"Nationality?" asks the immigration officer.
"German," she replies.
"Occupation?"
"No, just here for a few days
---
Climatologist snow job. (See 1 below.)
---
Obama drives a big bus so he can continue throwing people under it.. (See 2 below.)
And Obama ain't that bright either according to Jack Kelly. (See 2a below.)
---
Jeffrey Goldberg assesses Israel's Ehud Barak! (See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
---
Apparently Obama had a normal pot smoking youth. Unlike our boy Clinton, Barry inhaled all
he could.
Maybe we can exhale him out of office and send him on his 'Mary Jane Way!' (See 4 and 4a below.)
---
Sound advice . (See 5 and 5a below.)
---
If Romney is such a venture capitalist vulture then please explain Obama's sucking the blood
out of our nation's spirit for the last three years.
Dr Vaknin's comments and observations need repeating.(See 6 below.)
---
It's just the "Same Old Story' but this time Obama stars and not Bogart. (See 7 below.)
---
We know Obama is an unmitigated and petulant liar but we still do not know where he was
born. (See 8 below.)
My friend, John Podhoretz see Obama's election prospects as getting bleaker. (See 8a below.)
---
Walter Russell Mead slams the New York Times! (See 9 below.)
---
What do Iran and Syria have in common? Everything. What do Chamberlain and Obama and Western leaders have in common? Everything. (See 10 below.)
---
Obama not only is opposed to capitalist vultures his ideas seem bad for all birds of a feather! (See 11 below.)
---
Dick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Climategate Continues
Climategate, the 2009 exposure of misconduct at the University of East Anglia, was a terrible blow to the reputation of climatology, and indeed to that of British and American science. Although that story hasn’t been in the news in recent months, new evidence of similar scientific wrongdoing continues to emerge, with a new scandal hitting the climate blogosphere just a few days ago.
And central to the newest story is one of the Climategate scientists: Keith Briffa, an expert in reconstructing historical temperature records from tree rings. More particularly, the recent scandal involves a tree-ring record Briffa prepared for
a remote area of northern Russia called Yamal.
For many years, scientists have used tree-ring data to try to measure temperatures from the distant past, but the idea is problematic in and of itself. Why? Because tree-ring data reflect many variables besides temperature. Russian tree growth, like that of trees around the world, also reflects changes in humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness, and on and on. But let’s pretend, if only for the sake of argument, that we can reliably determine the mean temperature 1,000 years ago or more using tree cores from a remote part of Russia. The central issue that emerges is: How do you choose the trees?
It was the way Briffa picked the trees to include in his analysis that piqued the interest of Steve McIntyre, a maverick amateur climatologist from Canada. The Climategate e-mails make it clear that McIntyre earned the public scorn of the most powerful U.N. climatologists, including James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Phil Jones, while simultaneously earning their fear and respect in private.
McIntyre noticed a few problems with the way Briffa chose the sampling of Russian trees, and he wrote to Briffa requesting the data Briffa used in a published tree-ring paper. Briffa declined. And so began a four-year saga involving multiple peer-reviewed journals, behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Briffa and his closest confidants, and a Freedom of
Information Act request on the part of McIntyre that appears to be on the verge of being granted. Even without the final set of data, however, McIntyre has shown beyond the shadow of doubt that Briffa may have committed one of the worst sins, if not the worst, in climatology — that of cherry-picking data — when he assembled his data sample, which his clique of like-minded and very powerful peers have also used in paper after paper.
It was already known that the Yamal series contained a preposterously small amount of data. This by itself raised many questions: Why did Briffa include only half the number of cores covering the balmy interval known as the Medieval Warm Period that another scientist, one with whom he was acquainted, had reported for Yamal? And why were there so few cores in Briffa’s 20th century? By 1988, there were only twelve cores used in a year, an amazingly small number from the period that should have provided the easiest data. By 1990, the count was only ten, and it dropped to just five in 1995. Without an explanation of how the strange sampling of the available data had been performed, the suspicion of cherry-picking became overwhelming, particularly since the sharp 20th-century uptick in the series was almost entirely due to a single tree.
The intrigue deepened when one of the Climategate e-mails revealed that, as far back as 2006, Briffa had prepared a much more broadly based, and therefore more reliable, tree-ring record of the Yamal area. But strangely, he had decided to set this aside in favor of the much narrower record he eventually used.
The question of Yamal had rightly come up when Briffa was questioned by Climategate investigators. He told them that he had never considered including a wider sample than the one he went with in the end, and hadn’t had enough time to include a wider one. However, the specific issue of the suppressed record appears to have largely been passed over by the panel, and Briffa’s explanation, like so many others given to the Climategate inquiries, appears to have been accepted without question.
But the ruse has now been shot to pieces, by the recent decision from the U.K.’s information commissioner that Briffa can no longer withhold the list of sites he used in his suppressed regional record for the Yamal area. The disclosure of these sites has allowed McIntyre to calculate what the broad series would have looked like if Briffa had chosen to publish it. He has shown that it has no hint of the hockey-stick shape that Briffa’s cherry-picked data indicated. Briffa’s decision to publish an alarming but unreliable version of the Yamal series — instead of a more reliable and thoroughly unremarkable one — has been the talk of the climate blogosphere, with many prominent commentators openly speaking of dishonesty.
Two and a half years after the initial revelation of the Climategate e-mails, new controversies, on the part of the scientists and the investigators involved, continue to emerge. Many of the players involved are desperate to sweep the scandal under the rug. However, their machinations have only succeeded in bringing renewed attention to their questionable science and ugly behind-the-scenes shenanigans, reigniting hope that more complete and more independent investigations — on both sides of the Atlantic — will yet be performed.
Andrew Montford is the author of The Hockey Stick Illusionand the proprietor of the Bishop Hill blog. Harold Ambler is the author of Don’t Sell Your Coat and the operator of the blogtalkingabouttheweather.com.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)PAKISTAN GIVES BIN LADEN HERO 33 YEARS, OBAMA DOES NOTHING
By WILLIAM BIGELOW
Dr. Shakil Afridi was convicted of treason in Pakistan on Wednesday for helping the United States find Osama Bin Laden.
In the kind of double game that has been characteristic of the Obama era, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for his release. But where was the administration during Afridi’s arrest and trial? Four months ago, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta openly admitted that Afridi had run a hepatitis B vaccination program in order to gather DNA samples from members of Bin Laden’s family, who were thought to be living nearby. When Afridi was charged with treason in January, Panetta lamely said that Pakistanis should be against the charge, because they were threatened by terrorism, too: “For them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part.”
A “mistake”? How about a cataclysmically immoral, terrorist-supporting decision that would not be accepted by the United States under any circumstances?
Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison by a tribal court in northwestern Pakistan and sent to Central Prison in Peshawar. The Pakistanis were careful to indict Afridi by using a British-era regulation for frontier crimes, because normal penal law would have required his execution.
The Pakistani government, which likely knew of Bin Laden’s whereabouts, was furious after Bin Laden’s killing, because they viewed the attack as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. American officials claim that Afridi did not know Bin Laden was the target of the plot.
So the Obama Administration used Afridi to help find Bin Laden, spiked the football repeatedly about the Bin Laden killing, then abandoned Afridi by publicly confirming his participation. Now they weakly protest his imprisonment. Where is President Obama hiding when a man who put his life on the line for the United States is in danger?
2a)Obama Is Not That Bright
By Jack KellyBarack Obama is the smartest man with the highest IQ ever to be elected to
the presidency, historian Michael Beschloss told radio talk show host Don
Imus in November of 2008.
"So what is his IQ?" Mr. Imus asked. Mr. Beschloss didn't know. He was just
assuming.
Many shared that assumption. Adjectives frequently applied to Mr. Obama are
"smart" (278 million hits on Google), "intelligent" (62 million) and
"brilliant" (24 million).
There is little evidence to support it. Mr. Obama went to Harvard, but so
did George W. Bush, who some liberals consider dumber than dirt. The
president won't release his transcripts, so we can't judge by his grades.
Mr. Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, but when he was selected,
popularity mattered more than scholarship.
Mr. Obama joined an undistinguished law firm, where he tried no cases. So no
help there.
Many cite the president's oratorical skills, but he often rambles when he
speaks without a teleprompter. That's because his brain "is moving so fast
that the mouth can't keep up," wrote Meghan Daum of the Los Angeles Times.
Columnist Joe Klein said Mr. Obama's first autobiography "may be the
best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician." But Mr. Obama
got help writing "Dreams from My Father" from "his friend and Hyde Park
neighbor Bill Ayers," celebrity journalist Christopher Andersen claimed in
his 2009 biography of Barack and Michelle.
"The book's language, oddly specific references, literary devices and themes
would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers' own writing," Mr. Andersen wrote.
Biographer David Maraniss published this month his interview with Genevieve
Cook, who dated Mr. Obama in New York, but bears little resemblance to the
"New York girlfriend" described in "Dreams." That's because she is a
composite, Mr. Obama said.
Yet Mr. Obama's description closely resembles radical Diana Oughton, who was
Mr. Ayers girlfriend and who blew herself to smithereens in 1970 while
building a bomb intended to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, according to the
blogger "BookFworm."
Mr. Obama has said a lot of unsmart things: there are 57 states; Canada has
a president; "Austrian" is a language; America is "20 centuries" old; Arabic
is spoken in Afghanistan. He's called the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) the
Maldives, and declared it would be "unprecedented" for the Supreme Court to
invalidate a law passed by Congress.
President Obama's stimulus bill didn't stimulate. His subsidies to "green"
firms have produced neither the jobs nor the energy he promised.
