I have had an earful from memo readers with respect to my concurrence with Obama's three espoused plans enunciated at his press conference, Unable to contain himself as usual, Obama extended his demands by a factor of twenty and now has given us his version of the 'full Monty' with theatrical props of children. The latter sort of reminded me of Sadaam's intimidating interview with the little English boy with his father standing near by. (See 1 below.)
And then we have some telling statistics. (See 1a below.)
The now Mayor of Chicago was right - ride that hysterical horse to victory and never let a crisis go to waste! (See 1b below.)
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It's the spending stupid! But then, Obama knows that! (See 2 below.)
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Abbas the humanitarian! Get out the Nobel Prize! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama taking 23 actions aimed at gun violence
The package includes a call on Congress to ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and it would close loopholes in the gun sale background check system.
Obama is also ordering federal agencies to make "relevant data" available to the federal background check system and to remove barriers that might prevent states from providing information, particularly mental health data, for background checks.
Obama was flanked by children who wrote him letters about gun violence in the weeks following the Newtown shooting. Families of the 20 children killed in the massacre, as well as survivors, were also in the audience along with law enforcement officers and members of Congress.He intends to nominate Todd Jones as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Jones is the agency's acting director.
"This is our first task as a society, keeping our children safe," Obama said. "This is how we will be judged."
1a)Subject: Statistics
Be sure to check at the very end....
Common Sense stats.----
>
> From the World Health Organization:
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> The latest Murder Statistics for the world:
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> Murders per 100,000 citizens
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> Honduras 91.6
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> El Salvador 69.2
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> Cote d'lvoire 56.9
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> Jamaica 52.2
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> Venezuela 45.1
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> Belize 41.4
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> US Virgin Islands 39.2
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> Guatemala 38.5
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> Saint Kits and Nevis 38.2
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> Zambia 38.0
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> Uganda 36.3
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> Malawi 36.0
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> Lesotho 35.2
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> Trinidad and Tobago 35.2
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> Colombia 33.4
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> South Africa 31.8
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> Congo 30.8
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> Central African Republic 29.3
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> Bahamas 27.4
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> Puerto Rico 26.2
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> Saint Lucia 25.2
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> Dominican Republic 25.0
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> Tanzania 24.5
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> Sudan 24.2
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> Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 22.9
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> Ethiopia 22.5
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> Guinea 22.5
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> Dominica 22.1
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> Burundi 21.7
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> Democratic Republic of the Congo 21.7
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> Panama 21.6
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> Brazil 21.0
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> Equatorial Guinea 20.7
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> Guinea-Bissau 20.2
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> Kenya 20.1
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> Kyrgyzstan 20.1
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> Cameroon 19.7
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> Montserrat 19.7
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> Greenland 19.2
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> Angola 19.0
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> Guyana 18.6
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> Burkina Faso 18.0
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> Eritrea 17.8
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> Namibia 17.2
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> Rwanda 17.1
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> Mexico 16.9
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> Chad 15.8
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> Ghana 15.7
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> Ecuador 15.2
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> North Korea 15.2
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> Benin 15.1
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> Sierra Leone 14.9
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> Mauritania 14.7
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> Botswana 14.5
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> Zimbabwe 14.3
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> Gabon 13.8
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> Nicaragua 13.6
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> French Guiana 13.3
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> Papua New Guinea 13.0
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> Swaziland 12.9
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> Bermuda 12.3
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> Comoros 12.2
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> Nigeria 12.2
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> Cape Verde 11.6
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> Grenada 11.5
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> Paraguay 11.5
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> Barbados 11.3
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> Togo 10.9
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> Gambia 10.8
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> Peru 10.8
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> Myanmar 10.2
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> Russia 10.2
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> Liberia 10.1
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> Costa Rica 10.0
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> Nauru 9.8
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> Bolivia 8.9
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> Mozambique 8.8
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> Kazakhstan 8.8
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> Senegal 8.7
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> Turks and Caicos Islands 8.7
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> Mongolia 8.7
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> British Virgin Islands 8.6
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> Cayman Islands 8.4
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> Seychelles 8.3
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> Madagascar 8.1
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> Indonesia 8.1
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> Mali 8.0
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> Pakistan 7.8
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> Moldova 7.5
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> Kiribati 7.3
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> Guadeloupe 7.0
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> Haiti 6.9
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> Timor-Leste 6.9
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> Anguilla 6.8
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> Antigua and Barbuda 6.8
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> Lithuania 6.6
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> Uruguay 5.9
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> Philippines 5.4
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> Ukraine 5.2
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> Estonia 5.2
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> Cuba 5.0
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> Belarus 4.9
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> Thailand 4.8
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> Suriname 4.6
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> Laos 4.6
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> Georgia 4.3
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> Martinique 4.2
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> And
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> The United States 4.2****
> ****
> ALL the countries above America have 100% gun bans****
1b)The war between the amendments
By Victor Davis Hanson
The horrific
Apparently, in the sequential thinking of James Madison and the Founding Fathers, the right to free expression and the guarantee to own arms were the two most important personal liberties. But now these two cherished rights seem to be at odds with each other and have caused bitter exchanges between interpreters of the Constitution.
