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Can Rubio weather the attention etc.? The press, media and Democrats have a zero painted on his back! They must destroy him because he is a fresh new face, is moderate, thoughtful and a threat to their tired and worn out Hillary.(See 2 and 2a below.)
I would be buying cosmetic stocks because a lot of money is going to be spent by Hillary's handlers making her look youthful! (See 2b below.)
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Obama's nuclear fantasy according to Bret. (See 3 below.)
Meanwhile Ruthie Blum lays out Peres for all to see what he really is and has been - Israel's equivalent of Jimmy Carter. (See 3a below.)
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Sowell, always a worthy read. (See 4 below.)
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Just can't help not re-posting: "Click here: So God Made A Liberal... - YouTube"
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Dick
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1)Amity Shlaes: The Coolidge Lesson on Taxes and Spending
The 30th president had two lion cubs. Their names? Budget Bureau and Tax Reduction.
By AMITY SHLAES
Only Reagan could fix this.
That's the intuitive reaction to the surge of spending and budgetary challenges in Washington today. It's hard to think of another Republican with the fortitude to push back against the outlays, to make government smaller, to lower taxes. And to show that such moves can yield prosperity.
The "only Reagan" assumption is too narrow—especially when it comes to the fiscal challenge. For while Reagan inspired and cut taxes, he did not reduce the deficit. He did not even cut the budget. But if you look back, past Dwight Eisenhower and around the curve of history, you can find a Republican who did all those things: Calvin Coolidge.
A New Englander and former Massachusetts governor, Coolidge came to Washington as vice president and moved into the White House only in 1923 after the sudden death of President Warren Harding. He later won the office himself and served until 1929. The 30th president cut the top income-tax rate to 25% (lower than the 28% of the historic Reagan cut of 1986). Coolidge reduced the national debt and balanced the budget. When he departed the White House for his home in Northampton, Mass., he left a federal budget smaller than the one he found.
Three factors gave Silent Cal the ability to cut as he did, each suggesting a governing approach that would be useful today.
The first advantage was a gift from his predecessor, President Harding: the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. Theretofore, the president had enjoyed no general oversight of the budget. Bills came to the chief executive's desk like requests crafted by clever children, hard to turn down. Under the Accounting Act, the executive branch gained the authority to present a unified budget and a research staff in the form of the Budget Bureau, a forerunner to today's Office of Management and Budget. The executive also had the authority to impound money already appropriated.
Associated Press
Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States.
The second advantage was one Coolidge himself supplied: the discipline to use budget tools, new and old. Harding had dramatically cut the budget, still bloated from World War I, but he lacked the stamina to keep up the work. Harding also made bad appointments of profligates or outright criminals, whose corrupt agencies undermined his savings drive. By the time Harding died, Congress was already weary of postwar austerity and confident it could squeeze more spending out of Coolidge, who might only hold office until elections the next year.
But Coolidge came in like a lion, determined to make austerity permanent. Coolidge met with his budget director, Gen. Herbert Lord, on his first day in office and routinely thereafter. The two men soon announced that they would deepen planned cuts in two politically sensitive areas: veterans and on District of Columbia public works. "I am for economy, and after that I am for more economy," Coolidge told voters—who gladly kept him in the White House when he ran in 1924.
Against Congress, Coolidge also moved boldly. The jovial Harding had vetoed only six bills. Coolidge vetoed 50. "It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones," Coolidge once advised his father. Coolidge proved a maestro of the pocket veto. He twice vetoed farming subsidies and he stopped government entry into the utilities industry by killing a project to operate the old wartime plant at Muscle Shoals in Alabama.
Coolidge's third advantage was insight into what might be called fiscal trust. The president understood that ambitious budget cuts would be accepted if he could "align" them with ambitious tax cuts. The press wondered how two such taciturn men as Coolidge and his Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, managed to chat long enough to plot a tax crusade. But the two shared an outlook and "conversed in pauses," as was written at the time.
After congressional resistance compromised their first legislation so badly that an editorial in this newspaper assailed lawmakers for "hazing the president," Coolidge and Mellon redoubled their effort. Finally, in 1926, Coolidge won his 25% tax rate.
Coolidge and Mellon carefully underscored the technical evidence, and there was plenty, that greater revenues might follow tax rate cuts. But they still insisted on twinning tax cuts with budget cuts, so voters and markets would never be betrayed. When an admirer in South Africa sent two lion cubs to the president, Coolidge named them Budget Bureau and Tax Reduction to emphasize the linked approach.
President Reagan recognized Coolidge's achievement, and upon taking office in 1981 he had a neglected Coolidge picture restored to a place of honor near Lincoln and Jefferson in the Cabinet Room. It is too much to hope that President Obama would take Coolidge's example to heart. But those who are even now pondering presidential runs for 2016 would do well to heed Silent Cal's deeds.
Ms. Shlaes is the author of "Coolidge," just published by HarperCollins, and the director of the Four Percent Growth Project at the Bush Presidential Center.
A version of this article appeared February 19, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Coolidge Lesson on Taxes and Spending.
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2)Can Marco Rubio Live Up to the Hype?
He's the GOP's Barack Obama, a fresh-faced politician with an immigrant name, a playlist full of rap, and a collection of fawning press clips. The challenge: He's selling the same old party message.
The freshman senator from Florida had joined four veteran colleagues to unveil a proposal for the first major overhaul of immigration law in a quarter-century. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced “my friend, Senator [Marco] Rubio, who obviously is a new but incredibly important voice in this whole issue of immigration reform.”
Two weeks earlier, Rubio had laid out a similar set of principles in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Marco Rubio: Riding to the Immigration Rescue.” The article came as a surprise to McCain and other members of the bipartisan group of senators who had been sketching out an immigration plan with and without Rubio for weeks. The blueprint was inspired by legislation that McCain first spearheaded in 2005.