Unemployment on his watch peaked at 10 percent, one of the highest rates
since the Great Depression. Deficits are out of control.
"The man who promised everything is delivering nothing," wrote Noemie Emery
in the Weekly Standard. "Journalists who wept when he won the election now
grind their teeth in despair. ... The gap between sizzle and steak never
seemed so large."
Could it be that Mr. Obama's "superior intellect" is a myth created by
journalists to mask what may be the thinnest resume of anyone ever elected
president? An example of puffery is the description of Mr. Obama as a former
"professor of constitutional law." Mr. Obama was a part time instructor at
the University of Chicago law school, without the title or status of
professor. And, according to blogger Doug Ross, he wasn't very popular with
the real professors.
"I spent some time with the highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a
few months back," Mr. Ross wrote in March 2010. "According to my professor
friend, [Obama] had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building. ...
The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified,"
Mr. Obama's been governing like someone with a resume too thin for a
president. He's "incompetent," an "amateur," former President Bill Clinton
told Hillary Clinton at a private gathering with friends, according to a new
book by Ed Klein. The Clintons have vehemently denied his account.
Even Ms. Daum noticed "the gulf between the brilliant young man who wanted
to change the world and the stymied president who can barely pass a piece of
legislation." Mr. Obama is just too smart to be a good president, she wrote.
Or not smart enough. "The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in
stupid does," said Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal.
Jack Kelly is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade of
Toledo, Ohio.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)In Iran Nuke Talks, Ehud Barak Is the Man to Watch
By Jeffrey Goldberg
When U.S. President Barack Obama dispatches his negotiators to Baghdad next week to join talks with Iran over the future of its nuclear program, he’ll be most concerned about the reaction of one man: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Obama believes Barak, and not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is the Israeli leader agitating most vociferously for a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a strike the Obama administration thinks would be grossly premature and quite possibly catastrophic. (Your humble columnist concurs with this assessment.)
If Barak sees these talks as productive -- especially in light of evidence that the U.S. and its allies are doing a credible job of keeping Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold -- then Obama will have successfully pushed off an Israeli strike, at least until after the U.S. presidential election in November.
Barak has made clear that he seeks one thing above all in the nuclear talks: for Iran to shut down its formerly secret nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, near the city of Qom. Obama has made Barak’s preoccupation with Fordo his own.
Zone of Immunity
It’s not hard to see why both men see Fordo as a crucial component of Iran’s nuclear program. Once Iran moves its enrichment program to Fordo -- which is built inside a mountain and has hardened defenses against nearly all conventional munitions -- it will probably have entered a “zone of immunity,” in which Israel would no longer be able to cripple its centrifuges. (The Israelis, like the Obama administration and many international experts, don’t doubt that Iran would seek to build a nuclear weapon if political and technical conditions allowed for it.)
For Barak, keeping Iran outside the zone of immunity is paramount. If Iran moves its nuclear program beyond the reach of the Israeli air force, Netanyahu and Barak believe they will have outsourced the security of their nation to the U.S., which has more advanced weaponry. But in Barak’s estimation, the U.S. has gone 0-2 in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons to hostile, unstable countries. Pakistan and North Korea both built and tested nuclear weapons over U.S. objections. Barak has pointed out that Israel is 2-0 in the same arena, having destroyed nuclear facilities in both Iraq and Syria from the air.
If he thinks Iran -- a country whose government advocates the destruction of Israel -- is close to immunizing itself against a preventative Israeli attack, he will argue for an immediate strike. By some estimates, work on the hardening of Fordo continues at a steady pace.
In the past three years, Obama has intensified pressure on Iran in ways that have forced the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate authority over Iran’s nuclear program, to make at least semi-positive noises about compromise. Thanks to an international effort orchestrated by Obama to isolate the regime, tankers loaded with Iranian oil are sitting off the country’s coast -- with no buyers to be found.
Obama doesn’t believe that the Iranians will rush to compromise before sanctions go into full effect on July 1. But there is a plausible chance that Iran could reach an agreement with the other countries at the Baghdad talks -- known as P5+1 - - and promise to shutter the Fordo facility.
If this happened, then Barak would be at least partially happy. Because Barak doesn’t actually want to strike Iran this year -- he wants to maintain the ability to strike Iran next year, and the year after that.
Buying Time
Obama has studied Barak and Netanyahu carefully. He’s fully aware that Barak was Netanyahu’s commander in the Israeli army, and he understands that Netanyahu often defers to Barak on matters of security. Although a sharp-taloned hawk on Iran, Barak is a former leader of Israel’s Labor Party and generally in ideological harmony with Obama. He is also far less apt to lecture Obama on the imperatives of history, and more likely to engage in practical discussions about ways to derail Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Which is why the Baghdad talks are so crucial. Obama thinks they could buy him substantial time with Israel, as he works over the coming months to convince Khamenei that his nuclear program is folly. But if the talks fail to persuade Iran to close the Fordo facility, then Barak and Netanyahu -- who now sit atop a powerful coalition government -- could be moving again toward a strike.
(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)-
3a)Netanyahu, Barak refuse to see US official with negative report on Baghdad talks
State's Wendy Sherman, senior US delegate to world power talks with Iran
The rupture between the US and Israel over Iran’s nuclear program widened further Friday, May 25 when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided not to be available to hear the briefing brought to Jerusalem from Baghdad by Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman who headed the US delegation to the Six Power talks. The report she delivered to National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror and Foreign Ministry Director-General Rafi Barak was that no progress had been achieved in Baghdad due to Iran’s refusal to budge on its “right” to enrich uranium at low (3.5-5 percent) or high (20 percent) levels or shut down the Fordo nuclear plant near Qom.
Although the participants agreed to reconvene in Moscow in three weeks, the Iranian delegation stressed there would be no progress until the US and the other five world powers (Britain, France, Russia, Germany and China) recognized Iran’s absolute “right” as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium.
Meanwhile, every day spent on diplomacy is thoroughly exploited by Iran to zip ahead with its nuclear plans. The Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA)’s quarterly report released Friday reveals that since February Iran almost doubled its stockpile of more highly enriched uranium which is close to weapons grade from 73.4 to 145 kilograms.
The centrifuges at the Fordo facility, built into the side of a mountain, rose to over 500 from 300 in the last report.
Using the IAEA figures, if Fordo goes on producing 23.9 kilograms of 20-percent enriched uranium per month, Iran will by the end of December have accumulated 336 kilograms of near-weapons quality uranium.
The IAEA also reported that Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to less than 5 per cent grew to 6,232 kilograms from 5,451 reported in February.
Its inspectors recorded “the presence of particles” of 27 per cent-enriched uranium at Fordo. Iran maintained the particles were a result of “technical reasons beyond the operator’s control.”
The IAEA report was released a day after talks between Tehran and the six powers ended without progress.
Iran’s senior delegate Saeed Jalili declared that his government would never accept the Washington-ruled distinction between two categories of nations – one permitted and the other forbidden to enrich uranium. He claimed this was against international treaties.
Friday, the Washington Post quoted Mohammad Hoseyn Moussavian of Princeton University as revealing that in 2004, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “I would resign if for any reason Iran is deprived of its rights to enrichment.”
Moussavian is presented as an Iranian academic visiting Princeton to lecture and write a book on the Iranian nuclear issue and was the contact man in one of the direct, back-channel negotiations taking place in Paris between the White House and Khamenei. His words therefore were intended to carry weight as a reminder to Obama that the supreme leader, like the US president, intended to come out of their dialogue strengthened – not undermined. And therefore, for both their sakes, Washington must endorse Iran’s “right to enrichment.”
Tehran presented a second ultimatum for the nuclear talks to continue: phased sanctions relief, starting with the postponement of the European Union’s oil embargo scheduled for July 1 until the end of negotiations and the reconnection of Iranian banks to the SWIFT international money transfer system.
The gap between Israel and the Obama administration widened in the course of Washington’s direct, secret give-and-take with Tehran. In early April, Defense Minister Barak reported Israel offered some compromise on the enrichment issue. Israel informed Washington of its approval of a “1,000 formula.” Iran would be permitted to activate 1,000 centrifuges for enrichment and keep 1,000 kilograms of 3.5-per cent enriched uranium.
The Netanyahu government backtracked when this concession was used by US officials as a lever for further accommodations with Iran.
The direct US-Iran channel and the second round of Six Power talks with Iran have clearly left the standoff over Iran’s nuclear solidly in place: Iran stands by its right to enrich uranium up to weapons grade, the US stands by diplomacy, however hopeless, for resolving the controversy, while Israel demands a time limit for negotiations. Its military option was put back on the table for so long as Iran’s enrichment centrifuges continue spinning at top speed.
Iran has significantly stepped up its output of low-enriched uranium and its total production in the last five years would be enough for at least five nuclear weapons if refined much further a US security institute said.
