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Obama has accomplished another miraculous feat. Has he thrown Egypt's military into the arms of Russia? (See 2 below.)
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A very dear liberal friend of mine asked me would I acknowledge Obamacare worked when the various fixes have been completed?
I replied, in my opinion it was beyond fixing because it was bad legislation, had never been read and now that it was being implemented, its impact was so onerous even Democrats would have to run from it as best they could.
I have said repeatedly, Republicans should not stand in the way of attempts to fix it. Enforce it because that is the best way to get rid of bad legislation.
Not everything about Obama care is bad. Uninsured should have options for coverage, subsidized if necessary, but not at the expense of those who already have coverage and can afford something better.
Progressives believe in fairness , whatever that means, and in seeking fairness they create havoc which not only do we know what that means but are witnessing it every day. Concepts are good when they work and are affordable but liberals never understand that fact because rational thinking which flies in the face of their emotions is something foreign to their DNA .(See 3 below.)
I decided to submit my thoughts in an LTE as follows:
"While many liberals continue to defend their anointed and bask in the glory of his questionable accomplishments, which now even member of his forlorn Party have begun to disavow, I submit were he an employee of a business they might own they would summarily fire him for his various failures and evident incompetence.
If my premise is correct, then the only way to explain the disconnect of progressive thinking, who continue bathing in the luxury of their misbegotten concepts in search of fairness, is their abject inability to admit the cost of their flawed concepts. Logic and empirical evidence defies their emotions.
As for Obamacare, I submit the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it. Why some Republicans seek to propose mending this monstrosity is beyond comprehension.
It is unlikely there can be a timely fixing of Obamacare and Obama is equally unlikely to bring himself to admit what Clinton , as recently as yesterday urged, so allow this beast to fall of its own weigh because this dog just will just not hunt!"
===I find it ironic that France, Europe's wussiest nation, chose to stand tall when it came to Iran . The problem is France does not have the military capability of backing up its convictions but at least their current government is clear eyed whereas ours remains dreamily glassy eyed. (See 4 below.)
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More Sowell tea sipping. (See 5 below.)
===
I admit to being wrong in my timing.
I wrote more than 4 years ago Obama would prove a disaster and when he did the press and media would pull away from him in an Et Tu Brute move so as not to go down with his ship. I was wrong in my timing. They hung loyal for four years but now the crack is finally appearing and they are scurrying like rats deserting a ship as are many from his own party.
Not only has his ratings declined with respect to competence but the trust factor, which is like Humpty Dumpty, the most fragile of all, in free fall.
Well it ain't because of GW. This is one the O baked and .will have to eat by himself.
===
Dick
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1) Dangerous Times: Obama and the Crisis of Evil
By James Lewis
The Atlantic, November 2, 2012: Obama's Crystal-Clear Promise to Stop Iran From Getting a Nuclear Weapon.
The New Republic, March 2, 2012. "...never has an American president treated an Israeli prime minister with such shabbiness as Obama has treated Netanyahu."
Daily Blaze, November 8, 2013: UNITED STATES HAS BEEN SECRETLY LIFTING IRAN SANCTIONS, EXPLOSIVE REPORTS SAYS.
For decades sane people have tried to raise worldwide alarms about the rise of Iran as a rogue nuclear power.
Liberals chose not to listen. Conservatives listened, because we are realists, and we still read history.
Today -- at this very moment -- the crisis is here, and worst of all, it has been aided and abetted by Barack Hussein Obama.
Obama has plainly betrayed Israel in its hour of greatest danger -- and not only Israel, because every other country within reach of Iranian missiles and WMDs is also in danger of a massive assault. That includes Putin's Russia, Saudi Arabia -- the historic religious enemy of Iran for the last thousand years. Egypt is in danger. Turkey is within reach of Iranian missiles and weapons of mass destructions.
If you are deluded by our media to think only Israel is in danger, you haven't looked at a map of the Middle East lately.
The Saudis just ordered nukes from Pakistan to share with the Egyptian army, which has the big numbers the Saudis don't have.
The Israelis are preparing preemptive strikes. They have been planning with other endangered countries.
