Meanwhile Europe remains in la la land when it comes to Hezballah. (See 2 below.)
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Obama's unstated goal is smash Republicans in order to control Congress in 2014. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Congress seems to prefer Israel as a partner but Brennan and, presumably, Obama seem to prefer the Saudis. (See 4 below.)
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Uncle Ben holds the keys!
I and my technical guru have been overly cautious. (See 5 below.)
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There are those who believe we have a do nothing Congress and , not only are they right, but also that is the best stance when the doctor wants to administer dangerous poison. Keep your mouth shut. (See 6 below.)
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Sen. Paul and I may not agree on everything he believes and states but Sen. McCain is a loose cannon. McCain was a maverick in his own early tenure in the Senate. How quickly he forgets. (See 7 below.)
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Does Hezballah have Syrian chemical weapons? Stay tuned. (See 8 below.)
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Krauthammer explains the rationale behind our giving foreign aid. (See 9 below.)
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Off to Winter Park to celebrate both Dagny's first birthday and her parent's 8th anniversary.
Dagny now can be thrown in the pool, fully clothed and and come up to the surface and float on her back. Amazing what you can do with kids at an early age. She also now can associate sounds with certain animals, sheep, dog etc., can pretty much walk independently. Her name fits her because she is a feisty, independent beauty.
Have a great weekend and remember to sequester!
---
Dick
Congress seems to prefer Israel as a partner but Brennan and, presumably, Obama seem to prefer the Saudis. (See 4 below.)
---
Uncle Ben holds the keys!
I and my technical guru have been overly cautious. (See 5 below.)
---
There are those who believe we have a do nothing Congress and , not only are they right, but also that is the best stance when the doctor wants to administer dangerous poison. Keep your mouth shut. (See 6 below.)
---
Sen. Paul and I may not agree on everything he believes and states but Sen. McCain is a loose cannon. McCain was a maverick in his own early tenure in the Senate. How quickly he forgets. (See 7 below.)
---
Does Hezballah have Syrian chemical weapons? Stay tuned. (See 8 below.)
---
Krauthammer explains the rationale behind our giving foreign aid. (See 9 below.)
----
Off to Winter Park to celebrate both Dagny's first birthday and her parent's 8th anniversary.
Dagny now can be thrown in the pool, fully clothed and and come up to the surface and float on her back. Amazing what you can do with kids at an early age. She also now can associate sounds with certain animals, sheep, dog etc., can pretty much walk independently. Her name fits her because she is a feisty, independent beauty.
Have a great weekend and remember to sequester!
---
Dick
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1) Obama to Jews: Peace is essential but prospects are bleak
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- President Obama believes prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace are “bleak,” but he still will urge both sides to avoid unilateral actions that might further damage a process he hopes will be back on track within a year.
That was the message Obama delivered Thursday in a meeting with about 25 Jewish community figures at the White House to discuss his planned trip to Israel later this month. Obama was especially engaged, participants said, when it came to discussing how he might best convey to the Israeli people his enthusiasm for Israel and its Jewish history.
Participants were under strict instructions to speak to news media only in the most general terms, and most of the participants contacted by JTA hewed to that stricture. Two participants, however, shared notes on the particulars and a third confirmed those accounts.
According to the partipants, Obama appeared weary and was emphatic about not bringing any “grandiose” plan for Middle East peace to the region. He said he would, however, counsel the parties against making "unilateral" moves. He did not elaborate, but U.S. references to unilateralism generally refer to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and Palestinian attempts to achieve statehood recognition.
Obama reportedly rejected an entreaty from one participant to stake out a harder line on Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, emphasizing that a military option was still on the table even though he preferred to first exhaust diplomatic options. Officials from the major powers, led by the United States, are meeting with Iran in Istanbul later this month to negotiate terms for making Iran’s nuclear program more transparent.
Obama said he would not engage in “chest beating” to make people feel better. He also said it's natural for the United States and Israel to have differing assessments of how advanced Iran is in its nuclear quest. Such differences are a matter of interpretation, the president said, and exist within Israel’s political and security establishments as well.
When he goes to Israel, Obama plans to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is still attempting to cobble together a government after January's election. Obama also will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and will travel to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah.
Obama told the Jewish participants that he thinks prospects for peace are “bleak,” but added: “That doesn't mean six or nine or 12 months from now we won't be in the midst of a policy initiative.”
Obama said he would tell the Israelis that “the prospects for peace continue to go through the Palestinians.”
A White House official confirmed that the president would not be seeking a specific outcome from this visit.
“The president noted that the trip is not dedicated to resolving a specific policy issue but is rather an opportunity to consult with the Israeli government about a broad range of issues -- including Iran, Syria, the situation in the region and the peace process,” the official said. “He also underscored that the trip is an opportunity for him to speak directly to the Israeli people about the history, interests, and values that we share.”
Obama seemed more enthusiastically engaged, participants said, when he was seeking input from them on how best to reach out to Israelis and make them feel secure about the U.S.-Israel alliance. The exchange took up the bulk of the meeting, with Obama fielding more than a dozen questions and suggestions over 45 minutes.
Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union, said that he counseled the president to emphasize the Jewish connection to the land.
“I underscored the need for him to go to a place where he can both symbolically and in his statements speak about the millennia of connection between the Jewish people and Israel,” said Diament, who spoke under conditions that allowed participants to relay their own words to reporters.
Israeli and U.S. officials for weeks have grappled with which venues would best convey Obama’s outreach effort. One factor is security; Israeli officials have told their American counterparts that securing Obama outside the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv corridor is daunting, which limits his options. Aside from the official meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem and dinner at the home of President Shimon Peres, who will present Obama with a medal, nothing has been confirmed. A visit to Jerusalem’s Old City is still under consideration, as is a tour of an Iron Dome missile defense battery, a system Obama funded and which successfully protected Israel from rocket attacks during the Gaza Strip war last November.
Obama wants to speak to “young people,” White House officials have said, and Israeli officials reportedly are working on a venue that could accommodate a large crowd of university students, probably in Jerusalem.
In a separate interview with JTA, Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, said Israelis are looking forward to the visit because of the message it will send.
“In terms of Israel, the timing of the trip could not be better because it reassures us in a period of profound instability throughout the region, and sends an unequivocal message throughout the region about the strength and vitality of the U.S.-Israel alliance,” Oren said.
In addition to the Orthodox Union, participants at the meeting included representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, J Street, Americans for Peace Now, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, B'nai B'rith International, the Conservative and Reform movements, the Anti-Defamtion League, the American Jewish Committee, Hadassah, the National Council of Jewish Women, Jewish Women International, the National Jewish Democratic Council, the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Influential supporters of the president also were in attendance, including Robert Wexler, Mel Levine, Steve Rabinowitz and Alan Dershowitz.
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2) Europe Rolls Over for Hezbollah Blackmail
By Soeren Kern
The recent cases in Bulgaria and Cyrus provide irrefutable evidence that Hezbollah is highly active in Europe, where it raises funds, launders money, traffics drugs, recruits operatives and plots attacks with impunityThe main objective of Israeli President Shimon Peres's week-long state visit to Brussels, Paris and Strasbourg March 5-12 is apparently to persuade reluctant European leaders to designate Lebanon's Hezbollah movement a terrorist organization.
Several Western countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands officially classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization years ago. But the European Union has steadfastly resisted calls to sanction Hezbollah.Blacklisting Hezbollah would deprive the militant group of significant sources of fundraising by enabling the freezing its bank accounts and assets in Europe. It would also facilitate intra-European police cooperation aimed at pursuing and arresting Hezbollah operatives believed to be living underground throughout Europe.
Well, at least that has been clarified: in recent weeks Bulgarian authorities implicated Hezbollah in the July 18, 2012 terrorist attack which killed five Israeli tourists and their driver in the Black Sea resort of Burgas.EU leaders say they do not have enough information to make a judgment about whether Hezbollah is involved in terrorism. They have tried to justify themselves by saying that because the issue is legal, not moral, in nature, they need "courtroom evidence" of Hezbollah's culpability.
Bulgaria's February 5 public announcement, which angered many EU countries afraid of provoking Hezbollah, was the first time that an EU member state has officially established that Hezbollah was guilty of a carrying out a terrorist attack on EU territory.
European officials have long rationalized their lack of resolve against Hezbollah by claiming that the organization has both a military wing and a political wing, and that cracking down on the former would cripple the latter, which consequently would lead to the destabilization of Lebanon as well as the broader Middle East.
Many analysts, however, say this high-mindedness is a smoke screen behind which Europeans are hiding to conceal the real reason why they are reluctant to confront Hezbollah: fear, fear and more fear.
Europeans are afraid to call Hezbollah what it is because they fear reprisals against European interests at home and abroad. Europeans also fear that if they take a hard line against Hezbollah, the group may activate sleeper cells and carry out attacks in European cities. (According to a leaked German intelligence report, there are more than 900 Hezbollah operatives in Germany alone.)
In Spain, for instance, where Hezbollah was involved in the April 1985 bombing of a restaurant near Madrid in which 18 Spanish citizens were killed, the case was closed in 1987 due to a lack of arrests.In addition, Europeans are afraid that Hezbollah may retaliate against European troops, known as UNIFIL, participating in the United Nations mission in Lebanon.
Less than a month after those killings, it emerged that Spanish intelligence agents met secretly with Hezbollah militants, who agreed to provide "escorts" to protect Spanish UNIFIL patrols. The quid pro quo was that Spanish troops look the other way while Hezbollah was allowed to rearm for its next war against Israel.After six Spanish peacekeepers were killed in a Hezbollah bomb attack in southern Lebanon in June 2007, a fearful Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero recruited that same Hezbollah to safeguard Spanish troops, presumably as a way to safeguard his own job.
The Spanish government recently announced that it will cut the number of its troops within UNIFIL to half by the end of 2013. What is clear is that Spain, as well as its European partners, have abandoned the letter and the spirit of UN Resolution 1559, the main objective of which was to disarm Hezbollah and to transfer effective control over the southern Lebanon to Lebanon's armed forces.
