America's foreign policy should rest on one foundation - Is it in our nation's best interest to act?
Not whether it buys votes for the next election, not whether it curries momentary favor etc.
Implicit in this question is the assumption we should be prone to helping democracies and, in doing so, also take into consideration the human rights aspect of the matter. Sometimes all we can do is give voice and apply pressure but we should never fail, at least, doing that. Then there are times when we can and should take more overt action, even military, but only if it remains in our nation's best interest and not from a short term but rather from a long term perspective.
Here is where I fault the press and media with their own desire to ring their respective cash registers. Their myopic shrill attacks and biased agenda reporting have done more harm than good. We can go back to Cronkite, a respected journalist, and point to his influence in causing us to lose in Viet Nam at a time when we were actually close to victory. Then we have the press and media playing up Jane Fonda's visit and, more recently, the protests of that lady from Texas (whose name escapes me) against GW's escapades in Iraq.
With respect to our support of Israel. Israel is a democracy, they are a solid ally and they are actively being threatened by Iran which seeks to achieve nuclear status for the purpose of destroying them. Then controlling the Middle East as the dominant power. These facts alone should be compelling enough but when one considers a nuclear Iran is a threat both to stability in the Middle East as well as world peace then the issue of doing what is in our own self interest becomes even more overwhelming/compelling.
When I review, in my own mind, Obama's actions with respect to his foreign policy, specifically as it relates to the Middle East, it is rife with mistakes in judgement and actions.
This president naively thought he could strengthen our standing by apologizing for America's neo-Colonial actions which he saw as mostly having a negative effect.
He totally misjudged the response pulling the rug out from under Mubarak would have and has been ambivalent towards supporting rebellions in Iran and Syria.
Yes, he has applied economic and financial sanctions on Iran, but has failed to move swiftly to avert their nuclear progress. Now he is confronted by an ally that believes its very existence is threatened and whose acts of offense-defense could take matters out of our hands and leave us with a fait accompli that has serious repercussions.
Obama and Clinton thought they could reset relations with Russia and made the same mistake GW did when he said he looked into Putin's eyes and concluded he could trust this KGB thug. Not even Russians trust him.
Obama caved on defending Poland and the Czechoslovakia with a defensive missile system thinking it would appease Putin.
Obama's withdrawal from Iran may prove, from a long term standpoint, a huge mistake and, certainly from a short term standpoint, has left the nation gasping to maintain progress towards an Arab/Muslim type democracy. This prospect becomes even more doubtful if Iran is allowed to rise in power.
Obama's actions in Afghanistan are, at best, likely to re-introduce the Taliban and leave that nation wondering with friends like America who needs enemies.
I daresay,based on the constant shin kicking by the likes of tin horn dictators like Chavez, we are any more respected/feared in the world or have greater influence which we can leverage for the benefit to ourselves the good of world peace and stability as a result of Obama's foreign policy initiatives.
Then what of his energy policies and his decision to postpone building a pipeline and the imposition of huge costs on energy companies and his confused and dictatorial actions after the Gulf/BP incidence?
Finally, what about his decision to weaken our military and cut spending on defense as we face a growing naval threat from China? And more recently we seem to be feeding N Korea food again as they, in turn, feed us more propaganda for the gullible.
I am trying to be objective but I keep running up against a wall of failures, missed opportunities and mistakes.
You decide! (See 1 below.)
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Between D'Souza and now the deceased Brietbart, Obama may finally be vetted and eventually defanged based on fact not assumptions and in his own words, which I have always said would/could/should be his undoing. (See 2 below.)
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Maybe I too have my head in the sand when it comes to buying this rally but I am sitting on the sideline with cash. The only stock I have bought for income and very modest long term hoped for appreciation is DTEGY.
Huge deficits and central bank fundings, prospective inflation, Iran's nuclear ambitions, the possibility of four more years of Obama and China's diversifying away from our dollar and its own economic problems are enough uncertainties to keep me on the sidelines for the time being.
And then we have a straight up market that has exceeded in two months forecasts for the entire year but then, markets have a frequent way of proving all pros wrong.
And then we have a straight up market that has exceeded in two months forecasts for the entire year but then, markets have a frequent way of proving all pros wrong.
Yes, markets climb walls of worry so this market has plenty of wall to climb but I ain't no wall climber type.(See 2 below.)