Our U.S. military forces bases all over the Middle East are now also under direct threat from the suicide cult that runs Iran. And Obama has colluded in a criminal retreat from our great power responsibilities.
If you are wondering why almost 200 general officers have resigned from what Obama calls "my army" in the last few years, consider the possibility that they simply could not tolerate Obama's strategic perversity in the Middle East. These general officers have been telling Obama not to do it. His response was to fire them.
The crisis we have been predicting is here now. Don't doubt it. This is the greatest nuclear danger since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963. It is exactly what George Bush and Dick Cheney tried desperately to warn us about, the moment when rogue fanatics got their hands on nuclear weapons. Bush-Cheney tried to keep it from ever happening. But Obama has turned their sane and sensible policy upside-down. In Syria and Iran Obama has actually protected fanatical Muslim war cults. That was the big secret of Benghazi, where Ambassador Stevens was sending arms to nearly 60,000 Al Qaida terrorists in Syria. The Qaidaists turn on him and murdered him, but they kept those arms, including shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
Our media haven't dared to tell the truth. That is why you are reading this in the new media.
Today the murderous mullahs are within weeks of getting to enriched fissionable materials any time they decide to go ahead -- and Obama is demanding the surrender, not of the war-making mullahs, but rather of the peaceful people of Israel.
We are now in a nuclear crisis. Remember that. This time it's worse than the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963, because our president at that time never doubted for a moment that the USSR was a deadly enemy that had to be faced down. Obama doesn't get that.
BHO is different. If you don't yet understand that, starting paying attention now. This is not a drill. This is real. If Americans don't understand our clear and present danger, they will very soon. We have to understand that Obama is even more dangerous than we thought he was.
Normal Americans don't have trouble choosing between the Nairobi killers who violated and decapitated young children in the Kenya mall last month, and the Israelis, who have been giving medical help to wounded refugees from war-torn Syria. Those Al Qaida killers in the Kenya mall were bloodthirsty, merciless beasts of prey. Iran's new "smiling man of peace," Ayatollah Rouhani, actually commanded the truck bombing that killed 299 U.S. Marine and French peacekeepers in Beirut in 1983. He is a ruthless mass killer.
Normal people see Al Qaida's execution of Christian children as unmitigated evil. Ordinary people see Rouhani's mass murder of peacekeeping troops in war-torn Beirut to be just as evil.
By comparison, civilized nations like Israel and America are constantly worried whether we are doing the right thing. When Ayatollah Khomeini was forced to end the Iran-Iraq war with Saddam Hussein, a war that killed one million Arabs and Iranians, he said that making peace would be like a stab to his heart. That is the difference between civilized nations and war cults like the mullahs of Iran.
Intelligence analyst Claire Lopez just reported that Saudi Arabia has ordered nuclear weapons from Pakistan. This column has warned about that threat, because Saudi nukes were inevitable once the mullahs of Iran came close enough to nukes. The Saudis have been at war with the mullahs of Iran for a thousand years. The Saudis were almost overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini forty years ago. Saudi Arabia and Egypt must have nuclear weapons once Iran has them.
And yet -- Obama has protected the Iranian nuclear program until today, when he is effectively telling Israel to surrender to their demands. If you think Obama betrayed his promise to Americans that "if you like your health insurance you can keep it" -- you have to realize that he just committed a much greater and more dangerous act of treachery -- one that threatens a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East. And it may not stop there. Iran now has ICBMs that can reach Europe. Iran could send a freighter with a nuclear bomb to New York harbor and explode it there. The mullahs have shouted since 1979 that they were prepared or martyrdom to kill the infidels. Today they have the means to carry out their threats. The Saudis and Egyptians understand that, which is why they are buying nukes and missiles from Pakistan.
The American media have closed their eyes (as always), but Obama has now pushed over the pillars of peace in the Middle East very deliberately. Even Hillary warned him against overthrowing U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt as reported in the Washington Post. Yet Obama went right ahead and supported the radical Muslim Brotherhood to take over Egypt. The Egyptian media are now accusing the president of the United States of supporting the most radical Muslim fanatics in Egypt and Iran.