Many liberals believe there is no need to own semi-automatic assault rifles, magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, or even semi-automatic handguns. They argue that hunters and sportsmen don't need such rapid-firing guns to kill their game -- and that slower-firing revolvers and pump- or bolt-action rifles are sufficient for home protection.
Implicit to the liberal argument for tighter gun control is the belief that the ability to rapidly fire off lots of bullets either empowers -- or indeed encourages -- mass murderers to butcher the innocent.
Most conservatives offer rebuttals to all those points. Criminals will always break almost any law they choose. Connecticut , for example, has among the tightest gun-control laws in the nation. A murderer can pop in three 10-bullet clips in succession and still spray his targets almost as effectively as a shooter with a single 30-bullet magazine. Like a knife or bomb, a gun is a tool, and the human who misuses it is the only guilty party. An armed school guard might do more to stop a mass shooting on campus than a law outlawing the shooter's preferred weapon or magazine.
Homeowners should have the right to own weapons comparable to those of criminals, who often pack illicit semi-automatic handguns. If mass murders are the real concern, should ammonium nitrate be outlawed, given that Timothy McVeigh slaughtered 168 innocents in Oklahoma City with fertilizer? Banning semi-automatic weapons marks a slippery slope -- each new restriction will soon lead to yet another rationalization to go after yet another type of gun.
Liberals counter that just as free speech is curtailed (you cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded auditorium), the constitutional right to bear arms is no more infringed upon by the banning of semi-automatic, large magazine firearms than it is by current prohibitions against heavy machine guns.
Conservatives reply that the chief purpose of the Second Amendment was not necessarily just to ensure personal protection from criminals or the freedom to hunt with firearms, but in fact to guarantee that a well-armed populace might enjoy some parity to an all-powerful, centralized government. To the Founders, the notion that individual citizens had recourse to weapons comparable to those of federal authorities was a strong deterrent to government infringing upon constitutionally protected freedoms -- rights that cannot simply be hacked away by presidential executive orders.
That may be why the brief Second Amendment explicitly cites the desirability of a militia. By intent, it was followed by the Third Amendment, which restricts the rights of an abusive government to quarter federal troops in citizens' homes.
So which amendment should we begin pruning to deal with monsters like those at Newtown and Columbine?
The Connecticut shooter, Adam Lanza , was known to be mentally unstable. He sat for hours transfixed with violent video games -- in a popular culture of cheap Hollywood mayhem where bodies implode on the big screen without worry over the effect of such gratuitous carnage on the viewer.
Just as semi-automatic weapons mark a technological sea change from the flintlock muskets of the Founders' era, computer-simulated video dismemberment is a world away from the spirited political pamphleteering of the 18th century. If we talk of restricting the Second Amendment to protect us against modern technological breakthroughs, why not curtail the First Amendment as well?
How about an executive order to Hollywood to stop its graphic depictions of mass killings, perhaps limiting the nature and rationing the number of shootings that can appear in any one film? Can't we ban violent video games altogether in the same way we forbid child pornography? Isn't it past time for an executive order to curtail some of the rights of the mentally unstable -- given that the gunmen in mass killings usually have a history of psychic disorders and often use mood-altering drugs?
If conservatives have ensured that there are millions of semi-automatic assault weapons in American society, liberals' unprecedented expansions of free expression have led to an alarming number of unhinged Americans on our streets, nursed on sick games like "Grand Theft Auto" and hours of watching odious movies such as "Natural Born Killers."
Legislating away the evil in men's heads and hearts can be a tricky -- and sometimes unconstitutional -- business.
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2)The Obama Hat Trick: Three Hockey Sticks
By Greg Richards
While the solution to cutting spending is going to be tough, our spending problem is not hard to understand. Chart I shows federal spending as a percent of GDP from the Eisenhower administration through estimated numbers for fiscal 2012, which ended in September. The Eisenhower administration is a good starting point for post-war budgets because it is the first period of budgetary normality following World War II, demobilization, and the Korean War. Spending as a percent of GDP gives a crisp number which is comparable over long periods of time.