In addition to the investigation in Bulgaria, there has also been the trial in Cyprus of Hossam Taleb Yaakoub, a captured Hezbollah operative with joint Lebanese and Swedish citizenship who is suspected of plotting attacks on Israeli targets. The trial, which is scheduled to end on March 7, has provided many insights into Hezbollah's secret operations in Europe.Europeans are also afraid of inciting the thousands of shiftless young Muslim immigrants in towns and cities across the continent. The fear of angry Muslims is, in fact, so pervasive in European capitals that in practical terms Islam has already established a de facto veto on European foreign policymaking.
Taken together, the recent cases in Bulgaria and Cyprus provide irrefutable evidence that Hezbollah is highly active in Europe, where it raises funds, launders money, traffics drugs, recruits operatives and plots attacks with impunity.
After Bulgaria implicated Hezbollah, John Brennan, President Barack Obama's chief counterterrorism advisor and his nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency, urged the EU to condemn Hezbollah: "We call on our European partners as well as other members of the international community to take proactive action to uncover Hezbollah's infrastructure and disrupt the group's financing schemes and operational networks in order to prevent future attacks."Even so, the new revelations are unlikely to cause the EU to reconsider its refusal to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group and crack down on its fund-raising. Indeed, European officials have signaled that they desperately want to keep the peace with Hezbollah.
In Sweden, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt went so far as to express his anger at Bulgaria for blaming Hezbollah. In a February 5 tweet, he said: "We need to reflect seriously on consequences of Bulgaria probe naming Hezbollah as behind terrorist attack."But Catherine Ashton, the European Union's high representative for foreign policy, responded without even mentioning Hezbollah by name. She said only that there was now a "need for reflection" and added: "The implications of the investigation need to be assessed seriously as they relate to a terrorist attack on EU soil, which resulted in the killing and injury of innocent civilians."
Only one EU country has had the courage to blacklist Hezbollah's entire organization: The Netherlands proscribed the group in 2004. In a recent statement, the Dutch Embassy in Israel said: "The Netherlands has been calling for Hezbollah to be included on the EU list of terrorist organizations since 2004, and has consistently urged its EU partners to support such a move."
In 2008, the British government "banned" Hezbollah's military wing after the group targeted British troops in Iraq. But the Labour government stopped short of curtailing Hezbollah's ability to operate in Britain, arguing that the military wing is separate from the political wing.If the EU is eventually shamed into adding Hezbollah to its terror list, it will probably follow the example not of Holland but of Britain.
In recent weeks, British Foreign Secretary William Hague has repeatedly urged the EU to replicate the British model and outlaw only Hezbollah's military wing. Although this "fix" would allow the EU to say that it has taken meaningful action against the group, Hezbollah leaders themselves make no such distinction.
Sheikh Naim Qassem, the second in command of Hezbollah, with the title of deputy secretary-general, has rejected Britain's attempt to separate the group into military and political wings. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in April 2009, Qassem said: "Hezbollah has a single leadership. … The same leadership that directs the parliamentary and government work also leads Jihad actions in the struggle against Israel."
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu concurred, saying: "There is only one Hezbollah, it is one organization with one leadership."
Avi Dichter, Israel's Minister of Home Front Defense and a former director of Shin Bet, had this to say: "To speak about [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah as someone who is only political is ridiculous. … Asking if Hezbollah is a terrorist organization is like asking if Paris belongs to France. Who is sleeping? Are we Israelis sleeping or are countries in Europe sleeping? There is no debate."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor, writing in the Washington, DC-based magazine Foreign Policy, put it this way: "Calling Hezbollah a charity is like calling al-Qaeda an urban planning organization because of its desire to level tall buildings. … The EU must find the moral and political courage to place Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations. It must find a clear message that Hezbollah can no longer target its citizens with impunity."Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
3)
Morning Examiner: Obama’s campaign of pain
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President Obama is just 42 days into his second term in the White House but he is already done governing. As The Washington Postreported this weekend, Obama is already “executing plans to win back the House in 2014, which he and his advisers believe will be crucial to the outcome of his second term and to his legacy as president.”
“The goal,” The Washington Post reports, “is to flip the Republican-held House back to Democratic control, allowing Obama to push forward with a progressive agenda on gun control, immigration, climate change and the economy during his final two years in office, according to congressional Democrats, strategists and others familiar with Obama’s thinking.”
In other words, Obama is done trying to work with Republicans in 2013 and 2014. He is abandoning any real effort for bipartisan immigration, gun, or energy reform. The bulk of his effort will now be devoted to eliminating all Republican power in Washington.
And Obama’s first step in that campaign will be to maximize the amount of pain the sequester inflicts on the American people. ABC News reports: “Now that the sequester has gone into effect — bringing on the spending cuts Obama once guaranteed would never happen — the president is in the awkward place of rooting for it be felt as he and his administration has predicted.”