Rouhani is a mass killer, as he showed in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. You can be that he's never lost a good night's sleep worrying whether he did the right thing back than. Rouhani is never in doubt, because God told him to kill those U.S. Marines. Those are the people we are dealing with. God told him to do it, and God will know his own when the souls of those U.S. Marines come before Him to be judged. That is literally what Rouhani believes.
Check it out. You can use the whole web to double-check these statements. Find out for yourself.
Today, with Obama's active connivance, Ayatollah Rouhani is now conducting a smiling "peace offensive," to lull hundreds of millions of indoctrinated suckers to sleep. Our media are in full collusion with Obama, the radical Left, and the most murderous branches of radical Islam.
Normal Americans just can't get into the mullahs' ancient theological mindset, because Christianity and Judaism left all that behind many centuries ago, after the great religious wars of European history. But radical Islam has revived Allah-knows-all indoctrination in Iran and Arabia. Westerners provide plenty of suckers for those absolutist cults.
Cult indoctrination is incredibly powerful. On November 18, 1978, more than 900 people committed mass suicide in Guyana on the direct orders of Jim Jones, a San Francisco cult leader. Those were pretty normal people before they joined the suicide cult. This is also how the Japanese Emperor cult was able to convince hundreds of young Japanes pilots to commit suicide by flying their planes into American aircraft carriers in World War II. Cults are dangerous. The mullahs in Iran have now controlled the schools and mass media in Iran for almost forty years. They are running a war-mongering suicide cult over there, but they have more than Jim Jones' 900 Americans drinking the kool-aid. They have hundreds of thousands of potential martyrs. In their war with Saddam Hussein the mullahs sent regiments of teenage boys on motorcycles into Saddam's minefields to martyr themselves in the name of Allah. Those kids wore green plastic signs around their necks, with the Arab slogan, "Key to Paradise."
The mullahs of Iran are today's Divine Emperor cult from World War II. Warmaking cults have existed throughout human history. They are not unusual. The Aztecs of pre-Columbian Mexico were a war-making cult that captured members of neighboring tribes to sacrifice atop their pyramids. The Yanamamo of Chile and Peru have been studied for decades by Harvard anthropologists. They are also a fierce, warmaking cult. The inner core of Hitler's Nazis were a cult, sworn to commit suicide to protect Der Fuehrer. The Japanese Aleph Cult is listed as a terrorist gang today, because in 1995 they carried out a Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway. Warmaking suicide cults are not unusual. The 9/11/01 Wahhabi terrorists all belonged to one of those cults. They killed 3,000 innocent people.
With nuclear weapons, the mullah cult could now kill many more people. That is the clear and present danger today. Delusional liberals will never take that threat seriously, but realistic people who understand the real world will take it seriously. The Israelis are realists, and so are the Saudis and the Egyptians. They understand the threat of suicide cults with weapons of mass destruction.
Obama's closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, grew up as a child in Khomeinist Iran. She knows all about it. Obama therefore has to know the truth about the suicide cult of Rouhani and Khamenei that runs those sixty million people today.
Normal Americans see a great moral abyss between Israel and Ayatollah Rouhani, who has been whipping up murderous hatred against the West for forty years. We see the difference between good and evil.
Obama doesn't get that. He has been taught to flip what normal people believe is good and evil. This may be hard to believe, but look at the facts, not at your fond dreams of what our presidents should be.
Obama has been indoctrinated all his life -- as a child in Indonesia by Muslims following the bloody Indonesian civil war, then in Hawaii by his "mentor," race-hater Frank Marshall Davis, and later on, as Obama told us in his autobiographies, by a cult-like collection of like-minded angry people he chose to be his personal friends in college. As a result, Obama has only one opinion of the world. Everything he says is an ever-changing stream of lies. That is why Obama needs a teleprompter, to be cued about the "narrative" of the day. Honest people don't need a teleprompter. They just say what's in their minds. Obama cannot do that.
Today Obama has dropped the smiling mask.
The O'Care website doesn't work? That doesn't bother this president for one moment. Trillions of deficit spending doesn't fix unemployment after five years? No problem. Obama isn't interested. Obama is a blind ideologue. His words change, but his mind is made up.
