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False science breeds distrust. (See 2 below.)
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Paul Rubin is an old friend and tries to explain some basic to Obama if he is capable of undesratnding and even cares to listen. (See 3 below.)
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So much for peace efforts. When you have, so called, friends who push you beyond rational limits for their sake and not yours peace efforts can come at too high a cost. (See 4 below.)
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A thoughtful article even if written by a Yalie! (See 6 below.)
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When you lay down with dogs you get fleas but that is ok if the fleas have lots of money, no shame and are willing to part with it in hopes the return will feather their own nest.
In Bam's case that has proven very rewarding and Solyndra is simply the tip of the 'green' iceberg.(See 7 below.)
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There are several important events before the Nov. election than can prove critical. Three that immediately come to mind are: Gov. Walkers win in Wisconsin, which is looking more and more likely and would send a message to unions you have over reached, The Surpeme's could outlaw 'Obamascare' and thus, send a message his apex achievement was the bust all thought it to be and third, Netanyahu could decide Israel cannot wait and or trust the West and Obama and attack Iran. (See 8 below.)
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Our hacks just love to tell about our hacking! What useful purpose is served? (See 9 below.)
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Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Obama’s war on coal hits your electric bill
By Phil Kerpen
Obama’s War on Coal has already taken a remarkable toll on coal-fired power plants in America.
Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a shocking drop in power sector coal consumption in the first quarter of 2012. Coal-fired power plants are now generating just 36 percent of U.S. electricity, versus 44.6 percent just one year ago.
It’s the result of an unprecedented regulatory assault on coal that will leave us all much poorer.
Last week PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia) held its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first real, market prices that take Obama’s most recent anti-coal regulations into account, and they prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.”
The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.
Why the massive price increases? Andy Ott from PJM stated the obvious: “Capacity prices were higher than last year's because of retirements of existing coal-fired generation resulting largely from environmental regulations which go into effect in 2015.” Northern Ohio is suffering from more forced coal-plant retirements than the rest of the region, hence the even higher price.
These are not computer models or projections or estimates. These are the actual prices that electric distributors have agreed to pay for new capacity. The costs will be passed on to consumers at the retail level.
House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) aptly explained: “The PJM auction forecasts a dim future where Americans will be paying more to keep the lights on. We are seeing more and more coal plants fall victim to EPA’s destructive regulatory agenda, and as a result, we are seeing more job losses and higher electricity prices.”
The only thing that can stop this massive price hike now is an all-out effort to end Obama’s War on Coal and repeal this destructive regulatory agenda.
The only thing that can stop this massive price hike now is an all-out effort to end Obama’s War on Coal and repeal this destructive regulatory agenda.
The Senate will have a critical opportunity to do just that when it votes on stopping Obama’s most expensive anti-coal regulation sometime in the next couple of weeks. The vote is on the Inhofe Resolution, S.J. Res 37, to overturn the so-called Utility MACT rule, which the EPA itself acknowledges is its most expensive rule ever.
This vote is protected from filibuster, and it will take just 51 votes to send a clear message to Obama that his War on Coal must end.
Of course, Obama could veto the resolution and keep the rule intact, although that would force him to take full political responsibility for the massive impending jump in electricity prices.
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2)WHY SCIENTISTS HAVE SQUANDERED PUBLIC TRUST
I have commented before about the political problems of the scientific community, which are typically being turned around against Republicans. In a post last month I recalled the 2004 remark by Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin in the New York Review of Books that “Most scientists are, at a minimum, liberals,” and the caution of MIT’s Kerry Emanuel about the dangers of “group think” and the “shocking lack of political diversity among American academics.” He concluded that “Until this profound and well-documented intellectual homogeneity changes, scientists will be suspected of constituting a leftist think tank.”
John Holdren, Age 68
Well, this week the National Academy of Sciences had a chance to do something about this, and . . . completely blew it. A two-day symposium on science and public policy featured a panel of presidential science advisers, but the panel included only advisers to Democratic presidents, including Obama’s science adviser, the egregious John (sterilize the public) Holdren. The others were two advisers for Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter’s science adviser, the 87-year-old Frank Press.
Conspicuously missing from the panel was President Reagan’s science adviser Jay Keyworth, who is a spry 72. (He turns out to be the only living GOP science adviser.) When asked why Keyworth wasn’t invited, NAS president Ralph Cicerone said, “We didn’t want to go back that far.”
