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As I noted earlier, I am reading "The Amateur" and should be finished sometime today.

I urge everyone to read it whether they agree with Obama or not because it is food for thought and helps one understand why some, if not all, of his decisions follow a pattern that form the basis of and explain why our nation's situation has worsened since he became president.

The basic thrust of the book is that Obama is unqualified based on temperament, prior employment endeavors, lack of executive skills, ideology too far left for our nation and poor choice of advisers among other reasons. Obama operates in a vacuum of intellectual challenge, does not seek the advice of many and never those opposed to his ideas. He is aloof, has virtually no contact with the other branch of government - called Congress, and has a cold personality.

As for his so-called brightness, if his decision making is any indication, he is downright dumb and he has consistently demonstrated he is incapable of course correction because he is driven by his ideological far left thinking.

If you read "The Amateur" there is much to challenge you even if you ultimately conclude , in your eyes, Obama remains the/your 'messiah. '

Edward Klein, the author of "The Amateur" cites the number of convictions (pp 70) of Illinois politicians and states Obama is the product of Chicago Style politics which the author deems is a byword for patronage, nepotism, bribery and corruption (pp 70.)

In the concluding chapters, Klein discusses how Axelrod is going to present Obama as the "New Obama" and how the press and media will portray him as a president who has learned and thus is entitled to continue in office so he can complete his learning - albeit at our expense, freedom and security (my words.) Well, like the 'New Nixon,' who turned out not to exist, there is no 'New Obama.' The 'New Obama' is simply the repackaged 'Old Obama' being sold in a new format and by the same fish wrapping newspapers etc..

Again, to win re-election, Hope and Change are out the window. They have been ditched because Obama cannot run on his record so Axelrod will take the "Low Road" and run against Republican intransigence and slime his opponent, Romney. It is 'Give Em Hell Obama' time.

The author points out, it is up to Republicans and Romney to remind voters of how Obama has screwed up everything he has tried to accomplish with his radical left wing ideas and if they have the guts, something out of character for timorous Republicans who are often too Patrician to fight , there is plenty of Obama gruel for their campaign bowl.

This is a water shed election,of which the author cites six in the past (pp 248) and the stark choice for voters is between a left wing president who believes in engineering the equality of outcome versus a rival who espouses the equality of opportunity.

If Obama is defeated then the Social Tide begun with Wilson, reinforced by FDR and furthered by Obama will be set back on its heels. Universal health care, mandatory union membership, wealth redistribution, bigger and more intrusive federal government , restrictive legislative that cripples Capitalism, restraint on energy development and pitting American against American on the basis of have and have not's will be dealt a death blow.

Re-elect Obama if you believe in economic death spirals, legislative curses ,executive amateurism and weakness is the righteous path for America. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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John Mauldin responds to inflation - deflation? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Demanding Voter ID by Mass. Demwits! - Hypocrisy, bigotry or just stupidity. You decide! (See 3 below.)
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Has Obama's dear and closest Turkish ally stabbed him in the back and are Syrian SCUD missiles about to be transferred? (See 5 below.)
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Caroline Glick - ever the hard nosed!

Her article suggests Israel's Barak and America's Barak are two peas in the same pod in terms of their wrongheaded policies.

As a military man Israel's Barak is qualified. As a politician he is out of his league and proves it every time he opens his mouth.

Our Barak is a Chicago community organizer who has proven to be a dud in the world of foreign affairs, economics and leadership.

Go girl! (See 6 below.)
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Even this girl - Maureen Dowd - has thrown in the towel on our Barak.

I wrote years ago, before Obama's term in office was over, the press and media would turn from fawning and gushing over him to turning on him simply to save their own liberal skins and so it seems to be coming to fruition as Dowd cites books and articles critical of our Barak, written by dejected Liberals.

Dowd did not, however, refer to the book of her former New York Times co- worker - Ed Klein's "The Amateur." That might have cost her her job. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)An Economy Built to Stall

With a third slowdown in three years, maybe the problem is the policies.

Well, this week makes it official. The weakest economic recovery since World War II has become weaker still, sinking into a spring slowdown for the third year in a row. Are we finally ready to debate a change in the policies that have led to this pass?

On Thursday the government reported that growth in the first quarter was 1.9%, even weaker than the 2.2% initial estimate. Then Friday delivered the third slower jobs report in a row, which qualifies as a depressing trend. Employers created only 69,000 net new jobs in May, and April's total was revised down to 77,000 jobs. Stocks were crushed in the backwash.

US Unemployment Turns Back South

The US unemployment numbers for May were released this morning, and they were rather dismal. Mainstream economists were expecting something on the order of 150,000 new jobs, but they came in sharply lower at 69,000. March and April estimates were revised down 50,000. As long-time readers know, I pay as much or more attention to the direction of the revisions than to the actual monthly numbers, as the direction of the revision is a reasonable leading indicator. And what it indicates is what I was writing four months ago: we are in for another summer of poor jobs growth.

With the revisions, we have had the first back to back sub-100,000 new jobs months since last summer, with the average gain for the last three months a poor 96,000.

The unemployment rate rose to 8.2%, as the labor force rose a very strong 642,000. This is why I wrote, at the beginning of this recession some four years ago, that employment would take longer to come back this cycle. That is because of the way they count employment. If you have not looked for a job in the last four weeks, you are not counted as unemployed. The rise in the labor force is largely due to the growing number of people now looking for jobs, as those on extended unemployment benefits are beginning to come to the end of their two-year benefits period in fairly large numbers each month.

As more people look for a job, the statistical reality is that it takes more new jobs to move the unemployment number down. And with numbers like this month's, that means the unemployment rate will start to march back up. That is not something anyone wants, least of all politicians, who are fond of taking credit when the number of jobs rise but try to change the subject when unemployment climbs.

