Wisconsonites Point The Way! Appeasing our Appeaser? Transforming America!

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You gotta love the humor:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtyf7UHXNTM

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Yes, it can be done. Yes, thugs and stupidity can be defeated when enough citizens are aroused, angry and active!

That is how we broke from England and that is what the drafters of our Declaration of Independence and Framers of our Constitution intended. (See 1 below.)

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Peace in our time!  You decide!  (See 2  and 2a below.)

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Worth re-posting for those who missed it the first time.

The most effective way to transform America is to weaken it financially and militarily.  Our crushing debt  and interest payments on that debt to our debtors, mainly China, is laundered back in ways that support their spreading influence.

Our debt load and increase in entitlements takes from our ability to maintain a military presence that is capable of meeting the threats from our adversaries.

Of course this is something you will not hear from the elite media and news folks because they embrace Obama's program of turning America  into a less than exceptional nation.  They relish the idea that Obama is like the barber with Samson in the chair.

An overstatement?  Perhaps but the facts suggest otherwise! (See 3 below.)

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Bret has the right idea.  Netanyahu has to defend his nation not focus on appeasing our appeaser! Is he independent and tough enough to do so? Stay tuned! (See 4 and 4a below.)

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There might be some legal restriction involving separation of church and state.  I do not know but the article does raise some interesting questions of how we, apparently, are handcuffing ourselves.  (See 5 below.)
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Dick

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1) Big Labor Stumbles in Wisconsin

In a showdown with Gov. Scott Walker, democracy is the big winner.

By Sean Higgins 

More Than They Bargained For: Scott Walker, Unions, and the Fight for Wisconsin, by Jason Stein and Patrick Marley, University of Wisconsin Press, 350 pages, $26.95.

It’s not clear who first introduced the chant “this is what democracy looks like” to the epic early-2011 showdown in Wisconsin between angry public-sector union workers and newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The protesters shouting the phrase surely meant to insist that they were the true voice of the people. But despite the sheer size and raucous noise of the crowds that packed the Wisconsin State Capitol for weeks protesting Walker’s proposed legislation to roll back union benefits and prerogatives, the demonstrators ultimately lost every fight that mattered. They lost because the voting public in Wisconsin approved of Walker’s plan, albeit narrowly. 

The people had already spoken when they elected a Republican governor and legislative majority in 2010. Democracy then re-affirmed Walker’s controversial decisions even under the glare of a nationwide spotlight and a hostile press. Nevertheless, the sloganeers were correct, just not in the way they intended.

As Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Jason Stein and Patrick Marley note in their book More Than They Bargained For: Scott Walker, Unions, and the Fight for Wisconsin, “The citizens of Wisconsin and indeed the country as a whole, sometimes derided as apathetic and out of touch, showed that they were eager to engage on both sides, to defend the rights of workers and to safeguard the state’s financial future.” The engaged activists “marched, they sent hundreds of thousands of emails and tweets, and they overwhelmingly held themselves to a peaceful, democratic purpose, which asserted itself even in the face of the many exceptions to that general rule. Likewise, the police and authorities also managed to handle the protests without serious injury or loss of life on either side. When it came time to vote, citizens set turnout records.”

Engaged citizenry, vigorous debate, productive legislatures: This is everything that good-government types usually pine for. Yet most national media outlets viewed the Walker/union battle as something distasteful and unfortunate. “How did Wisconsin become the most divisive place in America?” clucked a New York Times headline. 

One of the greatest motivators for political participation, it turns out, is bitter division. As Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Beaver Dam) put it in February 2011, “Democracy isn’t pretty all the time.”

In their admirably evenhanded account, Stein and Marley leave readers to their own conclusions. But More Than They Bargained For suggests that the Wisconsin fight was less a failure of the Badger State’s democratic traditions than an example of how strong those traditions remain.

Wisconsin is the birthplace of public-sector unions. The nation’s largest such organization, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), was founded there in 1932 as the Wisconsin State Employees Association. That history fueled the outraged response to Walker’s attempted rollback of labor’s power. This was their home turf. If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere.

Unionizing people working on the taxpayer’s dime was a divisive issue from the start. “[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt said that such unions couldn’t take the same approach or militancy given that ‘their employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress,’ ” Stein and Marley note.

Unlike in the private sector, government-employee union members are also a political constituency of their ostensible bosses. The average private-sector boss, when working out a contract with a union, doesn’t have to worry that his employees might vote him out of a job—or give barrels of money to his rivals—if they don’t like his contract. 

That political power gives public-sector unions an edge their private-sector counterparts lack. It’s no coincidence that while private-sector unionization has plummeted from 20.1 percent in 1980 to 6.6 percent in 2012, the public-sector rate rests at 35.9 percent, down just a bit from a 1994 high of 38.7 percent, according to the Labor Department. In 2009 for the first time ever, the number of public-sector union workers exceeded those outside government employ. (As of 2012 the gap is 7.3 million to 7 million and growing.)

As Milwaukee County Executive from 2002 to 2010, young Scott Walker had clashed repeatedly with public-sector unions. Labor costs are one of the main elements in local government budgets. His Democratic predecessor as county executive cut sweetheart deals with unions, such as providing six-figure payouts to some retirees who were also getting $60,000 a year in annuities, driving up current and future costs. Walker fought, mostly futilely, to prune back those promises.

“Walker’s agenda quickly brought him and the county’s public employee unions into conflict,” write Stein and Marley. “In negotiations, he struggled to get concessions and agreements that would produce the kinds of savings for taxpayers that he had built into his budgets. Unions countered that Walker was budgeting in bad faith, plugging numbers into his budget plans that he knew unions would successfully oppose at the bargaining table.” Walker grew so frustrated that in 2009 he called for dismantling the entire county government and parceling out its functions.

