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This sign is for women who just drive and put gas in their car.
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Amen brother!
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My Golf Cart:
"One day while playing golf I accidentally overturned my golf cart.
Elizabeth, a very attractive and accomplished golfer, living in a villa on the golf course heard the noise and called out,
“Are you okay, what's your name?"
"It’s Mark, and I’m OK, thanks" I replied.
"Mark, forget your troubles. Come to my villa, rest a while,and then I'll help you get the cart back on its wheels."
"That's mighty nice of you," I answered
”But I don't think my wife would like it."
"Oh, come on," she insisted.
She was very pretty and persuasive.
"Well okay," I finally agreed, yet added,
"But my wife won't like it."
After a restorative brandy and a brief sit in the shade,I thanked my hostess. "I feel a lot better now, but I know my wife is going to be very upset."
"Don't be silly!” Elizabeth said with a smile, “She won't know anything. By the way, where is she?"
"Under the cart!" I replied...."
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This is the video of the Louisiana State Senator, Elbert Guillory, who switched to the Republican Party.
This is the video of the Louisiana State Senator, Elbert Guillory, who switched to the Republican Party.
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Pelosi was right. We had to pass 'Obamascare" to learn what was in it and now it is beginning to smell like a dead mackerel!
The current smelly aroma , of all things, is partly due to our current Sec. of State's sleight of hand when he was Senator Baystate! (See 1 below.)
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Printing money by World Central Banks has become a dangerous addiction. (See 2 below.)
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After attending several classes at The Naval War College, I became an avid reader of their Quarterly Publication. Thus, I have been writing and warning about China's Naval War Power growth for several years while our own shrinks.
The nation who rules the sea rules the world or, at the very least, is in a better position to protect their world wide commercial interests.
A strong navy remains an extension of a nation's foreign policy enforcement arm. (See 3 below.)
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These are students going to one of the better colleges in our nation.
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Caroline Glick - the unabashed hawk, takes Gen. Alon of the IDF's OC Central Command, to task for his failure to act and his former pronouncements. (See 4 below.)
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Democrats getting off the HMS Obama and boarding the HMS Good Ship Hillary.
Hope and change no longer sells so it is back to slick connivance! (See 5 below.)
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Pittsburgh has come back strong. Can Detroit even survive?
Unions, shoddy workmanship, lower cost foreign labor and better manufacturing ingenuity, making something consumers wanted, unfair and one sided federal labor laws and asleep at the switch management killed Detroit.
Pittsburgh faced similar problems but over came them.(See 6 below.)
Someone sent me a poster that was a bit overboard so I did not post. It was a picture of thriving Hiroshima today with a squalor one of Detroit juxtaposed and the caption read "Hit by an atomic bomb versus ruled by Democrats."
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Obama stubs toe on Berlin Wall according to Gorge Will.
I caught a bit of his speech and it sounded like preachy Rev. Wright wrote it. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)
John Kerry's ObamaCare Boondoggle
A backroom deal he cut for Massachusetts hospitals has caused a bipartisan uproar in Congress.
A bipartisan backlash is growing against another section of President Obama's health-care law. The president can blame this latest embarrassment on none other than Secretary of State John Kerry.
Everyone remember the origins of the so-called Affordable Care Act? The Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Gator-Aid, and other buyoffs for the votes of key Senate Democrats?
Three years on, yet another sweetheart deal has declared itself, this one inserted by the then-senator for Massachusetts. In Congress, it's becoming known as the Bay State Boondoggle.
At issue are the dollars that Medicare pays to hospitals for the wages of doctors and staff. Before the new health law, states were each allocated a pot of money to divvy among their hospitals. The states are required to follow rules in handing out the funds, in particular a requirement that state urban hospitals must be reimbursed for wages at least at the levels of state rural hospitals.
Enter Mr. Kerry, who slipped an opaque provision into the Obama health law to require that Medicare wage reimbursements now come from a national pool of money, rather than state allocations. The Kerry kickback didn't get much notice, since it was cloaked in technicality and never specifically mentioned Massachusetts. But the senator knew exactly what he was doing.
You see, "rural" hospitals in Massachusetts are a class all their own. The Bay State has only one, a tiny facility on the tony playground of the superrich—Nantucket. Nantucket College Hospital's relatively high wages set the floor for what all 81 of the state's urban hospitals must also be paid. And since these dramatically inflated Massachusetts wages are now getting sucked out of a national pool, there's little left for the rest of America. Clever Mr. Kerry.
The change has allowed Massachusetts to raise its Medicare payout by $257 million, forcing cuts to hospitals in 40 other states. The National Rural Health Association and 20 state hospital associations in January sent a panicked letter to President Obama, noting that the Massachusetts manipulation of the program would hand that state $3.5 billion over the next 10 years at the expense of Medicare beneficiaries everywhere. They quoted Mr. Obama's former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Donald Berwick, admitting that "What Massachusetts gets comes from everybody else."
Mr. Kerry's Yankee ingenuity isn't going down well with . . . most of Congress. Even representatives from the handful of states (nine) that have benefited along with Massachusetts from the new formula realize that mergers in the hospital arena, and changing "rural" designations, mean they could be hit in the future.
Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, an ardent supporter of Mr. Obama's health law, teamed up earlier this year with Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn to introduce legislation to kill the Bay State fleecing. Sixty-eight senators voted for the amendment as part of the (nonbinding) Senate budget resolution in March. That number included 23 Democrats, among them powerhouses of the liberal caucus: New York's Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin, and Minnesota's Al Franken.