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Kim on Newt. If we could clone Newt's energy and ability to synthesize ideas and merge them into Romney's body we would have the consummate candidate to take down Obama. Alas, the world is never perfect. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Buying Off North Korea (Again)
Washington pays for promises from another Kim.
its soccer squad scored a goal off mighty Brazil at their 2010 World Cup match-up in South Africa. So we'll forgive Kim Jong Eun if he feels like the diplomatic equivalent of Robinho for the point he just won against the Obama Administration.
On Wednesday, North Korea announced that it would stop enriching uranium, suspend its nuclear tests and allow U.N. nuclear inspectors to inspect its nuclear facilities (or at least those it chooses to declare).
Associated Press
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright after arriving at the Pyongyang, North Korea, airport in 2000.
In exchange, the U.S. has agreed to provide 240,000 metric tons of food aid over the next year. The deal is said to contain verification mechanisms to ensure that the food doesn't merely feed North Korean soldiers. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls it "a modest first step in the right direction." Other Administration officials insist they won't let themselves be fooled by empty Pyongyang promises.
Good luck with that. When the Clinton Administration (with Japan and South Korea) negotiated the Agreed Framework with Pyongyang in 1994, it too won promises from the regime that it would close its weapons-breeding reactor at Yongbyon and put its plutonium under seal in exchange for 500,000 tons a year in oil, two "light-water" reactors and a variety of U.S security guarantees.
That economic lifeline was certainly helpful to Kim Jong Il, who managed to keep his regime afloat and avoid the fate of most Soviet clients. But it didn't keep him from flouting the terms of the agreement.
In 2002, the Bush Administration confronted Pyongyang with evidence that it was pursuing a parallel program to enrich weapons-grade uranium. The North acknowledged the charge and admitted it had been doing so for years, only to deny it again later. It then pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and expelled U.N. inspectors.
Related Video
Heritage research fellow Bruce Klingner on the U.S. agreement with North Korea.
The North conducted its first nuclear test four years later. And in September 2007 we learned, thanks to an Israeli strike, that Pyongyang was secretly building a nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert, notwithstanding President Bush's explicit warning that the U.S. would react harshly to such proliferation attempts.
Once again, however, the U.S. tried to make a deal. In June 2008 President Bush announced that he was lifting sanctions on the North after Pyongyang offered an obviously incomplete nuclear accounting and destroyed portions of its already obsolete Yongbyon facility. "We will trust you only to the extent that you fulfill your promises," said Mr. Bush, sounding a lot like those State Department gnomes sound today.
The Obama Administration came into office a few months later, and the Kim family promptly welcomed the U.S. diplomatic overtures with ballistic missile tests, a second nuclear shot, the expulsion of U.N. inspectors, withdrawal from the negotiating table, and, for good measure, the hostage-taking of a couple of American reporters. So it was back to tough talk and sanctions—until now. What's changed?
Well, there's a new Kim on the throne. Advocates of a deal have also modified their expectations. Instead of arguing that we are on the road to de-nuclearizing the North, they claim that some agreement is better than allowing the North's nuclear program to run at full speed, and at least some North Koreans might get better fed in the bargain. Some South Koreans add that the North stages fewer provocations—like shelling South Korean fishing villages or torpedoing patrol craft—when it's at the negotiating table.
At least that's an honest argument for trying to keep Pyongyang bribed a little longer. But the problem is that throwing another lifeline to another Kim works at cross-purposes with what ought to be the basic U.S. goal of regime change. With the food aid, the younger Kim will be able to make up enough of the country's one-million ton harvest shortfall to keep the elites, the military and some portion of the work force fed. This, in turn, will allow him to keep cracking down on private markets, which pose the biggest threat to the regime's control over the population.
The overwhelming odds are that this deal will do little more than further prolong the agony of North Korea's people while sustaining a regime that poses a security threat to its democratic neighbors and the U.S. The Obama Administration has done pretty well so far in treating the North to a diet of economic pressure and diplomatic neglect. What a pity for it now to go down the same dead-end road that so conspicuously failed its predecessors.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Breitbart‘s Tapes of Obama’s College Years to Be Released in a week
“I have videos, this election we’re going to vet him,” new media mogul Andrew Breitbart proclaimed at this year’s CPAC event.
Breitbart was, of course, referring to clips that allegedly show President Barack Obama during his college days — videos that the media leader claimed would show “why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008.”