For perhaps the first time in the history of the United States, it is in the political interest of a president to inflict maximum pain on the American people. Obama could have spent the last 16 months preparing to mitigate sequestration’s impact on the
American people. Obama could have spent the last 16 months preparing to mitigate sequestration’s impact on the American people, as any responsible manager would have. Instead, he has done the opposite, explicitly ordering government agencies not to prepare for the worst. And he has refused all Republican efforts to pass legislation that would minimize the sequester’s pain.
“The president understands that to get anything done, he needs a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives,” Rep. Steve Israel,D-N.Y., told The Post “To have a legacy in 2016, he will need a House majority in 2014, and that work has to start now.”
It already has.
3a)GOP accusation confirmed: Obama out to break it
The Post reported: “[President] Obama, fresh off his November reelection, began almost at once executing plans to win back the House in 2014, which he and his advisers believe will be crucial to the outcome of his second term and to his legacy as president. He is doing so by trying to articulate for the American electorate his own feelings — an exasperation with an opposition party that blocks even the most politically popular elements of his agenda.”
This confirms what Republicans have been saying (despite liberal pundits’ scoffing): The president is interested in breaking the back of the opposition not accommodating or passing centrist legislation. A senior GOP House aide was mattter-of-fact: “It’s been clear since December that President Obama is more interested in leading his Organizing for Action campaign than leading this nation.”
Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), took the high ground. “Our country faces real challenges: cutting spending, fixing our debt and deficit, getting our economy moving and creating jobs. Hopefully, those challenges — not partisan politics — will be the focus for the White House. The American people gave us a divided government, and we all have to make it work.”The acknowledgment of the permanent campaign is quite an admission, casting most of what the president does in a more realistic light. He is engaged in bare-knuckle campaigning, not governing, when he engages in faux negotiations and goes around the country to hammer Republicans.
Indeed it is an odd approach only two months after the last election. Aside from dropping the mask and conceding the high ground, the revelation about the president’s 2014 strategy appears just at the time that he has been revealed to be untruthful with regard to the sequester. Now he wants the country to give him virtually unlimited power with a Democratic House? Moreover, in a midterm election the electorate is generally whiter, older and more conservative.
Is this the electorate (without Obama on the ballot) to hand him the House? Don Stewart, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) answers, “Let’s not forget, we’ve already seen what happens when he has an unchecked agenda: Stimulus, Obamacare and trillions in debt.”
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4)Brennan Signals 'Our Saudi Partners'
Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison - American Thinker, March 7th, 2013
4)Brennan Signals 'Our Saudi Partners'
Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison - American Thinker, March 7th, 2013
When President Obama met Saudi King Abdullah in London in 2009, the former bowed low before the latter. No American president had ever so abased himself before one of the world's most oppressive rulers before.
Now, Mr. Obama has nominated John Brennan to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Signals Intelligence, or sigint, is the science of interpreting signals sent by enemies of the United States. With his Arabic-language skills, John Brennan ought to be good at interpreting signals.
He's very good at sending them. When he spoke of Jerusalem — his “most loved city in the world” — he referred to it first by its Arabic name, al Quds. Nobody refers to Jerusalem as al Quds unless he wants to send a signal: “I agree with you.”
Every Arabic-speaking country denies the right of Israel to exist. Every one yearns to see Jerusalem swept free of Jews and called al Quds. When the Jordanians controlled East Jerusalem (1949-1967), they banned all the Jews from living there and from visiting Jewish holy places there. They even desecrated thousand-year-old graves in Jewish cemeteries there.
That's what is meant by al Quds. When you say you love this city more than any other and give it its Arabic name, you are sending the most terrible message. You are feeding into the Arab narrative that calls the establishment of the Jewish state Nakba — the Day of Catastrophe.
John Brennan obviously rejects Winston Churchill's advice to Western statesmen: “Let the Jews have Jerusalem. It is they who made it famous.” Churchill was no enemy to Arabs. Churchill even created Jordan as an Arab state and gave it a Hashemite ruling family.
But Churchill would not abase himself and the British people before these desert despots. As President Obama has done to us as Americans. As John Brennan is doing to us and to our allies in Israel.
John Brennan speaks of “our Saudi partners.” Partners in what? Mr. Brennan won't speak of a global war on terror. He rejects the use of jihadism to describe Muslim terrorists, since he regards jihad as a legitimate expression of a religion of peace and tolerance.
How tolerant is Saudi Arabia? Mr. Brennan might consult our own U.S. State Department Report on International Religious Freedom:
Freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law and is severely restricted in practice. … The [Saudi] legal system is based on the government's application of the Hanbali School of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence. The public practice of any religion other than Islam is prohibited, and there is no separation between state and religion.
If the Saudis will not cooperate with us on basic human rights, like freedom of speech and religion, might they at least be “our partners” in fighting al-Qaeda, right? After all, al-Qaeda says it wants to overthrow King Abdullah, the man to whom Mr. Obama shows obeisance.
The Report of the 9/11 Commission shows that the Saudis are not willing to help us even on this. In 1998, Vice President Al Gore traveled to Saudi Arabia to seek then-Crown Prince Abdullah's help in questioning Madani al Tayyib. Tayyib was a leading finance officer of al-Qaeda, held by the Saudis since 1997. The official report on Gore's failed diplomatic mission ends with this line: “The United States never obtained this access.”