The more realistic unemployment number would be one that counted people who are unemployed but would take a job if they could get one. While economists can argue how to actually come up with that number, nobody (without a serious political bias) would argue that it is less than 10%, and some would argue it's north of 12%. And the duration of unemployment is now back to a median time of over 9 months, with that number sadly rising as well. It is just taking longer to find a job if you don't have one.

CNN Money did a story last month with the note that "... there are far more jobless people in the United States than you might think. Last year, 86 million Americans were not counted in the labor force because they didn't keep up a regular job search. While it's true that the unemployment rate is falling, that doesn't include the millions of nonworking adults who aren't even looking for a job anymore. And hiring isn't strong enough to keep up with population growth. As a result, the labor force is now at its smallest size since the 1980s when compared to the broader working age population."

The household survey (which is different from the establishment [or business] survey) showed the creation of 422,000 jobs. We get the unemployment percentage (of 8.2%) from the household survey. You can't really look at the monthly numbers on the household survey, because they fluctuate wildly. "Change in the adjusted household survey over the last five months: +491,000, +879,000, -418,000, -495,000, +400,000. That nets out to +857,000, little different from the establishment survey's 823,000. Further evidence that one should look at the adjusted household numbers as a longer-term check on the establishment survey and basically ignore the monthly changes." (The Liscio Report)

The interesting thing to me in the household report was that the number of part-time jobs was up 757,000, which is far larger than the rise in the number of employed. Full-time employment actually dropped by 266,000. The broader measure of people who are unemployed or underemployed (part-time but wanting full-time work) is now back up to 14.8%. The Gallup Poll people, using a different survey basis, show an 18% underemployed rate.

But why should we worry? "The jobless rate in the U.S. could drop to as low as 6 percent by the first half of 2013, a bigger decrease than most economists currently project, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The relationship between the number of Americans newly unemployed and those recently finding work indicates joblessness will continue to decline, according to economist Aysegul Sahin."(BusinessWeek) Such scholarly work should help Mr. Sahin to land a job with the White House on the President's Council of Economic Advisors. Although, to be fair to the Fed, their more consensus view is that unemployment will still be 7.4% to 8.1% in the 4^thquarter of 2013.)

Perhaps the key driver of the US economy is consumer spending. And consumer spending requires consumers to have income. But this month's survey and the revisions to recent reports shows that hours worked are down slightly and wages are not keeping up with inflation. Total payrolls were down 0.3% for May, which is just a killer for consumer spending. GDP for the first quarter was revised down to 1.9%, and it looks like this quarter may not be any better or may even be worse, despite the higher expectations of mainstream economists.

But I suggest that you not take much comfort from consensus forecasts. There are certain analysts who I can almost always count on to be wrong. And they get there with the aid of a large number of graphs and charts and words to prove their points. But being consistently wrong can be useful, and I appreciate the effort it involves. However, there is wrong and there is just really bad. The Blue Chip economics consensus has never forecast a recession. And they largely miss recoveries. Essentially, they always forecast a continuation of the current trend. As a group, they are largely useless. They are not even a good contrarian indicator.

My friend James Montier (now of GMO) has long had fun with the poor track record of consensus economic forecasts. This graph pretty much says it all.

A Synchronized Global Slowdown

While synchronized swimming may be an event (if an odd one) at this summer's London Olympics, a synchronized global slowdown is not an event in which you want to get a medal. We looked at a spate of bad data last week, and we got even more this week. Lost in the bad employment data this morning was the news out of Asia. Australian manufacturing is clearly in a recession. India is posting its slowest growth in nine years. China is on the edge of a downturn in manufacturing. Unemployment is rising all over Europe and is much worse than in the US. German (!!!) credit default swaps are rising and are now higher than in 2008! Bank deposits in Europe are contracting at a faster rate than at any time in the last 14 years (the farthest back I can find data).

And while I don't want to steal too much thunder from next week's Outside the Box, I will pass along just this one graph from Greg Weldon ( www.weldononline.com), showing that the PMI numbers for Europe came in almost universally bad. Note that the two-year average is getting ready to go negative.

The jobs number suggests the US is at stall speed. I wrote at the beginning of the year that if someone could guarantee 2% growth for the year I would take it. That still seems like a good bet, as I don't think we are going to get near 2%. An economic shock from Europe, which is quite possible, could push the US and most of the rest of the world into recession. The weakness in China and the rest of Asia gives even more cause for concern.

Recessions are almost always by definition deflationary. And with that thought in mind, let's turn our eyes to this week's rather puzzling moves in European interest rates.

Why Would You Buy a Bond with Negative Interest?

It is entirely understandable why Spanish and Italian interest rates are rising, as the news, especially from Spain, is quite negative. But so far, there is little evidence that there is significant shorting of Spanish debt, as almost everyone believes that the European Central Bank will ride to the rescue of Spain, as it has in the recent past. That is a tough environment for short sellers. One morning you wake up and there is massive movement against your short position and you can't get out without large losses. But the longer interest rates rise without ECB intervention, the more likely they are to rise even faster at some point, forcing either an ECB intervention or a failed Spanish bond auction and an eventual default. Given that the latter events are so disastrous, it is not unreasonable to think that the ECB will act, at some point.

Yields on Spanish ten-year bonds are now at 6.62%, up 50 basis points in the last 45 days. That is a record 548 basis points higher than similar German debt. Greece, Portugal, and Ireland had to seek aid when rates rose over 7%. "Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said late yesterday that the future of the euro is at stake, as data showed a net 66 billion euros ($81 billion) of capital left Spain in March. 'I don't know if we're on the edge of the precipice, but we're in a very, very, very difficult situation,' he said at a conference in Sitges, Spain.