These tapes, which have inspired conspiracy theories surrounding what led to Breitbart’s death on Thursday of natural causes at the age of 43, are now purportedly going to be released
On Thursday evening, Steve Bannon, a writer and documentary filmmaker (“The Undefeated”), told FOX News‘ Sean Hannity that Breitbart’s company will release the mysterious Obama Harvard tapes within seven to 10 days.
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2)Investors' Sell Signal: Surging U.S. Stocks
By JOE LIGHT
The stock market is surging, but many individual investors aren't getting swept up in the excitement.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed 6.2% this year, and closed above 13000 on Tuesday for the first time since May 2008. Dow 13000 was short-lived, however, as the index fell below 13000 Wednesday, amid congressional testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. On Thursday, the Dow gained 28.23 points, to end at 12980.30.
The Nasdaq Composite, meanwhile, crossed the 3000 level on Wednesday for the first time in 12 years, before falling back.
Yet many individual investors, chastened by the dot-com collapse, the 2008-09 financial crisis and volatility since then have viewed the latest rally not as a "buy" signal but as an opportunity to take profits. According to mutual-fund flow tracker EPFR Global, individual investors have pulled $8.3 billion out of U.S. stock funds since the beginning of the year and sunk almost $10.6 billion into bond funds.
Jory Olson, 51 years old, an electrical engineer in Portland, Ore., said he has been tempted to add to his stockholdings during the recent rally but has avoided biting so far. In late January, in the midst of the month's 4.5% rise in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, Mr. Olson said he sold stocks and bought bonds.
"I remind myself of how bad it felt in March 2009," he said, referring to the crisis-era low. "I just didn't sleep because it was horrible. Now, we're on the other side of that swing and this could just as easily go down as it could go up."
Although the S&P 500 has returned 103% since bottoming in March 2009, it has suffered setbacks along the way, most recently as European leaders struggled to find a solution to the Greek debt crisis. That has caused individual investors to meet this year's rise with skepticism, some observers said.
EPFR hasn't tracked a single week in which individual investors put money into U.S. stocks since last July. And since the market bottomed in March 2009, EPFR has counted just two months of net inflows from individual investors. Institutional investors, on the other hand, are buying. Including all types of investors, U.S. stock funds have seen inflows of more than $588 million this year, according to EPFR.
Now, markets may be at a tipping point, said Sam Stovall, chief equity strategist for S&P Capital IQ. If individual investors decide to dive in, they have a lot of dry powder to drive the market higher, he said. But if they don't, it will be difficult for the rally to continue much longer.
To be sure, positive economic data have bolstered some investors' hopes for a sustained rally. The Conference Board on Tuesday reported U.S. consumer confidence in February reached its highest level in a year.
This week, the American Association of Individual Investors' sentiment survey reported that 44.5% of investors think the market will rise in the next six months, slightly higher than its long-term average.
Some investors regret having missed the rally.
New Yorker Sotirios Keros, 39, said he meant to buy stocks toward the beginning of the year, but held off. Now, stocks have rallied so sharply that he plans to increase his bond allocation.
"In retrospect, it was not the best of luck to delay my investment in stocks," he said. "I wish I would have been able to do it back then. But I missed it."
Lew Altfest, CEO of Altfest Personal Wealth Management in New York, said three times as many clients have contacted him in the first two months of the year asking to increase their stock allocations as they did in the same period last year.
But many investors remain leery. Financial planner John Gugle of Alpha Financial Advisors in Charlotte, N.C., said clients have called him over the past couple of weeks asking if they should sell stocks into the rally.
"They've had such tepid results for the last few years, and they're saying, 'Hey, if I've got gains, let's lock some of that in,' " he said.
Douglas Moore, 64, a retiree in Newport News, Va., said he hasn't ramped up his stockholdings, and if the market climbs a tad more, he plans to take some profit and move money to bonds.
"It's a lot easier to avoid the urge to add on to stocks when they're going up than it is to buy stocks when they're going down," he said. "I'll take a little off the table, put it into bonds, and roll on. It's when stocks are going down that I start to wonder how far down she's going to go."
Some investors said they have seen this all before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has crossed and closed above 13000 nine times since first breaching it in April 2007. It has crossed and closed above the milestones of 11000, 12000, 13000 or 14000 a total of 74 times. That has kept many individual investors from batting an eyelash at the latest hallmark, said Susan John, chairwoman of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors.
