Logic Demands A Rational Policy Pertaining to Legal Immigration!

This economist sees The Fed between a rock and a hard place because of Obama's negative growth policies.

The Fed has had to carry the ball and the ball is not getting lighter.  (See 1 below.)
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If the Immigration Bill is amnesty in disguise then the Republican Party has a death wish and you can thank McCain and his followers.  (See 2 below.)

We need a realistic overhaul with respect to our immigration policies but I suspect no the one The Senate passed.  (See 2a below.)
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Another typical Obama appointment at The State Department represents a nail in Israel's coffin? (See 3 below.)

Analysis of Kerry's performance to date at State! (See 3a Below.)
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Netanyahu right brass wrong when it comes to Iran!  Now a grudging admission comes too late. (See 4 below.)
Dick
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1) Gross domestic product (GDP) growth was revised downward for the first quarter from 2.4 to 1.8 percent because: consumer spending, business investment and exports grew less than previously estimated.

Slack consumer and business spending raise questions about whether household balance sheets have strengthened enough to fuel more robust growth in the second half of 2013 as many forecasters — in particular bank economists who tend to wear rose colored glasses — are anticipating.

Also, businesses remain wary about the growth of future sales and Obama Care associated healthcare costs. They remain reluctant to invest in new equipment, expand and hire new employees.

Poorer export performance indicates the manufacturing renaissance continues to be held back by sluggish growth in Europe, and protectionism and undervalued currencies in China and Japan. American manufactures lack market opportunities abroad.

Low interests rates-low overnight rates facilitated by Fed Open Market Operations and low long-term rates facilitated by QE3 have: inspired speculators to rush into the housing market, pushing up prices; encouraged students to take on too much debt, portending weaker consumer spending in the future; instigated easy credit terms and high transactions values for auto sales; and pushed up prices for junk bonds and kept many marginal companies in business.

If the Fed pulls back, mortgage rates will rise-slowing the housing recovery; student borrowing will slow — raising unemployment among 18-to-30 year olds and dampening consumer spending; car loans will become tougher and more expensive to get — lowering transactions prices and sale volumes in the auto industry; and lower the prices for junk bonds-causing bankruptcies among weaker businesses.

The Fed is between a rock and hard place. Obama Administration policies have been antigrowth — for example, the failure to confront China on the yuan; failure to approve more offshore drilling; failure to properly regulate banks, causing both loan shortages for good businesses and too many bad loans for questionable enterprises; healthcare policies that raise benefits costs and slow hiring; and regulatory overreach elsewhere that stifles manufacturing investment.

This has forced the Fed to carry the ball, but Fed easy money policies are creating distortions in asset markets-for example, elevated prices for agricultural land, homes, stocks and bonds; and too many risky derivatives.

If the Fed slows QE3, it risks torpedoing a fragile recovery. If it continues easy money policies, distortions in asset markets continue to grow, and new bubbles will threaten another financial crisis.

Peter Morici is an economist and professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and widely published columnist.
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2)Republican Party Won't Survive Amnesty Bill and Neither will America
By Karin McQuillan

The Republican Party won't survive the passing of the Democrat's illegal immigration amnesty bill.  This shouldn't be too complex for the D.C. geniuses:  if you betray your party's base to pander to the opposition's base, they win, you lose.

If you screw the white working class to pander to the Hispanic vote, whites will stay home.

If you destroy your base's trust in government, by passing yet another 2000 page bill no one has read, Republicans will stay home.  Republicans are too busy working and raising a family to waste their time voting for a bunch of cynical, lying politicians.

President Bush let down his base by spending money like a drunken sailor.  They stayed home.   

Obama lost Democrat voters in 2012, but he won anyway because an estimated 6 million white voters stayed home compared to 2008.  Who were these election drop-outs?  Rural, working class Republicans.  What issues did these voters care about?  They are deficit hawks, and want to see government spending come under control - not a swelling of the welfare state to support illegals.  They hate illegal immigration.  They want good education and a solvent Medicare system.  They want to feel listened to by their own party.  And they will not vote for a party that betrays them, no matter how awful the other side is.