"Investors have lost more on Spanish debt this year than any government securities apart from those of Greece. Spain, the fourth-biggest euro economy, owes bondholders 731 billion euros, more than the three countries that have already been bailed out combined. (Prime Minister) Rajoy's suggestion that his country risks being forced out of capital markets reinforces concern that it may not be able to manage its debts..." (Bloomberg)

But in recent speeches, ECB president Mario Draghi has said that European leaders must clarify their own vision of what Europe is to be. He correctly points out that it should not be up to the ECB to fill a policy vacuum created by European inaction.

" 'Can the ECB fill the vacuum of lack of action by national governments on fiscal growth? The answer is no,' Draghi told the European Parliament. 'Can the ECB fill the vacuum of the lack of action by national governments on the structural problem? The answer is no.'

"In his sharpest criticism yet of euro zone leaders' handling of the crisis, Draghi urged they spell out detailed plans for the euro and fiscal cooperation, something he believes will require governments to surrender some of their sovereignty to succeed.

"'How is the euro going to look like a certain number of years from now? What is the union vision that you have a certain number of years from now? The sooner this is specified, the better it is,' Draghi said." (Reuters)

That does not sound like a man who wants to buy Spanish bonds. And that is why, the longer he hold off, the more the market may sense he is waiting on European leaders to act. And that may take some time, as so far all they seem to want to do is kick the much-dented can down the road.

But even given the pessimism in Europe, why should Germany be able to sell €5 billion of two-year bonds at zero percent interest last week and see them trade this week at a slightly negative interest? Why would anyone buy a bond that is guaranteed to not even give you your money back? Is that a sign of severe potential deflation?

The answer is, not really. Buying German bonds, even at a slightly negative rate, is actually a cheap call option on the eurozone breaking up. A German bond that became a new Deutschemark-denominated bond would rise in value at least 40-50% almost overnight. If you are a pension fund, for instance, with a lot of sovereign debt from a variety of European peripheral countries and you think a break-up of the eurozone is possible, it is a way to hedge your investment portfolio.

Switzerland actually sold outright this week bonds that have a negative coupon. Again, not a sign of deflation but another call option, betting that the Swiss Central Bank will have to give up on its peg to the euro. That peg has got to be one of the biggest losing trades in central banking history, and the Swiss seem determined to lose even more money. If the euro goes to $1.15 or lower, that trade becomes an even more massive loser. At what point in the next year will the Swiss Central Bank decide it has endured all the pleasure it can stand in fighting the fall of the euro? If they abandoned the peg, the move in the Swissie (as traders call the Swiss franc) would be large and almost instantaneous. And the reward for investors outside of Switzerland buying Swiss bonds with a negative yield will be large.

First Deflation, Then Inflation

As noted above, recessions are by definition deflationary. Deleveraging events are also deflationary. A recession accompanied by deleveraging is especially deflationary. That is why central banks all over the world have been able to print money in amounts that in prior periods would have sent inflation spiraling upward. This drives gold bugs nuts as they see the money being printed, but they are not factoring in the velocity of money. If the velocity of money were flat, inflation would be quite significant by now. But velocity has been falling and is going to fall even further. The US Fed and the ECB are going to be able to print more money than we can imagine without stoking inflation ... at least for a while longer.

But interest rates are down in a lot of countries. Look at this table of ten-year bond yields (courtesy of Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture):

Today's employment numbers not only sent stocks tumbling and gold soaring, they had a significant effect on bond yields, which fell across the board. Look at today's numbers from Bloomberg.com. Note the 30-year US Treasury is at 2.52%!

One of the champions, for a rather long time, of the deflationary outlook has been my friend David Rosenberg (formerly chief economist at Merrill and now with Gluskin Sheff in Toronto). He has been talking for years about a target of 1.5% for the ten-year US bond. Today we got down to 1.5% and did not even pause, ending the day at 1.47%. I noted that in a phone conversation to Rich Yamarone, the chief economist at Bloomberg, and he said he believes we will scare 50 basis points before we are through. To which Rosie replied in a later text, "He's nuts." We will all be at a special evening for the University of Texas McCombs School of Business next Thursday. I will offer to hold their coats while they have a lively discussion.

Since I was thinking about bond yields, I called Dr. Lacy Hunt (one of the more brilliant economists in the country, and not just in my opinion). He has been forecasting interest rates for a long time and been the guiding light at Hoisington Asset Management, which has established perhaps the best track record I know of for bond returns, if a tad volatile. They have been long bonds for a very long time, which has been the correct position, if a difficult and lonely one. Most bond managers think rates are set to rise.

Not Lacy. He thinks we will get close to 2% on the 30-year bond and has said so for decades. (Interestingly, he will be in the audience on Thursday, along with Van Hoisington. I think I will refrain from saying anything about bonds that night and talk about something more predictable, like politics or Europe.)

Dr. Gary Shilling wrote his first book, called simply Deflation, in 1998 and followed it up recently with another great work, titled The Age of Deleveraging. He first went long bonds in 1982, which has been one of the great trades of the last 30 years. He lists a whole host of reasons for a deflationary period over the next few years.

The argument for deflation is rather straightforward. The boom in the US and much of the world from 1982 until 2008 was partially the result of financial innovations and massive leveraging. That process has come to its end, and the private sector is deleveraging and will do so even further as the economy softens and we slip into the next recession. Governments are coming to the end of their ability to borrow money at reasonable rates in Europe, and soon in Japan and eventually in the US (and that time is not as far off as we would like). I described the whole process in my book Endgame. Assuming the US government deals with its coming deficit crisis in a realistic manner, the results will be deflationary. I will comment later on the Fed response.