Had we been able to “follow the money,” we might have unraveled the al-Qaeda plot to attack the United States. We may never know if by interrogating Tayyib we could have saved thousands of American lives and trillions of American dollars.
This much should be clear: the Saudis are not “our partners,” as John Brennan says they are. When American lives are at stake, the Saudis are no friends.
John Brennan came away from his CIA tour in Saudi Arabia in the late 1990s filled with nothing but goodwill and admiration for what he calls our Saudi partners. Was he there when Al Gore begged for the Saudis' help?
Brennan's astonishing naivety alone should raise serious doubts about his serving as director of America's most sensitive intelligence agency. Every American who cherishes liberty and security has a right to be alarmed at such a disastrous choice for DCIA — and appalled by a president who could make it.
Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison are senior fellows with the Family Research Council, in Washington, D.C.
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5)-The Bernanke Market
By Bruce Johnson
Ben is to the stock market as Lance Armstrong is to bike racing.
Why the steroids Ben? The "emergency" rates don't seem appropriate when stocks are at record highs. Are they emergency rates still? Accommodative? Accommodative for what? Higher employment? Well, low rates creating 'maximum" employment is a theory and we haven't quite proven its effectiveness in an international arrangement in which cheap labor around the world supplies us, indirectly, the manufacturing for our needs and wants.
And what of the third unspoken mandate of the Federal Reserve? "Moderate interest rates" are supposed to be maintained by the Federal Reserve per its mission statement.
Record low interest rates are not moderate by any metric. The term moderate refers to "not extreme." These rates are extremely low.
As long as Ben Bernanke decides to keep money loose, the stock market will rise.
Restated, as long as one man holds to one mindset, the market will rise.
Does this sound like a free market? Or, does it resonate as a managed affair sponsored by a semi private powerful agency run by one unelected man? Bernanke is arguably the most powerful man in the word without a military.
As models and programs chase historically modest dividend returns one wonders of the fragility of this entire arrangement. The money is in a forced accommodative low rate mode by the Federal Reserve. It is reasonable to assume that free rates would be somewhere above the current near zero rates forced by Bernanke.
Rates are forced to these levels, as the reasoning suggests, because we are still in an emergency mode. There seems nothing so permanent as a temporary emergency mode implemented by a quasi government agency.
Loose money is supposed to increase employment. We can see it increases stock prices, but its impact on employment is moot.
The question is then, "where would the market be if rates were free to find their own level?" Where would rates be if the Fed didn't lend money to the Treasury each week? Could this market handle a .5% rate increase? What would that do to all the dividend capture programs long the market?
The Federal Reserve is in an unmanageable position, and some of the board members are acutely aware of the dangers. To ease out or unwrap the Federal Reserve balance sheet would be a catastrophic awakening for the stock market.
The low rates have not only encouraged federal spending and borrowing, they have affected consumer behavior as well. Consumer debt is on the rise, perhaps taking their cue from the government itself.
The Fed used to applaud high savings rates which would signal sound consumer financial condition. Instead they have prompted a paycheck to paycheck, roll the credit card debt behavior. People watch Washington and learn.
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6)Our Father, Who art in the White House
By William L. Gensert
Do you accept Barack Obama as your Lord and Savior? Chris Rock does -- calling him our father, who art in the White House. The media does as well. The epidemic of pandering press members dropping on their knees in the customary position of worship before our president has become a pandemic.
Media loved Bill Clinton, but they didn't 'intern' for the guy like they seem to for Barack. A cigar is just a cigar, but, today's press is smoking something, and it looks more and more like a Barack Obama, choom gang special blend. Note, rearranging the letters in "choom" will get you "mooch." Is there a better description of Obama, his bitter half and his entire set of hagiographic minions?
To the media, the man can do no wrong. He is universally portrayed as successful, moderate and bipartisan, when he has not one single measureable success, is probably the most left-wing president the nation has ever elected, and has 'reached across the aisle' only to publically slap those who have dared to disagree, or beneficently allow them to do as they are told.
Every utterance and ululation is treated as if it came down from Mount Ararat written on a tablet. At least the Ten Commandments made sense -- don't kill, don't sleep with your neighbor's wife. But, under Barack there seems to be only one commandment -- even if it does have sections -- everything bad is someone's else's fault, while everything good is because of him, and he needs more money and control, to solve not only the ills of the nation, but those of humanity as well.
Just look at coverage of the sequester, an Obama idea designed to embarrass political opponents by forcing automatic budget cuts he thought would be so onerous to conservative values that they would fold and cancel implementation in negotiations -- allowing him to raise revenue through tax increases.
To hear him tell it, reinforced by his adulatory cadre of cacophonous, keyboard-wielding media flunkies, the world will end now that the sequester has actually taken place as designed in his original plan -- 50% from defense and 50% from discretionary spending -- a 1.2% cut in total.
The president has stood at the podium and basically told the public that furloughed defense workers and laid-off firefighters and policemen will now be forced to beat small children to death with uninspected meat while airplanes crash all around them and released prisoners rule the streets.