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a think-tank which closely tracks Iran's nuclear program, made the analysis on the basis of data in the latest quarterly UN watchdog report which was issued on Friday Progress in Iran's nuclear activities is closely watched by the West and Israel as it could determine how long it could take Tehran to build atomic bombs, if it decided to do so. Iran denies any plan to and says its aims are entirely peaceful. During talks in Baghdad this week, six world powers failed to convince Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment program.  Fuel rod used in Iran's centrifuges (Screenshot) They will meet again in Moscow in mid-June to try to defuse a decade-old standoff that has raised fears of a new war in the Middle East that could disrupt oil supplies. Iran still defiantFriday's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based UN body, showed Iran pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment work in defiance of UN resolutions calling on it to suspend the activity.It said Iran had produced almost 6.2 tons of uranium enriched to a level of 3.5% since it began the work in 2007 – some of which has subsequently been further processed into higher-grade material. This is nearly 750kg more than in the previous IAEA report issued in February, and ISIS said Iran's monthly production had risen by roughly a third.  (Photo: Reuters) "This total amount of 3.5% low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons," ISIS said in its analysis. It added, however, that some of Iran's higher-grade uranium had been converted into reactor fuel and would not be available for nuclear weapons, at least not quickly. Enriched uranium can be used to fuel power plants, which are Iran's stated purpose, or to provide material for bombs, if refined to a much higher degree. The West suspects that may be Iran's ultimate goal despite the Islamic Republic's denials. Iran began enriching uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent in 2010, saying it needed this to fuel a medical research reactor. It later expanded the work sharply by launching enrichment at an underground site, Fordow. It alarmed a suspicious West since such enhanced enrichment accomplishes much of the technical leap towards 9% – or weapons-grade – uranium. The IAEA report said Iran had installed more than 50 percent more enrichment centrifuges at Fordow, which is buried deep under rock and soil to protect it against any enemy attacks. Although not yet being fed with uranium, the new machines could be used to further boost Iran's output of uranium enriched to 20%.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
4)A User's Guide To Smoking Pot With Barack Obama
Barry was quite the accomplished marijuana enthusiast back in high school
and college. Excerpts from David Maraniss' Barack Obama: The Story
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1439160406/?tag=buzz0f-20> dealing with the
elaborate drug culture surrounding the president when he attended Punahou
School in Honolulu and Occidental College in Los Angeles. He inhaled. A lot.
1. 1. The Choom Gang
A self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and
good times called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning "to
smoke marijuana."
3. 2. Total Absorption
As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few
pot-smoking trends. The first was called "TA," short for "total absorption."
To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who
would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton's claim
that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.
5. 3. Roof Hits
Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of "roof hits": when they were
chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out
and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and
sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.
7. 4. Penalties
When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo
(Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning "numbing tobacco") instead of
absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your
turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. "Wasting good bud
smoke was not tolerated," explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom
Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.
9. 5. The Choomwagon
[Choom Gang member] Mark Bendix's Volkswagen bus, also known as the
Choomwagon. ... The other members considered Mark Bendix the glue, he was
funny, creative, and uninhibited, with a penchant for Marvel Comics. He also
had that VW bus and a house with a pool, a bong, and a Nerf basketball, all
enticements for them to slip off midday for a few unauthorized hours of
recreation...
11. 6. Interceptions
Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the
rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted "Intercepted!,"
and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.
13. 7. Slippers
Choom Gang members often made their way to Aku Ponds at the end of Manoa
Stream, where they slipped past the liliko'i vines and the KAPU (keep out)
signs, waded into waist-high cool mountain water, stood near the rock where
water rushed overhead, and held up a slipper (what flip-flops are called in
Hawaii) to create an air pocket canopy. It was a natural high, they said,
stoned or not.
15. 8. Ray The Dealer
He was a long-haired haole hippie who worked at the Mama Mia Pizza Parlor
not far from Punahou and lived in a dilapidated bus in an abandoned
warehouse. ... According to Topolinski, Ray the dealer was "freakin' scary."
Many years later they learned that he had been killed with a ball-peen
hammer by a scorned gay lover. But at the time he was useful because of his
ability to "score quality weed."
...
In another section of the [senior] yearbook, students were given a block of
space to express thanks and define their high school experience. ... Nestled
below [Obama's] photographs was one odd line of gratitude: "Thanks Tut,
Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times." ... A hippie
drug-dealer made his acknowledgments; his own mother did not.
17. 9. Pumping Stations
Their favorite hangout was a place they called Pumping Stations, a lush
hideaway off an unmarked, roughly paved road partway up Mount Tantalus. They
parked single file on the grassy edge, turned up their stereos playing
Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, and Stevie Wonder, lit up some "sweet-sticky
Hawaiian buds" and washed it down with "green bottle beer" (the Choom Gang
preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl).
19. 10. Veto
One of the favorite words in their subculture revealed their democratic
nature. The word was veto. Whenever an idea was broached, someone could hold
up his hand in the V sign (a backward peace sign of that era) and indicate
that the motion wash not approved. They later shortened the process so that
you could just shout "V" to get the point across. In the Choom Gang, all V's
were created equal.
21. 11. Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud And Kona Gold:
In the Honolulu of Barry's teenage years marijuana was flourishing up in the
hills, out in the countryside, in covert greenhouses everywhere. It was sold
and smoked right there in front of your nose; Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric,
Puna Bud, Kona Gold, and other local variations of pakololo were readily
available.
23. 12. The Barf Couch
The Barf Couch earned its name early in the first trimester when a freshman
across the hall from Obama [in the Haines Hall Annex dorm at Occidental
College] drank himself into a stupor and threw up all over himself and the
couch. In the manner of pallbearers hoisting a coffin, a line of Annexers
lifted the tainted sofa with the freshman aboard and toted it out the back
door and down four steps to the first concrete landing on the way to the
parking lot. A day later, the couch remained outside in the sun, resting on
its side with cushions off (someone had hosed it clean), and soon it was
back in the hallway nook.
25. 13. The Annex Olympics
(The main hallway at Haines Hall was called the Annex,) home to the
impromptu Annex Olympics: long-jumping onto a pile of mattresses, wrestling
in underwear, hacking golf balls down the hallway toward the open back door,
boxing while drunk. There were the non-Olympic sports of lighting farts and
judging them by color, tipping over the Coke machine, breaking the glass
fire extinguisher case, putting out cigarettes on the carpet, falling asleep
on the carpet, flinging Frisbees at the ceiling-mounted alarm bell, tasting
pizza boxes to the floor, and smoking pot from a three-foot crimson opaque
bong, a two-man event involving the smoker and an accomplice standing ready
to respond to the order "Hey, dude, light the bowl!"
and college. Excerpts from David Maraniss' Barack Obama: The Story
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1439160406/?tag=buzz0f-20> dealing with the
elaborate drug culture surrounding the president when he attended Punahou
School in Honolulu and Occidental College in Los Angeles. He inhaled. A lot.
1. 1. The Choom Gang
A self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and
good times called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning "to
smoke marijuana."
3. 2. Total Absorption
As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few
pot-smoking trends. The first was called "TA," short for "total absorption."
To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who
would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton's claim
that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.
5. 3. Roof Hits
Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of "roof hits": when they were
chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out
and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and
sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.
7. 4. Penalties
When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo
(Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning "numbing tobacco") instead of
absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your
turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. "Wasting good bud
smoke was not tolerated," explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom
Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.
9. 5. The Choomwagon
[Choom Gang member] Mark Bendix's Volkswagen bus, also known as the
Choomwagon. ... The other members considered Mark Bendix the glue, he was
funny, creative, and uninhibited, with a penchant for Marvel Comics. He also
had that VW bus and a house with a pool, a bong, and a Nerf basketball, all
enticements for them to slip off midday for a few unauthorized hours of
recreation...
11. 6. Interceptions
Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the
rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted "Intercepted!,"
and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.
13. 7. Slippers
Choom Gang members often made their way to Aku Ponds at the end of Manoa
Stream, where they slipped past the liliko'i vines and the KAPU (keep out)
signs, waded into waist-high cool mountain water, stood near the rock where
water rushed overhead, and held up a slipper (what flip-flops are called in
Hawaii) to create an air pocket canopy. It was a natural high, they said,
stoned or not.
15. 8. Ray The Dealer
He was a long-haired haole hippie who worked at the Mama Mia Pizza Parlor
not far from Punahou and lived in a dilapidated bus in an abandoned
warehouse. ... According to Topolinski, Ray the dealer was "freakin' scary."
Many years later they learned that he had been killed with a ball-peen
hammer by a scorned gay lover. But at the time he was useful because of his
ability to "score quality weed."
...
In another section of the [senior] yearbook, students were given a block of
space to express thanks and define their high school experience. ... Nestled
below [Obama's] photographs was one odd line of gratitude: "Thanks Tut,
Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times." ... A hippie
drug-dealer made his acknowledgments; his own mother did not.
17. 9. Pumping Stations
Their favorite hangout was a place they called Pumping Stations, a lush
hideaway off an unmarked, roughly paved road partway up Mount Tantalus. They
parked single file on the grassy edge, turned up their stereos playing
Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, and Stevie Wonder, lit up some "sweet-sticky
Hawaiian buds" and washed it down with "green bottle beer" (the Choom Gang
preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl).
19. 10. Veto
One of the favorite words in their subculture revealed their democratic
nature. The word was veto. Whenever an idea was broached, someone could hold
up his hand in the V sign (a backward peace sign of that era) and indicate
that the motion wash not approved. They later shortened the process so that
you could just shout "V" to get the point across. In the Choom Gang, all V's
were created equal.
21. 11. Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud And Kona Gold:
In the Honolulu of Barry's teenage years marijuana was flourishing up in the
hills, out in the countryside, in covert greenhouses everywhere. It was sold
and smoked right there in front of your nose; Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric,
Puna Bud, Kona Gold, and other local variations of pakololo were readily
available.
23. 12. The Barf Couch
The Barf Couch earned its name early in the first trimester when a freshman
across the hall from Obama [in the Haines Hall Annex dorm at Occidental
College] drank himself into a stupor and threw up all over himself and the
couch. In the manner of pallbearers hoisting a coffin, a line of Annexers
lifted the tainted sofa with the freshman aboard and toted it out the back
door and down four steps to the first concrete landing on the way to the
parking lot. A day later, the couch remained outside in the sun, resting on
its side with cushions off (someone had hosed it clean), and soon it was
back in the hallway nook.