The next big deflationary force is the slowing of the velocity of money. I have written numerous e-letters and devoted a lot of space in the book to the velocity of money and won't go into it again here. It has been falling for five years, pretty much as I wrote it would, back in 2006. (I was writing about the velocity of money at least as far back as 2001, and probably earlier. It is a very important concept to grasp.) We are now close to the historical average velocity of money, but since velocity is mean-reverting it will go well below the historical average. This process takes years; it is not something that is going to end any time soon.

A slow-growth, Muddle-Through economy is deflationary. High and persistent unemployment is deflationary.

Absent some new piece of data that I can't see now, we are in for lower bond yields in the US. Rates are going lower and are going to stay low for longer than any of us can imagine.

I think the Fed will respond to the government acting in a fiscally responsible manner, which is inherently deflationary, by fighting that deflation with the only tool it has left; and that is outright monetization of debt. They will call it something else, of course, but that will be the actual outcome.

And they will be able to monetize more than you think they can without causing a repeat of the 1970s. Eventually it will catch up to us, as there is no free lunch, but they are betting they will be able to reduce some of the threat of actual inflation by cutting back on the money supply and raising rates. But we are years off from that. So, yes, at some point inflation will be back.

Anybody who says they know the timing is a lot more confident in his/her crystal ball than I am. Mine is rather cloudy on this topic. But I think I can see out a year or so, and it looks like continued low rates and deflation. By the way, just to appease the gold bugs among my readers, given my deflationary call, I will note in passing that solid gold stocks were up hugely during the deflationary Great Depression of the '30s. Even with the dollar on the gold standard. Just saying.

New York, Madrid, Tuscany, and Singapore

It is time to hit the send button, as I have to get up too early to go to New York this morning (it is already way too late). I get back Tuesday and then head to Austin on Thursday, as noted above. Then it's another quick trip to New York the following week for my partners at Altegris. I will be doing some media on that trip as well.

The on Friday that week, hopefully after I finish my letter, I get on a plane for Rome and then Tuscany but via an overnight stay in Madrid. I normally can wait to book tickets and get reasonable prices (everything is relative), and use the system-side upgrades I get from American Airlines to fly business or first. This time nothing was working. Finally, Myra, who does my travel and stays busy at it, realized the problem was the London Olympics. Traffic flow is messed up. The best for me way is to go through Madrid. Spend the night and fly out at a civilized hour the next morning.

That means I can meet with interesting people in Madrid rather than staying in a stuffy airport hotel. But I can't eat dinner at ten PM (as is the custom) and get home at 2 AM. So I suggest a late lunch at a place that is cool. Cool trumps food. Get them both?! You are my next BBF. You drop me off at five and go on your way. You get $25,000 worth of secrets (I will only hold back one or two). The secrets of the universe for a fun dinner.

I'm back from Italy for a week, then it's off to NYC for a day. That night I fly to Singapore from JFK, through Frankfurt. While the speaker fee was quite fair, I just wanted to not beat up my body, so the deal was, I get to travel on Singapore Air in one of their first-class cabins. I have heard it is the best experience one can have on a commercial flight. I am quite looking forward to it.

I am not in Singapore long, and so get back on Saturday to New York, where I will stay two nights before taking off for the week to the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, which may be one of the coolest times I spend this year. I will fill you in on the details later.

And then we have David Kotok's Maine fishing trip the first Friday in August. Then home the second week of August for almost 30 days. What a brilliant plan! Travel close to 200,000 miles in one year, and your plan is to be in Texas in August and early September? Texas as in the Furnaces of Hell? Texas in August? Oh well. God did in fact create air conditioning. I will survive.

A quick note about my travels. It seems like I am always on the road. It is an insane schedule –I get that. But each trip in and of itself makes perfect sense. Bluntly, most of them are for money. My speaking fees are high enough that I get excited to get on a plane and go somewhere. And if that excitement wears thin, then we will raise the price until the thrill returns.

Now, next Thursday is a freebie for Lew Spellman. It also gets my great friends in for an evening and Rosie in the night before for some guy time. We don't get enough of that. Austin is a quick trip. I can see George and Meredith Friedman of Stratfor for lunch and into the afternoon, comparing notes on the world. A few more meetings with fun people, then on to the hotel to read, think, and write before dinner – and then we are on. I get a charge out of doing panels with guys like Rosie and Rich. You have to bring your "A" game or you get crushed.

A New Adventure

The problem of late is just so many great opportunities that I don't feel I can say no to, although if I keep ending up in NYC I may need to get some kind of timeshare. I half expect this run could end for any reason at any minute, and I want to enjoy it. I honest to God have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure I'm not dreaming. Some of this seems so surreal, from the perspective of this country boy. Now, I work hard as Hades, but lots of people work hard. I recognize my good fortune and just want to enjoy it while it lasts.

And thank you gentle reader, for making it happen. Without you sticking with me, it would never have turned out this well. I am grateful.

And, we will soon be announcing significant changes to our publishing business. We have created Mauldin Economics, with an in-house team of analysts and editors to bring my readers world-class investment advice, including specific buy and sell recommendations. We have worked a long time to figure out how to do this in a manner that Tiffani and I and our entire, rapidly growing team can be proud of. At the end of the day, it is all about serving you.

Our first new investment product will come your way within two weeks, along with major changes in our website. And there will be more publications and website features in the near future.

But with all the changes, one thing will not change. I will write this letter every week for as long as I can, and it will be free. If you like what you read here, then every now and then take the time to introduce me to a few of your friends. I can always use another best friend like you.

And Bad Dad

But sometimes friends and even Dads really mess up. As many of you know, I have Korean twin girls who we adopted at six months old. They were beyond identical. While their siblings could tell them apart, they were almost 14 before I could be right more than 50% of the time. Honestly, in the early years, I was wrong a lot. That was not good, but by their early teens I got it up to about 90% of the time.