Ms. McCaskill (whose state will lose $15 million in hospital payments this year) is now demanding a binding vote, and on Monday she sent out another letter ginning up names to add to the 23 bipartisan co-sponsors she and Mr. Coburn have for stand-alone legislation. Texas Republican Kevin Brady recently introduced a similar repeal bill in the House, where it already has 36 co-sponsors.
House Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam, a Republican co-sponsor, notes that his (and President Obama's) home state of Illinois has already lost $60 million. "It's a zero sum game that reinforces all of our worst fears about how the health-care law was drafted. Backroom negotiations, secret deals, and now this long con on Medicare reimbursement rates that is already doing real damage to Illinois hospitals," he tells me.
The episode is also heaping embarrassment on the American Hospital Association, a cheerleader for the health law that is now robbing most of its members blind. Rather than endorse current boondoggle-repeal efforts—which would require it to publicly admit its mistake—the AHA is hiding behind calls for more "comprehensive reform" of the wage-payment system.
That dodge isn't likely to satisfy its cash-strapped members for long. Indeed, the fury from state hospitals is growing daily, heaping enormous pressure on members to join this latest cleanup of the president's rushed law.
If anything, this revolt is illuminating a notable trend. Whether it's the 2011 repeal of the health law's tax-reporting requirement, or the bipartisan push to repeal its medical-device tax, or this Bay State fix, the political template has looked the same. Vulnerable Democrats, under pressure from home-state constituencies, want to look willing to "fix" or "improve" parts of a wildly unpopular health law that they supported. This has provided Republicans with the opportunity to recruit them for bipartisan votes to repeal parts of the act.
That template is worth remembering as the law flails ahead into a no man's land of soaring premiums, rickety health exchanges and expensive mandates and taxes. A lot of home-state constituencies are going to be screaming. And a lot of members are going to be looking for cover.
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2)Central Banks and the Borrowing Addiction
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2)Central Banks and the Borrowing Addiction
From 1980 to 2010, overall U.S. debt grew as fast as GDP. From 1950 to 1980, it was a small fraction of growth.
By ROMAIN HATCHUEL
Have financial markets become a giant crack house? Investors have certainly been acting like a bunch of junkies lately.
Any hint that their main dealer—otherwise known as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke—might start cutting down his generous supply of cash sets them off in a frenzy. Mr. Bernanke's latest comments on Wednesday, signaling a sooner-than-previously anticipated tapering off of the Fed's monetary easing, triggered a sharp global selloff in practically every asset class.
Japan, the world's most central-bank-driven market at the moment, recently has been at the forefront of this commotion. After rallying 50% from the beginning of the year until May 22, the Nikkei 225 index lost more than 13% in a matter of days due to fears of the Fed reducing its asset purchases, and contradictory statements made by Bank of Japan 8301.JA -3.68% chief Haruhiko Kuroda about the targeted level of interest rates. It has fallen another 4% since the end of May, putting it close to bear market territory. This growing dependence on central bank liquidity is only the latest stage of a long process of addiction that began decades ago.
Drug addicts turn to dangerous and potentially lethal substances in order to find happiness, or at least some comfort, that their sober lives can't provide. Getting high is a way for them to live in a falsely enhanced reality. That is exactly what most developed nations have been doing for the past 30 years—artificially stimulating their economies by abusing a toxic substance called debt.
From 1980 to 2010, the average amount of household, nonfinancial corporate and government debt as a percentage of gross domestic product in G-7 countries (the seven most industrialized economies, excluding China) grew to 303% from 177%, a 71% jump. Over that same period, real GDP in these seven countries increased by 88% on average. When considering these two statistics, it's hard not to infer that a heavy reliance on debt had something to do with the economic happiness the world's richest nations enjoyed during those years.
A closer look at the United States over a longer period provides an even clearer picture. From 1950 to 1980, the world's largest economy soared by 191% in inflation-adjusted terms, while the combination of household, corporate (including financial) and government debt increased by a mere 12%. In the following three decades, from 1980 to 2010, the U.S. GDP grew a more moderate 124%, yet total debt rose by an almost identical 125%.
Although one needs to be careful when drawing conclusions from such data, it is obvious that surging debt—whether public or private, household or corporate—contributed massively to the advanced world's economic expansion. Our prosperity was, if not stolen, at least borrowed from the future. Well, the future is now, and payback time is nearing.
Major central banks in late 2008 and 2009 engaged in unprecedented monetary easing conducted to avoid a full-fledged financial meltdown. In doing so, they have postponed the adjustments required to stabilize let alone bring down, aggregate levels of debt in the world's largest economies. The Fed and its counterparts from England, the euro zone, Switzerland, Japan and China, have printed an astounding $10 trillion since 2007, tripling the size of their combined balance sheets.
By flooding the world with liquidity and keeping interest rates at rock-bottom levels, they have exempted many fiscally challenged nations from having to deal with their debt addiction. These policies have also provided artificial support to household wealth and spending, as well as corporate balance sheets.
Why get off the drugs if Mr. Bernanke and other members of the international central-bank cartel are providing a seemingly infinite fix? For a good reason: The risk of a global overdose is probably as high as it has ever been.
Asset prices look bubbly across the board, resulting in erratic price movements that extend way beyond Japanese borders. U.S. 10-year Treasurys, which are among the least volatile securities, posted their worst monthly performance since December 2010, losing 3.5% of their value in May (and another 2% since then).