25. 13. The Annex Olympics
(The main hallway at Haines Hall was called the Annex,) home to the
impromptu Annex Olympics: long-jumping onto a pile of mattresses, wrestling
in underwear, hacking golf balls down the hallway toward the open back door,
boxing while drunk. There were the non-Olympic sports of lighting farts and
judging them by color, tipping over the Coke machine, breaking the glass
fire extinguisher case, putting out cigarettes on the carpet, falling asleep
on the carpet, flinging Frisbees at the ceiling-mounted alarm bell, tasting
pizza boxes to the floor, and smoking pot from a three-foot crimson opaque
bong, a two-man event involving the smoker and an accomplice standing ready
to respond to the order "Hey, dude, light the bowl!"
4a)Dark horse: a short while ago, the Republican candidate Mitt Romney was not
given a chance in the US election, but now the picture looks differentBy Tim Stanley
Until recently, Barack Obama's re-election was regarded as inevitable - in
the same way that summer follows spring, or a monsoon follows a hosepipe
ban. The president's poll lead over Mitt Romney was strong, while the
Republican's character was assassinated by a primary fight that permanently
spoiled the reputation of his party. To court the GOP's conservative base,
Romney was forced to adopt positions on abortion, contraception, health care
and welfare that are thought to be unpopular among moderate swing voters.
Obama, by contrast, is the man who killed bin Laden and toppled Gaddafi. A
choice between Obama the moderate statesman and Romney the craven
conservative is surely no contest at all.
the same way that summer follows spring, or a monsoon follows a hosepipe
ban. The president's poll lead over Mitt Romney was strong, while the
Republican's character was assassinated by a primary fight that permanently
spoiled the reputation of his party. To court the GOP's conservative base,
Romney was forced to adopt positions on abortion, contraception, health care
and welfare that are thought to be unpopular among moderate swing voters.
Obama, by contrast, is the man who killed bin Laden and toppled Gaddafi. A
choice between Obama the moderate statesman and Romney the craven
conservative is surely no contest at all.
But in the last two weeks, things have changed. Obama's re-election is no
longer guaranteed; some pollsters think it is unlikely. Day by day, the odds
are improving that Mitt Romney will be the next President of the United
States.
longer guaranteed; some pollsters think it is unlikely. Day by day, the odds
are improving that Mitt Romney will be the next President of the United
States.
What changed? For a start, voters are getting gloomier about the economy.
Joblessness remains high and debt is out of control. According to one poll
released this week, only 33 per cent of Americans expect the economy to
improve in the coming months and only 43 per cent approve of the way that
the president has handled it. Voters think Obama has made the debt situation
and health care worse. The man who conducted the poll - Democrat Peter Hart
- concluded that "Obama's chances for re-election... are no better than
50-50."
Joblessness remains high and debt is out of control. According to one poll
released this week, only 33 per cent of Americans expect the economy to
improve in the coming months and only 43 per cent approve of the way that
the president has handled it. Voters think Obama has made the debt situation
and health care worse. The man who conducted the poll - Democrat Peter Hart
- concluded that "Obama's chances for re-election... are no better than
50-50."
The president has tried to distract from America's economic misery by
playing up the so-called culture war. Earlier in the year he decided that he
would force Catholic employers to provide contraception to their employees
through their insurance plans, and he followed that swipe at social
traditionalism by endorsing gay marriage. This embrace of Sixties liberalism
has backfired. While contraception and gay marriage often receive popular
support in national polls, Americans are far more conservative in the voting
booth. Thirty-two states have voted on gay marriage and all 32 have voted to
outlaw it - even liberal California. Nor has the culture war rallied his
party's base. In presidential primaries held on Tuesday, 39 per cent of
Arkansas Democrats and 42 per cent of Kentuckian Democrats rejected Obama's
re-nomination. In West Virginia, 41 per cent of the state's Democrats voted
for an imprisoned criminal rather than the president.
playing up the so-called culture war. Earlier in the year he decided that he
would force Catholic employers to provide contraception to their employees
through their insurance plans, and he followed that swipe at social
traditionalism by endorsing gay marriage. This embrace of Sixties liberalism
has backfired. While contraception and gay marriage often receive popular
support in national polls, Americans are far more conservative in the voting
booth. Thirty-two states have voted on gay marriage and all 32 have voted to
outlaw it - even liberal California. Nor has the culture war rallied his
party's base. In presidential primaries held on Tuesday, 39 per cent of
Arkansas Democrats and 42 per cent of Kentuckian Democrats rejected Obama's
re-nomination. In West Virginia, 41 per cent of the state's Democrats voted
for an imprisoned criminal rather than the president.
The result is that pollsters find Obama and Romney edging towards one
another. Rasmussen puts Obama only one point ahead; Gallup calls it a tie.
With Romney doing better than the president in key swing states North
Carolina and Florida, Gallup has publicly stated that Obama now has a higher
chance of losing rather than winning.
another. Rasmussen puts Obama only one point ahead; Gallup calls it a tie.
With Romney doing better than the president in key swing states North
Carolina and Florida, Gallup has publicly stated that Obama now has a higher
chance of losing rather than winning.
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5)The Reagan Memo
Some sage economic advice from 1980 for the next President.
Nearby today readers will notice excerpts from a memo written to Ronald Reagan by his economic advisers between his November 1980 election and inauguration. We share the memo because it shines a historical perspective on our own economic dilemmas as the Presidential race hits its Memorial Day turn.
The memo was sent to us by George Shultz, who later became the Gipper's Secretary of State but had served previous stints at Treasury, Labor and the White House budget office. The signers include some of the last century's most consequential economic figures, notably the great Milton Friedman, tax-cut evangelist Jack Kemp and former Treasury Secretary William Simon."
One lesson is how similar current economic problems are to those Reagan faced when he took office. The late-1970s were also a time of great economic anxiety fed by runaway government. Spending was out of control, taxes were too high, regulation too burdensome and energy too expensive. The big difference is that inflation today is lower, though food and energy prices have climbed fast until recently.
But the cause for optimism is that if the problems are similar, the solutions can also be similar. The memo is a tacit rebuttal of the White House talking point that today's Republicans are more radical than Reagan. Today's policy debates are remarkably similar to those 32 years ago. The Gipper's advisers wanted to reduce the cost of capital by cutting capital-gains taxes, for example, while Jimmy Carter thought like Mr. Obama that taxes don't much matter to economic growth.
A second lesson is the imperative for consistent policy that focuses on the long term: "The need for a long-term point of view is essential to allow for the time, the coherence, and the predictability so necessary for success."
An economy recovering from recession or other turmoil needs a steady, consistent hand. This gives business and entrepreneurs the confidence to invest and take risks, and it helps to build a durable recovery as Americans conclude a President isn't going to change policy every month for political reasons.
Reagan took his advisers' advice and focused on implementing his reforms his first year, then rode out various storms confident his policies would work in the long run. They resulted in a boom that added an economy the size of Germany's to U.S. GDP.
This is the opposite of President Obama's approach, which has been marked by the helter-skelter of temporary tax cuts, stimulus after stimulus, housing bailout upon housing rescue, favoritism for some industries over others, and arbitrary regulation that may or may not be mitigated if the White House feels enough political pressure. This is one reason in our view that the current recovery has been so lackluster.
The same lesson applies to monetary policy, even if inflation today isn't running at 13%. The Federal Reserve's policy fits and starts since 2008 have also contributed to economic uncertainty, as markets have had to absorb quantitative easing, Operation Twist and an unprecedented cacophony of Fed voices preaching greater ease or not. The next Fed Chairman would do well to heed the memo's advice of "conducting monetary policy in a steady manner" with the principal goal of price stability.
Perhaps the best reason to read the memo is as a reminder that, however large and insoluble today's problems seem, we have seen worse and solved them. The key is the right leadership with the right policies
5a)Advice for a New President
The counsel that Reagan received in November 1980 is still relevant today.
Editor's note: The following are excerpts from a Nov. 16, 1980 memo to President-elect Ronald Reagan from his Coordinating Committee on Economic Policy. Its title: "Economic Strategy for the Reagan Administration." The memo describes an era similar to our own in its economic problems and public anxiety, laying out a strategy to address them. The complete memo can be read at OpinionJournal.com. A related editorial appears nearby.
Sharp change in present economic policy is an absolute necessity. The problems of inflation and slow growth, of falling standards of living and declining productivity, of high government spending but an inadequate flow of funds for defense, of an almost endless litany of economic ills, large and small, are severe, they are not intractable. Having been produced by government policy, they can be redressed by a change in policy.
The Task Force reports that you commissioned during the campaign are now available. They contain an impressive array of concrete recommendations for action. More than that, the able people who served on the Task Forces are available to provide further detail and backup information to you or your designees. We all want to help and you can count on enthusiastic and conscientious effort.
Your Coordinating Committee has reviewed the Task Force reports. With due allowance for some differences in view about particulars and relative importance, we have found that they offer a substantial base for action by you and the team you assemble. We focus here on guiding principles, on priorities and linkages among policy areas, and on the problem of getting action.
You have identified in the campaign the key issues and lines of policy necessary to restore hope and confidence in a better economic future:
• Reestablish stability in the purchasing power of the dollar.
• Achieve a widely-shared prosperity through real growth in jobs, investment, and productivity.
