Strike while the iron is hot and Obama will be more likely to help Netanyahu in some form and or fashion for fear of losing the election if he does not. If Obama does help Netanyahu and wins he will then have more leverage over Netanyahu.
For chess players the next few moths will be an interesting period of gamesmanship.
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I have never doubted Netanyahu would eventually do what he feels he must and my conviction is even greater because Obama's dillying and dallying has actually worked against him. Yes, the sanctions have worked but were implemented so gradually and over such a long time they actually failed. Meanwhile, Netanyahu got a look see at Obama vis a vis Syria and that could not have been instilling and/or comforting.
So I see a war coming and sooner than later. But then what do I know?
In yesterday's recap conference someone asked the question about a game changer and the two panelists agreed a trip by Obama to Iran, like Nixon's to China, but it was doubtful such would occur. (See 1 below.)
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Cloning immune cancer cell therapy announced but NIH researcher disputes results as being inferior
(See 2 below.)
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Romney wins but John Fund says he leaves the ring badly beat up and politically damaged.Would he be wise to fold his cards and let Gingrich and Santorum slug it out with the rest of the Republican establishment nursing their wounds? (See 3 below.)
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Victor Davis Hanson pokes fun at Obama's gaseous energy policies. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)US bunker-busters, aerial refueling for Israel alongside diplomacy for Iran
US GBU-31 bunker buster bomb
This news came together with the announcement that European Union’s Catherine Ashton had proposed to Iran that long-stalled nuclear negotiations be resumed with the Six World Powers.
The morning after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pledged before the pro-Israeli AIPAC convention that he would head off the threat of Israel’s annihilation by a nuclear Iran, and his agreement to disagree with US President Barack Obama in their White House talks, the European Union’s Catherine Ashton suddenly jumped up with a proposition to Tehran to resume the long-stalled nuclear negotiations with the world powers. She made her offer on behalf of China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Following the same script as Ashton, Tehran signaled its willingness to let international inspectors visit the military base of Parchin where nuclear explosive tests are strongly suspected of taking place.
Straight after this two-way messaging, Tehran prevaricated by announcing, “Considering the fact that it is a military site, granting access is a time-consuming process and cannot be permitted repeatedly. Nevertheless it would be allowed after the International Atomic Energy Agency submits paperwork about related issues.”
Monday, March 5, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano declined to spell out the suspicion that the Iranians needed time to remove the nuclear evidence from Parchin. "But I can tell you that we are aware that there are some activities at Parchin and it makes us believe that going there sooner is better than later," Amano said. In the past that this military base was used for the secret testing of nuclear explosives and warhead triggers.
Washington sources add US intelligence certainly knew what was going on there. So did President Obama, when he addressed the AIPAC convention and promised to “prevent, not just contain” Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. And so did Netanyahu, when he met the president at the White House Monday.Yet,Parchin did not come up on any of those occasions.
The prime minister knew there was no point because Obama was already firmly set on engaging Iran in nuclear diplomacy with the Six Powers – probably in Istanbul next month as Tehran had proposed – irrespective of any other considerations. Tehran was to be allowed to flex its military muscle so as to reach the table in the strong position of a nuclear power.
Netanyahu spoke from this knowledge when he declared “Israel must be master of its fate” and “The pressure (on Iran) is growing but time is growing short.”
He made it clear he has no faith in the diplomatic option achieving anything. As in the past, Tehran would apply “bazaar tactics” to duck, weave, procrastinate and haggle, the while using the talks as a safe cover for continuing with impunity the very processes under discussion.
Yet a few hours after the Obama-Netanyahu impasse, Washington and Tehran whipped out the diplomacy ploy to cut short Israel’s military plans. It was assumed that Israel would not risk attacking Iran while it was locked in international negotiations.
But Netanyahu has always resisted making this promise. Israel may therefore see its chance when the diplomatic process inevitably hits bumps in the road and stalls.
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta echoed President Obama when he spoke before the AIPAC conference on Tuesday: He vowed that the United States would take military action to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if diplomacy failed.
"Military action is the last alternative when all else fails," he told the pro-Israel lobbying group. "But make no mistake, we will act if we have to."
He carefully sidestepped any reference to a timeline. So there is no guarantee that Iran won’t already be armed with a nuclear weapon by the time Washington gets around to determining that diplomacy has failed.
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2) Researchers report progress in cancer immunotherapy
By Melissa Healy
In a bid to make cancer immunotherapy more effective, researchers report they have succeeded in halting the progress of aggressive melanoma in its tracks — at least briefly — in seven patients treated with an army of cloned cancer-fighting immune cells. In one of those patients, the treatment resulted in complete remission of his metastatic melanoma and evidence that his immune system stands ready to fight any return of the cancer after three years.