Few serious money managers will tell you that they still see compelling investment opportunities out there. The more optimistic ones usually put forward the same lame reason: liquidity, liquidity, liquidity. In other words, cheap money should continue to drive up asset prices.
Austerity-bashers agree that the party must go on. One of their most outspoken leaders, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, has been arguing for years that austerity simply "doesn't work." But his criticism fails to address the issue properly, since it ignores the fact that austerity—a combination of spending cuts and tax increases—is not a policy intended to stimulate growth. If anything, austerity initially hinders economic activity (as several peripheral European countries are now experiencing), and may even interfere with deficit- and debt-reduction efforts. Rehabilitation is not designed to provide short-term relief to drug addicts. It is always a long and painful process.
Most of those against austerity concede that some sort of fiscal consolidation—deficit and debt reduction—is needed, but not in times of economic hardship. This theory takes no account of the considerable risks that the global economy still faces. These threats require immediate fiscal action—delaying such action undermines confidence and could create self-fulfilling prophecies.
How long will markets continue to give credit to debt-addicted nations? Would any of us lend money to a junkie? This "spend more, worry later" approach is also a waste of the historic momentum that the crisis created for fiscal discipline and reform—momentum that is now fading due to asset reflation.
Austerity is not a choice, nor is it an alternative to some other economic policy. It is a life-or-death obligation meant to prevent the world from an otherwise inevitable debt overdose. Unlike what some would like to believe, there is no painless recovery from a crisis that follows 30 years of stolen growth through heavy debt abuse.
Mr. Hatchuel is managing partner of Square Advisors, LLC, a New York-based asset management firm.
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3)
China's Growing Challenge to U.S. Naval Power
Beijing builds while America's fleet shrinks. No wonder our Western Pacific allies are nervous
By SETH CROPSEY
On his recent trip to Asia, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel tried to allay fears that the 7% cut to the Pentagon's budget due to the sequester will diminish America's protective influence in the region. Referring to President Obama's pledge to "rebalance" U.S. forces in favor of Asia, Mr. Hagel told reporters that America is carrying forward "every measurement of our commitment to that 'rebalance.' "
He also spoke of U.S. efforts to improve military-to-military relations with China. His aides pointed to plans for increasing the U.S. Marine contingent based in Darwin on Australia's north coast to 1,100 from 250.
The defense secretary's message was unlikely to reassure America's allies in the region. The U.S. Marine contingent in Darwin, even if it reaches its long-term goal of 2,500 personnel, might be useful in a conflict over control of the narrow sea passages (the Strait of Malacca, Sunda Strait and Lombok Strait) through which shipping between Asia and Europe must pass. But the Marines would be of limited use if China directly threatened Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines or Vietnam. Darwin is roughly as far from the northern reaches of the South China Sea as New York is from San Francisco.
China will be participating in U.S.-led naval exercises near Hawaii, part of an effort to improve military relations with China. The exercises include Australia, Canada, South Korea and Japan. That's all well and good, but it is ludicrous to imagine that any of this will moderate Beijing's vaulting ambitions in the Western Pacific. In addition to China's long-standing threat to Taiwan, Beijing has made no secret of its desire for hegemony in the South and East China seas. It already has engaged in provocative incidents over territorial disputes with Japan and the Philippines.
These ambitions are backed by an extensive program of Chinese military modernization. According to a report last month by the U.S. Defense Department, Beijing continues to build up its medium-range and long-distance missile arsenal, antiship cruise missiles, space weapons and military cyberspace capabilities. China is also improving its fighters, building three classes of attack submarines, and has commissioned its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. It is, in short, building an advanced system of weaponry capable of striking Asian states from afar.
Facing this growing military might in the Western Pacific is a U.S. fleet less than half the size it was at the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. The plan to build the 306-ship fleet that the Navy says is necessary to accomplish all its missions rests on assumptions about shipbuilding costs that the Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Service agree are unrealistic. The current situation is also troubling. On Tuesday, Rep. Randy Forbes (R., Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on sea power, told a group at Washington's Hudson Institute that "In 2007, the Navy was able to meet about 90% of America's combatant commanders' need [for ships]. This year that figure will fall to 51%."
The growing disparity between Chinese and U.S. military investment will eventually alter the balance of power in the Western Pacific. This shift will likely lead either to military conflict or to tacit American acknowledgment of Chinese dominance. A war would be disastrous, but Chinese dominance would not bode well either: The U.S. ability to shape the international order would end with Chinese supremacy in the most populous and economically vigorous part of the world.
The budgets needed to achieve the Navy's goals were unlikely even before sequestration. The defense budget since 9/11 has averaged 4.1% of GDP. Under the budgets projected by the Obama administration, the figure is projected to drop to 2.5% in less than a decade.
If America's unilateral disarmament occurs and the Pentagon leadership clings to a more or less equal division of dollars among the military services, the U.S. sea power available in the Western Pacific will decline significantly. Alternatively, to maintain strong forces in the Pacific, the U.S. would be forced to abandon its naval presence in such areas of strategic concern as the Caribbean or the Persian Gulf.
Such a shell game is not in the best interest of U.S. strategy. Neither is it in the interest of the international order that America has helped to establish and maintain in the decades since World War II. What ultimately matters for the U.S. and for a stable world order is America's ability to maintain a distributed and powerful presence across the globe.
Yes, the U.S. needs to pay greater attention to the security situation in Asia. But "rebalancing" requires weight, and America is losing this weight. Japan's plan to increase its submarine fleet to 24 from 16 demonstrates that Asia's leaders know it.