1a)Senate Republicans reject W.H. plea on Iran
By John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett
Senate Republicans are strongly rejecting a White House plea for a delay in a new round of economic sanctions against Iran and are vowing to move forward with additional restrictions over the country’s nuclear weapons program.
One Republican — Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois — angrily compared the Obama administration’s appeal to Neville Chamberlain’s “appeasement” of Nazi Germany before World War II.
Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and top officials from the State and Treasury departments held a classified briefing on Wednesday afternoon for members of the Senate Banking Committee in an attempt to preempt congressional action on sanctions while Western leaders negotiate with Iranian officials. That panel would take the lead on any Senate consideration of such legislation.
Yet Republicans on the committee — and a number of Senate Democrats — remain unconvinced by the White House’s position following the briefing.
“I do think we ought to accelerate sanctions,” said Kirk, a leading Israel supporter in the Senate. “The pitch was very unconvincing. It was fairly anti-Israeli.” Kirk told reporters that he’d met with Israeli officials earlier in the day who said a proposed deal with Iran would only set back their nuclear research effort by “24 days.”
Kirk added: “This administration, like Neville Chamberlain, is yielding a large and bloody conflict in the Middle East involving Iranian nuclear weapons, which will now be part of our children’s future.”
After leaving the meeting, Senate Democratic leadership and the Obama administration delegation’s lips were sealed. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his entire leadership team as well as Biden and Kerry declined comment to a waiting pack of media.
Kirk also blasted Wendy Sherman, the State Department’s lead negotiator in the Geneva-based P5+1 talks with Iran, pointing out that she also led the Clinton administration effort in the 1990s to prevent North Korea from developing its own nuclear weapons. Despite U.S. efforts to supply that regime with food and nuclear reactors in a bid to end weapons research, North Korea exploded its own nuclear bomb in October 2006.
“I started questioning Wendy Sherman about her record on North Korea, and she surprisingly defended it to me,” Kirk said. “Her record to North Korea is a total failure and an embarrassment to her service.”
“It was an emotional appeal, and I have to tell you that I was very disappointed in the presentation. It lacked content,” complained Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a Banking panel member who is also the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I was stunned that in a classified setting, when you’re trying to talk with the very folks that would be originating legislation relative to sanctions, there would be such a lack of specificity.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters he believes “we ought to be actually ratcheting up the sanctions against Iran. It’s pretty obvious that what the administration is promoting is something the Israelis think is a bad deal for them. It’s pretty clear the Sunni Arab allies of ours also think its a bad deal. Looking at it strictly from an American point of view, I think it's a bad deal as well. So I’d be surprised if we do not have a debate on enhanced Iran sanctions.”
Before the meeting, Reid and other top Democrats were non-committal — although they have all expressed strong support for Israel. Israeli officials are quietly urging U.S. lawmakers to impose additional sanctions in order to force Iran to end its efforts to build a nuclear weapon.
“We should find out from them what went on” at the last round of Geneva negotiations, Reid said.
Reid added: “I hope we can work something out with Iran, but I am a person who really believes in the state of Israel. It’s a country that is surrounded by a number of countries that have been for decades now trying to get rid of them, wipe them off the face of the map….” he added.
To view online:
1b)
Iran's Deal of the Century
A deal that undermines sanctions and doesn't stop a future with Iranian nuclear weapons
A deal that undermines sanctions and doesn't stop a future with Iranian nuclear weapons is the deal of the century for Iran.
Learn more:
According to multiple news reports, the P5+1 offered the following sanctions relief to Iran during the latest round of negotiations: repatriation of $3 billion in Iranian assets trapped in accounts overseas, in addition to the suspension of current sanctions with respect to precious metals (like gold), Iran’s petrochemical and car industries, and aviation parts.
From an analysis conducted by the non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies:
Gold Sanctions Relief: The deal on the table reportedly affords Iran the ability to resume the export of precious metals. Based on trade data compiled by Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Roubini Global Economics, gold imports from Turkey to Iran in 2012 reached as high as $1.6 billion per month. Using this figure as a guide, if gold sanctions relief is given for six months in the period leading up a possible final nuclear agreement, Iran has the potential to pocket at least $9.6 billion in gold sales.