The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, contributes to hopes that a tumor-fighting strategy called immunotherapy can slow, halt or even reverse the growth of a range of cancers — and do so with fewer dangerous side effects.
Immunotherapy is one of medicine's most promising — and most problematic — approaches to cancer treatment. It aims to charge up the patient's immune system to attack cancer cells and halt their out-of-control growth.
The approach outlined in the new study by researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle identifies several ways to make it better, said Dr. Cassian Yee, the study's senior author. The key is to identify specific cancer-fighting cells already circulating in the blood of patients and make thousands of copies of them in the lab.
This type of "adoptive immunotherapy" could be effective against a wide range of cancers, Yee said. His research group is making plans to try the technique on patients with advanced ovarian cancer and sarcomas — rare tumors that arise from connective tissue in bones and muscle.
Several independent researchers said the study results were promising. But they also noted that the trial involved only 11 patients and said the therapy was less effective than in other published trials.
"Someday, cell-based therapy will be mainstream in cancer therapy," said Dr. Jeff Miller of the University of Minnesota's cell therapy core laboratory. "Each article that shows clinical activity is giving us a piece of the puzzle" that will make it safer and more effective, he said.
Immunotherapy usually starts with clinicians harvesting immune system cells called T cells that have attached themselves to a tumor in an effort to attack. They then coax the cells to multiply, either in the lab or in the body, and let them loose in the bloodstream so they can attack cancer wherever they find it.
Yee's team tried to do this more precisely. The researchers hoped that by choosing T cells more selectively and cloning only those judged most likely to vanquish their foe, the treatment would be more effective. Sorting through the body's vast and diverse population of T cells to select just the right ones is a painstaking process. But Yee bet that the extra effort would pay off with better results and fewer side effects.
Researchers drew blood from patients and scoured it to find the rare type of immune cell — a melanoma-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte cell — that specifically homes in on proteins expressed by the cancer. Then they put their harvest — as few as a few hundred cells — into a test tube and cloned them, creating millions. The last step was to infuse the resulting army of cancer-fighting clones back into the patient.
In six of the 11 patients in the trial, the melanoma stopped progressing for 12 to 19 weeks. Another patient was declared in remission because his cancer ceased to spread and, after several months, disappeared altogether. Three years later, researchers continue to detect the presence of the cloned cells they infused into the patient, 61-year-old high school history teacher Gardiner Vinnedge of North Bend, Wash.
For six years, Vinnedge endured painful rounds of chemotherapy, only to have his melanoma return. The immunotherapy allowed him to return to work three weeks after treatments began. The only side effect, he said, was a raging rash that lasted for three days.
"My back, my legs were just covered with a hot red rash," Vinnedge said. "It meant the treatment was working — the war was on between my T cells and the melanin in my skin." Now he says he is optimistic he may live to see retirement age, though he's not sure he'll ever stop teaching.
For immunotherapy to work, the manufactured T cells must survive for the months it takes to reach a tumor and dismantle it, as well as to round up migrating cancer cells and kill them. Currently, the T cells have limited staying power and often die off before their work is done. Doctors give them a boost by administering a growth factor called interleukin-2. But at high doses, it can cause dangerously low blood pressure, breathing problems, kidney failure and heart arrhythmias.
Yee's group showed that by choosing T cells more selectively, patients can get by with much lower doses of interleukin-2, making the treatment less toxic.
The researchers also discovered another way to reduce their dependence on interleukin-2 — by selecting the most youthful T cells, which survived the longest when infused into patients.
Dr. Patrick Hwu of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston said the study "adds to the wealth of what we know" about using the body's immune system to fight cancer. But immunotherapy pioneer Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg was highly critical of the methods and results.
"Cloned cells don't work," said Rosenberg, who heads the National Cancer Institute's tumor immunology section. In larger immunotherapy trials that used cultured cancer-fighting immune cells taken from patients' tumors, Rosenberg and his colleagues achieved "durable and complete regression" in as many as 40% as patients with advanced metastatic melanoma. "These results," he said, "are inferior."