The dig was subtle, but Rubio didn’t let it go. “I am clearly new to this issue in terms of the Senate. I am not new in terms of my life,” noted the Cuban-American senator from West Miami. “I live surrounded by immigrants. My neighbors are immigrants. My family is immigrants. Married into a family of immigrants.”
The understated exchange between the two Republican lawmakers in late January reflects how Rubio has used his compelling biography to cast himself in a starring role in the immigration debate and, beyond that, the future of the GOP.
No matter that he’s only punched up the old script, swung back and forth on immigration policy, and never shepherded major legislation through Congress. What Rubio brings is the star power, adoring fan base, and command of the national media unmatched these days by anyone in Washington outside of the Oval Office. It’s the same aggressive product placement that has made the 41-year-old a top-tier presidential contender just two years after his swearing-in.
Rubio is the GOP’s Barack Obama, minus the intellectual heft intimated by two Ivy League degrees and a law-school faculty post. A Generation X-er with a name that sounds like change. The author of an American Dream-laced memoir that, audiences are frequently reminded, helped pay off his student loans. A former state lawmaker and a Senate short-timer with a thin binder of achievements but perhaps blessed with the greatest rhetorical gifts in politics today. “[Rubio] is the best communicator since Ronald Reagan,” Republican brass Karl Rove gushed recently on Fox News.
Like Obama, Rubio is increasingly viewed by his party as a transcendent figure who can build a winning coalition among a younger and increasingly diverse electorate—and, by the way, deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union in both English and Spanish. The buy-in speaks to Rubio’s uncommon knack for politics and the desperation of a party dependent on a shrinking white vote. “Rubio has exactly what Obama had—a party that has lost two successive presidential elections and is searching for a savior in the face of serious demographic challenges,” says Faith and Freedom Coalition Chairman Ralph Reed, a leading Christian conservative. “Whether Marco is the same elixir for the GOP is unknowable today.”
Time magazine rendered a decision last week, declaring Rubio “The Republican Savior” in a cover story that capped off a geyser of overwhelmingly positive media coverage. But as the man seemingly charged with saving the Republican Party from itself, Rubio has offered startling little in terms of outlining bold policy ideas or crafting a modern version of conservatism. His talent, instead, seems to lie in sales, in an ability to pull hoary tropes such as “American Exceptionalism” off the shelf and make them sound new.
Whether it’s the same old package of immigration reforms or the same old party platform, Rubio is the best gift-wrapper in the Republican Party. “We don’t need to raise taxes. We need to create more taxpayers,” he often says. Or, “The way to turn our economy around is not by making rich people poorer; it’s by making poor people richer.” Peel back the wordplay and it’s the timeworn antitax pledge Republicans have been pushing since the mid-1980s. While Obama’s victory has provoked hand-wringing about whether the GOP should abandon less popular positions and move toward the center, it’s possible that all the party needs is a more effective and charismatic vessel for those ideas, a better pitchman.
Like failed presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, Rubio is an anti-gay-marriage, climate-change-denying, fiscal-cliff-jumping military hawk. Yet, so far, he has deflected Democratic attacks that seek to tar him as another Republican extremist with a penchant for sounding totally reasonable and a national marketing campaign that promotes his softer, younger, hipper side. Some of the greatest hits have included a New York Times feature about his lifelong love for the Miami Dolphins; a GQ interview in which he discusses the nuances of East and West Coast rap; a wide-ranging Twitter feed that touches on politics, religion, family, and pop culture (“Cheering 4 & inspired by Lazaro Arbos from Naples, FL who made it to Hollywood on @AmericanIdol last night”); and, most recently, the Time story that leads off with his elderly mother in West Miami. She calls him “Tony.”
In one recent example of the symbiotic relationship between Rubio and the accommodating media,Politico’s Mike Allen led his well-read tip sheet on Feb. 5 with this item: “FIRST LOOK—SEN. MARCO RUBIO releases his Spotify track list, ‘What I’m Listening To.’ ” In an interview with BuzzFeed that night in front of a live audience, Rubio spent more time detailing his catalog from the digital-music service (reflecting a diverse taste for rap, indie rock, pop, and Christian rock) than defending his antiscience stance on climate change. His press secretary posted a lighthearted National Journal send-up titled “Five Ways Marco Rubio Is Not Your Grandfather’s Republican” on Twitter as a must-read for “anyone writing bio/profile pieces of @MarcoRubio.”
Now Rubio faces the same challenge that’s loomed over Obama since his groundbreaking 2008 campaign: Can he live up to the hype? Rubio wouldn’t be the first rising star to flame out—the 2012 GOP primary season featured a half-dozen front-runners—but the senator from Florida would have a very long way to fall. He seems to realize that.
“This stuff is all fleeting; it comes and goes,” Rubio said in a recent speech to the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion group. “You’re a senator today; you won’t be tomorrow. You’re in office today; you lose your next election.… The more you are given, the more that is expected of you.”
Hailed repeatedly by both the Left and the Right for his “courage” in taking up immigration reform, Rubio has little choice because of his status and ambitions. How could the most prominent Hispanic Republican in Congress angle for the presidency but sit out a nationwide debate that looms over his own community and will help determine his party’s survival? After seven of 10 Hispanics rejected Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in November, even Fox News ultraconservative pundit Sean Hannity embraced a pathway to citizenship—weeks before Rubio did. “The train was leaving the station, and he was forced to get on it,” said one GOP member of Congress who declined to speak on the record because he works with Rubio.
Although the senator had advocated legal status for young immigrants in college or the military, he didn’t come out in favor of a sweeping citizenship plan until The Wall Street Journal interview last month. Rubio collaborated last year with former GOP Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Jon Kyl of Arizona on a bill to grant visas to children brought to this country illegally, but after Obama beat them to the punch with an executive order in June, Rubio declined to even cosponsor the Republican bill.