"Most clients don't think it's a big deal," she said. "Many aren't even aware of it.
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3)Gingrich's Energy Charge
The candidate has recast an old debate in a way that the GOP can use to great effect against Obama.
There are few third acts in politics, but Newt Gingrich is giving it the old college professor's try. And whether Super Tuesday proves the speaker's comeback or his swan song, Mr. Gingrich is nonetheless bequeathing something to his party: energy.
Among Mr. Gingrich's failings as a politician is his fascination with "big ideas," an obsession that tends to lead him hither and thither into unproductive policy debates (see moon colonies). Among his successes as a politician is nonetheless his ability—when he lands on a policy issue that matters—to develop it, frame it, and use it to great purpose.
The combination of political desperation (falling poll numbers) and political opportunity (rising gas prices) has in the past weeks landed Mr. Gingrich on the big idea of energy policy. Putting aside his poll-driven promises of cheap gas or "energy independence," he's on to something. He's touching on a brand-new energy vision, as well as honing what ought to be one of the party's most effective criticisms of Barack Obama this fall.
Rick Perry tried this, making energy his first big policy proposal, even as he lacked the skills to connect it to the wider economy. The other presidential candidates also sniff Obama blood in rising gas prices. Mitt Romney throws the need for more domestic energy production into every speech. Rick Santorum hoisted a piece of shale as a visual prop in his post-Michigan-primary speech.
Associated Press
The candidate gets that the U.S. is now a potential resource powerhouse.
Mr. Gingrich, for his part, is leading with it, framing his speeches around energy and running a half-hour video of his ideas in key Super Tuesday states. His plan is to inspire enough voters to win his home state of Georgia, and to do well in the neighboring states of Tennessee and Oklahoma, picking up enough delegates to justify continuing. While the headlines have focused on his silly promise of $2.50-a-gallon gas (no president can guarantee a world price), the speaker's bigger contribution has come in his crystallization of two key arguments for the fall campaign.
The first is his point that this is not the usual, boring energy debate. For decades the nation has deadlocked over America's supposedly limited natural resources, fighting over whether high gas prices made it worth touching, say, the supposedly pristine Alaskan wilderness. It's been a debate in the context of scarcity.
Mr. Gingrich's savvy has been to grasp that this is over, done, passé. America is embarking on a seismic energy shift. A decade of technological advances—from 3-D mapping, to fracking, to horizontal drilling—has turned this country into a resources monster in oil and gas and coal. The old, tired GOP argument is that we need to drill for energy security. The new, rebooted argument is that America is primed to become the largest energy producer in the world, with all the money, jobs and benefits that come with it.
In the context of abundance, energy development is political gold for the GOP. As Mr. Gingrich notes: It is a winning economic argument, a shift that could create "more than a million new jobs." It is a winning deficit argument, since royalties and profits become a new cash stream to the government. It is a winning little-guy argument, since the beneficiaries of fracking are "people who own the property," like "farmers." It's a winning heartland argument, since cheap natural gas is the way to "increase our manufacturing base."
Energy also becomes, and this is the speaker's second point, one of the strongest contrasts with Mr. Obama. That is, if Republicans get it right. The temptation is going to be to hit Mr. Obama on gas prices, accuse him of not doing enough exploration. But if gas prices fall, that argument loses its punch. And Mr. Obama is already shamelessly taking credit for a production uptick on private lands.
The trick, which is what Mr. Gingrich is doing, is to instead cast energy policy as emblematic of the administration's entire broken philosophy, the "fantasy world" where "everything that is good is done by the government." This is the philosophy behind ObamaCare, behind entitlements, and all else.
Yet what is unique about energy is that it has already provided clear proof of failure, via Solyndra, EPA rules, the Keystone XL pipeline and more. A presidential mindset that believes government exists to remake the energy sector with high-cost green failures results in the exact opposite of the Gingrich proposition: fewer jobs, a higher deficit, calls for greater taxes, and declining manufacturing.
This is a contrast that has been gift-wrapped for the GOP, even if Mr. Gingrich isn't necessarily the best messenger. The ethanol king feels even in these speeches the need to keep plugging an "all of the above" policy that presumably throws more dollars at renewables. But in the way Mr. Gingrich occasionally can, he's outlining rich political arguments for his party. Whoever is the nominee could take some pointers.
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