Mr. Cropsey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of "Mayday" (Overlook, 2013). He served as a naval officer from 1985 to 2004 and as deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
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4)Delusional and dangerous Jews still continuing to stoke Palestinian anger, hopes
OC Central Command Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon has done it again. You may recall that Alon was the "senior military official," who as commander of the Judea and Samaria Division blamed the massacre of the Fogel family in March 2011 on undefined acts of vandalism in Arab villages allegedly carried out by Israelis. He also told the New York Times that he disagreed with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's view that Hamas's takeover of Gaza following Israel's withdrawal demonstrated that a unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would be reckless in the extreme.
Since he entered office in February, Kerry has come here nearly half a dozen times to force Israel to accept all of the PLO's preconditions for negotiations. These include an agreement in principle that in the framework of a peace deal, Israel will surrender to the PLO all of Judea, Samaria and northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem and expel the 550,000 Jews living in these areas from their homes. They also include a complete and continuous abrogation of Jewish property rights in Judea, Samaria and eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem, and the release of Palestinian terrorists jailed in Israeli prisons.
That person is probably Clinton, who is trouncing all other potential Democratic rivals in 2016 presidential polls.
“People are excited about the prospect of a Clinton candidacy, but also cognizant a campaign is a long way off.”
“I had a conversation with her where she said she needed time to see to some personal interests and I said, ‘The second you are ready — and I do not mean the minute and I do not mean the hour — but the second you are ready, I hope you will call me,’” Israel said.
“When people like Claire McCaskill who were so much for Barack Obama are now there for Hillary Clinton, it shows how Hillary Clinton has grown,” Davis, who is a columnist for The Hill, said.
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To get a feel for what this particular hell is like, you should read Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: An American Autopsy. LeDuff is a reporter who left the New York Times for the Detroit News and left the News when an editor took all the good stuff out of a story on a local judge. He's now a reporter for Fox 2 and you can get an idea of his personal style by watching his clips on YouTube. Detroit is a personal story for him: he grew up in the not-affluent suburb of Westland (named after a shopping center, as he notes) with a divorced mother who ran a florist shop on the east side of Detroit but who couldn't keep her children from dire fates. A daughter who became a streetwalker and died violently left behind her own daughter who would overdose on heroin. Three of LeDuff's brothers are working at just-above-minimum-wage jobs or not working at all (one pulled out a tooth with pliers). Charlie was lucky. He went into "the most natural thing for a man with no real talent. Journalism."
4)Delusional and dangerous Jews still continuing to stoke Palestinian anger, hopes
By Caroline B. Glick
OC Central Command Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon has done it again. You may recall that Alon was the "senior military official," who as commander of the Judea and Samaria Division blamed the massacre of the Fogel family in March 2011 on undefined acts of vandalism in Arab villages allegedly carried out by Israelis. He also told the New York Times that he disagreed with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's view that Hamas's takeover of Gaza following Israel's withdrawal demonstrated that a unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would be reckless in the extreme.
Over the past four months Alon has been criticized for his refusal to take actions to end the massive proliferation of terror attacks against Jews in Judea and Samaria. For months Alon ordered IDF forces to stand down as Palestinians hurled rocks and firebombs at them and at civilians. He set rules of engagement that are so restrictive that soldiers are better off running away from Palestinian mobs than defending themselves and Israeli civilians.
After Adva Biton, a three year old girl was critically wounded when her mother's car was stoned, and as online videos proliferated of IDF forces fleeing from assaults, and Israeli civilians being beaten and assaulted on the roads with firebombs, rocks and bullets, the media finally began reporting on the terror surge. Public pressure mounted for Alon to finally take action or be fired from his post.
You might think that given public scrutiny of his failures Alon would keep a low profile. But he hasn't. On Tuesday he spoke to a group of foreign journalists and diplomats and said that in his "professional" opinion, if we don't start negotiations with the Palestinians soon, we are likely to see an escalation of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis.
Alon's claims deserve scrutiny because they expose just how deeply his political views impede his ability to understand and competently perform his duties. Alon disclosed that the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements is the group behind the rioting and attacking Israeli civilians and military forces. The group, he revealed, is bankrolled by the PA. According to Alon, out of respect for US Secretary of State John Kerry's attempts to renew peace talks, the PA suspended the group's funding. He explained that this PA decision has led to a steep drop in terror attacks.
Alon said that the PA has kept its funding cut-off —like the funding itself — secret. Alon attributed the PA's silence to its leaders' modesty and moderation. In his words, "They weren't looking for diplomatic recognition for the move but rather for the territory to quiet down."
Alon also mentioned that PA security forces are involved in stone and firebomb attacks on Israelis. He warned that if Kerry's attempts to start peace talks between Israel and the PLO fail, then Palestinian terror will get worse. In his words, "If, in a few weeks, the attempt of the American involvement will go [away] with nothing, I'm afraid that we will see this trend of escalation even strengthening."
The implications of Alon's revelations are obvious. The supposedly grassroots groups of local rioters — including children -- attacking IDF forces and Israeli civilians with bullets, firebombs and stones are not at all independent or grassroots. They are wholly owned and operated franchises of the PA. And the ones leading the attacks are the US-trained Palestinian security services.
Most people would take these two pieces of information and conclude the PA is an enemy entity engaged in a massive and sustained terror campaign against Israeli forces and civilians. But Alon missed this. Alon revealed the secret PA funding of the rioters to prove its moderation by also revealing that the funding was temporarily suspended.