Despite this history, few suspected the coming firestorm when the boyish-looking Republican was elected governor in 2010. Walker hadn’t campaigned on rewriting public-sector union laws—a fact his critics would return to repeatedly, arguing he lacked a mandate. (Stein and Marley are sympathetic to this critique.) But Walker’s county-level budgetary battles were never far from his mind.

To avoid a repeat of his setbacks in Milwaukee County, Walker set out to weaken union power from the get-go. In his first budget, the governor boosted the amount that government employees must pay for their health insurance and pension costs. He also proposed rewriting the state labor law to end automatic dues deductions from paychecks, limit collective bargaining to wages and not benefits, and require that the unions subject themselves to annual recertification votes of their members.

In effect, Walker was calling for state employees to abide by right-to-work laws. The workers could still join unions, but the unions would lack the power to compel dues from those who did not want to join. This would place tremendous strain on Big Labor’s resources and power. The weakened unions would in turn weaken the state Democrats who depend on them. 

It was as hardball as politics gets. Walker even exempted the police and firefighter unions from the legislation, precisely because he knew they had the strongest public sympathy and the best relationship with Republicans. (A key reason why Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s similar reforms were successfully rolled back by unions in 2011 was that he didn’t make this exception.)

Outwardly, Scott Walker was an unlikely catalyst for such a spectacular battle. The 43-year-old former Eagle Scout was an exceedingly mild-mannered technocrat with no prior reputation as a bomb thrower. But when Walker took office, the state had a projected shortfall of $3 billion, about 5 percent of the budget, for the next two years. (Wisconsin has biennial budgets.) The new governor did not want to start off with tax hikes, and the state’s constitution requires a balanced budget. 

The problem fell into Walker’s lap because money from President Barack Obama’s February 2009 stimulus had propped up the state during the previous year and a half, papering over deficits. But now the federal spigot had run dry. 

The unions were not interested in giving anything up. After Walker’s election, they pushed the outgoing administration and Democrat-majority legislature to quickly approve new work contracts before Walker and the new GOP majority could be sworn in. The effort failed thanks to a single vote cast by an irascible retiring Senate Democrat. 

When the governor and his aides revealed their union-busting plans to state GOP lawmakers in February 2011, Walker rather naively told them they could rush this through the legislature with a minimum of controversy. Older hands at the state capitol knew better. State Sen. Dale Schultz (R–Richland Center) told Walker, “Come on, people kill each other’s dogs over this shit.”

While Wisconsin is generally seen as moderate, that’s more of a mathematical average than a character of centrism. The state is split between heavily liberal Democrats dominating urban areas such as Madison and strong conservatives controlling the rural parts. The practical effect of this is that the state often swings radically from election to election. Hence a liberal senator like Russ Feingold can be replaced by someone equally conservative, Ron Johnson.

This means that either party’s gains at the statehouse can be quickly washed away in the next election. Indeed, during the 2011 fight, the unions actually agreed to Walker’s financial concessions, offering them in exchange for dropping the collective bargaining changes. But this wasn’t the concession that it appeared to be: The unions knew they could get it all back the next time there was a Democratic majority. Part of what Walker was trying to do was to permanently change the state’s politics.

Public controversy grew quickly after Walker’s plans were formally announced in February.Within days, the state capitol was a circus. A group of 14 Democratic legislators fled to Illinois in a bid to prevent the bill’s passage by making a quorum impossible. Daily Show correspondent John Oliver even tried to mount a visual gag linking the Wisconsin protests to the Arab Spring by bringing a camel to the capitol. The stunt misfired when the camel got its leg stuck in a fence and panicked.

Yet as rowdy as the Wisconsin protests were during the spring, they never got out of control. Astonishingly, there were only a few arrests. “The masses of people remained overwhelmingly peaceful and generally respectful, and that wasn’t accidental or simply spontaneous,” Stein and Marley write. “Unions assigned people to self-police their protests and try to intervene before problems developed. When the Senate convened, urgent messages on Twitter called on demonstrators to remain calm and respectful to law enforcement, emphasizing how damaging any act of disrespect or violence could be for their cause.”

In other words, protesters policed themselves well because they knew how quickly a negative YouTube moment could go viral. This is a point to which the authors repeatedly return: It only looked from afar like the situation was out of control. 

Still, there was little doubt that Walker would eventually win. He had solid GOP majorities in both chambers of the legislature. When it became clear they couldn’t get the 14 AWOL Democrats to return to provide a two-thirds quorum, Republicans simply tweaked the bill until they could pass it with a bare majority. Walker signed it, and that was that. The chanting crowds could not reverse the fact that the voters had already given Walker his majority. 

The protesters then sought to overturn the package at the ballot box. But despite three separate recall votes during the next year, they failed. Walker actually managed to win his own recall vote by a larger margin than he won election in the first place.

But if Walker was making a power play, the unions were moving to jealously guard their power—power that wasn’t exactly little “d” democratic in the first place. They were, after all, arguing for their right to extract money directly from the taxpayer-funded paychecks of workers who had never wanted to join in collective bargaining.

In post-circus Wisconsin, it appears that many government workers have voted with their feet. Labor Department filings since More Than They Bargained For was published show that AFSCME Council 40—one of the union’s four branches in the state—has gone from 31,730 members in 2011 to just 20,488 now. AFSCME Council 48 went from 9,043 members to just 3,498 during the same time period. (The other two state branches, like most public-sector unions, are not subject to the disclosure requirement, which applies only to unions that represent at least some private-sector workers.)