Fast-forward. Two weeks ago I said that I was in Tulsa for the graduation of my daughter. I was late getting there because of my investment conference. When the other twin, Amanda, graduated from the same school a few years ago, it was later in May; so I just assumed there would be no conflict, when we planned our conference. But there was, sadly. And though I left very early the morning after the conference, between late flights and an early start to the ceremony this year, I just simply missed her walking.

But I got there and we all went out. But then I had mentioned in this letter about the trip and graduation and all, and instead of saying "Abigail" I said "Amanda"! It was Abigail's moment and Bad Dad, who finished writing at 6 in the morning, just blew it.

But Abigail, I am proud of you for getting it done and already having several internships in addition to your job. There are some kids I worry about, but you are not one of them. You are a winner and always will be, and any firm that gets you will be lucky.

And the twins both gave me graduation pictures. Standing in the same robe, in front of the same flag. My assistant Mary put them side by side on my office wall. And looking at them, for a second they were four years old again and Dad couldn't tell them apart. But just for a second. I have learned to discern that each of them is slightly prettier than the other one, so that makes it easy to tell them apart now.

Trust me, it's not any harder than figuring out Europe. And certainly not as hard as it will be to get out of bed in a few hours. So enjoy your week, and over the next few months we will look at some deflation trades that might work for you.

Your learning to enjoy the ride analyst,

John Mauldin

2a)Democracy Itself Could Be at Stake

By Tom Hutchinson

The past century has witnessed the welcome demise of fascism, totalitarianism and communism. These forms of government fell into what Ronald Reagan described as "the ash heap of history". But now another but far more desirable form of government is on the chopping block — democracy.

The democratic form of government in this country and much of the developed world is facing perhaps its greatest test.

The debt problems in the world's greatest democracies have reached epic proportions. The United States is in the process of going broke. The consequences of bankruptcy and default across the developed world could permanently reshape the world order — for the worse.

Economies could collapse. Depression and social unrest would likely ensue. The collapse of the most free and tolerant form of government the world has ever known amidst a brutal world could have huge negative ramifications for the human experience across the planet.

The debt bomb

Here in the United States the public debt is near $16 trillion. The increase in the debt over the last four years is larger than the debt accumulated from the country's founding until the year 2000. Monthly deficits are now larger than yearly deficits were less than ten years ago. But that's just public debt. Overall debt, which includes entitlement obligations, is estimated to be over $100 trillion. Things are quickly spiraling out of control.

Europe and Japan are in similar perilous predicaments. Europe's problems have obviously been in the news recently. Several countries in the EU have grown their government beyond what the private sector tax base can afford and the EU is struggling to stay united. Japan, in terms of debt to GDP, is the most indebted nation of all.

Political ineptitude

Yet, at a time when finding solutions is most crucial, the United States and other developed world governments seem incapable of taking on even much smaller problems.

It appears that technological advancements and economic growth and sophistication across the globe have surpassed, at least temporarily, the ability of large democratic governments to govern. Bloated and inefficient political bureaucracies aren't cutting it in the 21st century. To keep pace with a rapidly changing world, large governments need to be smaller, quicker and more efficient. But that isn't happening. Reaction time is too slow and the politics is too polarized.

Last summer's debt ceiling debate exhibited a lack of political will to make tough choices, and the world noticed. The U.S. suffered its first credit downgrade.

The political class in this country and others too often serve their own interests rather than those of the country. As a result, they have made promises in the form of entitlements to citizens that can't be delivered and left the problem for future Congresses to deal with, long after they have left office.

Now, the U.S. government, through the actions of the Fed, is printing money to compensate for the lack of political will on the part of the legislators to make fundament reforms. This money printing is further jeopardizing our longer term financial health. It also puts on display the political class's preference for easy but harmful short term fixes over more politically difficult long term solutions.

While the country desperately needs solutions, the political debate seems to be deteriorating. Elections are seldom about honest debates. Too often the winning party is the one with the best media strategy that can hype their own side and trash the other side to greater affect.

This has to stop.

The U.S. faces a crucial test for its very survival. The well being of the entire world and the democratic form of government is at stake. Just like during the Civil War, the Great Depression, the World Wars and the Cold War, our Democracy is again being tested by tremendous adversity. This could be the toughest adversary so far.

It is imperative to the future of this country and the world that the U.S. can get a handle on this fiscal time bomb. Somehow, we as a nation need to muster the character and political will to right this fiscal ship – fast. The stakes are astronomical. And the world is watching.

If we can conquer this problem, our greatest days could be ahead. If we can't, God help us

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3)MA Democrats: No Entry to Convention Without Photo ID

By Mike Flynn <http://www.breitbart.com/Columnists/Mike-Flynn>

<http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/01/voter-id-ma-democrats-di
senfranchise-their-delegates> post a comment

In recent years, Democrats have argued that requiring voters to show photo
IDs prior to voting is an egregious act of voter suppression. Ben Jealous,
of the NAACP, has gone so far as to argue that such requirements are
tantamount to modern-day Jim Crow laws. In the world they inhabit, lots of
voters don't have access to photo IDs, so requiring voters to provide this
will "disenfranchise" them and leave them out of the democratic process.
Funny they don't feel that way for their own party conventions.
On Saturday, Massachusetts delegates will meet in their state's Democrat
party convention. The votes of these delegates will determine whether there
are primary elections for their party nominations. With so much at state,
Democrats have decided to implement Voter ID requirements
<http://www.massdems.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/C2C-To-upload1.pdf> :
A PHOTO ID WILL BE REQUIRED TO ENTER THE MASSMUTUAL CENTER
Wait, what? Democrats tell us that photo ID requirements disenfranchise
minority voters, who, inexplicably, have limited access to photo IDs. Yet,
at their own convention, they insist that all delegates provide a photo ID
to even have access to the convention floor. When their own party is at
state, it seems their priorities are somewhat different that their rhetoric
suggests.
If the Democrats actually believe the rhetoric from people like Ben Jealous,
then they have disenfranchised scores of potential delegates with this photo
ID requirement. If, on the other hand, they instituted the photo ID
requirement to ensure the integrity of the votes of the party delegates,
they should repudiate the NAACP and work to ensure that their own rules
carry through election day.
Voter ID is good for me, but not thee is not a winning campaign slogan.