“There are huge risks and benefits to Rubio putting his name on immigration reform. He carries the good, the bad, the ugly,” said GOP consultant Ana Navarro, who advised McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign on Hispanic outreach. “But if you don’t put your name on it, people wonder why you’re not leading.”
Rubio will likely have served in Congress four years before launching a presidential campaign, two years longer than Obama did, increasing the pressure on him to have something to show for his time on Capitol Hill. In a sign that congressional gridlock hamstrings Rubio as much as his colleagues, only four of his 74 sponsored measures have cleared the Senate: a resolution opposing international regulation of the Internet; a resolution congratulating the NBA champion Miami Heat; and resolutions designating September 2011 and September 2012 as National Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month. Size that up against the major policy reforms enacted by other Republicans weighing presidential bids, including governors and more-seasoned members of Congress such as House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan.
Rubio is addressing the gravitas gap by making overseas trips as a member of the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, beefing up his Hill staff, and, most recently, partnering with experienced colleagues to revamp immigration laws. “If he becomes a presidential candidate, he will be able to claim he took a constructive role on an important national issue,” said Republican consultant Mark Salter, a longtime McCain confidant who has also advised Rubio. “But, remember, Barack Obama was elected without a single accomplishment in the U.S. besides running for president. It’s obviously not mandatory.”
ONE MUST YIELD
“Can’t we all agree it’s way, way too early for 2016?” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said on Twitter on Jan. 6. Less than two weeks later, South Carolina strategist Terry Sullivan, who ran Romney’s 2012 campaign in his state, began working for Rubio’s political action committee, Reclaim America, full time. So did Dorinda Moss, a top-drawer party fundraiser.
In fact, Rubio has long been testing the waters. Two days after the November election, he was announced as the headliner at a birthday party for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a coveted endorsement in the nation’s first nominating contest. “I wouldn’t have invited him to the party if I didn’t hope that he would look at [running for president] in the future,” Branstad said. Rubio’s political action committee aims “to elect conservatives to the United States Senate,” but only $73,000 of the $1.7 million spent since July 2011 went to candidates and committees. The biggest chunk, $525,000, went to consultants, revealing a political apparatus more focused on image-making than supporting fellow conservatives.
“He’s definitely doing all the right things to build a national profile and make himself a formidable force in 2016,” said Washington lobbyist Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC. “If Hillary [Rodham Clinton] doesn’t run, it will be a boring white guy against the sharp, young Hispanic from the state of Florida.”
But it may not be that simple. Another Florida politician stands between Rubio and a front-running presidential campaign: his longtime mentor, former Gov. Jeb Bush.
The torch was once passed in fall 2005, when Rubio was anointed the incoming speaker of the Florida House, and Bush, then governor, presented him with a gold sword named for “Chang,” a mythical Chinese warrior. When Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., unexpectedly announced he would retire early in 2010, Bush passed up the opportunity to run, and Rubio seized it. He donned the mantle of a tea-party-infused insurgent and brought down the establishment Republican candidate, Charlie Crist. Much like today, that moment offered a perfect union of Rubio’s biography, oratorical strength, and political opportunity.
Now, Rubio is positioning himself for another promotion while Bush is still weighing a return to politics. Republicans who know both men insist they would never run for the White House against each other. “Here’s how it would work,” said American Conservative Union President Al Cardenas, former chairman of the Florida Republican Party. “Jeb Bush clearly wants some time to think this over. I do believe Marco would defer to Jeb. But as Marco gets better known nationally, there’s going to come a time when [a presidential campaign] will become a foregone conclusion. For Marco to be deferential, my sense is that Jeb is going to have to make up his mind sooner rather than later.”
Although he’s been out of office for six years, Bush keeps in close contact with former staffers and political advisers. He could tap a vast fundraising network cultivated during three statewide races in Florida, his brother’s presidential and statewide races in Texas, and his father’s national campaigns since 1979. Jeb Bush raised most of his money the old-fashioned way, with receptions for big donors bearing checks from their clients and friends, while Rubio came of age during the tea-party movement and the advent of online, grassroots fundraising.
“Marco would probably be the most successful recipient of retail dollars in a potential Republican field of presidential candidates,” Cardenas said. “He’s got great retail appeal. He’ll be the most targeted candidate by the liberal media, and that will ensure him a bountiful amount of dollars.”
There’s a big overlap between Bush and Rubio supporters, but as some of them point out, they were Bush supporters first. They also emphasize the two-term governor’s willingness to take on “big, hairy, audacious goals,” as Bush called them, from sweeping education reform, to bans on affirmative action in state contracts and university admissions, to an Everglades cleanup deal with the federal government. Rubio operates more cautiously and rarely strays from his party’s conservative orthodoxy. “Marco is learning. He’s maturing,” said Mel Sembler, a former national finance chairman and a friend of the Bush family, who has also raised money for Rubio. “Jeb would certainly be the one if it comes down to the two of them, but I don’t think it will come to that.”
During the 2012 Republican presidential primary battle, Bush sided with Texas Gov. Rick Perry when rivals attacked him for offering in-state tuition to the children of illegal immigrants. “I think that is a fair policy,” Bush told NJ in September 2011. As the issue dogged Perry’s candidacy, Rubio withdrew his previous support for such tuition breaks.
“If you are going to be a leader, you have to take risks like Jeb did,” Sembler said. “Immigration reform is a very important step for Rubio to take.”