Some of those workers presumably dropped out because Walker’s reforms strictly limited what AFSCME’s bargaining could get for them. But if labor solidarity were as strong as the chanting crowds claimed, the declines should not have been that drastic so soon after the reforms passed. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that recall-election exit polls show that Walker got support from 28 percent of union members. A nontrivial minority apparently appreciated getting the choice of whether to join a union

Stein and Marley’s book is a fairly straightforward account, benefiting from their broad knowledge of the state’s nuanced politics. The authors bust a few myths, such as the widely held belief that the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Koch brothers—left-wing bogeymen—were involved in writing Walker’s legislation. In fact, it was the governor’s own idea. His primary inspiration was Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who rescinded collective bargaining for state employees on his second day in office in 2005.

The book is filled with amusing anecdotes. One Senate Democrat left for Illinois so abruptly that he didn’t have time to tell his wife, who had left a crockpot on and had to call a neighbor to get it turned off. Some Republican lawmakers snuck out of the capitol at night by donning hoodies, picking up signs, and pretending to be protesters.

Stein and Marley do lament the decline of bipartisanship that accompanied all this ruckus. “Compromise…had become a ‘dirty word,’ ” they write. But it is far from clear that a compromise would have done anything more than delay the inevitable policy reckoning of increasing labor payouts vs. decreasing government revenue. And the extremely high level of civic engagement would not have happened without an emotionally contested battle. There’s a reason “politics as usual” is usually boring. 

No one can argue that the substantive issues in Wisconsin did not receive a full airing, or that voters were not aware of the policy consequences. This is what democracy looks like.

The protesters may even have done Walker a favor. Had he been able to ram his bill through as originally intended, the governor wouldn’t have had a chance to publicly make his case or prove his mettle.

One reason the political class tends to shy away from divisive politics is that one side always stands to lose badly, which is something fans of Walker’s actions should bear in mind. His fate could have easily turned out more like that of Ohio’s John Kasich, whose reforms were ground into dust by Big Labor.

But sometimes it’s better to have clear winners and losers. If Walker’s reforms succeed, voters in and out of Wisconsin will have an example of how American policy and politics can change for the better. If not, they’ll know who to blame.

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2)U.S. and Iranian Realities

By George Friedman

U.S. President Barack Obama called Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last week in the first such conversation in the 34 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The phone call followed tweets and public statements on both sides indicating a willingness to talk. Though far from an accommodation between the two countries, there are reasons to take this opening seriously -- not only because it is occurring at such a high level, but also because there is now a geopolitical logic to these moves. Many things could go wrong, and given that this is the Middle East, the odds of failure are high. But Iran is weak and the United States is avoiding conflict, and there are worse bases for a deal.

Iran's Surge

Though the Iranians are now in a weak strategic position, they had been on the offensive since 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq. They welcomed the invasion; Saddam Hussein had been a mortal enemy of Iran ever since the 1980-1989 Iran-Iraq War. The destruction of his regime was satisfying in itself, but it also opened the door to a dramatic shift in Iran's national security situation.

Iraq was Iran's primary threat after the collapse of the Soviet Union because it was the only direction from which an attack might come. A pro-Iranian or even neutral Iraq would guarantee Iranian national security. The American invasion created a power vacuum in Iraq that the U.S. Army could not fill. The Iranians anticipated this, supporting pro-Iranian elements among the Shia prior to 2003 and shaping them into significant militias after 2003. With the United States engaged in a war against Sunni insurgents, the Shia, already a majority, moved to fill the void.

The United States came to realize that it was threatened from two directions, and it found itself battling both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. The purpose of the surge in 2007 was to extricate itself from the war with the Sunnis and to block the Shia. It succeeded with the former to a great extent, but it was too late in the game for the latter. As the United States was withdrawing from Iraq, only the Shia (not all of them Iranian surrogates) could fill the political vacuum. Iran thus came to have nothing to fear from Iraq, and could even dominate it. This was a tremendous strategic victory for Iran, which had been defeated by Iraq in 1989.

After the Iranians made the most of having the United States, focused on the Sunnis, open the door for Iran to dominate Iraq, a more ambitious vision emerged in Tehran. With Iraq contained and the United States withdrawing from the region, Saudi Arabia emerged as Iran's major challenger. Tehran now had the pieces in place to challenge Riyadh.

Iran was allied with Syria and had a substantial pro-Iranian force in Lebanon -- namely, Hezbollah. The possibility emerged in the late 2000s of an Iranian sphere of influence extending from western Afghanistan's Shiite communities all the way to the Mediterranean. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had fairly realistic visions of Iranian power along Saudi Arabia's northern border, completely changing the balance of power in the region.

But while Syrian President Bashar al Assad was prepared to align himself with Iran, he initially had no interest in his country's becoming an Iranian satellite. In fact, he was concerned at the degree of power Iran was developing. The Arab Spring and the uprising against al Assad changed this equation. Before, Syria and Iran were relative equals. Now, al Assad desperately needed Iranian support. This strengthened Tehran's hand, since if Iran saved al Assad, he would emerge weakened and frightened, and Iranian influence would surge.

The Russians also liked the prospect of a strengthened Iran. First, they were fighting Sunnis in the northern Caucasus. They feared the strengthening of radical Sunnis anywhere, but particularly in the larger Sunni-dominated republics in Russia. Second, an Iranian sphere of influence not only would threaten Saudi Arabia, it also would compel the United States to re-engage in the region to protect Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Russians had enjoyed a relatively free hand since 2001 while the Americans remained obsessed with the Islamic world. Creating a strategic crisis for the United States thus suited Moscow's purposes. The Russians, buffered from Iran by the Caucasus states, were not frightened by the Iranians. They were therefore prepared to join Iran in supporting the al Assad regime.

The problem was that al Assad could not impose his will on Syria. He did not fall, but he also couldn't win. A long-term civil war emerged, and while the Iranians had influence among the Alawites, the stalemate undermined any dream of an Iranian sphere of influence reaching the Mediterranean. This became doubly true when Sunni resistance to the Shia in Iraq grew. The Syrian maneuver required a decisive and rapid defeat of the Sunni insurgents in Syria. That didn't happen, and the ability of the Shiite regime of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to resist the Sunnis was no longer guaranteed.