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4)Turkey ditches Syrian rebels. Will Israel attack Hizballah's Scuds?

Scud D ground-to-ground missile

In an astonishing about face, Turkey has just turned away from its 14-month support for the anti-Assad revolt alongside the West and made common cause with Russia, i.e. Bashar Assad. Further exacerbating fears of a “proxy war” involving Israel, Iran and Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah is getting ready to bring its Scud D missiles, which can reach any point in Israel, and other advanced weapons, including anti-air missiles, out of secret storage in Syria and transfer them across the border to Lebanon. Two years ago, Israel issued an ultimatum through Washington that the Scuds would be destroyed if they were moved over to Hizballah’s launching pads in Lebanon.

The Lebanese Shiite group has since kept its most advanced hardware stashed at the Syrian Al Hame and Al Zabadani military bases near Damascus.

Now that Syrian rebel attacks are closing in on Syrian military targets, Tehran and Hizballah leaders are working on plans to get them across into Lebanon without exposing them to Israeli attack.

One plan is to enlist the Palestinian Jihad Islami in the Gaza Strip and exploit a clash over the Scuds’ transfer as a trigger for an all round military offensive against Israel. It would be timed for the moment the Western-Arab intervention in Syria against President Assad crosses the line between covert and overt military action and begins an operation to establish safe zones as bases for rebel operation.

Washington, London and Paris began rushing forward contingency plans for this eventuality upon discovering that Ankara had secretly notified leaders of the rebel Free Syrian Army Thursday, May 31 that it had withdrawn permission for them to launch operations against the Assad regime from Turkish soil.

It was then realized that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had stabbed Western-Arab Syrian policy in the back and moved over to help prop Assad up at the very moment his regime was on the point of buckling under international after-shocks from the systematic massacres of his own people.

That day, Erdogan’s betrayal was confirmed when Davutoglu announced over Turkish NTV: “We have never advised either the Syrian National Council or the Syrian administration to conduct an armed fight, and we will never do so.” He added: “The Syrian people will be the driving force that eventually topples the Syrian regime. Assad will leave as a result of the people’s will.”

This was precisely the view voiced this week by Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he spoke out against violent rebellion, military intervention and sanctions to topple the Syrian ruler.

For the time being, the pro-Assad Moscow-Tehran front, bolstered now by Ankara, has got the better of Western and Arab policies for Syria. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Bashar Assad and Hassan Nasrallah have drawn encouragement for advancing to their next step: to confront the United States and Israel with another accomplished fact, the deployment of Scuds aimed at Israel from Lebanon.

Failing to curtail their transfer across the Syrian-Lebanese border in compliance with its 2010 ultimatum will seriously shake Israel’s deterrent capabilities and undercut its military credibility against its enemies, including Iran.

If on the other hand, the Obama administration again holds Israel back from military action, this time to destroy the long-range Scuds, Bashar Assad, Hizballah and Tehran will be awarded a winning hand – and not only in Syria.

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6)The reign of the fantasists

By Caroline B. Glick

The two Baracks -- the American president and Israel's Defense Minister -- share a lot more than just a name. How pathetic . . . and dangerous!

Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak has done it again. Speaking Wednesday at the Institute for National Security Studies, Barak warned that if Israel can't cut a deal with the Palestinians soon, it should consider surrendering Judea and Samaria in exchange for nothing.

Even the diehard leftists in the media had a hard time swallowing his words. After all, when Barak was premier, he oversaw Israel's unilateral surrender of South Lebanon. Barak promised that by giving Hezollah South Lebanon, Israel would force the Iranian proxy army to disarm and behave like a Western political party.

Whoopsie.

Then of course, there is the Gaza precedent. Ignoring the lesson of Lebanon, Barak's successor Ariel Sharon reenacted his unilateral surrender policy in Gaza. Like Barak, Sharon promised that once Gaza was cleared of all Jewish presence, it would magically transform itself into a Middle Eastern version of Singapore.

Whoopsie.

Both Barak and Sharon promised that their unilateral surrender policies would do more than merely transform Hezbollah and Hamas into liberal democrats. They said that by cutting and running, Israel would earn the love of the international community, and winning the love of the likes of Washington and Brussels, they said was the most urgent item on Israel's agenda.

Apparently Barak was referring to the same imperative when on Wednesday he said that Israel needs to act fast because, "We are on borrowed time. We will reach a wall, and we'll pay the price."

So yes, Hezbollah has taken over not just south Lebanon, but all of Lebanon. And true, there is no one in the Palestinian Authority today that is willing to accept the continued existence of Israel in any borders. But that just means we need the West to love us even more. And the only way to get the West to love us is by imperiling our very existence by handing our heartland over to people who wish to destroy our country.

Given the high value Barak and his comrades place on winning the love of the West, it is worth considering what motivates the West — or more to the point, the US, which leads the Western world.

Unfortunately, the situation is not pretty. US President Barack Obama's policies are just as irrational as the ones that Barak is urging Israel to implement in order to win Obama's support. And Obama's rationales for adopting these policies are just as divorced from reality as Barak's are.

The place where this irrationality is displayed most prominently today is in Obama's policy regarding Iran. As Michael Singh rightly noted Wednesday in the New York Daily News, under Obama, US policy towards Iran is based on the view, "that at the root of the Iran nuclear crisis is US-Iran conflict, and that the root cause of that conflict is mistrust."