Bush has found a lucrative and influential niche in the private sector. He heads his own consulting firm and a think tank called the Foundation for Excellence in Education, serves as a senior adviser to Barclays Capital, gives paid speeches, and sits on several corporate boards. And then there’s his family. His oldest son, George P. Bush, is running for statewide office in Texas. He has a baby granddaughter in Miami. Perhaps most important, his wife, Columba, disdains the public spotlight. “She wants to be Mrs. Bush, not first lady,” said one Bush confidant.
So long as his status as party statesman, leader of an educational think tank, and author of a forthcoming book on immigration reform allow Bush to influence public policy, he may be inclined to spare himself and his family a risky national campaign. He is, after all, a Bush—saddled with the mixed presidential legacies of his brother and his father. His immigration and education policies may be forward-thinking, but his surname sounds like the past.
“A lot of tea partiers consider him part of the establishment, another Bush, and they don’t want to go that route,” said Everett Wilkinson, chairman of the Florida-based National Liberty Federation. “There’s a fair amount of excitement over Rubio.”
ON THE OTHER FOOT
Mocking the hype that surrounded Obama’s meteoric rise swiftly became something of a Republican obsession. “After four years of a celebrity president, is your life any better?” asked one 2012 campaign ad from the American Crossroads super PAC. A 2008 McCain ad called “Celeb” featured footage of Obama’s speech to a cheering crowd of 200,000 in Berlin and derisively compared him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. “The most articulate and talented teleprompter reader in America,” Rubio once called the president.
Now the senator is flipping the script. Rubio by the numbers: 346,286 Facebook friends, 262,553 Twitter followers, and 1,712,327 views of his YouTube channel. Republicans boast about his star power extending beyond national borders. “He’s at the top of the checklist for every foreign dignitary visiting Washington,” said Claver-Carone of the U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC. “They all want to meet with the president, the secretary of State, and him. That’s remarkable for a freshman senator.” Rubio’s fundraising committee is promoting a contest in which the winner gets to meet him at the Conservative Political Action Conference next month: “Enter now and you could win the chance to fly out to Washington, D.C., have VIP seating for my speech, and meet me backstage.”
The risk of Rubio’s celebrity, however, is that narrative sometimes collides with reality. The tea-party hero is a career politician (aside from brief stints as a lawyer/lobbyist) who routinely billed personal expenses to an American Express card paid by the Florida Republican Party. The fiscal hawk who strenuously opposes raising the debt ceiling once faced foreclosure on a condominium he owns with his close friend, former Rep. David Rivera of Miami. The son of Cuban exiles frequently referred to his parents’ flight after Fidel Castro took over in 1959 but was forced to correct the record after The Washington Post and the Tampa Bay Times reported that the couple actually arrived in Florida in 1956.
Rubio, whose office declined an interview request from NJ, addresses all of these issues in his memoir, An American Son, casting himself as the victim of a scandal-hungry press and offering a case-by-case rebuttal. The book (another way in which he has followed Obama’s game plan) provides his unfiltered and, in some cases, misleading version of events. He writes, for example, “I reviewed the [American Express] statement every month and paid for unofficial purchases directly.” In fact, his payments were irregular and included a six-month lapse. Rubio also says the charges for airline tickets were “easily explained” as political trips appropriately billed to the party; he omits that he had double-billed some of those trips to the party and to state taxpayers.
But when it comes to toeing the party line, Rubio’s record is nearly bulletproof. He received a 100 percent rating from Americans for Prosperity, a 97 percent rating from the Club for Growth, and a 96 percent rating from Heritage Action for America, an arm of the Heritage Foundation. Good luck to any future rival who seeks to outflank him on the right. He voted against the Violence Against Women Act, a United Nations treaty to protect the disabled, and the fiscal-cliff deal that raised taxes on families earning more than $450,000. He also opposed federal aid to superstorm Sandy victims and to states damaged by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “What sets him apart from other people who just call themselves conservatives is that he’s willing to take the tougher votes,” said AFP President Tim Phillips.
In the homestretch before the November election, Rubio decried gay marriage in automated calls to voters in battleground states. He voted to end funding to Planned Parenthood, called the recent anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision “tragic,” and cosponsored a bill to allow employers to opt out of covering birth control in their health insurance plans. After Obama announced a sweeping gun-control agenda in response to the shooting deaths at a Connecticut elementary school, Rubio said on Fox News, “I actually think the president—and he just doesn’t have the guts to admit it—is not a believer in the Second Amendment.” Asked in the GQ interview about the age of the Earth, he responded, “I’m not a scientist, man.” When BuzzFeed asked him if climate change is a threat to Florida, he said, “I’ve seen reasonable debate on that.” Yet, the decision to have him respond to Obama’s State of the Union address shows that the party sees Rubio as a standard-bearer.
LIVING THE DREAM
It was against that straight-ticket conservative record that Rubio plunged into the immigration debate and, for the first time since he got to Congress, challenged the Republican base to follow his lead. He whipped through scores of interviews with conservative media outlets and, with a few exceptions, was greeted as a conquering hero. Immigration hard-liners, from Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly to radio talk-show host Mark Levin, melted in the presence of their party’s idol. “I don’t like Marco Rubio’s plan. There. I said it,” wroteRedState blogger Erick Erickson, all apologetic. “The GOP was smart to put Marco Rubio as the face of the plan, because many of us like him personally, support him still, and consequently don’t want to seem critical.”
Polls show a majority of Americans favor allowing illegal immigrants to earn citizenship, and while support is thinner among Republicans, it was 42 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 53 percent in an Associated Press/GfK survey last month, and 59 percent in a recent Gallup Poll. Rubio’s immigration rollout comes as the Republican Party is more motivated than ever to bridge the gap with Hispanics, the fastest-growing slice of the electorate. “Marco has the best instincts and timing of anyone I’ve ever known,” said Rubio’s former campaign manager, Jose Mallea. “He knows when it’s the right time to strike on an issue.”