Iranian Ambitions Decline

In 2009, it had appeared extremely likely that an Iran loosely aligned with Russia would enjoy a sphere of influence north of Saudi Arabia. By 2013, this vision was shattered, and with it the more grandiose strategic vision of Ahmadinejad and his allies in Iran. This led to a re-evaluation of Iran's strategic status -- and of the value of its nuclear program.

It was Stratfor's view that Iran had less interest in actually acquiring a nuclear weapon than in having a program to achieve one. Possessing a handful of nuclear weapons would be a worst-case scenario for Iran, as it might compel massive attacks from Israel or the United States that Iran could not counter. But having a program to develop one, and making it credible, gave the Iranians a powerful bargaining chip and diverted U.S. and Israeli attention from the growing Iranian sphere of influence. Ahmadinejad's hope, I think, was to secure this sphere of influence, have the basis for making demands on the Saudis and the Gulf Cooperation Council, and trade the nuclear program for U.S. recognition and respect for the new regional balance. Indeed, while the United States and Israel were obsessed with the Iranian bomb, the Iranians were making major strides in developing more conventional power.

Iran's regional strategy was in shambles, and the international sanctions its nuclear program triggered began to have some significant effect. I am unable to determine whether Iran's economic crisis derived from the sanctions or whether it derived from a combination of the global economic crisis and Iran's own economic weakness. But in the end, the perception that the sanctions had wreaked havoc on the Iranian economy turned the nuclear program, previously useful, into a liability.

Iran found itself in a very difficult position. Internally, opposition to any accommodation with the United States was strong. But so was the sense that Ahmadinejad had brought disaster on Iran strategically and economically. For Iran, the nuclear program became increasingly irrelevant. The country was not going to become a regional power. It now had to go on the defensive, stabilize Iraq and, more important, address its domestic situation.

The U.S. Challenge

There is profound domestic opposition in the United States to dealing with the Iranian regime. Just as the Iranians still genuinely resent the 1953 coup that placed the shah on the throne, the Americans have never forgotten the seizure of the U.S. Embassy and the subsequent yearlong hostage crisis. We must now wait and see what language Iran will craft regarding the hostage crisis to reciprocate the courtesy of Obama's acknowledging the 1953 coup.

The United States is withdrawing from the Middle East to the extent it can. Certainly, it has no interest in another ground war. It has interests in the region, however, and chief among those are avoiding the emergence of a regional hegemon that might destabilize the Middle East. The United States also learned in Iraq that simultaneously fighting Sunnis and Shia pits the United States against forces it cannot defeat without major effort. It needs a way to manage the Islamic world without being in a constant state of war.

The classic solution to this is to maintain a balance of power with minimal force based on pre-existing tensions. A weakened Iran needs support in its fight with the Sunnis. The United States is interested in ensuring that neither the Sunni nor the Shia win -- in other words, in the status quo of centuries. Having Iran crumble internally therefore is not in the American interest, since it would upset the internal balance. While sanctions were of value in blocking Iranian ascendancy, in the current situation stabilizing Iran is of greater interest.

The United States cannot proceed unless the nuclear program is abandoned. Rouhani understands that, but he must have and end to sanctions and a return of Western investment to Iran in exchange. These are doable under the current circumstances. The question of Iranian support for al Assad is not really an issue; the United States does not want to see a Syrian state dominated by radical Sunnis. Neither does Iran. Tehran would like a Syria dominated by al Assad, but Iran realizes that it has played that card and lost. The choices are partition, coalition or war -- neither Iran nor the United States is deeply concerned with which.

Threats to a Resolution

There are two threats to a potential resolution. The primary threat is domestic. In both countries, even talking to each other seems treasonous to some. In Iran, economic problems and exhaustion with grandiosity opens a door. In the United States right now, war is out of the question. And that paves the way to deals unthinkable a few years ago.

A second threat is outside interference. Israel comes to mind, though for Israel, the removal of the nuclear program would give them something they were unable to achieve themselves. The Israelis argued that the Iranian bomb was an existential threat to Israel. But the Israelis lack the military power to deal with it themselves, and they could not force the Americans into action. This is the best deal they can get if they actually feared an Iranian bomb. Though Israel's influence on this negotiation with Iran will face limits with the U.S. administration, Israel will make an effort to insert itself in the process and push its own demands on what constitutes an acceptable Iranian concession.

Saudi Arabia meanwhile will be appalled at a U.S.-Iranian deal. Hostility toward Iran locked the United States into place in support of the Saudis. But the United States is now flush with oil, and Saudi attempts to block reconciliation will not meet a warm reception. The influence of Saudi Arabia in Washington has waned considerably since the Iraq war.

The Russian position will be more interesting. On the surface, the Russians have been effective in Syria. But that's only on the surface. The al Assad regime wasn't bombed, but it remains crippled. And the Syrian crisis revealed a reality the Russians didn't like: If Obama had decided to attack Syria, there was nothing the Russians could have done about it. They have taken a weak hand and played it as cleverly as possible. But it is still a weak hand. The Russians would have liked having the United States bogged down containing Iran's influence, but that isn't going to happen, and the Russians realize that ultimately they lack the weight to make it happen. Syria was a tactical victory for them; Iran would be a strategic defeat.