Alon's strategy for dealing with the violence is not to do his job — deploy forces judiciously to defend the country and its citizens from our enemies. His strategy is to pressure the government to surrender to all of the PLO's territorial and political demands.
Because that is Kerry's peace plan.
Since he entered office in February, Kerry has come here nearly half a dozen times to force Israel to accept all of the PLO's preconditions for negotiations. These include an agreement in principle that in the framework of a peace deal, Israel will surrender to the PLO all of Judea, Samaria and northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem and expel the 550,000 Jews living in these areas from their homes. They also include a complete and continuous abrogation of Jewish property rights in Judea, Samaria and eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem, and the release of Palestinian terrorists jailed in Israeli prisons.
It ought to go without saying that there is no connection between military affairs and Alon's positions, and his ideological blindness to basic strategic realities renders him unfit for duty.
But it doesn't go without saying. Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon continues to support Alon despite his ideologically induced incompetence.
Alon is just one — albeit and important one — of many unelected public officials whose actions stand opposed to his responsibilities, to the public interest and to the official policies of the government.
Take Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein. A year ago today, a committee of distinguished jurists led by retired Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy submitted a report to the government on the legal status of construction in Judea and Samaria. The Levy Report was not a radical document. All it did was set out the legal basis for the positions that have been adopted by every Israeli government since 1967. Like every single government since 1967, the Levy Report stated that Judea and Samaria do not fit under the international legal definition of territories under belligerent occupation and as a consequence, the 4th Geneva Convention does not apply, and Israeli communities in these areas are completely legal and legitimate.
Weinstein is supposed to serve as the legal advisor to the government. But in the case of the Levy Report, and not only in this case, he acted instead as a political commissar. He abused his legal position to intimidate the government not to adopt the findings of a committee it empaneled, and whose recommendations were aligned with its own stated positions.
Post-Zionists like Alon and Weinstein, like their comrades on the Supreme Court and in the media are intimidating enough on their own. But their subversive behavior is supported by the US and the EU. Kerry's obsessive focus on forcing Israeli concessions to the PLO, like the EU's decision to support of an economic boycott of Israeli exports, strengthens the position of radicals like Alon and Weinstein. They make it all but impossible for the government to implement its own policies.
In many respects, Netanyahu has given in to these pressures. Not only has he overseen the appointment of post-Zionists like Alon and Weinstein. By appointing Tzipi Livni to serve as Justice Minister and the minister responsible for negotiations with the PLO, he has ensured that nothing will be done to remedy the phenomenon of radicals being promoted to positions where they can undermine the policies of the government.
Moreover, as Housing Minister Uri Ariel acknowledged this week, due to the confluence of foreign pressure and the empowerment of post-Zionists in the public sector, the government is not respecting Jewish property rights in Jerusalem. It is banning construction for Jews in the capital by preventing planning committees from convening to approve building plans. Netanyahu is using similar administrative tools to enact an undeclared freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria.
In taking these actions, Netanyahu is betting — probably correctly — that he will not be forced to surrender Judea and Samaria because Abbas will never agree to negotiate with Israel. Under Abbas's leadership, Palestinian society has been so radicalized that there is no Palestinian constituency that supports peace with Israel. So too, the Islamic world has become so radicalized since US President Barack Obama came into office that there is no regional support whatsoever for a Palestinian decision to recognize Israel.
While Netanyahu's policies may allow him to survive Obama's second term without irrevocably destroying the country, on the ground, the lives of Israel's citizens are not being defended, and their legal and civil rights are being trampled.
Ariel, like Jewish Home Party leader Minister Naftali Bennett, doubtlessly wishes to end this state of affairs. But so far, their efforts in this area have been limited to calling for the government to change its policies. They and likeminded government ministers have the power to fix this situation. And the time has come for them to act.
The Levy Report provides several recommendations for respecting the legal rights of Jews in Judea and Samaria. There is no reason for the government not to implement these recommendations — even without formally adopting the report.
The report's main recommendation is to take the government out of the zoning process. The property and civil rights of Jews in Judea and Samaria must be accorded the same respect as those of all Israelis regardless of the political views of appointed officials or foreign governments. Local councils and municipalities in Judea and Samaria, as well as Jerusalem's municipal government should have the power to approve building plans within their municipal boundaries.
To bring about this result, the government must remove the Ministry of Interior from the zoning process in Jerusalem. The government should not have the power to convene or block the convention of local planning boards.
As for Judea and Samaria, the sale of private lands should not require the approval of the Civil Administration. And in accordance with the recommendations of the Levy Report, a land registry should be established and anyone with legal title to land should be required within 3-5 years to register his holdings or lose his ownership rights. So too, in keeping with the Levy Report, Israeli courts should be empowered to adjudicate land ownership disputes in Judea and Samaria. The government's position on land disputes should be determined only after the disputes are adjudicated in properly constituted courts of law.
Beyond the Levy Committee's recommendations, to further privatize the field, as is the case in the rest of the country, state lands that are within the boundaries of recognized communities should become the property of the communities, not the state.
Since 1967, the Israelis who support Jewish settlement of Judea and Samaria based their actions on the assumption that the government is interested in securing Jewish rights. Certainly after the government forcibly expelled the Jews of northern Samaria and Gaza from their homes, this assumption is unjustified. With the empowerment of ideologically driven radicals like Alon and Weinstein to key positions it is downright ridiculous.