Jay Keyworth, speaking recently at the University of Colorado
So let’s see: having Jimmy Carter’s 87-year-old science adviser apparently isn’t “going back that far,” but having Reagan’s still active 72-year old science adviser would be? And please tell me again why we shouldn’t regard scientific elites with suspicion?
Maybe the NAS should put together a panel to explore the strange bubble around the scientific establishment that distorts its outlook on the world. I used to respect Cicerone, in part for staring down the enviros when they tried to prevent an NAS panel on geoengineering. But no more. These people deserve every calumny thrown their way.
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3)A Tutorial for the President on 'Profit Maximization'
Profits provide the incentive for firms to do what consumers want.
By PAUL H. RUBIN
In justifying his attacks on Bain Capital, President Obama argues that "profit maximization" might be an appropriate goal for a private-equity firm, but not for more general public policy. This argument ignores one of the most basic premises of economics.
We economists assume that firms always maximize profits, and that profit maximization by firms (all firms, not just private-equity ones) is a very good thing. But this is not because profits are in themselves good. Rather, profit maximization is good because it leads directly to maximum benefits for consumers. Profits provide the incentive for firms to do what consumers want.
Consider what contributes to profit maximization. In simple terms, profit maximization means producing the products earning the highest returns, and producing these products at the lowest possible cost. Both are socially useful behaviors that benefit consumers.
Which products produce the highest returns? The answer is the products that consumers want and are currently underproduced. If there are excess returns (profits) to be earned in some market, that is because consumers are willing to pay more for those products than the current cost of production.
Profits are earned by producing more of these products—that is, by satisfying unmet consumer demands. Profit maximization means doing the best job of satisfying these unmet demands, and so providing benefits to consumers. If the unmet demand is for a currently nonexistent product that consumers will value when it is produced (Facebook, the iPhone, Google search), then of course even more profits can be earned.
A firm such as Bain that is involved in investing capital can only make money if it succeeds in satisfying consumer demands. Of course, its goal in deciding where to invest is to maximize returns for its investors, but that is a detail. It will only succeed in this goal if it does a good job of identifying and satisfying consumer demands for products.
The second trick to maximizing profits is to reduce costs as much as possible. This may involve eliminating some unneeded resources, which may translate into unemployment in the short run. It may involve recombining resources into more productive configurations, or restructuring governance of the firm.
The immediate purpose of reducing costs is to increase the profits of investors, but the ultimate result is to benefit consumers. In the textbook ideal of a purely competitive economy, cost reductions will immediately translate into lower prices for consumers. But in any market structure—competition, monopoly or oligopoly—profit-maximizing behavior translates reduced costs into reduced prices for consumers.
Consider the converse: What if a business does not maximize profits? Then it is either not making the products that consumers want the most, or it is not producing its products at the lowest cost. In either case, consumers are harmed. Any argument against "profit maximization" is an argument against consumer welfare.
Maximizing consumer welfare is the ultimate justification for an economy. Consumers are of course also workers and voters. Contrary to President Obama's claim, skill at profit maximization does translate directly into skill at governing the economy. Failure to understand this simplest and most basic point is probably itself enough to disqualify someone from the presidency when economic issues are paramount.
Mr. Rubin is a professor of economics at Emory University and president elect of the Southern Economic Association
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4)The peace process battered Israel's reputation
By Jeff Jacoby
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"What happened," asks Michael Oren, "to Israel's reputation?"
The Israeli ambassador to the United States, a noted historian, combat veteran, and bestselling author, raised that question in a Wall Street Journal essay last week. Writing on the 64thanniversary of Israeli independence, Oren began by quoting from Life magazine's salute to the Jewish state on its 25thbirthday in 1973-- a 92-page special issue that honored the "astonishing achievement" of modern Israel, an island of enlightened democratic courage flourishing against all odds amid a sea of Arab hostility and violence. From "a tiny, parched, scarcely defensible toe-hold," Life declared, the people of Israel had forged "a new society ... in which pride and confidence have replaced the despair engendered by age-long suffering and persecution."
Needless to say, media descriptions of Israel today are rarely so admiring. When the spotlight turns to Israel now, it is typically harsh and unflattering. Though Israeli society remains robustly democratic and free, though its dictatorial and jihadist enemies still yearn to see it wiped out, international opinion treats the Jewish state as a pariah. Israel is accused of lurid war crimes and smeared as an "apartheid" regime; it is routinely portrayed by UN panels and campus activists as an occupying Goliath brutally oppressing a Palestinian David.
