally in the Middle East? Is it possible that he believed that the same Chinese regime that systematically tramples the human rights of its people would agree to intervene in another country's domestic affairs? Outside the intellectual universe of the Obama administration — where stalwart US allies such as Hosni Mubarak are discarded like garbage and foes such as Hugo Chavez are wooed like Hollywood celebrities — national governments tend to base their foreign policies on their national interests.
In light of this basic reality, Security Council actions generally reflect the national interests of its member states. This is how it has always been.
This is how it will always be. And it is hard to believe that the Obama administration was unaware of this basic fact.
In fact, it is impossible to believe that the administration was unaware that its plan to pass a Security Council resolution opposing Assad's massacre of his people — and so jeopardize Russian and Chinese interests — had no chance of success. The fact that they had to know the resolution would never pass leads to the conclusion that Obama and his advisers weren't trying to pass a resolution on Syria at all.
Rather they were trying to pass the buck on Syria.
We have two pieces of evidence to support the view that the Obama administration has no intention of doing anything even vaguely effective to end Assad's reign of terror that has so far taken the lives of between five and ten thousand of his countrymen.
First, for the past 10 months, as Assad's killing machine kicked into gear, Obama and his advisers have been happy to sit on their hands. They supported Turkey's feckless diplomatic engagement with Assad. They sat back as Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayep Erdogan employed the IHH, his regime-allied terror group, to oversee the organization of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition.
Second, the administration supported the Arab League's farcical inspectors' mission to Syria. That mission was led by Sudanese Gen. Muhammad al- Dabi. Dabi reportedly was one of the architects of the genocide in Darfur. Clearly, a mission under his leadership had no chance of accomplishing anything useful. And indeed, it didn't.
AND SO, after nearly a year, the issue of Assad's butchery of his citizens finally found its way to the Security Council last month. Many in the US expected Obama to use the opportunity to finally do something to stop the killing, just as he and his NATO allies did something to prevent the killing in Libya last year.
Ten months ago Obama, Rice, Clinton and National Security Council member Samantha Power decided that the US and its allies had to militarily intervene in Libya to ensure that Muammar Gaddafi didn't have the opportunity to kill his people as Assad is now doing. That is, to prevent the type of human rights calamity that the Syrian people are now experiencing, Obama used the UN as a staging ground to overthrow Gaddafi through force.
Sadly for the people of Syria, who are being shot dead even as they try to bury their families who were shot dead the day before, unlike the situation in Libya, Obama has never had the slightest intention of using his influence to take action against Assad. And faced with the rapidly rising public expectation that he would take action at the Security Council to stop the killing, Obama opted for diplomatic Kabuki.
Knowing full well that Putin — who is still selling Assad weapons — would veto any resolution, rather than accept that the Security Council is a dead end, Obama had Rice negotiate fecklessly with her Russian counterparts. The resolution that ended up being called to a vote on Saturday was so weak that US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement on Friday calling for the administration to veto it.
As Ros-Lehtinen put it, the draft resolution "contains no sanctions, no restrictions on weapons transfers, and no calls for Assad to go, but supports the failed Arab League observer mission," and so isn't "worth the paper it's printed on."
She continued, "The Obama administration should not support this weak, counterproductive resolution, and should also reconsider the legitimacy that it provides to the Arab League — an organization that continues to boycott Israel — when it comes to the regime in Damascus."
But instead of vetoing it, the administration backed it to the tilt and then expressed disgust and moral outrage when Russia and China vetoed it.
The lesson of this spectacle is that it we must recognize that the Obama administration's rhetoric hides more than it reveals about the president's actual policies.
THE FIRST place that we should apply this lesson is to the hemorrhage of administration rhetoric about Iran.
For the past several weeks we have been treated to massive doses of verbiage from Obama and his senior advisers about Iran. The most notable of these recent statements was Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's conversation with The Washington Post's David Ignatius last week.
Panetta used Ignatius to communicate two basic messages. First, he wanted to make clear that the administration adamantly opposes an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear installations. And second, he wanted to make clear that if Iran strikes Israeli population centers, the US will come to Israel's defense.
The purpose of the first message is clear enough.
Panetta wished to increase pressure on Israel not to take preemptive action against Iran's nuclear weapons program.
The purpose of the second message is also clear.
Panetta spoke of the US's obligation to Israel's defense in order to remove the justification for an Israeli attack.
After all, if the US is obliged to defend it, then Israel mustn't risk harming US interests by defending itself.