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3)
Mitt Romney will exit the ten Super Tuesday contests with more delegates than anyone else, but his political reputation damaged. Given his crushing financial advantage, Romney should have done better tonight. He lost Oklahoma to Rick Santorum, despite the endorsement of the state’s most popular politician — populist U.S. senator Tom Coburn. He won Virginia, where his only opponent was Ron Paul, by only 59 percent to 41 percent. He lost significant cities ranging from upper-crust Charlottesville to working-class Lynchburg. Late-reporting urban areas may still give Romney a win in Ohio, but it is striking that he is struggling so much in a state where he carpet-bombed Rick Santorum the way he did. And in Ohio — unlike Michigan — there was no semi-organized effort among Democrats to embarrass him by casting votes for Santorum. Romney won among those voters who saw electability in November as their prime concern; his problem was that many voters had other priorities. Evangelicals continued to resist him, as did many blue-collar workers and the most conservative of voters. Mitt Romney remains the favorite for the GOP nomination, but if his campaign doesn’t realize that tonight’s results are real danger signals for their man — with regard to both later primaries and the November election — they are fooling themselves. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4)The Gaseous Policies of Barack Obama By Victor Davis Hanson “They” Did It (Again)! There are no “oil men” in the White House. So the Obamites cannot, as in the past, blame Halliburton, BP, or Exxon for rigging gas prices out of the Oval Office. Which leads to the question: why then are prices now climbing when the Bush-oil company connection is no longer the narrative? The new answer? “Wall Street” (e.g., the fat-cat bankers, corporate jet owners, those who don’t know when not to profit, etc.) raised prices. But if true, who let them get away with that? The Chinese, who are scrounging every barrel they can on the world market? The Indians, who follow suit? Maybe it’s the Obama administration Treasury that has borrowed $5 trillion in three years, not only eroding the buying power of the world-traded dollar but also sending a message to oil producers that even more debt is coming and their petrodollars will only be worth less and less? Or perhaps it is growing world tension, as in Iran, that caused the panic? But then who snubbed the Green revolution in Iran in the spring of 2009, sought “outreach” and “reset” with the theocracy, and leveled five serial demands to stop Iranian enrichment (or else!) to the point that Iran no doubt understood 2009-2012 was a once-in-a-lifetime exempt window of opportunity to get the bomb and to control the Gulf? To paraphrase William Tecumseh Sherman, Obama might as well rail at the wind. The administration’s current panic mode arises because we are nearing $5 a gallon. (I just filled up two miles away in West Selma, with a supposed 21% unemployment rate and a per capita income of about $14,000, and the price today was $4.27.) It is only early March. Obama may blame Wall Street, but he is savvy enough to do the following calculus: by August, people will want to drive more than they do in March; the Chinese will suddenly not wish to buy less oil this summer; he has no federal leases that he approved in January 2009 that will be coming on line after three-and-a-half years; Volts will not be going into hyper-production mode; and prices will only go up just as the campaign and the weather heat up. There is about an hour’s worth of Obama administration past quotes on gas prices that should make some interesting campaign ads. High Gas Prices Are Good Bad So what exactly is the administration’s reaction to skyrocketing gas prices? That should be an absurd question — except that we know administration officials are either on record as indifferent to the high cost of gasoline, or in fact hoping for higher prices. Consider also the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline; the restrictions of new federal oil leases in the West, Alaska, offshore, and in the Gulf; Obama’s prior promises that energy prices would skyrocket because of his efforts to enact cap and trade; his boast to help Brazil out by importing its new offshore oil finds; his worries only over the abrupt rate of gas increases in 2011 rather than his desire for gradual, steadier escalation; Energy Secretary Chu’s various statements that high prices were not such a concern and indeed that he wished to see gas reach European levels (e.g., $8-10 a gallon); Interior Secretary Salazar’s insistence that even $10 gas would not open up new federal oil lands; and on and on. I think that such words and deeds translate into some technocratic “never waste a crisis” dream in which we adapt to mass transit, begin to pile into Smart cars and subsidized government Volts, arrange our power use around the cycles of the Sun and wind, and in general consume far less as dictated by those in the technocratic overseer class, the waiting-Escalades-on-the-tarmac bunch who by needs must consume far, far more to save us from ourselves. The financiers of Solyndra and other failed subsidized firms are somehow exempt from the sorts of invective leveled at those who produce oil, as if we like those who lose our money and end up producing nothing but despise those who make a profit, pay taxes, and get us to work in the morning. “Skyrocketing” for Thee, “Orchid-Growing” Temperatures for Me I say technocratic because only those who work for government or live in larger cities or do not depend on driving vans, pick-up trucks, tractors, or semis could think it was wise for an oil- and natural gas-rich nation not to exploit fully its own natural resources. (Can any of you readers recall a civilization that in the past voluntarily chose not to exploit a valuable natural resource when it could be done safely, without damage, and to great profit?) Whatever the level that the price of gas reaches, Barack Obama and Steven Chu and the technocracy won’t feel it all that much. Do you remember Obama’s first day in office when he abruptly ordered the temperature in the White House dialed up? (Had that “oil man” Bush been too energy-conscious?) David Axelrod himself complained that one could grow orchids at Obama’s new presidentially mandated heat: “skyrocketing” prices for us, but orchid growing for the president? Think of some of the ramifications of this faculty lounge policy (I use that term empirically rather than as invective, given I taught among faculty for 21 years). Americans must borrow even more billions to import ever-higher priced oil that enriches many of our enemies, all of which will be pumped abroad under far more lax environmental conditions than had we developed our own resources here at home. (What happened to “Planet Earth”?) Increased gas costs will also simply transfer lots of dollars that might have been spent in America to foreign governments, and will curb consumer consumption of other goods in an economic downturn. Is the driving force then some philosophical desire to restrict crass American materialism in order to return to a preferable pre-carbon dioxide Golden Age past? And if so, are the president’s sudden complaints about high gas prices and considerations to draw again from the strategic petroleum reserve entirely cynical, in the sense that once reelected, he and Secretary Chu will accelerate their restrictionist policies in hopes of keeping gas prices even higher? (We are already halfway on the road to “European levels.”) Or of making subsidized Solyndra- and Volt-like projects at last viable? Why would the president consider tapping the strategic oil reserve, but not start a breakneck effort at developing new sources? Is previously pumped oil less polluting; does it increase supply and lower prices in a way that freshly pumped oil does not? Does his mockery of “drill, drill, drill” suggest that “not drill, not drill, and not drill” is a wiser alternative? Does Obama realize that even an extra 3 to 4 million barrels a day produced here would earn the U.S. billions in extra revenue and help to stabilize world prices by taking a commensurate amount of American demand off the world market? The Strange Case of Dr. Chu Give credit to Steven Chu. He’s not backing down and most recently reiterated to Congress that high prices are not much of a concern of this administration. (But Mr. Chu: if they go up any more, you will soon be out of a job, yes?) In contrast, and faced with reelection, the president now brags that we are using less fuel and pumping more of it than when he took office. Again, examine that surreal logic: because unemployment is high and GDP growth low, there is less demand for gas, and that is suddenly a good thing? (Note how — for the first time? — Obama does not blame Bush for lowering gas demand as he had serially for causing the economic doldrums: “Bush wrecked the economy but I was smart enough to make it far worse to lower gas demand.”) Then the president boasted further that domestic production is at an all-time high. Consider that weird reasoning as well: although he curtailed production on federal lands where there are now record levels of known oil and gas reserves, private industry has developed horizontal drilling and fracking — despite, rather than because of, the president — on mostly private land in the Dakotas and elsewhere. Is the reasoning, then, something like: “Congratulations to the oil industry for ignoring me”? In sum, from January 2009 to January 2011 — in the pre-Climategate days before Al Gore was a “sex poodle” and when the Himalayan glaciers were to be swamps and polar bears extinct — new gas and oil production was considered “bad,” given that Obama was pushing wind, solar, and “alternative” energies. In those giddy cap-and-trade days, he could afford to pontificate because he was not up for reelection and world demand was sluggish, dropping oil prices at the wellhead. When the world economy began rebounding, demand picked up, prices spiked, and now Obama is in campaign mode: suddenly high gas prices are bad and he claims not that he wants his House-approved cap-and-trade bill pushed through his Democratically controlled Senate, but rather that all along he has encouraged private enterprise to drill while successfully persuading us to cut back our consumption (as if we did so because of the impressive oratory of Barack Obama rather than because he had managed to ensure millions of Americans now had no jobs to drive to work to). The Omnipotent Mr. Obama Why is it that Obama takes credit for the rebound of the stock market after the historic drops in September 2008, but sees the price of gas as extraneous in a way speculation on Wall Street is not? To say that gas prices have doubled under his watch is considered by sophisticates simplistic and reductionist, given all the factors beyond his control that contribute to such increases; to say that Wall Street has improved under his watch is to appreciate the brilliantly subtle and clever manner in which an omnipotent Obama has restored financial confidence and restored some of our lost 401(k) plans. Obama keeps claiming that the oil companies are gouging us. Some of them may well be doing that; after all, they can profit well enough at the old $40-$50 a barrel levels on about 45% of our supply produced domestically, and “need” not receive $110 for their Texas or Dakota oil at the world price. But such thinking assumes that we all should sell our product at less than we might to help fellow Americans. The farmer who produces almonds need not sell his crop at $1 a pound off the tree because he does not “need” such profits, even though he realizes that world demand has forced the price up (from the old $.75 a pound) that he could receive by exporting his almonds. In other words, everything produced in the United States that has the potential to be exported has a “world” price in this globally interconnected world, and the fact that oil does too does not make its producers inherently evil. We might as well try to convince this new generation of gold miners to sell their product to fellow Americans at $500 an ounce to help lower the deficit rather than to “gouge” us at demanding a “world” price of $1500 an ounce that is well beyond what they “need” to profit from mining. So here we are: as gas keeps spiraling the secretary of energy simply cannot any longer remark on the resulting deleterious effects since he is on record that they are not deleterious. And the president has urged us to consider, in lieu of Neanderthal drilling, our sizable algae reserves (does algae grow in the U.S. more abundantly than elsewhere?) in a manner that he once urged us to inflate our tires and “tune up” our electronic ignition cars. So no worry: we have two Nobel laureates in Dr. Chu and Barack Obama to see us through. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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