"Why has Israel's image deteriorated?" Oren asks. "Why have anti-Israel libels once consigned to hate groups become media mainstays?" Especially now, after nearly two decades in which Israel has gone to such extraordinary lengths to end its conflict with the Palestinians.
The concessions Israel has made in pursuit of peace are unprecedented in diplomatic history. Oren mentions some of them: Recognizing the PLO as a diplomatic partner, creating an armed Palestinian Authority, twice offering the Palestinians a sovereign state, agreeing to share control of Jerusalem, removing every Jewish community in Gaza, and repeatedly inviting Palestinian leaders to negotiate without preconditions.
Given all this, Israel's ambassador wonders, why is Israel so bitterly demonized? His answer -- that Israel's enemies have undertaken a "systematic delegitimization of the Jewish state" -- merely begs the question. With everything Israel has done to prove its goodwill, with the deep sacrifices it has offered in its quest for peace, why should a campaign to blacken Israel's image be achieving such success? Why is Israel's reputation so much worse today than it was before Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn 19 years ago?
The real answer is that Israel's global standing has been debased not despite the "peace process," but because of it.
For 19 years Israel has clung to a policy of appeasement that has made it seem weak and irresolute -- a policy that successive Israeli governments have justified by denigrating Jewish rights to the land, while playing up the Palestinian narrative. Ehud Barak infamously said in 1998 that if he had been a Palestinian, he might have joined a terrorist group, and that "there is legitimacy for a Palestinian to fight." Were an American presidential hopeful to suggest that under other circumstances he could see himself becoming an al-Qaeda terrorist, his White House ambitions would instantly implode. But Barak's remarks didn't prevent him from becoming prime minister.
With its embrace of the peace process, "Israel stopped defending its own claim to the West Bank and Gaza and instead increasingly endorsed the Palestinian claim," Israeli journalist Evelyn Gordon has written. "And with no competing narrative to challenge it any longer, the view of Israel as a thief, with all its attendant consequences, has gained unprecedented traction."
Britain's Neville Chamberlain abandoned his appeasement strategy once it became clear that Adolf Hitler had no intention of making peace. But Israel has gone on making concession after concession to those who seek its destruction, clinging against all logic to the fantasy of a "two-state solution." Once, it was agreed by Israeli governments left and right that a Palestinian state would be intolerable; that there could be no negotiating with the PLO; that diluting Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem would be unthinkable.
Yet in its desperate quest for peace, Israel backed away from each of those red lines. With each retreat, it lost respect. And all the while it reinforced a false and terrible message: Peace would be possible if only Israel were willing to give up more. The absence of peace, therefore, must be Israel's fault.
The 19-year disaster of the peace process -- that is what happened to Israel's reputation. How can the Jewish state get its good name back? Step 1 is to jettison the policy that has caused it such harm.
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5)What Iran's Rulers Want
By Clifford D. May
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| War, genocide and nuclear weapons. There can no longer be serious doubt | |
It’s no longer possible to pretend we don’t know the intentions of Iran’s rulers. They are telling us — candidly, clearly, and repeatedly. Most recently last Sunday: Addressing a gathering in Tehran, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, vowed the “full annihilation of the Zionist regime of Israel to the end.”
A few days earlier, José Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain, during a presentation at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a respected Israeli think tank, recalled a “private discussion” in Tehran in October of 2000 with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who told him: “Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the Earth.”
Dore Gold, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. who now heads the JCPA, wanted to be certain there was no misunderstanding. He asked Aznar: Was Khamenei suggesting “a gradual historical process involving the collapse of the Zionist state, or rather its physical-military termination?”
“He meant physical termination through military force,” Aznar replied. Khamenei called Israel “an historical cancer” — an echo of Nazi rhetoric he has employed on numerous occasions, the last time in public on February 3.
Khamenei also told Aznar that the goal of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 has remained constant. It is to rid the world of two evils: Israel and the United States. Eventually, there must be an “open confrontation.” Khamenei said it was his duty to ensure that Iran prevails.