The Iranian and American realities argue for a settlement. The psyche of both countries is in the balance. There is clearly resistance in both, yet it does not seem strong enough or focused enough to block it. That would seem to indicate speed rather than caution. But of course, getting it done before anyone notices isn't possible. And so much can go wrong here that all of this could become moot. But given how the Iranians and Americans see their positions, the odds are, that something will happen. In my book, The Next Decade, I argued that in the long run Iran and the United States have aligning interests and that an informal alliance is likely in the long run. This isn't the long run yet, and the road will be bumpy, but the logic is there.
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3)Transforming America

By Victor Davis Hanson 

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” — Barack Obama, October 30, 2008

“We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.” — Michelle Obama, May 14, 2008 

There certainly is no question that Barack Obama wants to change the United States. And there clearly is no doubt that such fundamental transformation is difficult, given our tripartite system of government — even though Obama entered office with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, an enthralled media, and a closely divided Supreme Court.

So to what degree, after nearly five years in office, has Obama succeeded in changing the United States?

Federal spending. We are $6 trillion more deeply in debt. And there are record numbers of Americans on food stamps, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, or simply disengaged from the work force. Obama has also fundamentally changed Americans’ ideas about the redistributive state.

Whereas, under Clinton and Bush, the argument centered on whether federal subsidies eroded the work ethic, created dependency, and led to a permanent underclass, now the discussion is quite transformed beyond the safety net. Fairly or not, Obama is seen as expanding entitlements in part as a political tool, quite apart from the question of their efficacy in eliminating poverty.

The problem is not just that his critics accuse Obama of trying to create a permanent constituency, a loyal “47 percent” dependent on state money, but rather the way in which Obama himself envisions these programs as reminders of his them/us faultlines. After 2009, the regulations governing food stamps and welfare were liberalized and politicized as never before. These payouts were judged not just on whether they hurt or helped people, but also, in the Greek and Roman sense, of increasing the number of recipients so as to change political realities.

Taxes and debt. Democrats usually wish to raise them, Republicans to shrink them. Nothing new there. But under Obama, there is now a twist. Higher taxes are not a means to achieve a balanced budget, as under the Clinton-Gingrich deal of 1997. Indeed, the return of a 39 percent–plus federal income-tax rate on higher incomes will result not in a balanced budget as before (even with congressionally imposed sequestration). We will still have huge annual deficits of two-thirds of a trillion dollars or more.

Because nearly half of Americans will continue to pay no federal income taxes, and the old Clinton rates were imposed only on the upper brackets, we have the worst of both worlds: high taxes on job creators, along with continuing huge deficits. That paradox raises the question of whether Obama sees deficits not just as necessary to prime the economy, or as a tolerable consequence of huge increases in federal spending, but also as a mechanism to serially raise taxes on the upper brackets, as a desirable redistributive end in and of itself. Taxes are seen now not just as a way to fund expenditures, but as a punitive tool — hence the new phraseology of 1 percent, fat cats, corporate-jet owners, you did not build that, no time to profit, at some point you’ve made enough money, etc. A more equal but poorer America appears to be preferable to a more affluent but less equal nation.

Health care. Little need be said about Obamacare, an orphan now disowned by most of its parents. The purpose of this vast new entitlement was not to ensure all Americans better health care (if it had been, then pro-Obama business owners, unions, and congressional staffers would have wanted in), but instead a sort of health-care TSA bureaucracy, with more dependents, more federal workers, and higher redistributive taxes — in short, larger government.

Interest rates. Ostensibly, de facto zero interest rates are used as a stimulus for a moribund economy that so far seems oblivious to all the traditional liberal priming tools of massive borrowing, growth in federal spending, and more entitlements and public hiring. Yet almost nonexistent interest rates have sharpened the class divide. The very wealthy have benefited enormously as capital streamed into the stock market in desperate search of almost any return. The very poor do not depend on interest on savings as a hedge against inflation or as central to retirement.

That leaves the middle class, who so far have not felt the upside of zero interest rates — the interest on their credit-card debt remains sky-high, their student loans are steep, and their mortgage interest for the most part is not all that low. The banks loan at high interest and pay almost nothing on deposits; Wall Street welcomes in cash without much worry about competition to produce returns; and the poor are the beneficiaries of the vast federal borrowing that goes some way toward explaining why interest rates cannot climb, given that servicing the ever-rising federal debt would become almost unsustainable.

The presidency. An imperial presidency is not new. But rule by executive fiat that escapes audit from the media is. We live in an age when a president can arbitrarily nullify a law, like Obamacare’s employer mandate; ignore it, like the Defense of Marriage Act; or simply create it, as with partial blanket amnesties. Various wars — on coal, guns, non-union businesses, and political opponents — are waged by executive action. For now, the logic is that the president’s means are justified by the exalted ends that he professes. Obama has set the precedent of a president creating, ignoring, or defying laws as he sees fit to forward a progressive agenda.

Scandal. Bill Clinton gave us plenty of scandals; but, as in the case of the Nixon administration, the media galvanized public attention to the danger of a sometimes lawless administration. But whether it is the Benghazi deception, the IRS scandal, the NSA disclosures, the AP monitoring, or Fast and Furious, a new precedent has been established that the public is supposed to weigh two considerations in assessing scandal: the truth versus the damage that the truth can do to a progressive vision of a fairer America. So far the truth has lost.

Politics. In his political style, Obama seems to operate on the medieval concept of exemption. Through lofty spoken abstractions, he excuses low behavior. Praising “civility” allows you to call your opponents veritable terrorists; talk of unity means energizing supporters to get in their opponents’ face; advocacy of a campaign of principles reduces Romney to a veritable ogre. Plenty of presidents have proved vicious, but few so adept in attributing their own base behavior to others. Damning fat cats and corporate-jet owners allows a president to hold serial $50,000-a-head fundraisers. Ridiculing Romney’s elevator seems to make vacationing in Aspen, Costa del Sol, Vail, and Martha’s Vineyard perfectly natural.