When taken together, Panetta's message sounds balanced and responsible. But when examined carefully, it is clear that it is not. First of all, it is far from responsible for the US government to tell its chief ally that it should be willing to absorb an attack on its population centers from Iran. No government can be expected to sit back and wait to be attacked with nuclear weapons because if it is, the Americans will retaliate against its attacker. Panetta's message was not just irresponsible.
It was obnoxious.
And this leaves the first message. Since Obama was elected the US has devoted most of its energies not to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but to pressuring Israel not to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And Panetta's remarks to Ignatius were consistent with this mission.
Some have argued that the US's stepped-up naval presence in the Persian Gulf is evidence that the US is itself gearing up to attack Iran. But as retired US naval analyst J.E. Dyer explained in an essay last month at the Optimistic Conservative blog, the US posture in the Persian Gulf is defensive, not offensive.
The US has not deployed anywhere near the firepower it would need to conduct a successful military campaign against Iran's nuclear installations. The only thing the US deployment may serve to accomplish is to deter Israel from launching a preemptive air strike against Iran's nuclear installations.
It is true that to a certain extent, Israel has brought this escalating American rhetorical storm on itself with its own flood of rhetoric about Iran. Over the past week nearly every senior Israeli military and political official has had something to say about Iran's nuclear program.
But this stream of words does not reflect a change in Israel's strategic timetable. Rather it is a function of the rather mundane calendar of Israel's annual conference circuit. It just so happened that the annual Herzliya Conference took place last week. It is standard fare for Israel's security and political leadership to bloviate about Iran's nuclear program at Herzliya. They do it every year. They did it this year.
And in truth, no one said anything at the conference that we didn't already know. We learned nothing new about Iran's program or Israel's intentions. Had there been no conference last week, there would likely have been no flood of Israeli statements.We only know three things for certain about Iran. It is getting very late in the game for anyone to take any military actions to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran will not stop its nuclear weapons program voluntarily.
And Obama will not order US forces to take action to stop Iran's nuclear project.What remains uncertain still is how Israel plans to respond to these three certainties. The fact that Israel has waited this long to strike presents the disturbing prospect that our leaders may have been confused by the Obama administration's rhetoric. Perhaps they have been persuaded that the US is on our side on this issue and that we don't have to rely only on ourselves to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
But as the foregoing analysis of the administration's very angry words on Syria and very sober words on Iran demonstrates, Obama and his deputies use rhetoric not to clarify their intentions, but to obfuscate them. Just as they will do nothing to prevent Assad from continuing his campaign of murder and terror, so they will do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, where her column appears.
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5)A Fairness Quiz for the President
Is it fair that some of Mr. Obama's largest campaign contributors received federal loan guarantees?
By STEPHEN MOORE
President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?
Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?
Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?
Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?
Is it fair that President Obama sends his two daughters to elite private schools that are safer, better-run, and produce higher test scores than public schools in Washington, D.C.—but millions of other families across America are denied that free choice and forced to send their kids to rotten schools?
Is it fair that Americans who build a family business, hire workers, reinvest and save their money—paying a lifetime of federal, state and local taxes often climbing into the millions of dollars—must then pay an additional estate tax of 35% (and as much as 55% when the law changes next year) when they die, rather than passing that money onto their loved ones?
Is it fair that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel and other leading Democrats who preach tax fairness underpaid their own taxes?
Is it fair that after the first three years of Obamanomics, the poor are poorer, the poverty rate is rising, the middle class is losing income, and some 5.5 million fewer Americans have jobs today than in 2007?
Is it fair that roughly 88% of political contributions from supposedly impartial network television reporters, producers and other employees in 2008 went to Democrats?
Is it fair that the three counties with America's highest median family income just happen to be located in the Washington, D.C., metro area?
Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy—pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is "subsidized"?
Is it fair that those who work full-time jobs (and sometimes more) to make ends meet have to pay taxes to support up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits for those who don't work?
Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?
Is it fair that thousands of workers won't have jobs because the president sided with environmentalists and blocked the shovel-ready Keystone XL oil pipeline?
Is it fair that some of Mr. Obama's largest campaign contributors received federal loan guarantees on their investments in renewable energy projects that went bust?
Is it fair that federal employees receive benefits that are nearly 50% higher than those of private-sector workers whose taxes pay their salaries, according to the Congressional Budget Office?
Is it fair that soon almost half the federal budget will take income from young working people and redistribute it to old non-working people, even though those over age 65 are already among the wealthiest Americans?