• Devote the resources needed for a strong defense, and accomplish the goal of releasing the creative forces of entrepreneurship, management, and labor by:
• Restraining government spending.
• Reducing the burden of taxation and regulation.
• Conducting monetary policy in a steady manner, directed toward eliminating inflation.
This amounts to emphasis on fundamentals for the full four years, as the key to a flourishing economy.
Guiding Principles
The essence of good policy is good strategy. Some strategic principles can guide your new administration as it charts its course.
• Timing and preparation are critical aspects of strategy. The fertile moment may come suddenly and evaporate as quickly. The administration that is well prepared is ready to act when the time is ripe. The transition period and the early months of the new administration are a particularly fertile period. The opportunity to set the tone for your Administration must be seized by putting the fundamental policies into place immediately and decisively.
Getty Images/Time Life Pictures
Ronald Reagan (center) meets with advisers, including George Shultz and Milton Friedman to his left, Sept. 1, 1981.
• The need for a long-term point of view is essential to allow for the time, the coherence, and the predictability so necessary for success. This long-term view is as important for day-to-day problem solving as for the making of large policy decisions.
Most decisions in government are made in the process of responding to problems of the moment. The danger is that this daily fire fighting can lead the policy-maker farther and farther from his goals. A clear sense of guiding strategy makes it possible to move in the desired direction in the unending process of contending with issues of the day.
Many failures of government can be traced to an attempt to solve problems piecemeal. The resulting patchwork of ad hocsolutions often makes such fundamental goals as military strength, price stability, and economic growth more difficult to achieve.
• Central problems that your Administration must face are linked by their substance and their root causes. Measures adopted to deal with one problem will inevitably have effects on others. It is as important to recognize these interrelationships as it is to recognize the individual problems themselves.
• Consistency in policy is critical to effectiveness. Individuals and business enterprises plan on a long-range basis. They need to have an environment in which they can conduct their affairs with confidence.
• Specific policies as well as long-term strategy should be announced publicly. The Administration should commit itself to their achievement, and should seek Congressional commitment to them as well. Then the public, as well as the government, knows what to expect.
• The administration should be candid with the public. It should not over-promise, especially with respect to the speed with which the policies adopted can achieve the desired results.
Seizing the Initiative
The fundamental areas of economic strategy concern the budget, taxation, regulation, and monetary policy. Prompt action in each of these areas is essential to establish both your resolve and your capacity to achieve your goals.
Budget
Your most immediate concern upon assuming the duties of the President will be to convince the financial markets and the public at large that your anti-inflation policy is more than rhetoric. The public, and especially the financial community, is skeptical and needs a startling demonstration of resolve. Many question whether you are serious about a sizeable cut in budget outlays. Credible FY 1981 and 1982 budgets which do that clearly and unambiguously would evoke an extraordinary response in the financial markets, and set the stage for a successful assault on inflation and a decline in mortgage and other interest rates.
The FY 1981 Budget will be almost four months along by the time you take office and a FY 1982 Budget will have been submitted for consideration by the Congress. There are now estimates of alarming increases in these swollen budgets. Prompt and strong action is necessary if these budgets are to be brought under control, as they must be. The nation can no longer afford governmental business as usual.
The formal budget alone is far from the whole story, though it is visible and Important. Off-budget financing and government guarantees mount and expand programs through the use of the government's borrowing capacity, draining the nation's resources without being adequately recorded in the formal spending totals.
In addition, the mandating of private expenditures for government purposes has gained momentum as the spotlight has Illuminated direct spending. These mandates are also a clear call by government on the nation's resources. Efforts to control spending should be comprehensive; otherwise, good work in one area will be negated in another. And these efforts should be part of the Administration's development of a long-term strategy for the detailed shape of the budget, four or more years into the future.
In addition, the mandating of private expenditures for government purposes has gained momentum as the spotlight has Illuminated direct spending. These mandates are also a clear call by government on the nation's resources. Efforts to control spending should be comprehensive; otherwise, good work in one area will be negated in another. And these efforts should be part of the Administration's development of a long-term strategy for the detailed shape of the budget, four or more years into the future.
The Weinberger Task Force has identified an extensive and promising array of areas for potential savings, but it will be up to your Administration and the Congress to do the job. It takes top-notch people to do it. We recommend that:
• A Budget Director, permanent or pro tem, be chosen and set to work now.
• A small team from 0MB be assembled explicitly to work with the newly designated Director.
• The Director's recommendations be a part of your discussion with Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointees as these appointments are made.
Amendments calling for dramatic reductions in the FY 1981 Budget should be submitted to the Congress within the first week of your Administration. A thoroughly revised FY 1982 Budget provides even greater opportunities for large further reductions, and this budget should be submitted as soon as possible.
Finally, it has become all too evident in recent years that current budget procedures are biased in an expansionary direction. The Congressional budget process defined by the Budget Act of 1974 has failed to achieve its purpose of removing the "runaway" bias. We therefore recommend a presidential task force to develop new techniques which can help to rein in the growth of federal outlays. It should examine the presidential item veto, renewed presidential power to refrain from spending appropriated funds, and other initiatives to hold down spending. This task force should report to you within two months.
Tax Policy
Tax policy is properly the province of your Secretary of the Treasury. The making of that appointment should have a high priority so that important work can go forward. The Walker Task Force provides the materials needed to pose the issues to you in concrete form and to translate your decisions into a proposal to the Congress. This proposal should be presented early in the new administration in tandem with other key elements of your economic program. It should embody the main thrust of tax policy for the whole of your first term, not simply for the year 1981.
We consider that the key ingredients should be your proposals for the Kemp-Roth cut in personal income tax rates, simplification and liberalization of business depreciation and a cut in effective taxes on capital gains (see Innovation Task Force). Consistent with your proposals earlier this year, the effective date for these reductions should be January 1, 1981.
We consider that the key ingredients should be your proposals for the Kemp-Roth cut in personal income tax rates, simplification and liberalization of business depreciation and a cut in effective taxes on capital gains (see Innovation Task Force). Consistent with your proposals earlier this year, the effective date for these reductions should be January 1, 1981.
Other key proposals are tax incentives for the establishment of enterprise zones in the inner cities and such other items as tuition tax credits, reductions in the windfall profits tax, inheritance taxes and the taxation of Americans living abroad, and the restoration of restricted stock options.
Regulation
The current regulatory overburden must be removed from the economy. Equally important, the flood of new and extremely burdensome regulations that the agencies are now issuing or planning to issue must be drastically curtailed. The Weidenbaum Task Force sets out the needed blueprint for personnel selection, immediate administrative action, and legislation. Again, the key to action is a knowledgeable and forceful individual to develop and coordinate strategy and to form a team to carry it out. Such an appointment should be made promptly, with the expectation that the effort would carry forward through the transition for at least a year into your Administration.
Your appointee and his team should be located within the Executive Office of the President. Achieving regulatory reform will take informed, strong, and skillful work with the Congress, as well as with those in charge of departmental and agency regulatory efforts. The person heading up this effort will require your continued, wholehearted support.
Many of our economic problems today stem from the large and increasing proportion of economic decisions being made through the political process rather than the market process. An important step to demonstrate your determination to rely on markets would be the prompt end of wage and price guidelines and elimination of the Council on Wage and Price Stability.
To advance the entire regulatory effort—both to galvanize public support and to strengthen the positions of Administration appointees—we urge you to issue a message on regulatory reform in tandem with the budget and tax messages. The message should call upon state and local governments to launch similar regulatory reform efforts—as a few have already done.
Energy
The battle between government regulation and the private market is nowhere more apparent than in energy, where the market has a decisive comparative advantage. Governmental intrusion into energy production and use provides a glaring example of how regulation costs us all dearly. Alternatives to imported oil exist here in the United States. As the Halbouty Task Force emphasizes, market pricing and market incentives will accelerate the development of these alternatives, just as surely as present regulations and the politicization of this field inhibit them. Its recommendations and the issues it poses for careful review cover the energy field in a comprehensive manner and deserve immediate attention.
We recommend, also, that you promptly exercise the discretion granted to the President to remove the price controls on crude oil and petroleum products, rather than continue with the present calendar, which postpones complete decontrol until October 1981. This decisive action will eliminate at once the regulatory apparatus administering the entitlements program, and discourage continued efforts by special interests, to prevent or slow down decontrol and deregulation.
Also, the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 should be repealed so that all natural gas prices are decontrolled. These measures are particularly urgent because the uncertainty of our critical Middle East oil supplies, dramatized by the Iran-Iraq war, makes it all the more necessary to get the earliest possible incentive effect of free market pricing.
Also, the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 should be repealed so that all natural gas prices are decontrolled. These measures are particularly urgent because the uncertainty of our critical Middle East oil supplies, dramatized by the Iran-Iraq war, makes it all the more necessary to get the earliest possible incentive effect of free market pricing.
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation is incompatible with the free market pricing of energy and should be promptly eliminated.
The Department of Energy has become a large and unmanageable institution with a variety of programs ranging from essential to useless. The essential functions should be transferred and the Department eliminated. This should be the main task of your Secretary of Energy.
Monetary Policy
A steady and moderate rate of monetary growth is an essential requirement both to control inflation and to provide a healthy environment for economic growth. We have not had such a policy. The rate of monetary growth declined sharply in the early months of 1980, and rose rapidly in recent months. These wide fluctuations are adversely affecting economic conditions and may continue to do so into 1981.
The McCracken Task Force emphasizes that the attainment of a proper monetary policy deserves the very highest priority and that such a monetary policy can be achieved through effective use by the Fed of its existing powers. The Task Force also brings out the relationship of monetary policy to budgetary and other economic policies.