The Democrats want "comprehensive" immigration reform because it legalizes eleven (or is it twenty?) millionillegals, brings in their families and on top of that, doubles the number of legal immigrants.  Plus the CBO says 75% of illegal immigration would continue.  This will create a record number of foreign-born legals and illegals, mostly Spanish-speaking, mostly third world, mostly a net drain on taxpayers. We are talking about an estimated 56 million people within a decade.  According to the Center for Immigration studies, "There has never been a period in American history when the foreign-born share grew this fast."

The immigration bill will permanently wipe away America as we know it.  Democrats believe this will mean a permanent voting majority for their big government welfare state.  They are right.  We will become Republicans' worst nightmare: a nanny state with a permanent Democrat majority who feel entitled to live on taxpaying families.

Hopes for a good economic future for America's blacks and working class will be sunk, as they are forced to compete for low wage jobs.  Hopes for constitutionally limited government will be sunk, as we get an unassimilated influx of third world people who do not understand our republic and the principals for which it stands. 

Republican politicians, we are told, think the amnesty bill will be good for them personally.  They have business and agribusiness lobbyists who profit from illegals and new immigrants' low wages and no benefits.  The Republican leadership is willing to sell out America to fatten their own political coffers - and they think they can survive the voters' wrath?

The cost of illegal immigration to the taxpayers of Los Angeles County alone is $1 billion a year.  For the country's taxpayers, it is already well over $100 billion a year.  Most of the expense to support illegals is at the state and local government.  We hear about the taxes paid by illegals, but that covers 5%  of the local and state government spending on them, and only 30% of federal outlays.

Even low-skill, low-wage legal immigrants are a burden on their fellow citizens.  According to the Heritage Foundation:

In 2010, in the U.S. population as a whole, households headed by persons without a high school degree, on average, received $46,582 in government benefits while paying only $11,469 in taxes. ...Lawful immigrants receive significantly more welfare... than U.S.-born households...with the same education level.

For the 11 million illegals who are about to be given amnesty, it is far, far worse:

Amnesty would provide unlawful households with access to over 80 means-tested welfare programs, Obamacare, Social Security, and Medicare. ... The typical unlawful immigrant is 34 years old...If amnesty is enacted, the average adult unlawful immigrant would receive $592,000 more in government benefits over the course of his remaining lifetime than he would pay in taxes.

Over a lifetime, the former unlawful immigrants together would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services and pay $3.1 trillion in taxes. They would generate a lifetime fiscal deficit (total benefits minus total taxes) of $6.3 trillion. (All figures are in constant 2010 dollars.) This ... understates real future costs because it undercounts the number of unlawful immigrants and dependents ... and underestimates significantly the future growth in welfare and medical benefits.

We are looking at crushing tax burden for Americans.

So why is the Republican leadership going along?  Do their voters want higher taxes, a bankrupt safety net, a bigger government?  Amnesty and an explosion of legal immigration betray every promise made during the election, and every interest of the majority of Republican voters. 

Read our lips:  we do not want amnesty.


2a) Immigrationists and the Death of America
By Selwyn Duke
Let's do a little thought exercise here.  Imagine that some force was flooding an indigenous people's lands with millions of unassimilable foreigners, and it was understood that this influx would irretrievably change that land's culture and replace the population.  What would anthropologists call this phenomenon?  Cultural genocide comes to mind.  

Of course, in America we call it "immigration policy."

Now, when King Edward I "Longshanks" said about dominating the Scots in the film Braveheart, "If we can't get them out, we'll breed them out," it was to be expected from an enemy of Scotland.  And how should we characterize America's immigrationists?

Before answering, let's first consider the testimony of Fredo Arias-King, ex-aide to former Mexican president-elect Vicente Fox (hat tip: Timothy Birdnow).  About how he and his colleagues spoke to 50 U.S. congressmen and senators back in 1999 and 2000, he writes:

Of those 50 legislators, 45 were unambiguously pro-immigration, even asking us at times to "send more." This was true of both Democrats and Republicans.