To Barack and his klatch, the sequester is their realization of Armageddon, but it isn't even an actual cut in spending. It's a cut in the already scheduled increase in spending. Even with the sequester, the government will spend more this year than last.
Now that it is a reality, he's changed his tune somewhat; it will hurt, but not right now "as some people have said."
"Yeah"...Homer Simpson says, while rolling his eyes, "some people."
In response to a political loss -- his inability to cow Republicans into cancelling spending cuts and increasing taxes with a last minute sequester fold -- Barack, has instead decided to punish America for not forcing Republican submission in response to his doomsday predictions.
"Let's make this hurt," he probably muttered to himself as he called forth his closest advisors, ordering them to put his best team of men (Seal Team Six?) on its preservation for posterity.
He has now ordered the release of incarcerated illegal immigrants and momentarily mothballed an aircraft carrier. Yet, his most egregious slight on the hopes and dreams of Americans, has been the cancellation of all public tours of the White House.
Barack Obama apparently believes that the worst thing he can do to America and Americans is to deprive them of access to him.
Here we are, wasting away in sequesterville, looking for our lost shaker of salt, and Barack thinks depriving vacationers to the capital the possibility, however miniscule, of a glimpse of him and the royal family (sometimes, they're not on vacation), is the worst he can do to all those hayseeds and clingers that make up the 50% of the nation who don't support his socialistic addiction to deficit spending and accumulated debt ($6 trillion so far).
And the best thing the Republicans have done with regard to the sequester, and in fact, during Obama's entire presidency, was to do nothing. I want more of that. Don't forget, we have the Obamacare implementation this year and next, that should torture everyone.
But, Barack is nothing if not a man of action...
In response to publicity surrounding the recent publication of the Chief White House Calligrapher Patricia A. Blair's salary of $96,725 per year (her 2 deputies, Debra S. Brown and Richard T. Muffler earn less, at $85,953 and $94,372, respectively), our President has decided to show he is serious about spending and has now ordered all future administration communications done in calligraphy.
If you watch CNN closely, you can see the sign posted in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, announcing the cancelation of tours is a prime example of calligraphic splendor.
...And people said he wasn't serious about managing our nation's finances.
If given enough rope, Barack Obama and his lackeys will hang themselves.
America picked this guy twice, and there is no working with the man. Use whatever legislative tools a minority party possesses to mitigate the Obamage, and allow the bitter angels of Barack's incompetence to become unbearably obvious.
Instead, I say Back Furack in everything he does. Let him be all he can be. Now that Hugo's dead, let Barack air out his inner Chavez and keep saying and doing one idiotic thing after another. The press will back him no matter what, but the citizenry, will finally begin to wonder: is this man as big a moron as he seems to be? In time, people will see him for what he is, America's worst mistake.
The worm has turned, and that is not just a reference to the ever-ambiguous Dennis Rodman's man-crush on the latest Kim (not that there's anything wrong with that).
The man (Barack, not Dennis or Kim) is on course to end his presidency with an approval rating in the single digits.
Opting to negotiate with this man is what Barack is fond of calling a "false choice." There are no deals to be had, and hubris, like water, seeks its own level. It is just a matter of time until Obama's self-regard eventually puts him under water with the people.
He has a date with destiny.
Let's not stand in his way.
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7)Rand Paul Shifts Political Orbit
By Jonathon MoseleyThe political world changed its orbit Wednesday as Rand Paul seized the spotlight in his March 6 filibuster. Rand Paul -- not this author's favorite before -- is probably now the 2016 front-runner for president. But the difference results from fundamental changes in substance.
How can one day be that big of a deal? Because Rand Paul demonstrated a reproducible, winning formula. It was as if Ronald Reagan were granted just one day to come back to Earth to remind the Party of Lincoln of "how it's done." Rand demonstrated a repeatable formula that all Republicans can copy. It is the template that is significant.