With this as context, it is no longer possible to pretend that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is not a priority for Khamenei. The notion that he is merely making — as Reuters charmingly phrases it — “a peaceful bid to generate electricity,” or that he has not decided whether he wants nuclear weapons (notwithstanding his fatwa declaring possession of nuclear weapons a sin), or that he wants them only as a deterrent because he fears foreign aggression, or that he favors diplomatic conflict resolution but requires a series of “confidence-building measures” — all that is wishful thinking and self-delusion, if not blatant disinformation.
Anthony Cordesman, the respected security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, used to be skeptical about the nuclear ambitions of Iran’s rulers. Then he sat down and examined hundreds of pages of evidence compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency. His report, “Rethinking Our Approach to Iran’s Search for the Bomb,” concludes:
Iran has pursued every major area of nuclear weapons development, has carried out programs that have already given it every component of a weapon except fissile material, and there is strong evidence that it has carried out programs to integrate a nuclear warhead onto its missiles.
Besides being committed to war, genocide, and developing nuclear weapons, Iran’s rulers are the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, and have long been so designated by the U.S. government. They support Hezbollah and Hamas, and collaborate with al-Qaeda — evidence of that is abundant. They have been responsible for killing Americans in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They have violated the most fundamental tenets of international law, by, among other things, seizing the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, ordering the murder of a British novelist in 1989, and plotting to bomb a restaurant in Washington, D.C., last year.
Khamenei’s representatives have agreed to negotiate with the P5+1 — the U.S. and the four other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany — for one reason only: They want an end to the sanctions that have been debilitating, if not yet crippling, Iran’s economy. The value of Iran’s currency has been plummeting, inflation and unemployment have been spiking, and the regime has been denied many billions of dollars in hard currency. A European oil embargo scheduled to take effect in July could drop Iranian exports by as much as 40 percent.
Testifying before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs last week, Mark Dubowitz, my colleague at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warned Congress that Iran’s negotiators will offer concessions that sound meaningful but are not, in exchange for Western concessions that sound trivial but amount to capitulation.
Dubowitz cautioned that it will require vigorous congressional oversight to make sure that Western diplomats do not provide Iran with “sanctions relief in the shadows” — that, specifically, insurance, energy, financial, and shipping-related sanctions that have already been passed into law will fail to be strictly enforced in order to keep “the process” going. That will be seen as preferable to acknowledging diplomatic failure. The major media are likely to miss this — or misreport it.
In his presentation in Jerusalem, Aznar also recalled a meeting he had with Vladimir Putin, in which he advised the Russian president against selling surface-to-air missiles to Iran. “Don’t worry — I, you, we can sell them everything, even if we are worried by an Iranian nuclear bomb,” Aznar quoted Putin as saying. “Because at the end of the day, Israel will take care of it.”
Aznar had told this story in Washington about a year ago, but, at the time, he asked those of us in the room to keep it off the record. I remember that he added incredulously: “But that’s the Russian policy? To let Israel take care of it?”
If, in the days ahead, this becomes the de facto policy of the U.S. and Europe as well, we should not pretend we don’t know that — or that we don’t understand the profound implications.
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism. A veteran news reporter, foreign correspondent and editor (at The New York Times and other publications), he has covered stories in more than two dozen countries, including Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, China, Uzbekistan, Northern Ireland and Russia. He is a frequent guest on national and international television and radio news programs, providing analysis and participating in debates on national security issues.
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6)OBAMA TELLS UNEMPLOYED YOUTH TO ‘PERSEVERE’
With the battle lines of the 2012 Presidential race beginning to form–from Bain Capital to the War on Women–President Obama took time last week to give the commencement address at Barnard College, the private women’s liberal art college whose brother-school, Columbia, is Obama’s alma mater.
The speech was delivered well: the President worked the crowd, hit his punchlines, and delivered his sobering anecdotes. While battered from a turmoil-ridden first term in office, Obama nevertheless displayed a familiar, yet highly concerning, charisma for the onset of his re-election efforts.
He began by reminding the recent graduates that he too faced a hard economy leaving college. As a member of the class of 1983, the President told students he shared “a lot in common with all of you.”
However, the attempt here to present a relatable, shared struggle stumbled upon the reality of two very different recessions. Barack Obama entered an economy shaped by the Reagan recovery. In 1983 the nation was adding roughly 400,000 jobs per month, GDP was growing around seven-percent, and the unemployment rate was steadily declining.