...[Moreover] [m]ost of them seemed to be aware of the negative or at least doubtful consequences of mass immigration from Latin America, while still advocating mass immigration.

... [The Democrat legislators] seemed more interested in those immigrants and their offspring as a tool to increase the role of the government in society and the economy. Several of them tended to see Latin American immigrants and even Latino constituents as both more dependent on and accepting of active government programs and the political class guaranteeing those programs, a point they emphasized more than the voting per se. Moreover, they saw Latinos as more loyal and "dependable" in supporting a patron-client system and in building reliable patronage networks to circumvent the exigencies of political life as devised by the Founding Fathers[.]

Republican lawmakers we spoke with knew ... that they may not now receive their [the naturalized Mexicans'] votes, [but] they believed that these immigrants are more malleable than the existing American: That with enough care, convincing, and "teaching," they could be converted, be grateful, and become dependent on them. Republicans seemed to idealize the patron-client relation with Hispanics as much as their Democraticcompetitors did.  

... Also curiously, the Republican enthusiasm for increased immigration also was not so much about voting in the end, even with "converted" Latinos. Instead, these legislators seemingly believed that they could weaken the restraining and frustrating straightjacket devised by the Founding Fathers and abetted by American norms. In that idealized "new" United States, political uncertainty, demanding constituents, difficult elections, and accountability in general would "go away" after tinkering with the People[.]

... I remember few instances when a legislator spoke well of his or her white constituents. One even called them "rednecks," and apologized to us on their behalf for their incorrect attitude on immigration. Most of them seemed to advocate changing the ethnic composition of the United States as an end in itself.

This isn't unusual in the West, either.  In fact, it was revealed in 2009 that the U.K.'s immigrationists sought to socially engineer a "multicultural" Britain because they wanted to "rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date" but didn't want to divulge the scheme lest they lose their "core working class vote."  With friends like that...

Now, what would you call people who visit such a thing upon their own culture solely to gain power?  And what fate do they deserve?

G.K. Chesterton's comment -- "It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged" -- comes to mind.

In fairness, Mr. Arias-King's experiences predate the Tea Party revolution, and the House GOP did defeat John McCain's shamnesty bill in 2007.  I also suspect that it was legislators partial to immigration who were inclined to meet with him in the first place.  And while I don't doubt that closeted culturally genocidal maniacs still exist (in abundance), there are also those who genuinely believe that diversity should be "an end in itself."  Unfortunately, bad policy is equally destructive whether implemented out of malice or stupidity.

Speaking of which, multiculturalism can only ever be what it is, an ideology; it can never be a workable reality.  Having many different cultures within the same borders is actually called balkanization, and its consequences have been repeatedly observed throughout history.  If the differences among the disparate peoples become great enough, the nation is partitioned, and they go their separate ways; the only possibility for avoiding this is if an iron fist of tyranny holds the competing cultures together, as Marshall Tito did in the former Yugoslavia (and we all know why it's "former").  Another possibility is that one group will prevail over and subsume the rest, as the Japanese have largely done with the Ainus, an aboriginal people who once dominated the island of Hokkaido.

This is absolutely the norm.  Do the names Saxons, Alans, Franks, Visigoths, Vandals, Avars, Alemanni, and Frisians sound at all familiar?  They were once distinct groups that occupied early medieval Europe, but they are no more, having been subsumed into a wider culture.  This may be a good thing if it's a superior culture, it may be a bad thing if beauty was lost, or it may be a mixed bag.  But it is an undeniable thing.

This brings us to the myth of diversity.  All it can ever be is a liability to, hopefully, be overcome; it can never be the "strength" it's billed as (without even a shred of evidence in support of the notion).  And, interestingly, here's what the Online Etymology Dictionary tells us about the origin of the term "diversity": "mid-14c., from O.Fr. diversité (12c.) 'difference, oddness, wickedness, perversity,' from L. diversitatem 'contrariety, disagreement, difference[.]'"  "Contrariety" and "disagreement"...it certainly worked out that way in Yugoslavia, in the Soviet Union, in Czechoslovakia, in India (when two regions broke away and became Pakistan and Bangladesh).  Why, even in Canada, where Quebecois and other Canadians are racially identical, there has often been talk of secession.