Is it fair that in 27 states workers can be compelled to join a union in order to keep their jobs?
Is it fair that nearly four out of 10 American households now pay no federal income tax at all—a number that has risen every year under Mr. Obama?
Is it fair that Boeing, a private company, was threatened by a federal agency when it sought to add jobs in a right-to-work state rather than in a forced-union state?
Is it fair that our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids—who never voted for Mr. Obama—will have to pay off the $5 trillion of debt accumulated over the past four years, without any benefits to them?
Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
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6)There comes a time when a woman just has to trust her husband... for example...
A wife comes home late at night from being out of town and quietly opens the door to her bedroom.
From under the blanket she sees four legs instead of two. She reaches for a baseball bat and starts hitting the blanket as hard as she can.
Once she's done, she goes to the kitchen to have a drink. As she enters, she sees her husband there, reading a magazine.
"Hi Darling", he says, "Your parents have come to visit us, so l let them stay in our bedroom.
Did you say ‘hello’?”
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7)How Israel Keeps Us Safe
By Karin McQuillan
We have a president who has a problem with Israel. According to a New York Times column, "Don't Do It, Bibi
Obama's indifference to Israel's safety is a moral problem, but it is more than that. It poses a grave threat to our national security.
Israel's blessings don't stop with the gifts of individual Jews advancing high tech and medical care. Israeli inventiveness in those fields is of the greatest military importance to us. As a country, Israel does more than any other country in the world to keep the U.S. safe
What has Israel done for us?
Compare the benefits of our alliance with Israel to the things we get from our allies in Europe. Europe has chosen to take advantage of us, depending on our taxpayers to protect theirs. They use us for a free ride. Britain supports us, but has no great military budget anymore. Their modern weapons systems depend on us. There is no broad two-way street.
Our alliance with Israel is not only broad and mutual, but it is essential.
Drones? Israel is the world leader
Think of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We use an Israeli-produced tactical radar
State-of-the-art missile defense? Israel is America's "most sophisticated and experienced partner
Our Navy and Air Force? Israel provides us with a revolutionary helmet-mounted sight that is standard in nearly all frontline Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft. Israel provides us with a gun system for close-in defense of naval vessels against terrorist dinghies and small-boat swarms. Israel provides a port of call for the Sixth Fleet
Nuclear threats? It was very helpful that Israel prevented Iraq from developing nuclear capability by bombing Osirik in 1981. In 2007, Israel prevented Syria from developing nuclear capability by bombing Syria's secret nuclear facility at al-Kibar. Washington didn't know
The war on terror? Israel provides homeland security training for U.S. airport security and police departments across the country. They've worked to help us with national resilience planning to save lives and preserve national security during natural disasters and terror attacks. Israel helps us with counter-terrorism intelligence and cooperation in defeating the terrorist operations of Hamas, Hezb'allah, and al-Qaeda. We have joint Special Forces training and exercises, collaboration on shared targets, and close cooperation among the relevant U.S. and Israeli security for preventive actions and deterrence. We rely on Israeli advances to enhance our capabilities to defend our cyberspace from sabotage. Israeli advances protect our banking, communications, utilities, transportation, and internet infrastructure.
Israel is not a charity case. U.S. presidents are sworn to protect and defend America, not Israel. Sixty years of close cooperation has been maintained because it is to our benefit. It was President Eisenhower
The U.S.-Israeli relationship makes it easier for our military to do their job. In superficial ways, it makes it harder for the State to do their job. Our State Department is unwilling to confront Arab lies about Israel being the cause of Islamic violence. There is no actual cost to our alliance with Israel, and immeasurable benefits. Unfortunately, our State Department has few Kissingers who can see past Arab propaganda to the realities of national interest.
Israel is a highly effective ally in our fight to defend and protect America. The Israelis do more than any other country in the world to oppose the imposition of the jihadi vision. Europe is succumbing. Obama would follow. The rest of us know that our alliance with Israel helps keep us safe.
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7)A Defining Moment
By Thomas Sowell
Governor Mitt Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor has been treated as a gaffe in much of the media, and those in the Republican establishment who have been rushing toward endorsing his coronation as the GOP's nominee for president -- with 90 percent of the delegates still not yet chosen -- have been trying to sweep his statement under the rug.
But Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor -- because they "have a very ample safety net" -- was followed by a statement that was not just a slip of the tongue, and should be a defining moment in telling us about this man's qualifications as a conservative and, more important, as a potential President of the United States.