The Federal Reserve is an independent agency. However, independence should not mean lack of accountability for what it does. In practice, independence has not meant that the Federal Reserve is immune to Presidential and Congressional influence. The problem is how to assume accountability while preserving independence. We suggest that you:
• Request the Fed to state targets for monetary growth year by year for the next five years that in its opinion will end inflation. Influential members of relevant committees of Congress have already urged the Fed to specify such long-term targets.
• Assure the Fed that you will propose and fight for fiscal and other policies compatible with the elimination of inflation.
• Improve the procedures for coordinating Federal Reserve monetary policy with the economic policies of the Administration and the Congress and support Congressional efforts to monitor the Fed's performance and to recommend changes in the procedures that could improve performance.
With these fundamentals in place, the American people will respond. As the conviction grows that the policies will be sustained in a consistent manner over an extended period, the response will quicken. And a healthy U. S. economy, as the Burns Task Force states, will restore the credibility of our dollar on world markets, contribute significantly to smoother operation of the international economy, and enhance America's strength in the world.
Organizing for Action
The activities of a wide variety of departments, agencies, and other units of government within the Executive Branch impinge on economic policy. But the flow of economic events does not recognize organizational lines. The economy itself operates as a system in which constituent parts are linked, sometimes tightly. The combination of interwoven problems and disparate organizations means that, in the process of policy formulation and implementation, some people high in your administration must identify the central ideas and problems and devise a strategy and tactics for dealing with them. Your leadership is essential to this effort.
One arrangement that has worked well in the past is for the Secretary of Treasury to be the chief coordinator and spokesman on economic policy, domestic and international. To carry out this mandate effectively, the Secretary should be one of your key staff members as well as a departmental head with a White House title and office. Since economic developments are often closely related to security, the Secretary should be a member of the National Security Council. For this coordinating role, an Economic Policy Board, with comprehensive membership, should be established; it should meet regularly and be the avenue through which economic issues come to your Executive of the Cabinet and to your desk. The Council of Economic Advisers might suitably provide the secretariat for this group.
Maintaining a Steady Course
Our final point is our most important one. The success of your economic policy will be a direct reflection of your ability to maintain a steady course over your full first term. Rough times will come and crises of one kind or another, some small, some of great moment, will arise. Sustained effort through these testing times means that public understanding and support are essential. Of equal and related importance is the understanding and support of the Congress.
This last task—gaining understanding and support of the Congress—is of crucial importance. As a result of the voting on November 4, the 97th Congress, we are convinced, will be more cooperative on economic and financial issues. That cooperation will be fostered if, during the transition, the Secretary of the Treasury (designate) consults intensively with key members of Congress on the design and implementation of your economic policies.
You have emphasized in your successful campaign precisely the strategy set forth in this document. In moving to implement it, you will be doing what the people voted for. Every effort must be made to maintain and broaden your base of support by improving public understanding and by close cooperation with the Congress. Cabinet officers and others in your administration can help in these tasks. Their ability to do so should be one important criterion in their selection.
At the end of the day, however, the burden of leadership falls on you: leadership to chart the course ahead; leadership to persuade that your course is the one to take; leadership to stay on course, whatever way political winds may blow. Through effective advocacy of the sharp changes so sorely needed, your leadership has brought us to this long-hoped-for opportunity at a critical moment for the nation. Your leadership can maintain this advocacy in the convincing manner necessary for a successful outcome.
Arthur F. Burns
Milton Friedman
Alan Greenspan
Michel T. Halbouty
The Honorable Jack Kemp
James T. Lynn
Paul McCracken
William E. Simon
Charls E. Walker
Murray L. Weidenbaum
Caspar W. Weinberger
Walter B. Wriston
George P. Shultz, Chairman
6)Israeli Psychologist on Obama
Dr. Sam Vaknin is an Israeli psychologist. Interesting view on our
president.
Dr. Vaknin has written extensively about narcissism.
Dr. Vaknin states, "I must confess I was impressed by Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident -- a wholesome presidential package. I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling.. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words. Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such quasi "religious" impact on so many people.
The fact that Obama is a total incognito with Zero accomplishment, makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming. Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects."
Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of the Malignant Self Love believes "Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist." Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens. Vaknin says that Obama's language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest friends suggest that the man is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People's Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Stalin, Saddam, Mao, Kim Jong Ill and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time.
All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers. They created a personality cult around themselves and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirers, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. They gave them hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, invariably they brought them to their doom.
When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it is too late.
One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse "Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations,"says Vaknin.
"Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant two years old. Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia , a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father.
At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. "She died of cancer in 1995."
One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents.
Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and does not deserve their attention.
If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The "present" vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.
If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The "present" vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.
Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him a lot longer than expected and at the end it evolved into, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book Dreams from My Father.
Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still a nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself?
Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama's lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month.. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who raised nearly half a billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? Because, his brother cannot be used for his ascent to power. A narcissist cares for no one but himself.
This election was like no other in the history of America . The issues were insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world?
I hate to sound alarmist, but one is a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others. They are simply self serving and selfish. Obama evidences symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or a Bill Clinton for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined.
This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw.
Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous. Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party. The great majority of blacks voted for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven. This is racism, pure and simple.
The downside of this is that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama's detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites. The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions will increase to levels never seen since the turbulent 1960's.
Obama will set the clock back decades. America is the bastion of freedom. The peace of the world depends on the strength of America , and its weakness translates into the triumph of terrorism and victory of rogue nations.. It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, the Castrists, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the lawyers of the Guantanamo terrorists, and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of their man in the White House.
America is on the verge of destruction. There is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president."
Michael A. Haberman M.D.
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Rating agencies say they need to be convinced lawmakers have a real plan in the works to reduce the growing debt if the nation is to avert future downgrades, according to a report by The Hill.
“If Congress doesn’t put in place a process that assures people that this will be addressed in a real manner . . . then there is no doubt in my mind that our sovereign debt will be downgraded,” said Steve Bell, the senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Markets throughout the world are going to be looking at the action of the United States government.”
“It’s highly uncertain . . . because of the political circumstances,” said Steven Hess, Moody’s lead analyst for U.S. ratings. “Our stance at this point is to wait and see.”
“We’d have to assess the actual content of any temporary agreement,” Hess added. “How likely is it that that will require a credible plan to be implemented within whatever time frame they come up with? It’s the actual deficit and debt trajectories that we expect that will be the most important determinant.”
Fitch and Moody’s have both put the United States on notice that future downgrades are coming without a change in course. Furthermore, Fitch identified 2013 as a crucial year for the United States to take action on its debt. Currently, it sees better-than-even odds that it will downgrade the United States.
Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a member of the Simpson-Bowles debt commission and a long time spending hawk, agrees with the findings.
“We’re going to get another downgrade. I can tell you right now. You can have a great legal case for suing the rating agencies for not downgrading us again because we have not demonstrated the political will to solve the problems,” he said in a recent interview with Bob Schieffer for CBS’s Face to Face.
Coburn argues that last year’s downgrade of the nation’s credit rating from AAA to AA+ by the ratings agency Standard and Poor’s was just the beginning, according to the CBS report. The agency made its decision just days after congress passed an 11th hour compromise to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
Standard and Poor’s in a statement at that time said it was “pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government’s debt dynamics any time soon.”
Coburn agrees. “We should see another downgrade because we have not done the structural things that will fix our country. If you look what’s getting ready to happen to us, in another five years, we’re going to have $22 trillion worth of debt. We’re going to have 120 percent of our total GDP in debt. If you look at historic interest rates, we’re going to be paying $800 billion a year in interest. Where are we going to get that money?” he warned in the Face to Face interview.
Despite all the negative consequences of delay, any substantive action on the debt almost certainly won’t happen before the election, notes The Hill report. Lawmakers will tangle mightily in lame-duck sessions in November -- when Congress must decide whether to raise the debt ceiling, extend the Bush tax rates and replace $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts set to begin in January 2013.
Lobbyists on K Street are betting on a short-term deal in the lame duck that would kick down the road longer-term decisions on taxes and spending into 2013. The expected compromise, according to The Hill: extend current tax rates in the short term while nudging up the debt ceiling.
The maneuver would allow more time for lawmakers to reform the tax code.
Beth Ann Bovino, deputy chief economist for Standard & Poor’s who does not set ratings as part of her job description tells The Hill that she expects lawmakers will compromise in the nick of time – with a “credible medium-term plan, which is what investors and the economy would nee."
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8)Will the 1991 Biography Discovery Force Obama to Open the Hood?
By Monte Kuligowski
If you have a young boy, you've probably watched Disney's Cars 2 about a thousand times. For those who don't know, at the movie's end (an obligatory spoiler warning here), Sir Miles Axlerod is exposed as a fraud when he's forced to open his hood by Mater, the hayseed hick. Hold that thought.
Three possibilities follow the bombshell discovery that Barack Obama was promoted in 1991 through 2007 by his professional agency as an author "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii." (1) Obama untruthfully presented himself as Kenya-born. (2) Obama untruthfully presents himself as Hawaii-born. (3) Obama had no knowledge that his bio contained the 16-year-old "error" which was corrected in April of 2007, when Obama was gearing up his campaign for the U.S. presidency.
Of the three possibilities, number three may be discarded on its face as absurd. Everyone in the publishing industry knows that authors write their own bios. At the very least, authors approve their own bios. I've written some law review articles, and in the law journal context, author bios are normally brief. Even so, in every instance, the respective publishers printed only what I approved.