So how much more of a problem it is when a group not only has a different language, but is different racially, economically, culturally, and ideologically?  And what about when that group of diversifiers supposes it has a rightful claim to your territory (a poll showed a majority of Mexicans believing that the Southwest belongs to Mexico and that they have a "right to enter the U.S. without U.S. permission")?  What about when you try to teach these newcomers American history and they say, as a teacher respondent reported to me some years ago, "We don't care about this -- we're Mexican"?  When people have come to your land mainly to make money and have loyalty lying elsewhere, it doesn't bode well for assimilation.

The kicker here is that flooding a nation with unassimilable foreigners may do no more for diversity over the long term than pythons in the Everglades.  Sure, the swamp is currently more diverse -- with tens of thousands of fascinating non-indigenous creatures added to the mix -- but how diverse will the ecosystem be when they decimate native species?  Thus have Florida authorities decided that amnesty for the snakes probably isn't the best idea.

So it is with a cultural ecosystem.  Harking back to my earlier point, the introduction of new cultural elements isn't always just a matter of simple addition; subtraction and division can be factors as well.  When worlds collide, when there is an incongruence of cultural elements, there may be mixing, as with the wolf and coyote.  Or there may be an extinction, as with how the Dodo on Mauritius was wiped out by rats.  Of course, a new equilibrium is always established, but it may very well be less diverse.  And, for sure, it will be different.

The good news here, if one can call it that, is embedded within the bad.  The history of social engineers is that they possess no clearer a crystal ball than do futurists or science-fiction writers.  If the immigrationist traitors simply want to destroy America, they will certainly get their way.  But they will never have Mexico Norte, a republic they can comfortably rule as patrons of complacent clients.  Because nature -- in this case man's -- takes it course, and some people will likely realize that divided we stand.

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3)Controversial Pick Circles Advisory Role at State

Robert Malley closing in on Syria advisory position

BY: Adam Kredo

A controversial diplomat with a history of anti-Israel writings could be appointed as a high-level adviser on Syria at the State Department, according to multiple Jewish officials with ties to the White House.

Robert Malley, a career diplomat who was fired from the 2008 Obama campaign for negotiating with Hamas, could be hired for the job in the coming weeks, according to sources close to the issue.

Additionally, Malley was reportedly under consideration to be deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, where he would work on the Israel-Palestine peace process, which Kerry has made a top priority.

One source close to the White House confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that Malley is “under serious consideration” by Secretary of State John Kerry for a top advisory role, while another source called it “a done deal.”

Both indicated that he would likely be responsible for working on the Syria portfolio, which would include future administration decisions to possibly arm rebel forces.

Both sources confirmed the Free Beacon’s earlier report about Kerry’s desire to tap Malley for a high-level posting. They spoke only on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the post.

Jewish insiders and some on Capitol Hill said Malley would be a troubling addition to the State Department no matter what roll he fills.

“He will sit at the table,” said one of the Jewish officials. “Once you have a seat at the table you can say whatever you want about anything you want, and nobody will tell him to shut up. That’s what this is about.”

A State Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

A longtime government insider who worked for former President Bill Clinton and advised then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, Malley has a history of criticizing Israel while apologizing for terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

He currently serves as the Middle East director of the International Crisis Group (ICG), which did not respond to a request for comment about the possible posting.

“If you look at his writings and see what he’s said, … I don’t think he comes off well,” said one of the Jewish officials.

Another source with knowledge of the appointment confirmed to the Free Beacon last week that Malley has quietly been confirming that an earlier Al-Monitor report on the appointment is accurate.

While the position would not require Senate confirmation, sources on Capitol Hill expressed outrage over Kerry’s decision.

“Malley comes from a worldview that sees Israel as a transgressor, as an occupier and that Palestinians are the victims,” said one senior congressional aide. “He sees freedom fighters where the rest of the world sees terrorists.”