As a careful omission, the President chose not to tell the young women of Barnard they were not as fortunate: The labor market is relatively stagnant. Fewer jobs are being added despite tremendous population growth. And the economy is much more difficult for Americans under twenty-five.
Mr. Obama suggested that perhaps our problem is simply one of perception. He blamed the news media. As he reminded students, “good news doesn’t get the same kind of ratings as bad news anymore.” We shouldn’t worry because there’s a tremendous amount of good news happening–it just cannot be seen and is not being reported, according to the president.
This sort of finger pointing is not uncharacteristic for Obama, who always seems ready to construct a culprit other than himself, be it a Republican Congress, the Supreme Court, Wall Street, Super-PACs, and even now, with an equal amount of irony and desperation, the mainstream media.
Beyond the finger pointing in the President’s address, two larger themes stood out that could be defining elements of his re-election narrative: perseverance and progress.
As his last piece of advice, Obama implored the graduates to “persevere.” Despite the numerous hardships down the road, determination is almost a sufficient quality in itself for success. Speaking to a generation now unemployed and burdened with a multi-trillion dollar generational debt–largely due to the man they put in office–the message of hope is hard to sell.
Instead, the President focused on perseverance–a shared struggle that our generation will endure side by side a President who is “right there with you.” And to his credit, there is a degree of brilliance to this strategy. Cloaked in empathetic anecdotes and an admirable personal story, the President has redefined his failings as virtuous opportunities. His economy is our defining struggle–yet, miraculously, he is the shepherd, not the villain.
With the economy in tatters, Obama’s message has gone from Hope and Change to Grin and Bear It in the course of four short years.
Additionally, in his speech the President disclosed a very revealing premise: “The question is not whether things get better… they always do,” he said. Progress–loosely defined as the addition of laws, rights, entitlements and the like–is inevitable. Call it moving forward or evolving or some other formulation, but change, almost by itself, is some sort of social good.
And here, the President touched on the core–the intellectual, social and political culmination–of the 2012 race: What is our metric for progress? From Obama’s address, he painted an America striving for greater equality, social justice, populated by individuals that could materially flourish once the government provided “fair” opportunity.
But, contrast this with Mitt Romney’s commencement address at Liberty University, given only a few days earlier. Romney played down worldly ambitions. He urged students not to rush forward, but to look back–to search for guidance in the ancestral, fundamental, unchanging, grounded truths of the West’s religious tradition. In Governor Romney’s address, he painted an America that places its trust and hope in “God, not man.”
The coming election need not be about religion in the public square, or which candidate can more aptly quote bible verses. But, in addition to the economy or whatever hot-button issues drive the news cycle, it will be about our nation’s sense of purpose. How should we measure our society? Will America be a nation defined by liberty and opportunity, or by heavy-handed, debt-saddled, government-engineered “progress”?
These questions will have very real repercussions come November. And within that setting, the President’s Barnard address revealed at a profound difference between his vision for America and that of his Republican rival.
Fix Contributor Harry Graver is a student at Yale University.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7) Bam and his buddies
To President Obama and his campaign, venture capitalists come in two flavors:
* Avaricious vultures (Mitt Romney comes to mind).
* The good kind: folks who are putting their money where the White House says it will do the most good — in Obama’s re-election campaign.
Folks like New Jersey’s ex-Gov. Jon Corzine — who remains a major Obama campaign bundler, even while under investigation by several federal agencies for alleged Wall Street-related misconduct.
It turns out that Corzine was paid more than $8 million in cash and (now worthless) stock options by securities brokerage MF Global shortly before it went belly-up and mysteriously “lost” a staggering $1.6 billion of its clients’ money.
Team Obama has returned Corzine’s donations — but it’s still more than happy to pocket any and all cash he brings in from his friends.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) has said “people need to go to jail” over MF Global’s collapse — but to date, no one’s even been charged.
Indeed, a new PBS documentary reports that Corzine personally lobbied regulators not to ban a strategy that allowed his firm to borrow money from customer accounts to fund trading elsewhere. That strategy, “internal repo,” was critical to Corzine’s betting the MF farm on risky European debt.
It also appears that MF Global illegally commingled company and client funds to pay off financial obligations.
Yet Corzine is not considered a vulture.
Nor are those top execs at Mitt Romney’s old firm, Bain Capital, who’ve been pouring money into the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Bain itself, of course, is the prime focus of Obama’s wrath these days, with campaign ads ripping the firm as “vulture capitalists.”