Average spending for the federal budget as a percent of GDP from Eisenhower through Bush was 20.0%. In its first year, the Obama administration blew out the budget to 25% of GDP. That was when the Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress. In order to lock in the 2009 level of spending, which included the allegedly temporary stimulus, the Senate has not passed a budget since April 2009, even though the Budget Act of 1974 requires it to do so every year (making Harry Reid a scofflaw).
The government has been funded with continuing resolutions, which means that the current services budget is approved for the next year. The current services budget does not mean that the same money will be spent next year as this year, but rather that the same level of services will be maintained, including increased claimants for entitlements, pay increases, inflation adjustments, and, for many programs, built-in increments based on population growth. Expenditures for fiscal 2012, which ended September 30, 2012, came down to an estimated 23.1% of GDP, but it is not clear that that is a trend. We will have to see when we get estimates for spending in the current fiscal year and for the GDP over the same period.
Obama did not run in the last election as "the 25% man." He certainly did not run on restructuring spending, instead qualitatively expanding the relative size of the federal government from its post-war baseline and commensurately reducing the relative contribution of the private sector in the composition of GDP even though it is the private sector that must carry the load of government.
Want to see something that will curl your hair? Chart II shows federal borrowing as a percentage of the federal tax revenues, meaning how much borrowing we are doing each year as compared to how much revenue we are raising from taxes.
What Chart II shows is that we borrowed over 40% over taxes raised in fiscal 2012! This means that taxes would have had to be 40% higher than they were last year to balance the budget. And remember, we are not at war in the sense of World War II, nor are we building a stairway to heaven -- meaning investing in some great national enterprise. This is just the day-to-day spending of the government -- just a day at the office.
What does the Obama administration plan to do about it? Denounce the Republicans for wanting to get it under control and increase the pay of the federal workforce, which Obama just announced.
Want to see the effect of all this spending? Chart III shows the increase in gross federal debt (there is another calculation for federal debt, netting out the Social Security Trust Fund, which the government calls "debt held by the public," but we are not using that here).
As Will Hunting says in the movie Good Will Hunting, "you like apples? How 'bout them apples?"
What will become of us? Nothing good if this continues. The mechanism of financial ruin will be a collapse in the value of the dollar, perhaps occasioned by a return of the rate of interest the government pays on its debt to a normal level. Currently, due to the unique circumstances of the slow growth world economy, the continued safe haven status of the U.S., and the Fed's quantitative easing, interest rates are at the abnormally low level of about 1.8% on the total federal debt. Every 1% increase in the interest rate the federal government pays on its debt would add $125 billion to the budget. An increase of 500 basis points, which would be large but not unprecedented, would add about $600 billion to federal expenditures simply to service the debt. That could push the deficit to $2 trillion a year.
It will not happen right away, because we are not in extremis -- yet -- and the world has no good alternative to the reserve and transaction status of the dollar -- yet. But if that terrible day should ever come, it will come suddenly, and then Humpty-Dumpty will not be able to be put together again -- meaning the currency, not the U.S. of A, which would stumble along in some form, but not the one we know now. The government would issue a new currency, effectively default on these debts, and the game would start over, but with tumbleweeds blowing through a lot of streets. Also by that time we would have finished dismantling our military, a project which the administration is embarking on now in order to grab all federal spending for welfare programs in their various forms -- i.e., abandoning its one true constitutional duty to chase the socialist mirage that destroyed so many countries in the last century and saved none.
The question with the Obama administration is always (1) does it know what it is doing or (2) doesn't it? And then wondering which answer is worse. The effect is the same.
But let's not fool ourselves. A lot of people in the country have come to depend on this spending. Cutting it back will not be pretty, nor can it be done all at once. In round numbers, spending needs to be brought back to 20% of GDP, which is historically what the tax base has supported through both the high tax rates of the Eisenhower era and the much lower tax rates of the Reagan era.
The "easiest" way to bring the country's finances under control is to hold the absolute dollar spending -- not the "current services budget" with its built-in increases, but actual dollar spending -- flat for eight years. With reasonable economic growth, that would more or less balance the budget. The only problem with that program is that 10,000 baby-boomers are retiring a day, with their claims on Social Security and Medicare plus the increasing cost of medical care itself.
Getting spending under control would mean at the least means-testing those programs. That would be only a down-payment, perhaps solving 30% of the problem. The rest would have to be done with a sharp pencil. The right mental image is that the administration clears out at least one floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next-door to the White House, turns it into cubicles, and brings in an army of accountants to go over every item in the budget.