Energy. Before Obama, natural gas and nuclear power were seen as preferable alternatives to oil and coal. If new restrictions on reactors and a de facto end to the new federal leasing of land for oil and gas exploration are any indication, neither energy source is now acceptable. Had Obama opened up federal lands for fracking and horizontal drilling, built the Keystone Pipeline, and encouraged natural gas as a transportation tool, power bills would not have climbed and gasoline prices would not have doubled. The U.S. would have enjoyed an even brighter energy future than what private enterprise alone has provided.

Obama’s view of energy — whether we cite former energy secretary Steven Chu’s lunacy on the desirability of raising U.S. gasoline prices to European levels, or candidate Obama’s own promises to bankrupt coal companies — is elitist to the core. His signature energy achievement is to change the terms of the debate: The chief energy issues for the Obama administration are not national security, not energy independence, not greater competitiveness for American business, not savings for the American consumer, and not jobs. Instead, whether a fuel might heat the atmosphere seems the sole concern.

Race. Had Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell been elected president, race would have been incidental rather than essential to their governance. Nothing in Barack Obama’s past suggests that such a statement could ever have been true of his presidency.

From the beer summit to “punish our enemies” to the two occasions of pop editorializing about Trayvon Martin, and from Eric Holder’s “my people” to “nation of cowards,” the Obama administration has sought at opportune times to emphasize racial differences, mostly to secure the base for Obama’s own reelection and for midterm elections.

The result is that race relations have become more polarized than at any other time in the last 30 years. Under Obama’s leadership, celebrities, political analysts, and politicians traffic more in racial animus than at any other time in our recent history. Obama has had an uncanny ability to energize the Black Caucus to voice unusually inflammatory charges. How did it happen that suddenly Chris Rock and Jamie Foxx sound racially biased? When did the post-election commentary of pundits (e.g., “too old, too white, too male”) become so race-based?

From the trivial — dropping his g’s and clumsily transforming his cadences — to the fundamental — weighing in in mediis rebus on pending court cases — the president’s goal has often been division, not unity. We have reached a surreal situation of reading daily accounts of black-on-white crime in the media, reported by politically correct journalists who dare not mention the perpetrator’s race, followed by enraged readers’ comments that are the most patently racist in modern memory.

Illegal immigration. Before Obama, the debate over illegal immigration was mostly an argument between two schools that transcended politics and ideology: literalists who believed the law had to be enforced to its full extent, postfacto as well as preventatively, and realists who agreed in theory but felt that many of the 11 million who resided illegally in the U.S. could be given a pathway to citizenship, so long as they have no criminal record, have avoided public assistance, and could claim long residence — contingent on closing the border.

Not now. Under Obama, illegal immigration has become a political if not a racially charged issue. Supporters of blanket amnesty saw an evolving demographic process of fundamentally transforming the electorate of the American Southwest, resonating with Obama’s own unfortunate lead, as in his advice to Latinos to “punish our enemies.” Perhaps this vision was best summarized by ACORN’s former CEO, Bertha Lewis. She recently urged African-Americans to support increased immigration on the following rationale: “We got some Latino cousins, we got some Asian cousins, we got some Native-American cousins, we got all kind of cousins. . . . Cousins need to get together, because if we’re going to be [part of the non-white] majority, it makes sense for black people in this country to get down with immigration reform. . . . Everyone, even all white folks in this country, acknowledge that in a minute, [the] United States of America will be a new majority, will be majority minority, a brand-new thing. . . . For the first time ever in history, African-Americans outvoted white Americans. Pooh. That’s the fear of the white man. That could change everything. That’s why [immigration] should matter to us.”

Foreign policy. What is the common theme to the euphemisms about terrorism and radical Islam, the failed reset with Russia, withdrawal from Iraq, confusion in Afghanistan, lead-from-behind in Libya, pink lines and pseudo–“game changers” in Syria, the faux deadlines with Iran, mesmerization with Turkey, peace feelers to Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela, as well as the rhetorical tropes found in the Cairo speech, the U.N. addresses, and the Al-Arabiya interview?

Just as, in Obama’s worldview, the 1 percent exercise undue influence in the United States, so too abroad America has exercised exceptional power and influence that either are not warranted by its traditions and history, or do not contribute to stability and social justice in the world at large. Fundamentally transforming the role of the U.S. means tilting toward countries that are suspicious of the Western tradition, and favoring groups and countries like Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinians that have supposedly legitimate grievances against the United States. The goal? Probably, the transformation of the U.S. into something like the EU, whose democratic socialism is manifested abroad with soft-power lectures.

Guns. There is no new restrictive legislation on firearms; and yet never has the ability to buy reasonably priced ammunition and firearms in quantity been more curtailed. In loudly threatening to enact more gun control after each publicized tragic shooting, the Obama administration has created a climate of fear, which has prompted hoarding, shortages, panic buying, and paranoia, which have accomplished what the federal government could not.

To what degree these changes will be reversed or institutionalized depends on the 2014 and 2016 elections. For now, Obama’s transformations are not to be found only in his legislative record, but far more in his use of the presidency to change the way we envision and talk about America.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book is The Savior Generals from BloomsburyBooks. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.


3a)

China's Rising Tide in the Caribbean

Beijing's study of the Soviet Union's strategy in the islands is paying dividends.

By RUSH DOSHI AND DAVID WALTER

Most American vacationers see the Caribbean as a place for sun and sand, not for geopolitical struggle. But that may change as Beijing ramps up its global power ambitions. As U.S. strategic interest in the Americas wanes, China has lavished money and attention on the Caribbean's island nations, muddying the waters in what has long been "America's Lake."

In June, for instance, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Trinidad and Tobago to court the leaders of 10 Caribbean countries. He came bearing some $3 billion in development loans, a hefty sum for a tiny region.

At first, such largess seems straight out of China's standard developing-world playbook: From Africa to South America, Beijing has perfected the art of buying off governments, often to win natural resources for Chinese factories or to steal sovereign recognition from Taiwan.