Rather than expect the government to act as a partner or a defender, we should simply demand that it serve as a neutral facilitator, and privatize settlement activities. Only by taking the government out of local planning and zoning councils, focusing efforts on buying private land and establishing a land registry for Judea and Samaria, while requiring land disputes to be adjudicated by properly constituted courts, can Israelis secure their property and civil rights.
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5)Dems start Obama-to-Clinton transition
Democrats in Washington are starting to shift from the Obamas to the Clintons.
Hillary Clinton has already racked up a couple of endorsements for the 2016 presidential race — and she hasn’t even announced she’s running yet. Requests are flooding in for the former secretary of State to campaign for candidates.
Of course, President Obama remains the most sought-after figure, but his star power could fade in the coming months as the chatter about his successor intensifies. His approval rating has fallen as his administration has grappled with a variety of controversies ranging from IRS overreach to government snooping.
“The political focus of the Democratic Party will shift to Hillary, and in some ways it has already,” said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), who, as a staunch Clinton supporter, has an interest in seeing his forecast come true.
He noted that while Obama will be the policy leader of the party, there will be an “inherent transition” politically to the person Democrats see as the next leader.
That person is probably Clinton, who is trouncing all other potential Democratic rivals in 2016 presidential polls.
All the Clinton allies The Hill spoke to repeatedly emphasized her loyalty to Obama, pointing out that she needs some rest after her busy tenure as secretary of State. They stressed that she hasn’t made up her mind about 2016.
At the same time, however, they acknowledge that she is the early favorite for the next Democratic presidential nomination.
“There is a cautious presumption that the nomination is hers for the taking,” said Phil Singer, deputy communications manager for Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
“People are excited about the prospect of a Clinton candidacy, but also cognizant a campaign is a long way off.”
That caution is in place for a reason: There is a danger that Clinton could peak too early. She was the heavy favorite in the 2008 Democratic race before narrowly losing to Obama.
“Bubbles inflated early in the process can deflate,” Singer said.
“The piece that tends to get most overlooked is she hasn’t decided to run yet,” said Mo Elleithee, who was a spokesman for Clinton’s 2008 campaign. “She’s got to make a decision first and make it in her own time.”
There have been hints that Clinton is laying the groundwork for a campaign: She started a Twitter account with a description of her past titles and the note “TBD.” She is also working on a memoir.
And then there was Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-Mo.) unusual endorsement of Clinton on Tuesday — 30 months before the 2016 Iowa Caucus.
Several former Clinton aides told The Hill that they were surprised by McCaskill’s announcement.
During her first Senate campaign in 2006, McCaskill said she would not let her daughter be alone with former President Bill Clinton.
Some have viewed the Missouri Democrat’s move as a way to make amends with the Clintons, who are known to have long memories. It’s likely that other Democrats who criticized the Clintons during the 2008 race will follow McCaskill’s lead. That group could include lawmakers, lobbyists and Hollywood figures.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a longtime ally of the Clintons, officially jumped on board the Clinton 2016 bandwagon on Tuesday.
“I am personally urging Secretary Clinton to run,” Gillibrand said during an event at the Third Way think tank. “I’ve told her I plan to support her in any way I can.”
If Clinton opts against running, there is talk that Gillibrand might launch her own bid for the White House.
But before 2016 rolls around, there are the 2014 midterm elections. Democratic lawmakers are already clamoring for Clinton’s aid.
“It’s almost universal,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (N.Y.).
“Members would like her to drop by for a visit or two.”
He said he spoke to Clinton about helping Democrats retake the House.
“I had a conversation with her where she said she needed time to see to some personal interests and I said, ‘The second you are ready — and I do not mean the minute and I do not mean the hour — but the second you are ready, I hope you will call me,’” Israel said.
Rendell said if he were running again, he’d want Clinton over Obama to campaign for him because “President Obama is so identified with healthcare” and other controversial policy issues.
“Hillary comes in as a white knight with little downside.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who is seeking a second term next year, said, “We’re talking to her about helping me in my reelection effort, and I know that she’s taking a little break. But I’m hopeful that she will and I’m also hopeful she’s going to run for president.”
If reelected, Shaheen is expected to be a major player in the 2016 first-in-the-nation presidential primary in her home state. Her husband, William Shaheen, served as Clinton’s co-chairman of her national and New Hampshire campaigns in the 2008 contest.
Clinton’s approval ratings have dropped recently amid continued GOP attacks about her decisions related to the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. But her popular approval numbers remain over 50 percent.
Lanny Davis, a former special counsel in the Clinton White House who has known Hillary Clinton since law school, said her tenure at the State Department enhanced her stature.
“When people like Claire McCaskill who were so much for Barack Obama are now there for Hillary Clinton, it shows how Hillary Clinton has grown,” Davis, who is a columnist for The Hill, said.
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Detroit scenes.
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6)
The Unheavenly City
When people ask me why I moved from liberal to conservative, I have a one-word answer: Detroit. I grew up there, on a middle-class grid street in northwest Detroit and a curving street in affluent suburban Birmingham, and I got a job as an intern in the office of the mayor in the summer of 1967 when Detroit rioted. I was at the side of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and occasionally Governor George Romney during the six days and nights in which 43 people, mostly innocent bystanders, died. I listened to the radio in the police commissioner's office as commanders announced, shortly after sundown, that they were abandoning one square mile after another. The riot ended only after federal troops were called in and restored order.