The Wall Street Journal story hit on Jan. 14. Rubio endorsed a plan to let illegal immigrants earn citizenship by passing a criminal background check, paying back taxes, proving longtime residency, and learning English. His Senate office relentlessly cranked out the article, plus a gusher of positive reaction on Twitter and in other media outlets, giving Rubio a head start over his Senate colleagues who had weathered epic battles over a similar overhaul effort under then-President George W. Bush. “That he rolled out the same stuff we’ve been talking about for years and presents it as a new idea and gets all this credit is a little frustrating,” said one GOP source familiar with the talks. “There’s a necessity for him to be the face of this legislation, so we’re willing to concede the story line, but I think Rubio himself believes it.”
His sudden embrace of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants was especially puzzling because he had derided the earlier Bush plan during his 2010 campaign. “Earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty,” he said in a debate broadcast on CNN. Mallea insists, “I don’t think he’s evolved or changed. I think he’s expanded. Now he’s been in Washington for two years, and he’s figured it out.”
Immigration reformers who know that a deal hinges on Rubio are less interested in parsing his flip-flops than in earning his blessing. “It is obvious to me that he has evolved on immigration, and I think that bodes well for the future,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., one of the biggest champions of immigration reform in the House.
“Make no mistake about it. If we do come up with an immigration bill, and if Republicans do really buy in, not just in token number but in substantial numbers, Rubio deserves the credit,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a member of the bipartisan reform group who is close to Obama. “John McCain brings the history of the Republican Party. He’s been with us for a long, long time. Marco Rubio brings tomorrow’s chapter of where the Republicans are going.”
So much of the hope invested in Rubio is tied to his Hispanic identity and the community’s emerging political clout. Hispanic voters made up 9 percent of the electorate in 2008 and 10 percent in 2012; they could be 12 percent of the vote in 2016. It’s widely expected that should Rubio run for president, he would garner record-setting Hispanic support for a Republican on a national ticket.
Rubio’s appeal to Hispanics outside of Florida is untested, yet his immigrant success story and message of economic opportunity is assumed to carry universal appeal. “I know the middle class, because I’ve lived it,” Rubio said at a Romney event in Denver aimed at rallying the Hispanic vote, where he talked about his father’s job as a bartender and his mother’s work as a hotel maid and a clerk at Kmart. Mallea was at the event and recalled how Rubio made the older Mexican women cry, the same response the boyishly handsome politician evokes from the Cuban abuelitas back home in Miami.
“Whether you came here by airplane or raft or on foot, you came here because this is the greatest country in the world, and that is the ultimate equalizer,” said Mallea, who is Cuban and Ecuadoran. “I think Hispanics will see him as one of their own because he has that story.”
That expectation is based more on Rubio’s biography than his politics. Had he not come out in favor of legalizing undocumented immigrants, he would have faced resistance from Hispanic voters who disagree with his opposition to Obama’s overhaul of the health care system and to his tax hike on the rich, argues Matt Barreto, principal at a leading Latino polling firm and an associate professor in political science at the University of Washington.
“Marco Rubio is an opportunist,” Barreto said. “When you’re positioning yourself for president, you have to have some issue people can attach to you in terms of policy. But with Rubio, no one cares, because if he can get a bill passed, people will be happy.”
Like Obama, whose rousing speech at the 2004 Democratic convention catapulted him to national prominence, Rubio gave an unforgettable speech at the 2012 convention. Both men are great storytellers who understand the power of detail and the American Dream.
At the Tampa convention, Rubio recalled watching his first political convention in 1980 with his grandfather, disabled by polio. “As a boy, I used to sit on the porch of our house and listen to his stories about history and politics and baseball as he would puff one of three daily Padron cigars,” he said. “The one thing I remember is one thing he wanted me never to forget: That the dreams he had when he was young became impossible to achieve, but there was no limit to how far I could go, because I was an American.”
Rubio also talked about hearing the jingling of his father’s keys at the door when he came home after a 16-hour day of tending bar. “He stood behind a bar in the back of a room all those years so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room,” the son said. “That journey from behind that bar to behind this podium goes to excellence of the American miracle. That’s not just my story. That’s your story. That’s our story.”
Rubio has that part of his story down pat, but he’s still working on the next chapter. And, fortunately for his prospects, the media appear more than eager to chronicle every step along the way.
Scott Bland contributed
2a)Hillary Clinton to hit speaking circuit
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will start giving paid speeches later this year, POLITICO’s Playbook reported exclusively Monday.
Clinton, who has picked the Harry Walker Agency to represent her, is likely to start the paid speaking circuit in the spring and is expected to rake in fees that clock in at the six-figure range — making her among the best-paid speakers “in the history of the circuit,” POLITICO’s Mike Allen reported.
The possible 2016 presidential contender may do some speeches for free, depending on the cause, and will sometimes donate some of that money for charitable purposes. She is also exploring book options and will be involved in nonprofit work, Playbook said.
President Barack Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, has also joined up with the Harry Walker Agency, Playbook said.
2b)
Food for Thought
Just a quick refresher course lest we forget what has happened to many "friends" of the
Clintons.
1- James McDougal - Clintons convicted Whitewater partner died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. He was a key witness in Ken Starr's investigation.
2 - Mary Mahoney - A former White House intern was murdered July 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown .. The murder happened just after she was to go public with her story of sexual harassment in the White House.
3 - Vince Foster - Former White House councilor, and colleague of Hillary Clinton at Little Rock's Rose Law firm. Died of a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide.
4 - Ron Brown - Secretary of Commerce and former DNC Chairman. Reported to have died by impact in a plane crash. A pathologist close to the investigation reported that there was a hole in the top of Brown's skull resembling a gunshot wound. At the time of his death Brown was being investigated, and spoke publicly of his willingness to cut a deal with prosecutors. The rest of the people on the plane also died. A few days later the air Traffic controller commited suicide.