Mr. Obama's Acton & Dystel bio is fairly lengthy and detailed. To believe that Obama had no knowledge of the born-in-Kenya "error" requires more than just believing he didn't sign off on it. We would also have to believe that Obama didn't care to read his bio in the 36-page promotional booklet after publication and distribution. That is also a huge stretch. Did Obama get a copy? Of course he did -- that's another publishing standard.
Roger Kimball wrote a little spoof on A& D's "fact-checking" error:
An agency spokesman who claims to have been responsible for the "born in Kenya" wheeze has publicly said that it was a mistake, a typographical error, a slip of the pen that just went "unchecked" for, um, sixteen-seventeen years. I can understand that. She meant to write "Hawaii" and wrote "Kenya" instead. Could happen to anyone. They look and sound enough alike, don't they, that no one noticed. You meant to write "there" and you wrote "their" instead. You meant to write "cup" and you wrote "floccinaucinihilipilification" instead. No one -- no one at the literary agency, not the author himself -- could be expected to notice. You understand that, right?
Beyond any reasonable doubt, the Kenya birth information was supplied by Obama himself (and the bio was most likely written by Obama).
At this point, we should pause to consider why this explosive story is being largely ignored by the "mainstream" news media: no matter how it's spun, when the dust settles, the story is a lose-lose for Obama. Either way, Obama has lied. And either way, the respective lie is no small matter.
Some have speculated that Obama presented himself as Kenya-born to fit his black liberation ideology in context of promoting his yet-to-be-written book, Journeys in Black and White. Mark Steyn writes:
[B]eing born in Hawaii doesn't really help. It's entirely irrelevant to the twin pillars of contemporary black grievance - American slavery and European imperialism. To 99.99 percent of people, Hawaii is a luxury-vacation destination and nothing else. Whereas Kenya puts you at the heart of what, in an otherwise notably orderly decolonization process by the British, was a bitter and violent struggle against the white man's rule. Cool! The composite chicks dig it, and the literary agents.
Others have noted that if Obama registered for college in the United States as a foreign student (either because he was adopted by his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, in Indonesia or because he actually was born in Kenya), he pretty much had to go with the bio of the down for the struggle foreign author.
And adding to the mystery, Obama's college, vital, passport and Selective Service records are guarded more securely than the gold at Fort Knox. If only we could just move on past those silly distractions.
At this point, let's hope that the establishment conservative press can finally get a handle on navigating the Obama secrecy issue skillfully and without fear. The entire issue has been wrongly framed. There is no burden on the people to prove anything.
It's not about "birther" conspiracy theories. It's not about avoiding the "birther" label at all costs. It's about the staunch secrecy of Barack Obama. It's fundamentally about one simple question: what the hell is Obama hiding?
There is absolutely no reason why citizens should have to "believe" that Obama is eligible for the presidency when relevant evidence is being withheld.
Full disclosure will immediately end the suspicions that citizens reasonably have. The twin drums to be pounded are (1) the burden is on Obama to end all controversy for the sake of the country, and (2) the posting of images on the internet doesn't meet the Pawn Stars standard for authentication of documents, let alone the legal standard that Obama should be held to.
Anyone may safely advocate those two points. It's really easy, and I encourage my conservative colleagues to try it.
Prior to the Breitbart bombshell, we had countless oddities and anomalies. There's the African folklore: African newspapers, officials, and paternal family members have indicated that Obama was born in Mombasa. There are no living witnesses to Obama's Hawaii birth. There's the island state with a documented history of registering foreign births as Hawaiian. There were the ambiguous and misleading words of its officials concerning what the Department of Health has in its archives relating to Obama. There was Obama's sideshow spectacle of uploading his "birth certificate" to the internet in 2008 only to abruptly "release" the reportedly nonexistent birth certificate in 2011 (again online) after fighting its production in court after court for over three years.
But now in light of the Breitbart discovery, the production of Obama's college applications and records is as relevant as the need for Obama to comply with the legal standard for the production of his birth certificate -- which means producing certified paper copies for interested state election officials while making the original available for authentication in Hawaii.
Arizona's secretary of state, Ken Bennett, could have used the Breitbart discovery to support a demand for legal compliance and authentication of Obama's Hawaii records (what a great way to get this shocking news to the general public). But, sadly, it appears that Bennett has backed down from his halfhearted request that Hawaii's Department of Health send him a certified paper copy of the original birth certificate (the Department merely informed Bennett that the copy it produced for Obama matches the original, not that Obama's internet image matches the original).
The Breitbart discovery also connects the discovery by Sheriff Joe Arpaio's investigative team relating to the blatant forgery of Obama's Selective Service registration form. At this point, that document must be produced as well.
Something is not right with Obama. At the very least, he was willing to lie about his life story.
The American people have the right to know whether Obama lied in the past because of some disturbing personality disorder -- or, perish the thought, whether Obama committed criminal acts in furtherance of fraud being perpetrated on the American people.
Let's not move on.
There's only one way to get to the truth.
Let's lift open the hood, Sir Axlerod
8a)A smoke screen of self-delusion
By John Podhoretz
Like a Seurat painting or a pixilated photograph coming into focus, there are now enough tiny dots of independent data to begin to form a preliminary picture of Barack Obama’s re-election effort — and the emerging image is bleak.
Tuesday night, two more Democratic primaries brought bad news to the sitting Democratic president. More than four of every 10 Democrats who went to the polls in Arkansas and Kentucky voted against him. Obama was able to secure only 58 percent of the primary vote in each state.
This follows the 41 percent showing in the West Virginia primary for a felon sitting in a Texas jail, and the fact that 20 percent of Democratic voters in North Carolina’sprimary actually voted “no preference” rather than pull the lever for their party leader and president.
AP
President Barack Obama
Granted, of all these states, Obama won only North Carolina in 2008. But remember, these are Democratic voters, and they live in states that are perfectly hospitable to Democratic politicians. All four have Democratic governors; West Virginia has two Democratic senators, while North Carolina and Arkansas each have one.
Instantly, the Obama-defensive media sprang into action and located the nefarious explanation for these dreadful numbers: To wit, the voters are evil.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza said the results “have drawn a collective eyeroll from Democrats — and many others who closely follow national politics — who ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism. No, none of these Democrats are willing to put their name to that allegation . . . But it is without question the prevalent viewpoint they hold privately.”
Wait a minute. Haven’t I been told for 30 years now — and by such media eminences as the longtime Washington Postie Thomas B. Edsall — that dastardly Democratic racists in Southern states had left their party for the more cruelly Caucasian climes of the GOP and had thereby turned Dixie into a Republican stronghold?
Why, yes I have. But despite the theory that the GOP had sucked in all the available racists in a 12-state area over the past 30 years, apparently there are still melanin-hating meshugenahs in the Democratic camp. It took having a black president to smoke them out at last. They were so clever at hiding their tracks that they probably even voted for the black candidate in 2008.
Only rather than switching parties like a normal evil racist would do, they chose to stay Democrats in 2012 just so they could embarrass and humiliate Obama.
Those who assert that Obama’s poor showing among voters in his own party is due to the one factor he can’t control are not doing him any favors. They are, instead, helping create a smoke screen of self-delusion.
This is a refusal to look at real-time election results with a cool and dispassionate eye. What these four states offer isn’t polling information with a few hundred people standing in for a few hundred thousand. These are hundreds of thousands of actual voters in a grouping intrinsically favorable to Obama, and they are saying something about the viability of his re-election.
Obama avoided facing a primary challenger; good for him. But it turns out that Democrats who would’ve sent a message to him via such a challenger are simply conjuring one up with whatever is at hand.
That is important, because while no primary challenger has ever knocked off a president, every president with a serious primary challenger has lost his second-term bid.
What does it mean, then, when a president with unserious challengers who should be getting 90 percent of his own party’s primary vote instead can’t get over 60 percent in three successive states?
It means Big Trouble, is what it means.
It also means we know what is going to be said if he loses — that it won’t be because of the sluggish economy, or the $2.5 trillion in new spending, or the failed stimulus.
We will be told, as we were this week, that he wasn’t be judged on the content of his candidacy, but on the color of his skin.
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9) NYT Keeps Readers In The Dark
By Walter Russell Mead
Via Meadia has been watching the New York Times‘ coverage of the Wisconsin recall race with some bemusement. The race is of vital importance for anybody who wants to understand where the country is headed this year. The bill restricting public employee union collective bargaining rights set off a huge uproar, polarized Wisconsin politics, ignited a furious resistance and a series of recall elections — climaxing with the current attempt to unseat Governor Scott Walker.
NYT readers, like many other Americans, are interested in the race. The issues stir deep passions on both sides of the aisle. Outside money has poured into the state as conservative advocacy groups and high profile donors rushed to support Governor Walker and his allies. Similarly, organized labor and some serious liberal donors have pulled out all the stops to notch up a win in this high profile contest between liberal and conservative ideas.
That the Times takes sides in this contest neither surprises nor disturbs the Via Meadia team. We know the Times is a liberal newspaper (often a very good one) whose readers are primarily liberal and want the news reported and analyzed from that point of view. The paper doesn’t try to hide this from readers and its editors, reporters and proprietors are doing nothing wrong in producing a paper of this kind.
It is only to be expected that the Times would embrace the recall movement and follow the popular mobilization in support of the public sector unions in loving and even lavish detail. But the Gray Lady’s Wisconsin coverage has gone way beyond the journalism of engagement, a venerable and honorable practice. It has gone into the journalism of denial. For the last few weeks it has gone well beyond telling the story from the point of view that it and its readers share; it is concealing facts that its readers need to know.