Mitt Romney has come out in support of indexing the minimum wage law, to have it rise automatically to keep pace with inflation. To many people, that would seem like a small thing that can be left for economists or statisticians to deal with.
But to people who call themselves conservatives, and aspire to public office, there is no excuse for not being aware of what a major social disaster the minimum wage law has been for the young, the poor and especially for young and poor blacks.
It is not written in the stars that young black males must have astronomical rates of unemployment. It is written implicitly in the minimum wage laws.
We have gotten so used to seeing unemployment rates of 30 or 40 percent for black teenage males that it might come as a shock to many people to learn that the unemployment rate for sixteen- and seventeen-year-old black males was just under 10 percent back in 1948. Moreover, it was slightly lower than the unemployment rate for white males of the same age.
How could this be?
The economic reason is quite plain. The inflation of the 1940s had pushed money wages for even unskilled, entry-level labor above the level specified in the minimum wage law passed ten years earlier. In other words, there was in practical effect no national minimum wage law in the late 1940s.
My first full-time job, as a black teenage high-school dropout in 1946, was as a lowly messenger delivering telegrams. But my starting pay was more than 50 percent above the level specified in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Liberals were of course appalled that the federal minimum wage law had lagged so far behind inflation -- and, in 1950, they began a series of escalations of the minimum wage level over the years.
It was in the wake of these escalations that black teenage unemployment rose to levels that were three or four times the level in 1948. Even in the most prosperous years of later times, the unemployment rate for black teenage males was some multiple of what it was even in the recession year of 1949. And now it was often double the unemployment rate for white males of the same ages.
This was not the first or the last time that liberals did something that made them feel good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake, especially among the poor whom they were supposedly
helping.
For those for whom "racism" is the explanation of all racial differences, let me assure them, from personal experience, that there was not less racism in the 1940s.
For those who want to check out the statistics -- and I hope that would include Mitt Romney -- they can be found detailed on pages 42 to 45 of "Race and Economics" by Walter Williams.
Nor are such consequences of minimum wage laws peculiar to blacks or to the United States. In Western European countries whose social policies liberals consider more "advanced" than our own, including more generous minimum wage laws and other employer-mandated benefits, it has been common in even prosperous years for unemployment rates among young people to be 20 percent or higher.
The economic reason is not complicated. When you set minimum wage levels higher than many inexperienced young people are worth, they don't get hired. It is not rocket science.
Milton Friedman explained all this, half a century ago, in his popular little book for non-economists, "Capitalism and Freedom." So have many other people. If a presidential candidate who calls himself "conservative" has still not heard of these facts, that simply shows that you can call yourself anything you want to.
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8)Dear Sweet Tammy’s team:
As we enter 2012 we find Sweet Tammy’s embarked on a new quest to expand our geographic and product coverage. We have expanded to Cleveland and will continue expanding to new locations, but at the same time we will be expanding our product offerings so that we can increase our sales per location and consolidate our position as one of the premier artisanal bakeries in the region.
In order to best address the opportunities ahead of us, we have re-structured our Executive and Management Team as follows:
David Shpilberg – Chairman
David represents the interest of all our investors and will continue to help us develop and execute our business strategy
Tamara (Tammy) Berkowitz – General Manager
Tammy will be responsible for the management of Sweet Tammy’s. She will report to David Shpilberg.
Daniel Berkowitz – Sales Manager
Daniel will be responsible for all new account development and all sales to existing accounts. He will report to Tammy Berkowitz.
Evangelos (Evan) Simitzis – Operations Manager
Evan will be responsible for all facilities and equipment, retail and wholesale baking and distribution. He will report to Tammy Berkowitz.
Solomon (Sol) Horovitz – Distribution Manager
Sol will be responsible for all distribution of Sweet Tammy’s wholesale product as well as delivery orders. He will report to Evan Simitzis
Heidi Miller – Head Baker
Heidi will continue to be responsible for all retail baking which includes but is not limited to walk in business, call in orders, catering orders, university orders and special event orders. She will report to Evan Simitzis
Tammy will retain the role of Retail Manager until the business develops enough to justify the appointment of a full -time Manager.
David, Tammy, Daniel and Evan constitute the Executive Committee of Sweet Tammy’s, responsible as a team for the successful development of our company.
We are very proud of you, our Sweet Tammy’s Team, and count on your ideas and good work to make Sweet Tammy’s the best artisanal bakery in the region and a truly great place to work!
Tammy Berkowitz
Owner/General Manager
412-450-8445
6595 Hamilton Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
www.SweetTammys.com
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