Petrochemical Sanctions Relief: According to a recent Business Monitor International report, Iran exported $11.2 billion last year in petrochemical products exports and projects an increase of another $1 billion next year. If petrochemical sanctions relief is provided, using these numbers as a guide, Iran could enjoy a windfall of $5-6 billion over six months.
Automotive Sanctions Relief: Under U.S. sanctions since June 2013, Iran’s auto sector is inextricably linked to Iran's nuclear program because of its involvement with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s procurement networks and sanctions evasion. During a seven-month period in 2012, before the sanctions were imposed, Iran exported approximately $1.4 billion from its auto industry. Thus, if the administration provides automotive sanctions relief, this could be worth approximately $1.3 billion over a six-month period.
Conclusion: Iran currently has approximately $80 billion in foreign exchange reserves. Of those funds, $10 billion is frozen, $20 billion is fully accessible, and $50 billion is only semi-accessible for barter trade in escrow accounts in China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey. A deal that offers $3 billion in cash, plus another $16-17 billion, totaling $20 billion in sanctions relief, would give a staggering 25 percent boost to Iran’s total foreign exchange reserves, bringing that number up to $100 billion. It would also constitute a doubling of the amount of fully accessible foreign exchange reserves currently available, from $20 to $40 billion. If the P5+1 went further and released trapped oil funds valued at over $50 billion, through installment payments, this would increase Iran’s fully accessible reserves from $20 billion to $70 billion.
According to multiple news reports, the proposal offered in Geneva would allow Iran to continue manufacturing centrifuges, allow Iran to continue working on the Arak heavy water reactor, and limit Iranian uranium enrichment to 3.5% utilizing 9,000 centrifuges. News reports indicate the Arak heavy water reactor is not scheduled to come online until mid-2014 at the earliest. In addition, the following data was provided by the non-partisan Institute for Science and International Security:
The Enrichment of Uranium: Based on Iran’s current rate of production, 9,000 IR-1 centrifuges would produce 1,380kg of 3.5% enriched uranium over a six-month period. Roughly 1,500kg of 3.5% enriched uranium is needed to produce one nuclear weapon.
The Centrifuges: If Iran manufactures IR-1 centrifuges at its current installation rate of 500 centrifuges per month, Iran would manufacture 3,000 centrifuges over a six-month period. If Iran adds 3,000 centrifuges to the 19,000 already installed, Iran’s nuclear breakout timeline would shorten by 16%.
2) Lavrov to confirm Russian air defense system, surface missiles for Egypt, Russian Navy facilities at Alexandria
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu start a two-day visit to Cairo Wednesday, Nov. 13, to wind up a major sale of advanced Russian weaponry for the Egyptian army and the Russian Navy’s access to port facilities on the Mediterranean.
Military sources, which first revealed the coming transactions in the last week of October, now amplify that report by disclosing that Moscow has agreed to equip Egypt with a sophisticated combined double-layered system which covers both its defensive and offensive requirements.
1. The first layer will provide a shield against attack by stealth aircraft, drones and cruise missiles for all of Egypt’s airspace, including the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and its coastal waters, up to the central Mediterranean. Our military sources add that part of the system will be positioned in eastern Egypt for the protection of key Saudi cities as well.
2. The second layer will be built around sophisticated surface missiles with ranges that cover all points in the Middle East including Iran. Moscow and Cairo are keeping the types of missiles secret.
Saudi Arabia is putting up the estimated $4 billion to pay for the transaction.
The Russian delegation will include the first deputy director of the Federal Service on Military-Technical Cooperation, Andrei Boitsov, and officials from state-arms exporter Rosoboronexport.
Egyptian officials continued Tuesday to deny reports that a Russian naval base would be established in an Egyptian port as “illogical,” saying it would “undermine the country’s independence and sovereignty.”
However, according to our sources, planning is already underway for the deployment of some 1,500 Russian military personnel in Egypt to have the new missiles up and running and local personnel trained in their use by mid-2014. A similar number of Russian naval and marine servicemen have been assigned to setting up the naval base, most probably in Alexandria.
We have learned that the visiting Russian ministers and Egypt’s rulers will also discuss permission for Russian warships to dock in Egypt’s Red Sea waters opposite the Saudi coast.