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But was March 6 "Republicans' Last Stand" or "Rand's First Stand?" What is most optimistic as the basis for this analysis is that Republican senators started showing up. The Senate floor was more crowded at 10:00 and 11:00 PM than it was at 6:00 PM. They felt it. They saw it. They "got" it. (Excepting one superannuated senator from Arizona.) It clicked. In other words, Republicans might possibly do more of same. If Rand disappears back into the woodwork, then March 6 will have meant nothing.Freshman Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz "got it." Cruz was all over it. Cruz gave voice to the moment best of all. Cruz threatened to go way over the top, reading from the movie "Patton" and Henry the Fifth's St. Crispin's Day speech on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt. Yet somehow, flirting with serious rhetorical dangers, Cruz captured the moment just right. Like a roller coaster, you gripped the car fearing Cruz was going to fly off into mid-air, yet to our great surprise Cruz hit his mark. He grasped the significance, to put it mildly. Cruz praised the raw bravery of "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" rather than those who die a thousand deaths in the thicket of their own worried thoughts.Rand Paul unveiled a conservative answer to the Left's Saul Alinsky tactics:• Rand Paul shoved Obama's agenda off the public stage. Just getting the political world talking about Republicans' message instead of Obama's means Republicans are winning and Obama is losing.• Rand picked his issue very carefully. He chose the hill he wanted his opponent to die on. Rand showed what happens when you wisely pick the right issue to defeat your opponent with.• Yet Rand's issue seamlessly fit within his larger philosophy. He didn't just take a cheap shot. Rand chose an example that proves his larger point. As a caller to the Chris Plante show on Washington's WMAL said, "the biggest minority in America is the individual." Rand's filibuster fit within Rand's overall defense of individual liberty. The specific point created an effective argument supporting his larger theme.• Rand advanced his strategic goal. The entire filibuster episode portrayed a radically different image of Barack Obama. Even among low information voters, Obama's public image just took a serious hit. Instead of being the cool guy who loves you, Obama is now the tyrant who reserves the right to kill you any time he feels like it. On an emotional level, Rand Paul undid in one day years of spin about Obama.• Rand had a sense of the role of theatrical drama. Conservatives are rightly wary of selling an invalid argument. But even to promote the truth, one must understand that humans are emotional beings. Communicating a message in a crowded, busy world requires a feel for the dramatic.• So Rand did this in a way difficult for the news media to ignore. In politics, if a tree falls in the forest and the news media doesn't report it, it never happened.• Rand then hammered the issue perfectly. Who can defend U.S. Government drones assassinating American citizens inside America if they are not engaged in any violence? The issue is a blinding searchlight leaving the critters nowhere to hide. You can't say it doesn't matter. And there's no defense.• Rand focused like a laser beam, anticipating the misrepresentation and caricatures he knew would be attempted. He repeatedly emphasized, probably a dozen times an hour, how modest his request was. He understood how his actions would be lied about, and cut the scoundrels off at the pass. He repeated what he wasn't demanding, what he wasn't arguing. He emphasized how he had voted for Obama's other nominees.• Rand wasn't careless. His argument withstood scrutiny. And it got scrutiny. Yet he had a solid argument. Democrat Senator Dick Durbin asked about killing Osama Bin Laden. But Seal Team 6 was trying to arrest Bin Laden. It was Bin Laden's violence in resisting arrest that got him killed. Rand repeatedly emphasized that inside the USA the government should arrest people and question them, not assassinate them.• Rand was nimble. He admitted that he hadn't planned the filibuster. But when the Obama Administration repeatedly confirmed that they believe the president has the authority to murder U.S. citizens inside the USA when they are not actively attacking anyone, Rand saw an opening and pounced. But he had the wisdom to know if it was a good opportunity or not.• Rand Paul had guts.Yet the GOP will be lost if it does not learn the lesson and follow Rand Paul's brilliant "teachable moment" example. Winston Churchill quipped: "Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on." We will see how thick-headed Republicans are if they miss the point.On the same day that Rand Paul showed us how it's done, Republicans in the U.S. House impersonated overboiled cauliflower and caved in to Obama's massive overspending. The U.S. House skipped the chance to slow out-of-control spending. The Republican House passed a Continuing Resolution at the same $3.6 trillion level -- $700 billion per year higher than Federal spending in 2008. Republicans could have passed a Continuing Resolution at a lower level, especially while objecting that the U.S. Senate has not passed any budget.This author has often criticized Ron Paul on some issues. When Papa Paul is right, he's right, when he's not, he's not. So Senator Rand Paul really had to earn my favorable opinion. But on March 6 he surely did. Count one very impressed convert here
8) Washington: Hizballah has got hold of chemical weapons
For the first time in many years, voices in the US administration were criticizing the Israeli defense forces for under-reacting and, in this case, also underestimating the chemical weapons threat emanating from Syria and neglecting to pursue counter-measures. This is what visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak heard when he met US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon Tuesday, March 5, as the new defense secretary’s first foreign visitor.
Military and Washington sources disclose that Barak was berated for “inadequate and cursory” military preparations which failed to take into account that a chemical attack on Israel would make it necessary for the IDF to enter Syria – most likely for an offensive operation coordinated against the common threat with the Turkish and Jordanian armies.
Present at the meeting between Hagel and Barak were also Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff and Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. Our sources add that the conversation ranged over the Syrian crisis with no reference to a nuclear Iran.
From the defense secretary, Barak heard intelligence estimates confirmed for the first time by an American official that Hizballah has been able to procure a quantity of chemical weapons from Syria – a development which Israel’s leaders have vowed to prevent.
The proliferation of chemical weapons to HIzballah and other armed bands on Israel’s borders was apparently in the mind of Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin, UN Security Council president for March, when he cautioned Monday that trouble was building up between Israel and Syria.
At UN Center in New York, Israeli and Russian delegates separately warned Monday, March 4, of a dangerous situation developing in the area of separation on the Golan captured by Israel in the 1967 war. Syrian troops were forbidden to enter this area under a ceasefire formalized in 1974 between Syria and Israel.
Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor complained to the Security Council about five shells fired from this very area which landed in Israel Saturday, March 2. "Israel cannot be expected to stand idle as the lives of its citizens are being put at risk by the Syrian government's reckless actions," Proser wrote in a Note to the council. "Israel has shown maximum restraint thus far."