There are three major battles over the next two months on the financial future of the country: (1) the debt ceiling, (2) the second round on the sequester, and (3) the continuing resolution to keep funding the government, given that the Senate won't pass a budget. Since the administration refuses to concede that we have a spending problem, the debt ceiling is really the only tool the Republicans have to get its attention -- the proverbial club to hit the mule on the head. The Dem strategy is to pretend that there is no problem and denounce the Republicans for bringing it up.
This budget battle is a turning point for republican government as significant as Caesar crossing the Rubicon and ending the Roman Republic. Or, as Lincoln put it, determining whether "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
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3)
Abbas needs to be replaced
By Efraim Inbar
A-little-noticed Reuters item published January 10 reported that Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, has rejected a conditional Israeli offer to let Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria resettle in the West Bank and Gaza, because it would compromise their "right of return" to homes in Israel lost during the 1948 War.
According to this report, Israel agreed to allow refugees' descendants to resettle in Gaza and the West Bank on the condition they sign a statement waiving the right of return to Israel. Abbas rejected this condition and reportedly said: "It's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return."
This is nothing new; in the past, Palestinians have rejected attempts to alleviate the conditions of their refugees by resettling. They kept the refugees, and millions of their descendants, as a political card. Moreover, the refugees constitute an important element in their self-propagated image of victimhood and martyrdom.
Instead of helping his people in distress, Abbas, in the best Palestinian tradition, prefers to cling to the right of return – a demand that no Israeli government is ever going to accept. Moreover, most of the international community rejects this Palestinian demand, understanding that there is broad consensus in Israel against a mass influx of Palestinians that could destroy its Jewish character.
The Palestinians just missed another opportunity to demonstrate that they can behave in a constructive fashion and be of help to its people. Instead of pragmatic politics we see once again Palestinian adherence to radical goals that continues Palestinian suffering and that produces obstacles to peace.
Another recent display of such typical Palestinian preference was provided by Abbas, the "moderate," when he addressed his countrymen on January 4. He avoided mentioning the land-for-peace formula, or the establishment of a Palestinian state beside Israel that could bring an end to the conflict and the suffering of his people.
He did not prepare his people for the need to make concessions for the sake of peace. Instead, Abbas stressed the perennial need to adhere to the path of struggle in order to realize "the dream of return" of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
The only explanation for this behavior is that the Palestinian national movement is very serious about the right of return, despite the attempts by pundits to propose that goodwill and Israeli territorial concessions can bring about a Palestinian flexibility on this issue. Dismissing Palestinian behavior and rhetoric, or belittling its importance in regard to the refugees amounts to putting your head in the sand. Unfortunately, the DNA of the Palestinian national movement contains the unrealistic demand for the right of return. Genetic engineering might be possible to induce some pragmatism, but it may take generations.
People do not give up easily upon their dreams.
This is why Abbas met Khaled Mashaal, the Hamas leader, in Cairo on January 10. Despite their fundamental ideological differences, they share the same dream – the destruction of the Jewish state. They may find a way to cooperate in an attempt to attain this objective, even if this could doom prospects for Palestinian statehood.
This explains why Abbas insists on not acknowledging that Israel is a Jewish state and on denying any links of the Jews to their ancestral homeland.
Abbas also takes measures to encourage armed struggle against Israel, even if they undermine the state-building efforts of the PA. He condoned at the end of December 2012 several parades of armed members of the Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the militia of Fatah, in honor of the anniversary of the founding of the Fatah movement.
Tolerant attitudes toward Palestinian terrorists run counter to the main litmus test of a state – the monopoly over the use of force. Turning a blind eye to the reemergence of armed groups in Palestinian society erodes the main achievement of the PA in recent years – the restoration of law and order following the formal dismantlement of militias.
The Palestinian armed groups may be tempted to engage in violent clashes with Israel that will turn out to be disastrous for the Palestinian self-determination and peaceful existence.
While promoting non-violence, Abbas is inciting to violence, in the apparent hope that a third intifada will bring better results than the second.
Abbas promised negotiations and moderation after the upgrading of the PLO to observer state status by the UN General Assembly in November 2012.
Instead, we get inflammatory rhetoric and irresponsible, self-defeating policies.
The Palestinians, like much of the Arab world, continue to be in urgent need of better political leadership to extricate them from pathological self-destructive behavior.
Efraim Inbar is a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University, the director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies and a fellow of the Middle East Forum.
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