But China's Caribbean involvement is far from business as usual. The combined Caribbean economy is no larger than that of Kansas, and only a handful of its countries—Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago—possess exportable resources of note. A few Caribbean microstates, such as St. Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis, recognize Taiwan, but China stopped courting these states five years ago amid a Beijing-Taipei detente.

The best way to understand China's Caribbean courtship is to consider the last distant power to have designs on the region: the Soviet Union. Today the Caribbean is regarded as a strategic and economic backwater by Washington. But the Soviets saw—and Beijing sees—something different: an American vulnerability.

Until it collapsed in 1991, the Soviet Union viewed the Caribbean through a military-strategic lens. Moscow knew the Panama Canal was essential for moving U.S. naval vessels from the Atlantic to the Pacific. U.S. oil imports arrived at Gulf of Mexico refineries via Caribbean waterways. In the event of war, the Soviets reasoned they could disrupt these transportation lines, harm the U.S. economy, and distract attention from Europe.

In the early 1960s, the Soviets set out to foment military coups, invest liberally in regional relationships, and move naval assets to the Caribbean. To further project its power, Moscow established proxy airstrips in Grenada, surveillance facilities in Central America, even a secret submarine base in Cuba. These investments led U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick to warn in 1981 that "the Soviet Union has become a major military power within the Western hemisphere."

Beijing's analysts studied the Soviet Union's Caribbean strategy in the 1980s, writing that "Soviet expansion posed a threat to [Caribbean] sea lines" and helped "contain U.S. strategy." China and the U.S. are not in a Cold War. But Beijing's recent Caribbean push does revive the Soviet strategy to project power. The difference is that Beijing has greater tolerance for the long game and emphasizes economic and legal instruments of statecraft instead of Soviet-style military assistance and coups.

Caribbean states are suffering from chronic trade deficits, decades of stagnant growth, and record government debt. This year three governments—St. Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica and Grenada—are pursuing painful debt restructuring. U.S. aid is roughly half what it was in the 1980s. But China has a major project in nearly every Caribbean country and, including the $3 billion in loans announced in June, has provided more than $6 billion in development loans and grants to the region over the past decade.

China's assistance is a long-term strategic investment, and it can buy low and sell high since Caribbean influence is relatively cheap. State-owned China Communications Construction Co. already plans to build a mammoth commercial port in Jamaica over the next decade. Later on, China could establish surveillance facilities or sign naval-access agreements, as it has with Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean and Pakistan in South Asia. In times of crisis, China could use the Caribbean to draw U.S. attention away from Asia and Beijing's own maritime backyard, the South China Sea.

Moreover, China knows that island states have outsize political influence in international organizations where even the smallest countries carry the same weight. Jamaica is home to the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which regulates mining access to seafloors in international waters—and the billions of dollars of rare-earth minerals believed to be buried there.

China currently produces more than 95% of all rare-earth minerals, and to retain its dominance in the market hopes to become a leader in deep-sea mining. Not coincidentally, China has given aid to Jamaica and several other Caribbean states sitting on ISA committees that award contracts and write regulations for deep-sea mining.

China has also invested in Caribbean microstates in hopes of winning their votes in other organizations such as the United Nations. These states can and do provide support for Chinese positions on human rights, Taiwan and, increasingly, territorial disputes as far away as the South China Sea.

In June, Caribbean leaders meeting in Trinidad thanked President Xi for his beneficence and hailed what he calls his "China Dream" of "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." That may seem like empty rhetoric—but the Chinese investment that buys diplomatic blandishments today will tomorrow be used to secure still greater economic and strategic advantages.

Mr. Doshi is an analyst at Long Term Strategy Group in Washington, D.C. Mr. Walter is a writer in Hong Kong.

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4)

Israel's Failing Strategy

The Jewish state cannot rely on the United States for its security.

By Bret Stephens

So Israel's prime minister is now left to play the part of querulous Uncle Ben, who arrives the day after the funeral convinced his scheming siblings have already absconded with mother's finest jewelry.

Uncle Ben's suspicions may well be right. But he largely has himself to blame for not acting in time.

Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House on Monday and on Tuesday addresses the United Nations. It's a predictable routine. First he obtains the stylized assurances from President Obama—still exulting from his 15 minute phone call Friday with Iran's Hasan Rouhani—that Iran will not be allowed to get a bomb and that "all options are on the table." Then Mr. Netanyahu denounces Iran at the U.N. and issues unspecified, and increasingly noncredible, warnings that Israel may act on its own.

All hat and no cattle, as they say.

Here's a line I never thought I'd write: I wish Ehud Olmert were Israel's prime minister. Mr. Olmert has many flaws, some of them well known. But he also had a demonstrated capacity to act. It isn't clear that Mr. Netanyahu does.

In May 2007 Israel disclosed to the U.S. that Syria was constructing a nuclear reactor in its eastern desert with help from North Korea. Mr. Olmert, then Israel's prime minister, asked President Bush to bomb the facility. Mr. Bush weighed the options, said no, and proposed instead taking the matter public at the U.N.

"I told [Mr. Olmert] I had decided on a diplomatic option backed by the threat of force," the former president recounts in his memoir, "Decision Points."

"The prime minister was disappointed. 'This is something that hits at the very serious nerves of this country,' he said. He told me the threat of a nuclear weapons program in Syria was an 'existential' issue for Israel, and he worried diplomacy would bog down and fail. 'I must be honest and sincere with you. Your strategy is very disturbing to me.' That was the end of the call."

Could Mr. Netanyahu say the same to Mr. Obama? Maybe. The Israeli prime minister infuriated the White House a couple of years ago by treating the president to a public lecture in the Oval Office.