5 - C. Victor Raiser, II - Raiser, a major player in the Clinton fund raising organization died in a private plane crash in July 1992.
6 - Paul Tulley - Democratic National Committee Political Director found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock , September 1992. Described by Clinton as a "dear friend and trusted advisor".
7 - Ed Willey - Clinton fundraiser, found dead November 1993 deep in the woods in VA of a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide. Ed Willey died on the same day his wife Kathleen Willey claimed Bill Clinton groped her in the oval office in the White House. Ed Willey was involved in several Clinton fund raising events.
8 - Jerry Parks - Head of Clinton's gubernatorial security team in Little Rock .. Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside Little Rock Park's son said his father was building a dossier on Clinton He allegedly threatened to reveal this information. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house.
9 - James Bunch - Died from a gunshot suicide. It was reported that he had a "Black Book" of people which contained names of influential people who visited prostitutes in Texas and Arkansas
10 - James Wilson - Was found dead in May 1993 from an apparent hanging suicide. He was reported to have ties to Whitewater..
11 - Kathy Ferguson - Ex-wife of Arkansas Trooper Danny Ferguson, was found dead in May 1994, in her living room with a gunshot to her head. It was ruled a suicide even though there were several packed suitcases, as if she were going somewhere. Danny Ferguson was a co-defendant along with Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit Kathy Ferguson was a possible corroborating witness for Paula Jones.
12 - Bill Shelton - Arkansas State Trooper and fiancee of Kathy Ferguson. Critical of the suicide ruling of his fiancee, he was found dead in June, 1994 of a gunshot wound also ruled a suicide at the grave site of his fiancee.
13 - Gandy Baugh - Attorney for Clinton's friend Dan Lassater, died by jumping out a window of a tall building January, 1994. His client was a convicted drug distributor.
14 - Florence Martin - Accountant & sub-contractor for the CIA, was related to the Barry Seal, Mena, Arkansas, airport drug smuggling case. He died of three gunshot wounds.
15 - Suzanne Coleman - Reportedly had an affair with Clinton when he was Arkansas Attorney General. Died of a gunshot wound to the back of the head, ruled a suicide. Was pregnant at the time of her death.
16 - Paula Grober - Clinton's speech interpreter for the deaf from 1978 until her death December 9, 1992. She died in a one car accident.
17 - Danny Casolaro - Investigative reporter. Investigating Mena Airport and Arkansas Development Finance Authority. He slit his wrists, apparently, in the middle of his investigation.
18 - Paul Wilcher - Attorney investigating corruption at Mena Airport with Casolaro and the 1980 "October Surprise" was found dead on a toilet June 22, 1993, in his Washington DC apartment. Had delivered a report to Janet Reno 3 weeks before his death.
19 - Jon Parnell Walker - Whitewater investigator for Resolution Trust Corp. Jumped to his death from his Arlington , Virginia apartment balcony August 15, 1993. He was investigating the Morgan Guaranty scandal.
20 - Barbara Wise - Commerce Department staffer. Worked closely with Ron Brown and John Huang. Cause of death unknown. Died November 29, 1996. Her bruised, nude body was found locked in her office at the Department of Commerce.
21 - Charles Meissner - Assistant Secretary of Commerce who gave John Huang special security clearance, died shortly thereafter in a small plane crash.
22 - Dr. Stanley Heard - Chairman of the National Chiropractic Health Care Advisory Committee died with his attorney Steve Dickson in a small plane crash. Dr. Heard, in addition to serving on Clinton 's advisory council personally treated Clinton's mother, stepfather and brother.
23 - Barry Seal - Drug running TWA pilot out of Mena Arkansas, death was no accident.
24 - Johnny Lawhorn, Jr. - Mechanic, found a check made out to Bill Clinton in the trunk of a car left at his repair shop. He was found dead after his car had hit a utility pole.
25 - Stanley Huggins - Investigated Madison Guaranty. His death was a purported suicide and his report was never released.
26 - Hershell Friday - Attorney and Clinton fundraiser died March 1, 1994, when his plane exploded.
27 - Kevin Ives & Don Henry - Known as "The boys on the track" case. Reports say the boys may have stumbled upon the Mena Arkansas airport drug operation. A controversial case, the initial report of death said, due to falling asleep on railroad tracks. Later reports claim the 2 boys had been slain before being placed on the tracks. Many linked to the case died before their testimony could come before a Grand Jury.
THE FOLLOWING PERSONS HAD INFORMATION ON THE IVES/HENRY CASE:
28 - Keith Coney - Died when his motorcycle slammed into the back of a truck, 7/88.
29 - Keith McMaskle - Died, stabbed 113 times, Nov, 1988
30 - Gregory Collins - Died from a gunshot wound January 1989.
31 - Jeff Rhodes - He was shot, mutilated and found burned in a trash dump in April 1989.
3 2 - James Milan - Found decapitated. However, the Coroner ruled his death was due to natural causes".
33 - Jordan Kettleson - Was found shot to death in the front seat of his pickup truck in June 1990.
34 - Richard Winters - A suspect in the Ives/Henry deaths. He was killed in a set-up robbery July 1989.
THE FOLLOWING CLINTON BODYGUARDS ARE DEAD:
36 - Major William S. Barkley, Jr.
37 - Captain Scott J . Reynolds
38 - Sgt. Brian Hanley
39 - Sgt. Tim Sabel
40 - Major General William Robertson
41 - Col. William Densberger
42 - Col. Robert Kelly
43 - Spec. Gary Rhodes
44 - Steve Willis
45 - Robert Williams
46 - Conway LeBleu
47 - Todd McKeehan
Quite an impressive list! Pass this on. Let the public become aware of what happens to friends of the Clintons!
HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT? ...SURELY YOU JEST!!
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3)Obama's Nuclear Fantasy
By Bret Stephens
The president is setting the stage for a world with more nukes in the wrong hands.
As a young Soviet military officer, Viktor Esin was stationed in Cuba during the October 1962 crisis, where he had release authority over a nuclear-tipped missile targeting New York. On his first visit to Manhattan in December, I made sure to thank him for not obliterating our city.
Gen. Esin rose to become chief of staff for the Strategic Rocket Forces, and he is now a professor at the Russian Academy of Military Science. So what’s been on his mind lately? Mainly the stealthy rise of China to a position of nuclear parity with the U.S. and Russia. “All in all, they may have 850 warheads ready to launch,” he says. “Other warheads are kept in storage and intended to be employed in an emergency.” He estimates the total size of the Chinese arsenal at between 1,600 and 1,800 warheads.
That is something to bear in mind as the Obama administration seeks to slash the U.S. arsenal to about 1,000 strategic warheads. That would be well below the ceiling of 1,550 warheads stipulated by the 2010 New Start Treaty. The administration also wants to spend less than the $80 billion it promised on modernizing America’s rusting nuclear-weapons infrastructure.
On the strength of that promise 13 Republican senators gave President Obama the votes he needed to ratify New Start. Suckers! Now the president means to dispense with the Senate altogether, either by imposing the cuts unilaterally or by means of an informal agreement with Vladimir Putin. This is what Mr. Obama meant in telling Dmitry Medvedev last year that he would have “more flexibility” after re-election.
But what, you ask, is so frightening about having “only” 1,000 nuclear weapons? Surely that is more than enough to turn any conceivable adversary Paleolithic. Won’t we remain more or less at parity with the Russians, and far ahead of everyone else?
It all depends on China. It is an article of faith among the arms-control community that Beijing subscribes to a theory of “minimum means of reprisal” and has long kept its arsenal more or less flat in the range of 240-400 warheads. Yet that is a speculative, dated and unverified figure, and China has spent the last decade embarked on a massive military buildup. Isn’t it just possible that Beijing has been building up its nuclear forces, too?
When I broached this theory in an October 2011 column—noting that the U.S. had, in fact, underestimated the size of the Soviet arsenal by a factor of two at the end of the Cold War—I was attacked for being needlessly alarmist. But one man who shares that alarm is Gen. Esin. In July 2012, he notes, the Chinese tested an intermediate-range DF-25 missile, which Russia carefully tracked.
“In the final stage the missile had three shifts in trajectory, dropping one [warhead] at each shift,” he notes. “It’s solid evidence of a MIRV [multiple warhead] test.” A month later, the Chinese launched a new long-range, MIRV-capable missile, this time from a submarine.
The general runs through additional evidence of China’s nuclear strides. But what should really get the attention of U.S. military planners are his observations of how Russia might react. “If China doesn’t stop, Russia will consider abandoning the INF Treaty,” he warns. “Russia cannot afford not taking this factor into account.”
The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, is a cornerstone of the settlement that ended the Cold War. If Russia abandons it and begins building a new generation of intermediate-range missiles, the U.S. would either have to follow suit or lose parity with Moscow. We’d be off to the nuclear races once again.
And not just with Moscow. As North Korea gears up for a third nuclear test, South Korea is eager to begin recycling plutonium—ostensibly for peaceful purposes, in reality as a nuclear hedge against its neighbors.
Then there is Japan, which is scheduled to bring on line a reprocessing plant at Rokkasho later this year. As nuclear expert Henry Sokolski notes, “the plant will produce eight tons of nuclear weapons usable plutonium each year (enough for 1,000 to 2,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs) at a time when Japan has no nuclear reactors to burn the material.”
Like the South Koreans, the Japanese don’t want a nuclear arsenal: They have lived peacefully under the nuclear umbrella of the United States for nearly seven decades. But as that umbrella shrinks, it covers fewer countries. Those left out will look to deploy umbrellas of their own. “The U.S. has obligations on extended deterrence in Asia,” Gen. Esin says. “The problem has to be at the forefront, not avoided.”
President Obama has often said that he wants to live in a world without nuclear weapons. Who wouldn’t? Even Gen. Esin is a “Global Zero” signatory. But the real choice isn’t between more nuclear weapons or fewer. It is between a world of fewer U.S. nuclear weapons and more nuclear states, or the opposite. In his idealism, the president is setting the stage for a more nuclearized world. (With the US on the short end of the stick — suiting Obama and his father’s agenda just fine. jsk)
3a)Peres and Obama: A love story
By Ruthie Blum -
It is a rare political leader in Israel who has defiled the concept of peace as consistently and unabashedly as President Shimon Peres. And if it weren't for the Orwellian universe that much of mankind currently occupies, his endless abuse of the term would have led to his being totally discredited, not repeatedly rewarded.
Nor does he seem to mind that most of the honors bestowed upon him for perpetuating dangerous fantasies about the Middle East in general and the Palestinians in particular have hailed from beyond Israel's borders. What counts is that the plaques keep piling up on the shelves of his office at the President's Residence in Jerusalem.
Ironically, Peres was appointed to the position that is ostensibly more pomp-and-circumstance than power precisely to keep him at bay. The damage he has done over the years to Israel's efforts to combat false ideas spread by its enemies has been extremely problematic. It is thus that his popularity abroad has always far exceeded how he is perceived at home. And what he has lacked in electoral success, he has made up for in medals — not one of which, it should be noted, was acquired on the actual battlefield.
