Planning on being in D.C. in March and hopefully she and her handsome husband, Matthew, are joining us for dinner to celebrate. (See 1 and 1a below.)
---
I have wonderful friends who are D.C. liberals. They now have a home at Tybee. He and his wife have become dear friends and I am working on their political thinking with modest but steady success.
Since the husband reads my memos and is willing to discuss my thoughts in a rationale manner, unlike most liberal political ilk who go ballistic and since they cannot defend their failed policies they usually resort to a diatribe of name calling, I told my friend I would post his two sites as a way of expressing my thanks for his 'liberality.'
Here they are and I commend them to you:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2012/features/obamas_top_50_accomplishments035755.php
http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/what-has-obama-done-since-january-20-2009.html
---
Feith on Iran and Obama. Don't believe all you hear. (See 2 below.)
---
I pose these questions to you:
a) Obama believes killing from the air with drones is more humane than water boarding? Am I off base to pose this question?
b) What is our CIC doing about Afghanistan? When has he even talked to the nation about 'his war.' Am I off base to pose this question?
c) What does Obama need to lie about the fact that he and his thugs are not lying about their Romney charges? Am I off base to pose this question?
d) Why should Israelis trust Obama when they look at his failure to do anything regarding Syrians?
Am I off base to pose this question?
e) Why cannot Obama discuss issues relevant to the nation? Is it because he has become irrelevant?
Am I off base to pose such a question?
f) Finally, and I could go on for hours, why does Obama double count when it comes to his spending on 'Obamascare?' He finally admits he has taken billions from Medicare and then claims he is adding it to his own medicare plan. Am I off base when I pose this question and ask can Obama count or does he just conveniently lie?
---
Comments from dear friends, neighbors and fellow memo readers after they saw 2016: "...saw it this afternoon and it was awesome. I feel that it needs to be seen by everybody, whether a Democrat or Republican. Why wouldn't that be something the RNC would promote particularly if it were free of charge? Just think if it were shown down at Sun City or other Florida retirement centers. If you think it is a good idea that has some potential and with your connections do you think you could forward the idea to those whose are in the "inner circle " of the Republican party. Obviously I will send the 2016 film must see to my political list."
---
Appears that Biden is not the only unguided missile in D.C. Seems there is another simpleton named Rep Akins who needs to sit on his tongue!
---
Dick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Why Republicans Can Win
The only candidate gutting Medicare today is Obama. The only candidate who intends to preserve Medicare for future generations is Romney.
By Kim Strassel
Memo to Americans: This presidential race is over. Turn off the TV, stow the voter ID, buy that Obama bumper sticker. Mitt Romney has lost.
Really, why go through 80 more days of the campaign, when the piercing conclusion of the Washington press corps, the Republican establishment and the Democratic Party is that Mr. Romney committed public suicide in choosing Paul Ryan? After all, these political pros know things.
They know Republican lose when they talk about entitlements. They know that's because Americans will trust only Democrats with Medicare and Social Security. They know the left is crack-happy with the Ryan pick. They know all this because somebody told them so a long time ago, and their job is to keep repeating things they've been told.
So in thrall is the Beltway crowd to its received beliefs that it has missed this (minor) point: America looks nothing like it did even four years ago. The political landscape has been upended. And that is why Republicans can win this year.l.
As they have been winning. Those who insist the GOP loses when it talks entitlements have yet to explain Mr. Ryan. True fact: You can't be the House Budget chairman without having won an election. That's what Mr. Ryan has done, seven times, in a competitive Wisconsin district that contains senior citizens, independents and party moderates—and that voted Obama in 2008.
Save for his first run, he's never earned less than 63% of the vote. And he's done that by taking the entitlement fight to his opponents.
Ah, say the pros, but even Mr. Ryan couldn't win an oldster state like Florida. Senior citizens will flip out. So they said in 2010, when Marco Rubio, in a debate with opponent Charlie Crist, suggested raising the retirement age and altering benefits to preserve Social Security. "Rubio just lost Florida!" screamed the Twitterverse.
Well, Sen. Marco Rubio is still talking about entitlement reform today. As are Republican Sens. Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey and Rob Portman, who beat Mediscare in swing states in 2010. As are dozens of House freshmen who ran on Mr. Ryan's budget.
They won because something fundamental has changed in the electorate. Our country has been through recessions before. What it has not experienced is an administration that used an economic slowdown to spend America into a debt crisis. The debt numbers are today so extreme ($16 trillion, 70% of GDP), the consequences so real (credit downgrades, default), that voters are scared.
Add to this the creeping nearness of an entitlement explosion. Social Security payouts already exceed revenue. Medicare could be bankrupt in eight years. In a 2011 Gallup poll, 67% of Americans agreed that Social Security and Medicare would create a financial crisis within a decade. Voters are willing to have this debate.