Yet Israeli policy since then has amounted to one big kowtow to Mr. Obama's needs, political and diplomatic. Israel apparently refrained from attacking Iran a year ago, largely out of deference to Mr. Obama's electoral needs. Since then it has given the administration the widest possible latitude to pursue diplomatic initiatives until they prove their futility.

A year on, here is where things stand.

(1) U.S. credibility on enforcing presidential red lines and carrying through on military threats is in tatters thanks to Mr. Obama's Syria capitulation.

(2) America's "diplomatic option" is, for Mr. Obama, a journey not a destination: He will pursue it no matter how flimsy the pretext or the likelihood of success.

(3) Iran has enriched nearly 3,000 kilos of uranium in the last year alone, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA also notes in its most recent report that "the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities . . . including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile."

Oh, and (4): Despite this, Israel finds itself on the diplomatic back foot because Iran's new president, unlike his predecessor, has alighted on a less-uncouth way to deny the Holocaust. Israel is now in the disastrous position of having to hope that Iranian hard-liners sabotage Mr. Rouhani's efforts to negotiate a deal that, if honored, would leave Iran first-and-five at the nuclear goal line.

How does Mr. Netanyahu get out of this trap? Here's another line I never thought I'd write: by downgrading relations with Washington.

That isn't to say that Israel doesn't benefit from good relations with the U.S. But the U.S., like Britain after World War II, is in retreat from the world, and Israelis need to adapt to a global reality in which the Americans are willing to do less, and consequently count for less. What Mr. Netanyahu has been doing instead is granting Mr. Obama a degree of leverage and a presumption of authority over the Jewish state to which he is not entitled and has done little to deserve. That needs to stop.

What also needs to stop is the guessing game over Israel's intentions toward Iran. Mr. Obama will not—repeat, will not—conduct a military strike against Iran. Israelis who think otherwise are fooling themselves.

But Israel will soon have to decide whether to act alone. If so, Israelis must proceed without regard to Mr. Obama's diplomatic timetable. If not, they'll need to reconsider the concept and structure of Israeli deterrence, including nuclear ambiguity.

One last thing worth noting: Reflecting on Mr. Olmert's decision to act against his wishes, Mr. Bush wrote this: "Prime Minister Olmert's execution of the strike made up for the confidence I had lost in the Israelis during the Lebanon war. . . . The bombing demonstrated Israel's willingness to act alone. Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light, and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel."

That is the voice of respect. Better for Israel to have that than any other mark of international approval or popularity.

4a)Netanyahu holds his tongue, and will have to hold his fire
By David Horovitz

You're wrong, I’ll be vindicated, but I know I can’t stop you trying.

Stranger things have happened, I’m not a fool, and you’re damn right you can’t stop me trying.

That was the blunt, unspoken essence of the gracious display staged by President Barack Obama and his guest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, showcasing a mature but asymmetrical partnership — between a superpower and, however unpalatable for Israel, a supplicant.

The prime minister “is always candid,” Obama vouchsafed just a little wryly at the tail end of his remarks. And one can imagine that Netanyahu was candid indeed behind closed doors, marshaling compelling argument, and evidence, to underpin his public contention that Iran “is committed to Israel’s destruction.”

But ultimately, Netanyahu knew all along that he and Obama would have to agree to disagree, that the president would not be deterred from putting the diplomatic route to the “test,” and that attempting a repeat of his May 2011 Oval Office lecture style (when he told Obama bitterly that Israel’s pre-1967 lines are indefensible) could only be counter-productive. He is certain there is no diplomatic route, only a blind alley, but he held his tongue.

And so Obama — much more familiar with Netanyahu’s thinking, and with Israel’s nuances, after his visit in March — could afford to be magnanimous.

Thus the president promised that economic pressure on Iran would not be lifted lightly, assuring his visitor airily that “anything that we do will require the highest standards of verification in order for us to provide the sort of sanctions relief that I think they are looking for.” And importantly for Netanyahu, he declared that “we take no options off the table, including military options, in terms of making sure that we do not have nuclear weapons in Iran” — a threat he had chosen not to issue in the specific Iranian context during his address to the United Nations General Assembly last Tuesday.

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5)Whose side is Obama and the NSA on, anyway?

NO SNOOPING PERMITTED Guess what Obama’s NSA snooping excludes... Mosques.  Bringing political stupidity and "political correctness" to new levels of absurdity.  This should help you sleep at night.  The source of this article is an Investor's Business Daily editorial. How in the hell can they say that they need NSA spying on all of us and then turn around and make an  exclusion for Muslim meeting places like this?  Now this makes perfect sense doesn’t it? Obama’s NSA snooping exempts one part of America from their spying. Muslim mosques. You couldn’t make this crap up if you tried. Mosques being off limits by the NSA isn’t something that was started in the Bush administration either. Exempting Mosques from the NSA began in October 2011 and they are off-limits to FBI agents. Kind of defeats the purpose of ‘protecting America’ by snooping when 95% of terrorism in this country is from Muslims. =============================================== Obama's Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers Posted 06/12/2013 06:34 PM ET http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/061213-659753-all-intrusive-obama-terror-dragnet-excludesmosques.htm   Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are. That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized. Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover sting operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret. We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel's formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there. Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown jihadists — inside mosques — and disrupted dozens of plots against the homeland. If only they were allowed to continue, perhaps the many victims of the Boston Marathon bombings would not have lost their lives and limbs. The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshipped. The bureau didn't even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying their images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV cameras and cell phones. One of the Muslim bombers made extremist outbursts during worship, yet because the mosque wasn't monitored, red flags didn't go off inside the FBI about his increasing radicalization before the attacks. This is particularly disturbing in light of recent independent surveys of American mosques, which reveal some 80% of them preach violent jihad or distribute violent literature to worshippers. What other five-alarm jihadists are counter-terrorism officials missing right now, thanks to restrictions on monitoring the one area they should be monitoring?--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------