Cavanagh was bright, young, liberal, and charming. He had been elected in 1961 at age 33 with virtually unanimous support from blacks and with substantial support from white homeowners—then the majority of Detroit voters—and he was reelected by a wide margin in 1965. He and Martin Luther King, Jr., led a civil rights march of 100,000 down Woodward Avenue in June 1963. He was one of the first mayors to set up an antipoverty program and believed that city governments could do more than provide routine services; they could lift people, especially black people, out of poverty and into productive lives. Liberal policies promised to produce something like heaven. Instead they produced something more closely resembling hell. You can get an idea of what happened to Detroit by looking at some numbers. The Census counted 1,849,568 people in Detroit in 1950, including me. It counted 713,777 in 2010.
To get a feel for what this particular hell is like, you should read Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: An American Autopsy. LeDuff is a reporter who left the New York Times for the Detroit News and left the News when an editor took all the good stuff out of a story on a local judge. He's now a reporter for Fox 2 and you can get an idea of his personal style by watching his clips on YouTube. Detroit is a personal story for him: he grew up in the not-affluent suburb of Westland (named after a shopping center, as he notes) with a divorced mother who ran a florist shop on the east side of Detroit but who couldn't keep her children from dire fates. A daughter who became a streetwalker and died violently left behind her own daughter who would overdose on heroin. Three of LeDuff's brothers are working at just-above-minimum-wage jobs or not working at all (one pulled out a tooth with pliers). Charlie was lucky. He went into "the most natural thing for a man with no real talent. Journalism."
* * *
His book opens as he notices in the ice at the bottom of an elevator shaft in one of Detroit's many, many abandoned buildings the feet of a corpse. We see him having a drink with Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers, the congressman's wife who later went to jail for bribery—and stopping off before to see the 13-year-old girl who, while attending a council session, criticized Conyers for calling the council president "Shrek." He makes the mistake of stopping for gas on the east side ("semi-lawless and crazy") and escapes being robbed by two goons when he pulls a gun from his glove compartment. He hangs out with honest guys whose job is to cope with the city's violent murders and arson-set fires—"murder dick" Mike Carlisle; firefighters Mike Nevin, who is unjustly sacked, and Walt Harris, who says grace at firehouse meals and dies in a fire set by an arsonist for $20. Detroit is no longer the nation's murder capital—though, LeDuff notes, police officials systematically undercount homicides—and Halloween is no longer Devil's Night (with 810 arsons in 1984). But the good guys are fighting uphill. City and county buildings are dilapidated; firemen have to bring their own toilet paper to work and don't have water pressure to put out a fire set in their own firehouse; the morgue doesn't have room for all the bodies.
Dan Austin's Lost Detroit (2010), a book highlighting a dozen of the city's abandoned architectural landmarks, shows photos of the old Packard plant, closed since 1956, where young men drive cars to the top and then pitch them to the ground, trees growing inside what were once downtown office buildings, and a grand 1920s downtown theater whose interior is now used as a parking lot (without many cars). LeDuff helps you see the rot. As he goes about his rounds he shows you "neck-high grass that went ignored and the garbage heaps that went uncollected," "sewers backed up into houses," and the disgusting disrepair of public buildings.
* * *
Who is responsible for all this? LeDuff sometimes seems ready to blame just about everybody in authority-crooked politicians, political fixers, lazy judges, General Motors executives, union leaders, Wall Street. Looming over his narrative is the giant—literally giant; he is hugely tall and fat—figure of Kwame Kilpatrick, son of a (now former) congresswoman. He was elected mayor of Detroit in 2001 and 2005, and convicted of bribery in a trial replete with evidence of phone-sex texting with one of his top staffers. And there's no doubt Kilpatrick fostered a political culture that was rotten to the core.
But Kilpatrick didn't start it. I blame the ambitious liberalism of the Cavanagh years, which I believed in at the time, and the 20-year rule of Coleman Young, mayor from 1973 to 1993. Young was smart, funny, and politically ruthless, with a background in left-wing unionism. The story I heard was that he supported the reelection of pro-Communist R.J. Thomas as president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in 1947 against the anti-Communist Walter Reuther; after Reuther won, Young lost his job as a pork chopper (the local word for union staffer) and was sent back to the assembly line. As mayor he disbanded the police department's stop-and-frisk unit. Crime soared and Devil's Night became a Detroit institution. Young occasionally denounced black criminals. But much more often he denounced white suburbanites and in his autobiography, published after he left office, savaged white homeowners who left the city. His economic strategy was to ally with the big auto companies and the UAW, just as their business model was undermined by foreign-based competitors. He got the Big Three automakers to finance the 70-story Renaissance Center, physically disconnected from the rest of downtown, and tore down a viable white neighborhood to make room for General Motors's Poletown plant. The great northward migration of Southern blacks quadrupled Detroit's black population from 149,000 in 1940 to 660,000 in 1970. The high crime rates of the Young years reduced its non-black population from 853,000 in 1970 to 250,000 in 1990; it was down to 125,000 in 2010.