Malley found himself in hot water the 2008 Obama campaign after he entered into direct negotiations with the terror group Hamas.

He also has defended Hezbollah as well as other violent and illiberal Middle East factions in a series of writings and interviews over the years.

An adviser for the liberal fringe group J Street, Malley has repeatedly blamed Israel for the failure to achieve peace despite the Palestinian peoples’ continued support of terrorism.

“For the Palestinians, to accept today a cessation of hostilities while gaining only an end to the Israeli encirclement of their territory, that means that they fought four months to return to the preceding status quo,” he said in a 2001 interview.

Malley also has referred to Jewish homes in Israeli territory of the West Bank as “colonies.”

“A political opening (immediate concessions of Israel on the colonies or a transfer of the territories and resumption of the peace process) is essential,” he said.

Malley also has advocated in favor of containment when it comes to the Iranian nuclear issue.

Obama “took containment of a nuclear-armed Iran off the table—even before any serious discussion of this option has taken place and just as influential U.S. voices had begun making the case for it,” Malley wrote.

“He sees political groups, not terror groups, and political agendas that can be resolved through negotiations where we see hardened killers who need to be defeated,” said the congressional aide, suggesting that this could be problematic if Malley is responsible for dealing with Syria.

3a) Top diplomat Kerry battles to deliver on big ideas

Since taking office, the US secretary of state has addressed the most intractable international issues, but has shown few results

In four months as secretary of state, John Kerry has certainly promised great things. Now he has to deliver.

In the Middle East, he has raised hopes his solo diplomatic effort can produce a historic breakthrough ending six decades of Arab-Israeli conflict.

He has pledged to bring Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government to heel and to work with Russia to end Syria’s civil war.

He has suggested rolling back US missile defense in the Pacific if China can help rid North Korea of nuclear weapons. He has hinted at possible one-on-one talks between the US and the reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if it would help.

Since succeeding Hillary Rodham Clinton as America’s top diplomat, Kerry has issued several as yet undelivered — and perhaps undeliverable — pledges to allies and rivals alike, proving a source of concern for Obama’s policy team. It is trying to rein in Kerry somewhat, according to officials, which is difficult considering Kerry has spent almost half his tenure so far in the air or on the road, from where his most dissonant policy statements have come.

The White House quickly distanced itself from both Kerry’s North Korea remarks and has now, since President Barack Obama’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Northern Ireland this past week, seen up close the strength of Moscow’s resistance to Kerry’s Syria strategy.

All the officials interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to evaluate Kerry’s performance publicly.

Reporting for work at the State Department in February, the former Democratic senator from Massachusetts quickly outlined his ambitions.

Clinton still harbored thoughts of a second potential presidential run when she arrived at the department. But aides say Kerry, a 69-year-old Vietnam veteran, is giving himself completely to a job that in many ways is the climax of his political career and the realization of a lifelong dream after years as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Now he wants to tackle head-on the world’s thorniest foreign policy conundrums.

Kerry, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, “believes this difficult moment in the world requires a willingness to address complicated issues. He believes the risk of high-stakes, personal diplomacy are far less than the risk of leaving difficult situations to fester or spiral out of control. That’s why he has invigorated our efforts in critical areas — such as North Korea, Syria and the Middle East peace process — and has personally invested time and effort to move the ball forward.”

No challenge may now be bigger than Syria, where a two-year civil war has killed at least 93,000 people.

Signaling a shift from the cautious approach of Obama’s first term, Kerry announced his first trip abroad would focus on changing Assad’s belief that he could prevail militarily and on pushing him into eventually relinquishing power. Since then, however, the fighting has only gotten worse. Thousands more have died as Assad firmed his grip over much of the country and the US hasn’t even delivered all the nonlethal aid Kerry promised Syria’s rebels, let alone any of the weapons or ammunition that Obama recently authorized.

Having failed to reshape the war, Kerry changed strategy by going to Moscow to re-launch a peace process for Syria that Clinton engineered in June 2012 but had been all but forgotten in the months since. In Moscow, Kerry boasted that the former Cold War foes just accomplished “great things when the world needs it” by deciding to convene an international conference, perhaps by the end of May, that would include Syria’s government and opposition.