This view is pure fantasy. No Iranian leader has ever given the US any reason to believe that this is the case. To the contrary, every Iranian leader since the 1979 Islamic revolution has made clear that the regime is dedicated to the destruction of the US and Israel. The Iranians do not wish to destroy the US and Israel because they distrust them. The likes of Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khamenei, President Ahmadinejad and all of their comrades wish to destroy Israel and the US because they hate us. They hate us because as they see it, both nations represent forces that are antithetical to their revolution's goal of Islamic world domination.

Rather than accept this fundamental, but unpleasant truth, Obama and his advisors base their policy of engaging Iran on fairytales about non-existent fatwas that purportedly ruled out the development of nuclear weapons. As Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon put it delicately this week, the Iranians are "laughing all the way to a bomb." Ya'alon explained, "During talks with world powers, the Iranians have managed to enrich 750 kilograms of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent, and 36 kilograms of uranium to 20 percent."

And while the Iranians were enriching all that uranium, according to satellite imagery published Wednesday by the Institute for Science and International Affairs they were destroying buildings at the Parchin nuclear site. The buildings in question were suspected of being used to conduct high explosive tests pertinent to the development of nuclear weapons.

And yet, despite Iran's obvious bad faith, and despite the fact that the much-touted sanctions against Iran have done nothing to slow the pace of its sprint to the nuclear finish line, the Obama administration insists on clinging to the fantasy that it can convince the Iranians that they can trust the US and therefore convince them to give up their nuclear weapons program.

Lacking any substantive means of defending this Tinkerbell-fairy-dust policy towards the most pressing threat to international security today, the only thing the Obama administration can tell increasingly distressed Israeli leaders is that we should trust them. They know what they are doing.

Allowing Iran to go nuclear isn't the only price Obama has been willing to pay in order to fulfill his fantasy of solving Iran's conflict with the US by building trust. He is also willing to destroy any chance of Syria becoming a responsible actor on the international stage.

Obama's willingness to sit on his thumbs for the past fourteen months as Syrian President Bashar Assad has killed as many as 15,000 of his countrymen owes in part to Obama's desire to win the trust of the ayatollahs in Teheran. Since Assad is Iran's client, any US move to overthrow him would weaken Iran. And since as far as Obama is concerned Iran doesn't have anything against the US, but simply suffers from a chronic lack of trust for Washington, it would be wrong to harm Teheran's interests by overthrowing the ayatollahs Syrian lackey.

Obama's Syria policy is not only a product of his fantasy-based policy towards Iran. It is also a consequence of his fantasy-based policy towards Turkey. Rather than intervene early in the conflict and support pro-Western forces in Syria as an alternative to Assad's tyranny, Obama outsourced the organization of the Syrian opposition to Turkey's Islamic Prime Minister Recip Erdogan.

In Obama's fantasy world, Erdogan is a great ally of the US. The fact that Erdogan has redefined Turkey away from the West and towards Teheran and the Muslim Brotherhood; rendered incoherent NATO's strategic mission; ended Turkey's strategic alliance with Israel; used advanced US arms to kill Kurdish civilians, and threatens war in the eastern Mediterranean over natural gas deposits that do not belong to him is irrelevant. All that matters is the fantasy that Erdogan is America's friend. And since Obama embraces this fantasy, he subcontracted the formation of the Turkish opposition to Erdogan.

Lo and behold, the opposition Erdogan established was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. And now, according to a report by Jacques Neriah from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the Syrian opposition is dominated not only by the Muslim Brotherhood, but increasingly by al Qaeda. So whereas a year ago the US had an opportunity to build and shepherd into power a multiethnic, pro-Western Syrian opposition, in the throes of his fantasies about Iran and Turkey, Obama squandered the opportunity. As a result, today we are faced with the grim reality that the world might be safer leaving Assad alone than in intervening to overthrow him.

This brings us back to Barak, and the Israeli establishment that cannot rid itself of the notion that we need to give away the store to the Palestinians in order to win the support of the "international community," that is, in order to win Obama's support. But towards the Palestinians as well, Obama has embraced fantasy over reality. This week the US State Department had the bureaucratic equivalent of an apoplectic fit when it learned that US Senator Mark Kirk inserted an amendment into the State Department funding bill that will require the State Department to provide the US Congress with two pieces of information: the number of Palestinians physically displaced from their homes in what became Israel in 1948, and the number of their descendants administered by the United Nations Relief Works Agency, UNRWA.

The Palestinians claim that there are some five million refugees. They demand that Israel allow all of them to immigrate to its territory as part of a peace deal. UNRWA and the Palestinians claim that not only are the Palestinians who left Israel in 1948 to be considered refugees, their descendants are also to be considered refugees.

Estimates place the number of Palestinians alive today who were physically displaced from Israel at thirty thousand.

All Kirk wants is the information. And for his effort to bring some facts into the discourse about the Palestinian conflict with Israel, the State Department came down on him like a wall of bricks. In a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides wrote that Kirk's "proposed amendment would be viewed around the world as the United States acting to prejudge and determine the outcome of this sensitive issue."

As far as the State Department is concerned, until the Palestinians and Israel reach an agreement, the US must keep faith with the international community by supporting a policy regarding Palestinian refugees that is both factually absurd and deeply hostile to Israel.

This policy is in perfect alignment with the US policy on Jerusalem. In late March we learned that in the interests of not prejudging the outcome of nonexistent negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians over eastern Jerusalem, the US refuses to recognize Israeli sovereignty not only over eastern Jerusalem, but over any part of Jerusalem. The fact that Jerusalem is Israel's capital is of no interest. The fact that US law requires the US government to recognize that Jerusalem is Israel's capital and locate the US Embassy in Jerusalem is irrelevant. To appease the international community, the US won't even recognize Israeli sovereignty over western Jerusalem.