Several thousand Russian military personnel will therefore soon be deployed in Egypt, 42 years after the entire body of Russian “military advisers” was expelled from the country by President Anwar Sadat.
The visit to Egypt by Lavrov and Gen. Shoigu was heralded at the port of Alexandria by the arrival of the Soviet Pacific Fleet flagship, the guided missile cruiser Varyag. Egyptian Navy commanders greeted the ship with unusual honor, including a gun salute. Varyag will remain in the Egyptian port for the duration of the Russian ministers’ stay.
When US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo on Nov. 3, he tried to induce Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to call off the arms deal with Russia by offering to restore in full the $1.3 billion US military aid package which the Obama administration left hanging after the coup which deposed Mohamed Morsi as president in July.
Gen. El-Sisi replied that Cairo does not intend severing its military ties with Washington and would prefer to continue to receive American airplanes and tanks, but will also be glad to take delivery of advanced Russian weapons which the US has withheld from Egypt.
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3) Democrats Face Dilemma on the Upton Obamacare Bill
President Barack Obama’s “if you like it, you can keep it” promise has House Democrats facing a dilemma as they look ahead to a vote on Republican legislation to preserve existing health plans.
“There will be defections,” a House Democratic leadership aide predicted.
The bill, sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., would give insurance companies the option of continuing all existing health plans for a year. It’s considerably weaker than a proposal by Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., that would require insurance companies to continue offering existing plans, but the political power of the legislation may be no less potent: Are you in favor of keeping the president’s promise or not?
The problem for the White House, and House Democrats, is this: Keeping those old plans undermines the new insurance exchanges and reforms at the heart of the Affordable Care Act. They’d much rather have people enter the new exchanges and see them take advantage of the options for comprehensive benefits with the law’s other attributes — such as no more penalties for pre-existing conditions and no more gender discrimination — intact. That has presented two additional problems: The website woes have made signing up difficult for many, and others, particularly those making too much money to qualify for subsidies, are seeing higher premiums than they had under their old plans.
In a House Democratic Caucus conference call at the end of last week, leaders, unsurprisingly, said that they would urge a “no” vote on Upton’s bill.
Though the vast majority of Democrats will likely side with leadership, a sizable contingent of vulnerable caucus members — mostly freshmen — are expected to side with Republicans in bids to win over their more moderate-minded constituents ahead of the 2014 elections.
It’s a challenge to Democratic leaders who pride themselves on maintaining party unity — in stark contrast to GOP leaders who regularly struggle to corral their rank and file — and who hail passage of the health care law as their premier legislative accomplishment.
Both factors were weighing on Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., when legislation came to the floor this summer to delay implementation of the individual mandate by one year. Pelosi lobbied members hard to oppose the bill, even as targeted lawmakers argued that their re-election chances hinged in part on that vote.
In the end, 22 Democrats voted “yes,” a number one senior House Democratic aide said would probably have been higher without Pelosi’s work.
That same aide told CQ Roll Call that a similar scenario could play out this week, and it could be even more of a challenge for Pelosi. Millions have received cancellation notices from insurance companies, despite the president’s promise that they could keep their health plans if they like them, “period” — leading to a rare presidential apology and turbocharging political pressure for a fix in both parties.
“The president has apologized, but that apology will be hollow unless Washington Democrats work with us to actually stop this train-wreck,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. “If they do not, the American people will certainly take notice.”
In conversations with CQ Roll Call, many House Democratic aides said that it was crucial to allow “front-liners” to do whatever it takes to keep their seats in the next Congress and not be bullied into upholding the party’s ideological purity.
One staffer for a senior House Democrat suggested the party should rethink broader Obamacare strategy and back some changes to the law.
Democrats, he wrote in an email, have “bitten the reins and been the work horse for this administration time and time again. We’ve defended health reform to the hilt with the promise that once it went into effect, the pain would have been well worth the struggle.
“It may be time to rally around some adjustments to the law,” he continued. “If the president can’t or won’t aggressively confront the insurance industry for exploiting this loophole, we’ve got to be proactive going into ’14.”