That conference has been delayed until at least July, and maybe August, and it might never come off at all given the opposition’s refusal to negotiate while it is losing land to Assad and getting so little help from the United States and other Western powers. That failure falls directly on Kerry, who as part of the US-Russian approach was tasked with delivering the opposition to the bargaining table.

Russia may have lived up to its end of the bargain by guaranteeing the Assad government’s attendance at any future peace conference. But Putin and the Kremlin also have been undermining peace efforts by sending more weapons to help the Syrian government’s counteroffensive.

Kerry’s one-man diplomacy in Syria is in some ways emblematic of his tenure.

Officials say he opted to revive the US-Russian strategy for a Syrian transitional government during his walk in the backyard of a Moscow guesthouse with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, informing aides only after of his decision. Afterward, he insisted he wasn’t simply rewinding the clock by a year because the US and Russia were now going to find ways to put the plan in place.

More than two months later, there has been no progress.

On Middle East peace, too, Kerry has put his credibility on the line.

Refusing to avoid one of the world’s most difficult conflicts, as Obama and Clinton largely did over the second two years of the first administration, Kerry has made four trips to the region to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior government members from both sides. Kerry will visit the region again this coming week to try to push the two sides back into talks, despite little to show so far for his efforts.

Kerry insists his quiet diplomacy is making headway, a claim that only he, Netanyahu and Abbas truly can substantiate because most of the discussions are one-on-one. Several senior Israeli and Palestinian officials have suggested otherwise in highly critical comments to local and international media. Few American officials, however, seem to know what is going on because they say Kerry rarely briefs even the most experienced US negotiators in that part of the world on his talks.

At times, the process has seemed ad hoc.

In Jordan last month, Kerry announced a sketchy $4 billion economic revitalization strategy for the West Bank that would accompany his peace plan. No details were provided, and US officials even sent reporters to aides of UN peace mediator Tony Blair for more information. Blair’s staff wouldn’t provide information or even confirm that the outline of an economic plan exists. Officials say Kerry’s friend, investor Tim Collins, is handling the portfolio, though it’s unclear if any money has been secured.

On Mideast peace, Kerry is largely fighting the battle alone. Since Obama’s visit to Israel in March, Kerry has gotten almost no public displays of support from the president, with the White House appearing reluctant to stake political capital in an endeavor that so often has proved a disappointment.

Some US officials have scoffed at the notion that Kerry is getting anywhere, though they allow that the White House has given him until roughly September to produce a resumption of negotiations.

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, praised Kerry’s efforts thus far.

“None of these are issues that you can solve in a few months,” Rhodes said. “The fact that he is taking these on with the energy he has is a great asset to the administration. These are the toughest challenges we have.”

Kerry’s individualist approach to foreign policy is partly a matter of circumstances and partly intentional.

With few Senate-confirmed senior officials in place at the State Department, Kerry has been short of aides at the highest level who might act as envoys to drive forward his agenda in his absence. Among others, Clinton had George Mitchell to push Mideast peace and Richard Holbrooke in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kerry lacks any such high-profile figures at his side.

Those who’ve worked closely with Kerry say the approach also reflects the great stock he puts in his personal diplomacy and the belief, perhaps more widely shared in the rarefied air of the Senate, that leaning on his close relationships with foreign leaders and dignitaries can deliver more results than delegating authority to capable bureaucrats.

That has left Kerry doing much of the work himself, from ordering up policy papers to envisioning new initiatives, while traveling the world or publicly regaling foreign ministers in Washington with stories of their past encounters or meals in exotic capitals.

Kerry makes it a point to stress the long-standing friendships he maintains all over the world. And his network of contacts may have played a role in the only tangible concession he has gained so far in the Middle East: a decision by Arab countries to sweeten their comprehensive offer to Israel for peace with the Palestinians.