Take this new magazine feature piece: a Brobdingnagian seven page weeper lamenting the political divisiveness ushered in, the article claims, by a Walker administration bent on bringing partisan conflict to the peaceful and civil people of Wisconsin. TheTimes accuses Walker of using outside money and shady legislative tactics to push through a radical agenda to rob workers of their rights, undo gun control laws and “dismantle public education.”
So far, so good. Let us stipulate that in the view of the Times, Scott Walker is a skunk and a cad. And let us stipulate that everything bad in Wisconsin, all the ill feeling and all the turmoil is entirely because this sinister enemy of all that is noble and good has been riding roughshod over every decent principle in public life.
But what Times readers will not learn from this piece is that the skunk is winning. Walker is overwhelmingly favored to win on June 5, with polls consistently giving him a significant lead over his opponent. In seven pages of focused, detailed coverage of the politics of the Wisconsin race, the piece has no room for this simple yet somehow telling detail.
The Times knows very well that Walker is kicking butt in Wisconsin. Blogger Nate Silver tells readers exactly this at his NYT blog 538. (Gibbon buried the more salacious details about the scandalous lives of the Roman emperors in untranslated Latin footnotes; the Times puts unpalatable facts in blogs where the more sensitive readers seldom look.)
It isn’t just that recent Times articles about Wisconsin have studiously tiptoed around the opinion polls that point to a solid Walker lead. Dan Kaufman’s weeper doesn’t give readers any idea why anybody in Wisconsin supports Walker or why even the Democrats now accept that the public supports Walker’s union legislation and aren’t making an issue of it in the campaign.
The bruised feelings, the sadness and the anger of Walker’s opponents are given plenty of air time, and we learn much from Mr. Kaufman about why the governor’s opponents think he deserves to be recalled. But we don’t learn anything at all, really, about why people support him — or why so many of them are furious with the unions and their supporters. In an article about the bitter political divisiveness consuming Wisconsin, we learn nothing about the actual nature of the divide.
Again, the Times doesn’t need to treat the two sides as equal. It can sneer at what it considers to be the fallacies and inconsistencies of Walker’s opponents all it wants. But if it wants to tell readers why Wisconsin is divided, it needs to at least refer to the ideas and the perceptions, foolish and mistaken though they may be, of those who passionately support the governor.
Kaufman’s agitprop misses much of the rest of the “divisiveness” in Wisconsin. There’s nothing about the allegations of violence, intimidation and lawlessness that Walker supporters have made against his opponents. There’s nothing about the controversies over state workers getting phony doctors’ notes to take ‘sick’ days rather than personal or vacation days to protest against the Walker law. Again, he is free to excuse this conduct as justified or raise doubts that it happened — but you can’t write about divisiveness while ignoring the controversies that have made people so angry.
Read the piece and see for yourself. It is long, exhaustive and deeply misleading. This goes beyond bias; it is the most foolish and self-defeating propaganda. If you want to know why liberals are so frequently surprised by events that other people saw coming, why so many well educated and well meaning people are so pathetically clueless about American politics and American culture — read this piece.
If there were an anti-Pulitzer Prize for the worst journalism of the year — this would be a contender.
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10)The Al Houla atrocity: The outcome of nuclear diplomacy with Iran
Assad's latest massacre at al-Houla
32 of them children under ten, at the Homs village of Al-Houla
Friday, May 25, was the most horrifying atrocity in the Middle
East this week, but not the only one: In Sanaa, six days
ago, al Qaeda’s suicide bombers, having penetrated Yemeni
military ranks, detonated two tons of explosives at a parade
rehearsal killing more than 100 soldiers and civilians and injuring 400.
Yet, according to the New York Times, after 15 months of bloodshed, President Barack
Obama is working on the Yemenbi model for a plan to push Bashar Assad out of office, while “leaving remnants of his government in place. The Yemeni model replaced President Ali
Abdullah in Sanaa with his vice president Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Whereas US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned Assad and his “cronies”
for the al-Houla massacre, the “Yemen plan” would leave in place those very “cronies,”
including Assad’s close relatives, who are responsible for massacres not only in
al-Houla, but also in Homs, Hama, Idlib and Deraa, to name a few.
According to the NYT, when Obama tested the idea with Russian Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev at the Group-of-8 summit in Camp David last Saturday, May 19,
the Russian prime minister raised the example of “Mubarak in a cage,” referring to
Mubarak’s court appearance at his trial. Obama then “countered with Yemen, and
the indication was, yes, this was something we could talk about.”
This scrap of dialogue lifted the veil from a key aspect of Obama’s broader Middle East
program and the role he has assigned Moscow for carrying it through. Several months
ago it was reported the US president is acting to bring the Russians into a
partnership for securing deals on the Iranian nuclear program and the Syrian crisis.
So far, his venture has had two results:
1. The Iranian nuclear impasse and the outcome of the Syrian civil war have been
more tightly integrated than ever before.
2. Any deal reached by the US, Russia and Iran on the two issues would have
to entail a carving-up of Middle East influence among those three powers.
As for Israel’s role in the ongoing bargaining,tIsrael’s Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud
Barak had agreed to stand back for Barack Obama to put his interim deal with Iran
to the test. Despite their reservations, they decided to go along with it after receiving
assurances from the White House that Iranian violations would result in the immediate
termination of negotiations and bring military action forward as the sole remaining
option for stopping a nuclear Iran.
The US president promised to put his accord with Israel before the G-8 summit. And he did.
But for now there is no deal although Israel, in effect, gave Obama six months’ grace to
explore his diplomatic initiative with Vladimir Putin and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei before
turning back to the military option.
But as the days pass, major hurdles are piling up in the path of what some observers
hail as Obama’s “Grand Bargain,” and others his “Grand Failure:” The Six-power talks
with Iran have failed to persuade the ayatollahs to give up uranium enrichment up to
weapons-grade; the world wants actions not words to halt the brutal massacres in
Syria; rising bloodshed in Yemen continues to cripple the country. Obama’s hopes of
a crisis-free six months for electioneering in peace look more and more like pipe-dreams.
The bargaining with Tehran is likely to stay stalled because Iran’s leaders take
Obama’s deal with Israel as a six-month respite from a military threat. So why should
they hurry in May or even June to reach a compromise with America on its demand
to stop 20 percent uranium enrichment?
Bashar Assad and his army chiefs likewise feel US hands are tied by Obama's
hopes of a breakthrough with Iran and they can safely carry on with their “unspeakable
crimes” for the next six months under the Iranian-Russian umbrella. Words however strong
will not discourage him from sending tanks to crush every last opponent and their children.
And Israel, seeing the US president lurching from one bargaining position to another to
keep his initiative afloat, shifts uncertainly in and out of its unwritten commitment to
withhold military action against Iran until November.
None of the parties involved in granting Obama his six-month grace period, whether
Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei, Binyamin Netanyahu or Bashar Assad, can be sure that
he will in fact be returned to the Whie House in November. And even if he is, how
much will be left of his Grand Bargain.
11) Wind Farms Killing ‘America’s National Symbol’
The federal government last August imposed hefty fines on seven petroleum companies in North Dakota over the death of 28 birds near their open waste pits.
The wind farms championed by promoters of “green energy,” by comparison, kill more than 400,000 birds a year — including dozens of eagles — yet they pay not a penny in fines.
“Team Obama wants to give wind-power companies long-term permits to butcher bald eagles, America’s national symbol, on the altar of green energy,” writes Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) disclosed: “With more than 100,000 turbines expected to be in operation in the United States by 2030, annual bird mortality rates alone (now estimated at 440,000 a year) are expected to exceed one million.”
Among those avian victims are bald eagles and golden eagles that fly into the turbine blades revolving at up to 200 miles per hour.
Determining an exact count for dead eagles is difficult because other animals may eat the carcasses, but 67 golden eagles are estimated to die annually at just one California wind farm, at Altamont Pass. Overall, the toll could surpass 500 golden eagles a year at wind farms in the eagles’ habitat in the western United States.
But a 2009 Obama-era law allows wind farms and others to kill eagles if the harm is unintentional. This loophole lets wind companies escape “the penalties that can befall those with eagle blood on their hands but without political connections,” notes Murdock, a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service whose article appeared on National Review Online.
First-time violators of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act can receive $5,000 fines and a one-year prison sentence, and second offenses can double those punishments — with wind farms exempt.
Three years ago, following an FWS investigation, PacifiCorp paid $10.5 million in fines after 232 golden eagles and other protected birds were electrocuted when they landed on its power lines in Wyoming during a 2½-year period.
In the North Dakota case, an Obama-appointed U.S. attorney brought charges against the oil companies for the deaths of mallard ducks and other birds that mistook open waste pits for natural ponds. Facing fines of at least $15,000 per bird and six months in jail, the companies pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1,000 per bird, although a federal judge later dismissed the case.
Last July, the FWS took enforcement to a new level of absurdity by threatening to impose a fine of $535, plus imprisonment, on the mother of an 11-year-old girl in Virginia accused of illegally possessing a woodpecker she saved from a hungry cat and soon released. The woodpecker is a protected species under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
But after the story garnered national attention, the FWS decided the situation was a “misunderstanding” and withdrew charges, according to a Heritage Foundation report.
Murdock concludes: “If bald eagles dropped dead beside oil derricks, Washington would pound the petroleum industry. Instead, wind propellers chop bald eagles in half. Team Obama then lets wind companies eradicate even more of this republic’s innocent national bird,” which is being “sacrificed in the name of environmental correctness.”
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