Obama is facing mounting criticism from — surprise — his fellow Democrats over these attack ads.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker, former Democratic Party Chairman Ed Rendell, Sen. Mark Warner and Obama auto czar Steve Rattner have all questioned Obama’s seeming attack on the free-enterprise system.
Booker, of course, walked back his public criticism of the “nauseating” attack “of his own volition,” says Team Obama — a claim contradicted by Booker himself, who admits the campaign spoke with him.
Obama, of course, is about nothing if not double standards. But this time, he truly has outdone himself.
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8) Has recall election made Scott Walker a GOP hero?
Democrats leapt at the chance to use Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to send a message to all the budget-cutting, union-busting conservatives across the land: If you mess with Big Labor, there’s a heavy price to pay.
But if you shoot at the king, you’d better not miss.
And with Walker suddenly looking as if he might survive the recall, it appears he’s only been grazed.
Now, instead of tacking Walker’s pelt to their door as a warning to any who would follow him, there’s a prospect the whole thing might backfire by elevating Walker into a tested-by-fire, conservative cult-hero and exposing the limits of the Democrats’ ability to exact revenge in the next statehouse where they’re wronged.
All the big GOP players now know Walker’s story by heart. Republican billionaires and megadonors are suddenly well-acquainted with him as well.
And if he wins in the June 5 recall against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) — which polls suggest he’s likely to do — his trajectory will very likely be even higher.
Not only will Walker be lionized by his GOP colleagues for embarrassing Big Labor and forcing the left to pour cash down the drain in a presidential election year, he’ll be credited with making the state more competitive for Mitt Romney.
Not bad for a rookie governor who has never been known for his charisma or burning political ambition.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, called Walker a “gutsy, courageous governor” who has already attained national prominence within the party. “The more Scott Walker can reduce the unemployment rate and balance the budget and return Wisconsin to fiscal prosperity, I think the more people would say going forward that he has maybe other opportunities.”
Like McDonnell, top Republicans across the country have showered Walker with praise. Romney dubbed the governor a “hero” in advance of the Wisconsin presidential primary last month and jockeyed with his primary opponent Rick Santorum over which candidate is Walker’s biggest champion. GOP officials and operatives all agree Walker’s got a promising political future if he comes out on top of the recall battle.
“He’s a guy who has something to offer his state now and hopefully the country in the future,” said former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.
In the latest testament to his exalted stature on the right, Walker is featured on the cover of the May 28 edition of the conservative National Review depicted as Perseus — the Greek hero who slayed Medusa — wielding a sword and holding the Gorgon’s snake-infested head. The headline: “Can Scott Walker Slay the Beast?”
National GOP donors have rushed to his defense, helping him rake in more than $25 million since January 2011 — with more than $13 million raised in just over three months earlier this year. That included $500,000 from Bob Perry — who helped fund the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks against John Kerry in 2004 — and $250,000 from Sheldon Adelson, a GOP super donor who poured millions into the super PAC that backed Newt Gingrich’s presidential bid.
Outside groups have also formed a defensive line around Walker. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, spent more than $1.5 million on ads defending the governor in the first three months of 2012, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
His new allies in the top echelons of GOP donor circles will come in handy if Walker decides to take his act beyond state borders. And his narrative as the Republican governor who withstood labor’s onslaught will only bolster Walker’s already soaring popularity in conservative activist circles.
“His profile is as high as I’ve ever seen a governor’s profile in the country,” said Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips. “I’ll be in Florida tomorrow, and I’ll mention Gov. Walker in every event, and the loudest applause of the day will be for him.”
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It’s hardly the outcome that labor organizers and progressive activists envisioned when they celebrated the collection of one million signatures last winter — nearly twice as many as they needed to force a Walker recall.
Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, said the left will likely have some regrets if Walker comes out on top next month — including remorse about how the primary contest played out between Barrett and the labor movement’s favored candidate, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.
“That was a key distraction,” Stern said. “It not only drained resources, it also reframed the issue into a more traditional electoral issue and not one of whether the governor deserves to be recalled.”
Still, labor leaders insist that eking out a victory in Wisconsin won’t make Walker much of a role model.
“This is going to be embarrassing. [He’s] the third governor in American history to be recalled; that’s not something that someone wants,” said AFL-CIO Political Director Michael Podhorzer. “If he wins a close election, then for him personally, I don’t think that is going to make him a vice presidential prospect.”