The Arab League’s proposal now allows Israel to keep some of the land it conquered in the 1967 Mideast war on condition that Israel agrees to cede territory on its side to a future Palestine. Kerry hasn’t been able to announce any commensurate move from Netanyahu, who brushed the Arab terms aside.

Some US officials wince at another legacy of Kerry’s Senate years: his penchant for loose or inaccurate talk.

On his very first day as secretary, he recounted his childhood bike rides in postwar Berlin past Adolf Hitler’s tomb. Hitler had no tomb. On more substantial issues of policy, he has made questionable claims over everything from US drone policy to climate change.

At other times officials have questioned his restraint, such as when he lauded America’s emerging “special relationship” with communist China. For one of the United States’ principal geopolitical foes, Kerry was using a diplomatic term generally reserved for ironclad US allies such as Britain and Israel.

He also seemingly ad-libbed unauthorized offers of a softened military posture to China and engagement to North Korea in a bid to calm tensions, which aides believe his engagement helped achieve.

On a trip to Turkey, he irritated advocates of Israel by appearing to compare the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing with the Turks killed in a 2010 Israeli commando operation on a ship trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Days later, in Brussels, he raised eyebrows by suggesting that one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects became radicalized while on a trip to Russia, something investigators had not concluded.

For all his idiosyncratic style, Kerry has not dodged any diplomatic fight. He has even spoken privately of taking on Cyprus’ four-decade deadlock between ethnic Greeks in the south and Turkish Cypriots in the north. He sought to re-engage the US with post-Hugo Chavez Venezuela on a trip to Guatemala this month, helping secure the release of an American filmmaker jailed for alleged espionage.

Officials say other governments Washington has long seen as rogues — from Cuba to Zimbabwe — could get a fresh look.

With no election around the corner and few worries about his image, Kerry has shown a willingness to think big.

Soon, however, he’ll have to produce.

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4)Ari Shavit: Netanyahu was right on Iran- brass and rest were wrong

An unlikely voice is sounding the alarm on a nuclear Iran—the liberal

Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which is well known for its often diametrical
opposition to official government policy.

Columnist Ari Shavit, taking as his source a recent article in The Economist
that declares it will be impossible to stop Iran from going nuclear, warns
“We’re out of time. We’re really out of time.”

“Via the Economist, the mainstream of the international community admitted
that its campaign against Iran’s nuclearization has ended in failure. And
via this journal, the school that favors containing a nuclear Iran came out
of the closet,” Shavit writes.

He continues: “What the world promised would never happen is happening at
this very moment. What the top ranks of Israel’s defense establishment
promised would never happen is in fact happening. Iran is becoming a nuclear
power, while Israel (which is sunk in summer daydreams ) stands alone.”

Dividing into two camps those who advocate containment or reject the
severity Iran’s nuclear ambitions (the optimists), and those who warn of
Iran’s impending nuclear breakout (the pessimists), Shavit lands on the side
of the latter.

“The international optimists and the Israeli optimists were wrong, big time.

Surprise surprise: Benjamin Netanyahu was right,” he writes.

“While the optimists were misled by their illusions, the pessimist read
reality correctly. While the defense establishment and the media
establishment were smitten with weakness and apathy, the pessimist kept
sounding alarms,” Shavit writes, adding, “Wolf? Wolf? Wolf! A strategic wolf
with nuclear teeth is now at the gate.”

Meanwhile a former research fellow at the London School of Economics wrote
in Israeli daily Ma’ariv Thursday that Western sanctions against the Islamic
Republic were having little affect.

Moshe Efrat wrote that Iran’s foreign exchange reserves of roughly $96
billion, as well as other newly implemented economic policies such as
raising minimum wage, will keep the country afloat and the middle-classes
happy for the foreseeable future.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday the dispute
over his country’s nuclear program could easily be resolved if the West were
to stop being so stubborn.

“Some countries have organized a united front against Iran and are
misguiding the international community and with stubbornness do not want to
see the nuclear issue resolved,” Khamenei’s official web site quoted him as
saying.

“But if they put aside their stubbornness, resolving the nuclear issue would
be simple,” he said, without clarifying his demands of the Western nations.

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