But a House Democratic leadership aide countered that the need for party loyalty, and a unified commitment to defending the health law, couldn’t be overstated. While some House Democrats might feel it “safe” to vote for the Upton bill because they don’t see it going anywhere in the Senate, a few Senate Democrats like Landrieu are starting to rally behind similar legislation.
“Members are going to have to realize that, to some extent, you can cause problems in the Senate if there is considerable House Democratic support on some of these things,” said the aide of the adverse effect those Upton “yes” votes could have if they provide leverage to Senate Democrats.
Of course, with the bill not scheduled to come to the House floor until the end of the week, a lot could change. The current legislative text could fall prey to conservative amendments, vaporizing Democratic support. The White House, which is exploring an “administrative fix” to address the dilemma, could unveil a plan that satisfies Democrats and, in their estimation, renders Upton’s bill irrelevant.
In the meantime, front-line Democrats are staying mum on their stances: None of the offices of the 22 Democrats who voted for the individual mandate delay would tell CQ Roll Call how the lawmakers planned to vote come Friday.
Correction 10: 46 p.m.
An earlier version of this post misstated the way 22 Democrats voted on legislation this summer to delay implementation of the individual mandate by one year. They voted “yes.”
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4) A silver lining to 'leading from behind'
Daniel Pipes
That the socialist French government of François Hollande just blocked a bad deal with Tehran, emerging as the hero of the Geneva negotiations, is on one level a huge surprise. But it also follows logically from the passivity of the Obama administration.
American foreign policy is in unprecedented free-fall, with a feckless and distracted White House barely paying attention to the outside world, and when it does, acting in an inconsistent, weak, and fantastical manner. If one were to discern something so grand as an Obama Doctrine, it would read: “Snub friends, coddle opponents, devalue American interests, seek consensus, and act unpredictably.”
Along with many other critics, I rue this state of affairs. But the French action demonstrates that it does have a silver lining.
From World War II until Obama waltzed in, the U.S. government had established a pattern of taking the lead in international affairs and then getting criticized for doing so. Three examples: In Vietnam, Americans felt the need to convince their South Vietnamese ally to resist North Vietnam and the Vietcong. During much of the Cold War, they pressured allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to resist Soviet pressure. During the 1990s, they urged Middle Eastern states to contain and punish Saddam Hussein.
In each case, Americans rushed ahead on their own, then beseeched allies to work together against a common enemy, a completely illogical pattern. The nearby and weak Vietnamese, Europeans, and Arabs should have feared Hanoi, Moscow, and Baghdad more than the distant and strong Americans. The locals should have been begging the Yankees to protect them. Why was this persistently not the case?
Because the U.S. government, persuaded of its superior vision and greater morality, repeated the same mistake: seeing allies as slow-moving and confused hindrances more than as full-fledged partners, it brushed them aside and assumed main responsibilities. With rare exceptions (Israel, and France to a lesser extent), the American adult unthinkingly infantilized its smaller allies.
This had the untoward consequence of leaving those allies with an awareness of their own irrelevance. Sensing that their actions hardly mattered, they indulged in political immaturity. Not responsible for their own destinies, they felt free to engage in anti-Americanism as well as other dysfunctional behaviors, such as corruption in Vietnam, passivity in NATO, and greed in the Middle East. Mogens Glistrup, a Danish politician, embodied this problem, proposing in 1972 that Danes save both taxes and lives by disbanding their military and replacing it with an answering machine in the Ministry of Defense that would play a single message in Russian: “We capitulate!”
Barack Obama's approach pulls the United States back from its customary adult role and has it join the children. Responding to crises on a case-by-case basis and preferring to act in consultation with other governments, he prefers “leading from behind” and to be just one of the pack, as though he were prime minister of Belgium rather than president of the United States.
Ironically, this weakness has the salutary effect of slapping allies hard across the face and waking them to the fact that Washington has too long coddled them. Jaundiced allies like Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Japan are waking to the reality that they cannot take pot-shots at Uncle Sam, assured in the knowledge that he will save them from themselves. They now see that their actions count, a sobering new experience. For example, Turkish leaders are trying to light a fire under the administration to get it to intervene in the Syrian civil war.