Then there's the other dramatic political change, more recent: Voters for the first time have an honest entitlement choice. Democrats have for years claimed that the choice was between the status quo and GOP cuts. Then they passed ObamaCare. In doing so, they put themselves on record with their real plans for Medicare.
The president's Affordable Care Act uses Medicare as a piggy bank, stripping today's program of $716 billion. And the law's way of dealing with the ensuing Medicare shortages is to empower a group of 15 individuals to make decisions on what medical services will need to be cut. So how does the Democratic Party intend to fix Medicare? Cut Medicare dollars, ration care. Now we know.
It is this Obama Medicare plan—not the status quo—that Republicans are running against. It is against this that they are contrasting Mr. Romney's proposal to restore that $716 billion, to preserve existing benefits for those 55 and above, and to give younger Americans more options and continued quality care.
There is only one candidate gutting Medicare today: Mr. Obama. There is only one candidate who will preserve Medicare for future generations: Mr. Romney. That comparison is striking, and it blows up conventional wisdom.
In a Rasmussen survey this week, Florida voters were asked, "When it comes to the future of Medicare, which scares you more: President Obama's health-care law or Paul Ryan's proposal?" By 48% to 41%, Floridians were more scared of Mr. Obama's $716 billion cut. And Floridians age 65 and up? By 54% to 34%—a 20 percentage-point difference—Florida seniors feared most an Obama future.
Democrats may not have good ideas, but they aren't blind. They've felt the shifting landscape, lived through 2010, and they understand the threat of a bold reform politician.
That's why Mr. Obama has personally spent such time the past two years publicly working to isolate and discredit Mr. Ryan. He's not thrilled by the Ryan pick, oh no. He fears it.
This fear, this fundamentally changed political landscape, does not guarantee a Republican victory. But what it does promise is that if the Romney-Ryan ticket stays on offense—if it can fight to a draw on entitlements and leverage the powerful economic argument—then it has every shot at the White House.
1a)The Truth about Turnout
New statistics show the Romney campaign is more than holding its own against the Obama reelection machine.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Chances are, you've been hearing about the vaunted Obama grassroots machine, and how the president's campaign is reactivating its 2008 network to flood the swing-states polling booths come Election Day. Chances are you've heard that Mitt Romney has no such operation, and remains critically outmatched in this sphere. Chances are, a lot of this is wrong.
Ground game operations are notoriously difficult to gauge; much depends on how a system all comes together in the 48 hours leading up to an election. Yet there are some key statistics worth watching. Those stats suggest the Republican National Committee—and by extension the Romney campaign—are more than holding their own against the Obama machine.
For all the vaunted Obama voter registration drives, a recent Boston Globe analysis found that in the key tossup states of Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado and Nevada, Republicans are doing a far better job. Democrats have registered 40,000 new voters this year, while Republicans have registered 145,000. The Obama response to this is that it already signed up a ton of voters in 2008, so doesn't need to match its prior pace.
Related Video
Editorial board member Joe Rago on some disappointing news for the President.
Then again, Republicans are also cruising on the statistic of overall voter advantage. Nowhere is this more obvious than Iowa. In 2008, there were some 105,000 more Democrats registered in Iowa than Republicans. Today, there are some 22,000 more Republicans registered in Iowa than Democrats. Republicans have regained their voter registration advantage in states like Colorado. Even states where Democrats have traditionally had a large voter advantage, they have slipped. In Florida, for instance, the Democratic voter advantage has fallen to 439,000, from 692,000 in 2008. In Pennsylvania, Democrats have lost 168,000 of a 1.2 million advantage.
Meanwhile, voter registration matters little, unless campaigns can get those registered to the polls on Election Day. And this is where Republicans feel the most optimism. Though it has been little reported, poll after poll has been showing up a marked enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats. A recent Gallup poll showed that Democratic voter enthusiasm was less than it had been in the past two presidential elections. Only 39% of Democrats say they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, down from 61% in 2008 and 68% in 2004. Polls, by contrast, have shown large numbers of Republicans who are extremely enthusiastic about getting to the polls.
Democrats since 2008 have gotten used to bragging about the Obama grassroots. Yet as the president has lost favor, the left's boasting has not always lived up to expectations. Witness the Wisconsin recall effort, which Democrats promised would be a dry-turnout-run for the presidential election, and which that party lost. We won't know until after the election who had the better ground game. But by all accounts, the GOP is moving in the right direction.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)The sanctions aren't 'crippling,' Tehran isn't isolated, and there aren't any tough American red lines.
By DAVID FEITH
The United States doesn't want Israel taking military action against Iran's nuclear program, and top officials have been traveling to Jerusalem this summer to make their case in person. Any attack would be dangerous and premature, they say, because Iran is suffering under crippling sanctions, the world is united against Tehran as never before, and all options remain on the table.