So according to Barak and his associates, to prevent Israel's isolation by securing US support, Israel ought to ignore the lessons of the Lebanon withdrawal, the phony peace process with the PLO, and the withdrawal from Gaza and move full speed ahead with policies that will make it impossible to defend the country.

As for the US, to win the support of Europe, Iran and Turkey, Obama has adopted policies that enable Iran to become a nuclear power, make Assad the most attractive leader in Syria, empower the most anti-American forces in Turkey and pressure Israel to renounce its right and ability to defend itself.

Standing alone never looked so good.

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7)Dreaming of a Superhero

By MAUREEN DOWD

ON Friday night, the nation’s capital was under a tornado watch. And that was the best thing that happened to the White House all week.

As the president was being slapped by Mitt Romney for being too weak on national security, he was being rapped by a Times editorial for being too aggressive on national security.

A Times article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane revealed that the liberal law professor who campaigned against torture and the Iraq war now personally makes the final decisions on the “kill list,” targets for drone strikes. “A unilateral campaign of death is untenable,” the editorial asserted.

On Thursday, Bill Clinton once more telegraphed that he considers Obama a lightweight who should not have bested his wife. Bluntly contradicting the Obama campaign theme that Romney is a heartless corporate raider, Clinton told CNN that the Republican’s record at Bain was “sterling.”

Covering a humorous W. at the unveiling of his portrait, the White House press actually seemed nostalgic for the president who bollixed up Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina and the economy — a sure sign that the Obama magic is flagging.

On Friday, an ugly job market report led to the stock market’s worst day of the year. As the recovery flat-lined, the president conceded to a crowd at a Honeywell factory in Golden Valley, Minn., that “our economy is still facing some serious headwinds” and getting sucked further into Europe’s sinkhole. In depressing imagery for the start of the summer campaign, cable channels carried the red Dow arrow pointing down while Obama spoke; the Dow wiped out all of its 2012 gains.

The president who started off with such dazzle now seems incapable of stimulating either the economy or the voters. His campaign is offering Obama 2012 car magnets for a donation of $10; cat collars reading “I Meow for Michelle” for $12; an Obama grill spatula for $40, and discounted hoodies and T-shirts. How the mighty have fallen.

Once glowing, his press is now burning. “To a very real degree, 2008’s candidate of hope stands poised to become 2012’s candidate of fear,” John Heilemann wrote in New York magazine, noting that because Obama feels he can’t run on his record, his campaign will resort to nuking Romney.

In his new book, “A Nation of Wusses,” the Democrat Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, wonders how “the best communicator in campaign history” lost his touch.

The legendary speaker who drew campaign crowds in the tens of thousands and inspired a dispirited nation ended up nonchalantly delegating to a pork-happy Congress, disdaining the bully pulpit, neglecting to do any L.B.J.-style grunt work with Congress and the American public, and ceding control of his narrative.

As president, Obama has never felt the need to explain or sell his signature pieces of legislation — the stimulus and health care bills — or stanch the flow of false information from the other side.

“The administration lost the communications war with disastrous consequences that played out on Election Day 2010,” Rendell writes, and Obama never got credit for the two pieces of legislation where he reached for greatness.

The president had lofty dreams of playing the great convener and conciliator. But at a fund-raiser in Minneapolis, he admitted he’s just another combatant in a capital full of Hatfields and McCoys. No compromises, just nihilism.

If he wins the election, “the fever may break,” he said. “My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again.”

In his new biography, “Barack Obama: The Story,” David Maraniss writes that a roommate of the young Obama compared him to Walker Percy’s protagonist in “The Moviegoer”: an observer of his life, one step removed.

Obama’s boss at his community organizing job in Chicago, Jerry Kellman, observed: “He was not unwilling to take risks, but was just this strange combination of someone who would have to weigh everything to death, and then take a dramatic risk at the end. He was reluctant to do confrontation, to push the other side because it might blow up — and it might. But one thing Alinsky did understand was that within reason, once something blows up, to a certain degree it doesn’t hurt, it helps.”

Maraniss’s book depicts Obama on an intense odyssey of self-discovery, moving toward defining himself less as a half-white man with white girlfriends than as a black man who wanted to be part of a black community.

His New York girlfriend, Genevieve Cook, told Maraniss that Obama confessed to her that “he felt like an impostor. Because he was so white. There was hardly a black bone in his body.” When she predicted that his future might be with a black woman — “That lithe, bubbly, strong black lady is waiting somewhere!” she wrote in her journal — he told her “he doubted there were any black women he would feel truly comfortable with. I would tell him, ‘No, she is out there.’ ”

He wanted to get out of the corporate world he found so distasteful — he described himself as “a spy behind enemy lines” — and reimagine himself as a politician.

On CNBC on Friday, Romney complained that Obama has “been more focused on his perspective of his historic legislative achievements than he has been focused on getting people back to work.”

A president focused on historic achievements? Imagine that. But in his lame way, Romney got at Obama’s problem: The Moviegoer prefers to float above, at a reserve, in grandiose mists.

As Maraniss recounts, Obama said he liked reading Hemingway because of Papa’s “integrity of grasping for those times, those visions, that are ones of true magnificence and profundity.”

Cook told Maraniss that she thought Obama’s desire to “play out a superhero life” was “a very strong archetype in his personality.”

But superheroes and mythic figures must boldly lead. Obama’s caution — ingrained from a life of being deserted by his father and sometimes his mother, and of being, as he wrote to another girlfriend, “caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me” — has restrained him at times.

In some ways, he’s still finding himself, too absorbed to see what’s not working. But the White House is a very hard place to go on a vision quest, especially with a storm brewing.

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Middle East and Other Musings

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Hope and Change In The Ditch - Take The Low Road!