No wonder he feels such an affinity with U.S. President Barack Obama. Though the two share very little in terms of age, culture, and religion, they have certain fundamental things in common. They both have a dim view of the West, while romanticizing the Third World. They both believe in seeing a situation as they wish it to be, not as it is. Neither has qualms about winning a Nobel Peace Prize while fertilizing the ground for the worst forms of war. Neither has a problem openly undermining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It was not innocent, then, when Obama — who had been overheard commiserating with French President Nicolas Sarkozy about their mutual aversion to Netanyahu — granted Peres the Presidential Medal of Freedom last June, mere months before snubbing Netanyahu in New York.
But then, Netanyahu had been urging Obama to take the Iranian threat seriously and not to link it to the Palestinian issue. “Shimon,” on the other hand (as Obama referred to him fondly at the White House dinner celebrating his Medal of Freedom), “teaches us to never settle for the world as it is. We have a vision for the world as it ought to be, and we have to strive for it.”
Yes, said Peres, “My vision is an Israel living in full, genuine peace, joining with all the people of the Middle East, former enemies and new friends alike, with Jerusalem becoming the capital of peace.”
Since the Obama-Peres fantasy-fest in the summer, things in the Middle East have gone from bad to worse. Plenty of “former enemies,” and an abundance of new ones added to the mix. The only constant is the re-election of both Obama and Netanyahu.
Peres knows that this will make Netanyahu's job that much harder this time around, particularly as Iran races towards an atom bomb with which it has boasted it will wipe Israel off the map, and Obama still courting the mullah-led regime to negotiate a “peaceful” nuclear program. He must be aware, as well, that Netanyahu is apprehensive about Obama's trip to Israel next month, when the American president is also paying a visit to Ramallah.
But Netanyahu's worries have been of little interest to Peres. It is strengthening Obama that has been on his agenda. Greeting a bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators and congressmen in Jerusalem on Sunday, he assured them that the American president “has shown both deep understanding and forthcoming support” where Israel's security needs are concerned. “It is time to return to the peace process. … We are building a government not only to govern but also to have the right vision.”
That this “vision” does not take into account the absolute unwillingness of the Palestinians to negotiate anything other than the elimination of the Jewish state does not matter. As Obama said about Peres, he has “a vision for the world as it ought to be.” You know, with Jerusalem as the “capital of peace.”
Unable to contain his excitement at the U.S. president's imminent visit — and keen on having a key role in it — Peres announced on Monday (through a statement released by The Times of Israel) that he will be granting Obama the Israeli Presidential Medal of Distinction. It will be the first time that a sitting American president has received this award, the criteria for which are “unique and outstanding contributions to tikkun olam [bettering the world], Israeli society and the State of Israel's image around the world, and which constitute examples of initiative, innovation, creativity, and vision.”
This is pure travesty.
Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the 'Arab Spring.'”
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4)Guns and Pensions
A nation's choice between spending on military defense and spending on civilian goods has often been posed as "guns versus butter." But understanding the choices of many nations' political leaders might be helped by examining the contrast between their runaway spending on pensions while skimping on military defense.
Huge pensions for retired government workers can be found from small municipalities to national governments on both sides of the Atlantic. There is a reason. For elected officials, pensions are virtually the ideal thing to spend money on, politically speaking. Many kinds of spending of the taxpayers' money win votes from the recipients. But raising taxes to pay for this spending loses votes from the taxpayers. Pensions offer a way out of this dilemma for politicians.
Creating pensions that offer generous retirement benefits wins votes in the present by promising spending in the future. Promises cost nothing in the short run -- and elections are held in the short run, long before the pensions are due.
By contrast, private insurance companies that sell annuities are forced by law to set aside enough assets to cover the cost of the annuities they have promised to pay. But nobody can force the government to do that -- and most governments do not.
This means that it is only a matter of time before pensions are due to be paid and there is not enough money set aside to pay for them. This applies to Social Security and other government pensions here, as well as to all sorts of pensions in other countries overseas.
Eventually, the truth will come out that there is just not enough money in the till to pay what retirees were promised. But eventually can be a long time.
A politician can win quite a few elections between now and eventually -- and be living in comfortable retirement by the time it is somebody else's problem to cope with the impossibility of paying retirees the pensions they were promised.
Inflating the currency and paying pensions in dollars that won't buy as much is just one of the ways for the government to seem to be keeping its promises, while in fact welshing on the deal.
The politics of military spending are just the opposite of the politics of pensions. In the short run, politicians can always cut military spending without any immediate harm being visible, however catastrophic the consequences may turn out to be down the road.
Despite the huge increase in government spending on domestic programs during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration in the 1930s, FDR cut back on military spending. On the eve of the Second World War, the United States had the 16th largest army in the world, right behind Portugal.
Even this small military force was so inadequately supplied with equipment that its training was skimped. American soldiers went on maneuvers using trucks with "tank" painted on their sides, since there were not enough real tanks to go around.
American warplanes were not updated to match the latest warplanes of Nazi Germany or imperial Japan. After World War II broke out, American soldiers stationed in the Philippines were fighting for their lives using rifles left over from the Spanish-American war, decades earlier. The hand grenades they threw at the Japanese invaders were so old that they often failed to explode. At the battle of Midway, of 82 Americans who flew into combat in obsolete torpedo planes, only 12 returned alive. In Europe, our best tanks were never as good as the Germans' best tanks, which destroyed several times as many American tanks as the Germans lost in tank battles.
Fortunately, the quality of American warplanes eventually caught up with and surpassed the best that the Germans and Japanese had. But a lot of American pilots lost their lives needlessly in outdated planes before that happened.
These were among the many prices paid for skimping on military spending in the years leading up to World War II. But, politically, the path of least resistance is to cut military spending in the short run and let the long run take care of itself.
In a nuclear age, we may not have time to recover from our short-sighted policies, as we did in World War II.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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