Start with sanctions. After years, they've proved troublesome, not crippling. Yes, the Iranian rial has lost half its value in 12 months. Oil exports are down by about half, too. And Tehran admits that inflation is above 20%, with unemployment above 13%. Yet this isn't an economy in freefall. The volume of oil exports is stabilizing, and the government has an estimated $60 billion to $100 billion in foreign currency reserves.
The unfortunate reality is that sanctions are generally a limited tool—and the Obama administration has made these sanctions even more limited. When Congress wanted to sanction Iran's central bank last year, the administration initially opposed the effort. The Senate endorsed it anyway, on a 100-0 vote, so the administration focused on getting last-minute loopholes written into the law.
One of them gave the State Department the authority to exempt from sanctions any country that it determined had "significantly reduced" its imports of Iranian oil. No one paid much attention at the time, but eight months later we know the loophole's effect: All of Iran's major oil-trading partners—20 of them—received exemptions from U.S. sanctions.
The Obama administration says all countries with exemptions earned them. But here again the rhetoric is slippery. India was exempted for pledging to cut its Iran imports by only 11%. Japan cut by 22%. Then there's China, which cut 25% overall from January to May but increased its take of Iran oil by 35% in the final two months, just before earning its exemption.
President Obama said in March that "the world is as united as we've ever seen it around the need for Iran to take a different path on its nuclear program." Yet China, India, Japan and others that continue to do big business with Tehran aren't focused on squeezing Iran's economy. They're focused on such things as getting around banking restrictions by bartering rice and steel for oil. Whether they're motivated by trade imperatives, nonaligned politics or something else, these countries show that Iran is by no means as "isolated" as Mr. Obama asserts.
There's another problem with the claim about a united front. The U.S. and Israeli governments may be the world's most important parties on this issue, but they disagree on a basic question: Is the goal to prevent Iran from "developing a nuclear weapon," as Mr. Obama says, or to prevent Iran from "possessing nuclear-weapons capability," as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu puts it? This difference matters.
The Israelis believe that a nuclear-capable Iran—one with sufficient fissile material and weapons technology to be able to build a bomb in a few weeks—is as threatening to the international order as an Iran with an actual weapon. Either circumstance, Israel fears, would allow the mullahs to carry out future adventurism under the protection of a credible nuclear deterrent. Any response to Hezbollah terrorism or to the murder of diplomats at Washington restaurants would have to consider that Tehran could retaliate with nukes.
This helps explain why a 2010 U.S. sanctions law committed Washington to doing "everything possible . . . to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability." But you wouldn't know that from the Obama administration. Instead, we get Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pledging that America "will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, period."
That sounds tough and unequivocal, but it says nothing about an Iranian nuclear capability. As such, it suggests to Iran's mullahs that as long as they don't parade a bomb through downtown Tehran, they can expand their nuclear program without crossing any American red lines. That's good if the priority is to avoid confrontation in the next few months; it's bad if you want to stop Iran from ever wielding a nuclear deterrent.
Administration officials argue that their nuclear-weapon red line is prudent. For one, they say, the concept of nuclear capability is vague. Moreover, as Mr. Obama said in March, if Iran really pushes to go nuclear "we will know that they are making that attempt." But that confidence in U.S. intelligence on Iranian enrichment sites, weaponization experts and the like may be misplaced.
In the Cold War, Stalin's Soviet Union first tested a nuclear device in 1949, four years before U.S. intelligence was expecting it. Mao's China did so in 1964, months earlier than anticipated. U.S. intelligence also underestimated Saddam Hussein's nuclear program before 1991, was surprised by India's nuclear tests in 1998, and overestimated Saddam's arsenal before 2003.Regarding Iran, significant nuclear facilities went undetected for a decade until exposed by a dissident group in 2002. Now every six or 12 months we read that, as the New York Times put it in February 2009, "Iran Has More Enriched Uranium Than Thought." For all the achievements of U.S. intelligence, few include pinpointing the progress of shadowy weapons programs.
Would this president, so dedicated to multilateralism (except where targeting al Qaeda is concerned), launch a major military campaign against Iran even without Russian and Chinese support at the U.N.? Do Iran's leaders think he would? Or have they noticed that American officials often repeat the "all-options-on-the-table" mantra as mere throat clearing before they list all the reasons why attacking Iran is a terrifying prospect?
Those reasons are plain to see. An attack could lead to a major loss of life, to regional war, to Iranians rallying around their regime, to global economic pain. And it could fail.But the question that counts is whether these risks outweigh the risks of a nuclear-capable Iran. That's a hard question for any democratic government and its citizens to grapple with. The Obama administration's rhetorical snow job only makes it harder.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mr. Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.
No comments:
Post a Comment