As far as emboldening other governors to take steps to limit collective-bargaining rights, “I really don’t think that many Republican governors want to go through what he’s gone through for the last year and a half,” Podhorzer added.
At least at the moment, the thinking on the right is very different. McDonnell said a Walker win would deal “a significant blow to the labor unions,” and definitely embolden other Republican governors to take on labor unions in battles over collective bargaining.
There’s still a long way to go before then. Walker’s success hinges not only on his ability to hold the governorship but also on the outcomes of the four state Senate recall elections. If Democrats are able to win control of the state Senate — and they need to pickup just one of the four seats — it would give them a powerful check against the governor’s agenda.
Still, there’s no question the governor’s recall is the marquee race and the national GOP mood will be pegged to his success or failure. Republicans will revel in their victory if they can keep the governorship in GOP hands — regardless of what happens down-ballot.
Stern said Walker has “every right to crow a little if he wins,” but said the labor movement shouldn’t worry about Walker becoming a powerful force in the national Republican Party. “Unless someone is looking for the crazy uncle in the attic, the guy you can trot out who’s like the red cape is to a bull.”
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9)Clinton: State Department Hacking Into Al-Qaeda Websites In Yemen
The State Department has launched a different sort of raid against al-Qaeda — hacking into al-Qaeda websites in Yemen.
Hadi has faced the twin challenges of Saleh loyalists refusing to relinquish their government and military posts, and of al-Qaeda attacks in the south, where the group has established a large safe haven from which to attack Yemeni troops.
The White House responded by issuing an executive order last week threatening sanctions against individuals who challenge Hadi’s government. It also dispatched a new batch of special operations forces to train Yemen’s army to help withstand al-Qaeda attacks that have killed hundreds of Yemeni troops.
The State Department has launched a different sort of raid against al-Qaeda — hacking into al-Qaeda websites in Yemen.
In a rare public admission of the covert cyber war against extremists, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says cyber experts based at the State Department hacked Yemeni tribal websites, replacing al-Qaeda propaganda that bragged about killing Americans.
“Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaeda attacks have taken on the Yemeni people,” Clinton said Wednesday.
In response, “Extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the Internet,” she said.
Clinton described the cyber effort as part of a larger, multipronged attack on terrorism that goes beyond attacks like the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden to include the propaganda battle, and the longer, slower campaign of diplomats working alongside special operations troops to shore up local governments and economies and train local forces.
Clinton was speaking alongside Adm. Bill McRaven, head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, at a conference of hundreds of U.S. and international special operations commanders — the two senior leaders sending a tacit message to their sometimes warring tribes of troops and diplomats that they have to get along.
Yemen is considered both a model and a test case of that effort. U.S. diplomats have been working to stabilize the fledgling government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who replaced ousted Yemeni strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saleh stepped down in February as part of a U.S.-backed power-transfer deal brokered by Gulf Arab countries aimed at ending political unrest in the country after a yearlong uprising.
Hadi has faced the twin challenges of Saleh loyalists refusing to relinquish their government and military posts, and of al-Qaeda attacks in the south, where the group has established a large safe haven from which to attack Yemeni troops.
The White House responded by issuing an executive order last week threatening sanctions against individuals who challenge Hadi’s government. It also dispatched a new batch of special operations forces to train Yemen’s army to help withstand al-Qaeda attacks that have killed hundreds of Yemeni troops.
Yemen’s al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is considered one of al-Qaeda’s most dangerous offshoots.
Yemen was the launching pad for three foiled al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. targets: the Christmas 2009 attempt to down an American airliner over Detroit with an underwear bomb and the sending of printer cartridges packed with explosives to Chicago-area synagogues in 2010. In the past month the CIA thwarted yet another plot by AQAP to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb which could have been undetectable by conventional airport scanners.
Clinton says the cyber attack was launched by an interagency group of specialists, including diplomats, special operators and intelligence analysts, housed at the State Department. Called the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, its experts patrol the Internet and social media to counter al-Qaeda’s attempts to recruit new followers.
“Together, they will work to pre-empt, discredit and outmaneuver extremist propaganda,” Clinton said.
Offensive attacks on extremist sites are generally attributed to the Pentagon’s U.S. Cyber Command, though seldom acknowledged publicly.
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