Liberal city government is expensive—Cavanagh instituted a city income tax raised later to 2.5%—and increasingly ineffective. The Detroit News reported that 47% of property owners didn't pay their 2011 property tax. The public employee unions, just starting up in the Cavanagh years, have long been pushing for salaries, benefits, and pensions that are increasingly unaffordable. So the city has let its physical facilities go to ruin, as LeDuff notes again and again. Dave Bing, the former basketball player and auto parts business owner who was elected mayor in 2009, threatened to close 77 of the city's parks. Detroit under its 1922 charter is a civil service city, with nonpartisan elections and nine council members elected at large. So, as LeDuff notes, council members and judges are often elected because they have familiar names. They don't have neighborhood responsibilities like Chicago's 50 aldermen and 50 Democratic ward committeemen. When I worked for Mayor Cavanagh, I was impressed by the competence and civic responsibility of Detroit's top civil servants. But since then the culture of civil servants and political appointees seems to have become one of entitlement and, as LeDuff observes, iron indifference to the plight of city residents.
* * *
Young complained about white flight, but that's not much of a problem any more. Hardy urbanites are trying to reclaim neighborhoods around downtown and Wayne State University for their hip form of civilization and may succeed. Now blacks are fleeing. Detroit's black population peaked at 777,000 in 1990; it leveled off to 775,000 in 2000 and plunged to 590,000 in 2010. Blacks with decent jobs and steady habits have been moving to the suburbs or back to their grandparents' South, and those who remain tend to be the people with no good alternative and no hope. Those who have visited both Detroit and Hiroshima will have trouble guessing which country won that war. You can see the devastation in the photos at the end of Detroit, in Austin's Lost Detroit or Julia Reyes Taubman's Detroit: 138 Square Miles (2011), and on the websites specializing in Detroit's ruins (I'm tempted to call them Detroit porn). But Charlie LeDuff seems determined to keep on fighting. He ends his book with two scenes. One is the sentencing of the arsonist who gave a bum $20 to torch the house where Walt Harris died. The judge gave him 42 years. The second is what he finds in the mosquito-infested neck-high grass of the field where his sister met a violent death. A fawn.
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7)Obama hits a wall in Berlin
By George F. Will
The question of whether Barack Obama’s second term will be a failure was answered in the affirmative before his Berlin debacle, which has recast the question, which now is: Will this term be silly, even scary in its detachment from reality?
Before Berlin, Obama set his steep downward trajectory by squandering the most precious post-election months on gun-control futilities and by a subsequent storm of scandals that have made his unvarying project — ever bigger, more expansive, more intrusive and more coercive government — more repulsive. Then came Wednesday’s pratfall in Berlin.
There he vowed energetic measures against global warming (“the global threat of our time”). The 16-year pause of this warmingwas not predicted by, and is not explained by, the climate models for which, in his strange understanding of respect for science, he has forsworn skepticism.
Regarding another threat, he spoke an almost meaningless sentence that is an exquisite example of why his rhetoric cannot withstand close reading: “We may strike blows against terrorist networks, but if we ignore the instability and intolerance that fuels extremism, our own freedom will eventually be endangered.” So, “instability and intolerance” are to blame for terrorism? Instability where? Intolerance of what by whom “fuels” terrorists? Terrorism is a tactic of destabilization. Intolerance is, for terrorists, a virtue.
It is axiomatic: Arms control is impossible until it is unimportant. This is because arms control is an arena of competition in which nations negotiate only those limits that advance their interests. Nevertheless, Obama trotted out another golden oldie in Berlin when he vowed to resuscitate thecadaver of nuclear arms control with Russia. As though Russia’s arsenal is a pressing problem. And as though there is reason to think President Vladimir Putin, who calls the Soviet Union’s collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” is interested in reducing the arsenal that is the basis of his otherwise Third World country’s claim to great-power status.
Shifting his strange focus from Russia’s nuclear weapons, Obama said “we can . . . reject the nuclear weaponization that North Korea and Iran may be seeking.” Were Obama given to saying such stuff off the cuff, this would be a good reason for handcuffing him to a teleprompter. But, amazingly, such stuff is put on his teleprompter and, even more amazing, he reads it aloud.
Neither the people who wrote those words nor he who spoke them can be taken seriously. North Korea and Iran may be seeking nuclear weapons? North Korea mayhave such weapons. Evidently Obama still entertains doubts that Iran is seeking them.
In Northern Ireland before going to Berlin, Obama sat next to Putin, whose demeanor and body language when he is in Obama’s presence radiate disdain. There Obama said: “With respect to Syria, we do have differing perspectives on the problem, but we share an interest in reducing the violence.” Differing perspectives?
Obama wants to reduce the violence by coaxing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who is winning the war, to attend a conference at which he negotiates the surrender of his power. Putin wants to reduce the violence by helping — with lavish materiel assistance and by preventing diplomacy that interferes — Assad complete the destruction of his enemies.
Napoleon said: “If you start to take Vienna — take Vienna.” Douglas MacArthur said that all military disasters can be explained by two words: “Too late.” Regarding Syria, Obama is tentative and, if he insists on the folly of intervening, tardy. He is giving Putin a golden opportunity to humiliate the nation responsible for the “catastrophe.” In a contest between a dilettante and a dictator, bet on the latter.
Obama’s vanity is a wonder of the world that never loses its power to astonish, but really: Iseveryone in his orbit too lost in raptures of admiration to warn him against delivering a speech soggy with banalities and bromides in a city that remembers John Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” and Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall”? With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting nearby, Obama began his Berlin speech: “As I’ve said, Angela and I don’t exactly look like previous German and American leaders.” He has indeed said that, too, before, at least about himself. It was mildly amusing in Berlin in 2008, but hardly a Noel Coward-like witticism worth recycling.
His look is just not that interesting. And after being pointless in Berlin, neither is he, other than for the surrealism of his second term.
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