Russia’s UN Ambasador Vitaly Churkin then spoke of “a very new and dangerous phenomenon” of armed groups operating in the Golan area of separation. “It’s something which potentially can undermine security between Syria and Israel,” said Churkin, who is acting Security Council president for March. He pointed out that the UN peacekeeping force is unarmed and unable to cope with this new situation. Israel and Syria are technically in a state of war.
Military and intelligence sources note the exchange of warnings between Israel and Russia touches two sensitive nerves:
1. It occurred the day before definitive talks open in Moscow between the Syrian government and opposition. The Russians fear Israel might embark on military action in response to the round of shells fired from the Syrian Golan Saturday, and force a delay in the talks. The last time this happened, in late January, Israel reacted with a cross-border attack on Syrian military installations.
2.The no-man’s lands unfolding along Syria’s borderlands with Israel and Jordan comes after the the withdrawal of the bulk of Syrian forces from these areas. Moscow fears additionally Israel’s armed forces will seize strategic points in the abandoned territory to clear out armed bands of the pro-al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra, which are believed responsible for the latest round of shelling into the Israeli Golan.
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Churkin’s warning referred to “armed groups” as the potential troublemakers, but he was also cautioning Israel to desist from fighting back so as not to upset Moscow’s diplomatic initiative for resolving the Syrian civil war
9)Why we give foreign aid
Sequestration is not the best time to be doling out foreign aid, surely the most unpopular item in the federal budget. Especially when the recipient is President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt.
Morsi is intent on getting the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman (the Blind Sheik), serving a life sentence for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center attack that killed six and wounded more than a thousand. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood is openly anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and otherwise prolifically intolerant. Just three years ago, Morsi called on Egyptians to nurse their children and grandchildren on hatred for Jews, whom he has called “the descendants of apes and pigs.”
Not exactly Albert Schweitzer. Or even Anwar Sadat. Which left a bad taste when Secretary of State John Kerry, traveling to Cairo, handed Morsi a cool $250 million. (A tenth of which would cover about 25 years of White House tours, no longer affordable under sequestration. Says the administration.)
Nonetheless, we should not cut off aid to Egypt. It’s not that we must blindly support unfriendly regimes. It is perfectly reasonable to cut off aid to governments that are intrinsically hostile and beyond our influence. Subsidizing enemies is merely stupid.
But Egypt is not an enemy, certainly not yet. It may no longer be our strongest Arab ally, but it is still in play. The Brotherhood aims to establish an Islamist dictatorship. Yet it remains a considerable distance from having done so.
Precisely why we should remain engaged. And engagement means using our economic leverage.
Morsi has significant opposition. Six weeks ago, powerful anti-Brotherhood demonstrations broke out in major cities and have continued sporadically ever since.The presidential election that Morsi won was decided quite narrowly — three points, despite the Brotherhood’s advantage of superior organization and a history of social service.
Moreover, having forever been in opposition, on election day the Islamists escaped any blame for the state of the country. Now in power, they begin to bear responsibility for Egypt’s miserable conditions — a collapsing economy, rising crime, social instability. Their aura is already dissipating.
There is nothing inevitable about Brotherhood rule. The problem is that the secular democratic parties are fractured, disorganized and lacking in leadership. And are repressed by the increasingly authoritarian Morsi.
His partisans have attacked demonstrators in Cairo. His security forces killed more than 40in Port Said. He’s been harassing journalists, suppressing freedom of speech, infiltrating the military and trying to subjugate the courts. He’s already rammed through an Islamist constitution. He is now trying to tilt, even rig, parliamentary elections to the point that the opposition called for a boycott and an administrative court has just declared a suspension of the vote.
Any foreign aid we give Egypt should be contingent upon a reversal of this repression and a granting of space to secular, democratic, pro-Western elements.
That’s where Kerry committed his mistake. Not in trying to use dollar diplomacy to leverage Egyptian behavior, but by exercising that leverage almost exclusively for economic, rather than political, reform.
Kerry’s major objective was getting Morsi to apply for a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. Considering that some of this $4.8 billion ultimately comes from us, there’s a certain comic circularity to this demand. What kind of concession is it when a foreign government is coerced into . . . taking yet more of our money?
We have no particular stake in Egypt’s economy. Our stake is in its politics. Yes, we would like to see a strong economy. But in a country ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood?
Our interest is in a non-Islamist, nonrepressive, nonsectarian Egypt, ruled as democratically as possible. Why should we want a vibrant economy that maintains the Brotherhood in power? Our concern is Egypt’s policies, foreign and domestic.
If we’re going to give foreign aid, it should be for political concessions — on unfettered speech, on an opposition free of repression, on alterations to the Islamist constitution, on open and fair elections.
We give foreign aid for two reasons: (a) to support allies who share our values and our interests, and (b) to extract from less-than-friendly regimes concessions that either bring their policies more in line with ours or strengthen competing actors more favorably inclined toward American objectives.
That’s the point of foreign aid. It’s particularly important in countries like Egypt, whose fate is in the balance. But it will only work if we remain clear-eyed about why we give all that money in the first place.
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