Thus does Obama's ineptitude have the potential to turn reluctant, self-absorbed partners into more serious, mature actors. At the same time, his incompetence promises to change the U.S. reputation from overbearing nanny to much-appreciated colleague, along the way reducing ire directed at Americans.
Of course, a weak foreign policy presents the danger of catastrophe (such as facilitating an Iranian nuclear breakout or not deterring a Chinese act of aggression that leads to war), so this silver lining is just that, a small recompense for a much larger grey cloud. It's not something to be preferred. Still, should two conditions be fulfilled – no disaster on Obama's watch and a successor who reasserts American strength and will – it just might be that Americans and their allies look back on this period as a necessary one with a positive legacy.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum.
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5)
Tea Party at the Crossroads: Part II
By Thomas Sowell
In opposing ObamaCare, the Tea Party took a position that increasing numbers of Americans agree with, now that ObamaCare's potential for disaster is becoming clearer by the day. But in trying to defund ObamaCare without the Congressional votes to do so, the Tea Party made a major tactical mistake.
Polls show that this mistake has already hurt the Republican Party, the only party that has any chance of repealing ObamaCare. To have any realistic prospect of repealing ObamaCare may require the Republicans to win both the 2014 and 2016 elections.
The Tea Party's failed and foredoomed defunding effort predictably got the Republicans blamed for shutting down the government. The fact that the Democrats also went down in the polls means nothing. Politics is a zero-sum game. If it hurts the Republicans more, that helps the Democrats.
Some defend the futile attempt to defund ObamaCare on grounds that it is much harder to repeal a law after it has gone into operation. That may often be true -- but not always.
Prohibition was repealed -- and it was a Constitutional Amendment, not just a piece of legislation. Prohibition could not be repealed by Congress alone, but required state legislatures to vote for repeal as well. Like ObamaCare, Prohibition sounded good to a lot of people before it went into effect. Only after they saw what a disaster it was in practice did people change their minds.
We are already seeing people changing their minds about ObamaCare, after they experienced the multiple disasters that are just starting to emerge. That includes Congressional Democrats who had voted for it.
If mistakes were always fatal, the human race would have become extinct long ago. So the fact that the Tea Party made a tactical misjudgment is not the end of the world. Everything depends on whether you learn from your mistake or refuse to admit that it was a mistake, even to yourself -- which is often the biggest mistake of all.
Barack Obama is currently giving a free demonstration of how refusing to admit your mistake can cost you public support, and even undermine your support within your own party.
The Tea Party does not need to repeat the same mistake that Obama has made -- especially since their principles are the opposite of his. The Tea Party is for protecting individual freedom from the ever growing, and ever more intrusive, power of government.
Friend and foe alike see the Tea Party as not just a bunch of politicians trying to stay in office, but people with a purpose beyond going along to get along. The left's desperate -- and dishonest -- efforts to discredit the Tea Party show that they understand its threat to their expanding government agenda.
The question is whether the Tea Party itself still has its eye on the ball -- the goals it was formed to serve -- or is letting itself get preoccupied with its battle against other Republicans.
Heaven knows there are Republicans who deserve criticism. But neither fervor nor ego can justify wholesale challenges to Republican incumbents in next year's primary elections. The end result of such a self-indulgence is likely to be getting more Democrats elected, making repeal of ObamaCare virtually impossible. We can only hope that this is not what the Tea Party has in mind, not only for their sake, but for the sake of the country.
A haunting example from history was the doctrinaire wing of the abolitionists, who ran their own presidential candidate in the 1860 elections, even though he had no chance of winning, and simply split the anti-slavery vote, so that Abraham Lincoln got just 40 percent of the popular vote when he won in a crowded field.
The doctrinaires were willing to risk a pro-slavery candidate being elected President of the United States at a critical juncture in history, which would have condemned millions of human beings to more decades, or perhaps generations, in slavery.
Whatever your principles, you have to weigh human consequences from whatever you do in the name of those principles.
There are millions of Americans today who are losing their insurance and their doctor -- and who may also lose everything financially to identity thieves, if ObamaCare is as careless with their private information as early reports indicate. These Americans are infinitely more important than internal battles among Republicans.
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