Friday, August 7, 2015

Unlike Obama, Trump, The Businessmen, Refuses To Renounce Leverage. Obama and Kerry's Iran Deal Reflects Abject Weakness and Surrender!

I agree we are far more likely to face deflation than inflation.

It was once argued we would inflate and repay our debt with discounted  inflated dollars but with China sinking, Europe remaining in the throes of the ravages of decades and consequences of failed economic Socialism and with  America's economy enjoying a puny recovery and the middle class decimated. I would agree Bill Gross is right to be worried about deflation.

There just is not enough private sector demand to lift our economy, re-employ the unemployed etc.  Government, Obama's government, has sucked all the air out of the balloon with policies that have restrained any solid recovery.

Obama pissed away untold billions, threw away opportunity after opportunity to give our economy a shot in the arm because of poor planning, overburdening rules and regulations and dumb ideas.
Now The Fed is contemplating raising rates just at the wrong time. (See 1 below.)
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David Brooks dumps on Obama and Kerry's Iran Deal! (See 2 below.)
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Last night three friends came for dinner and to watch the debates.  After the debates ended one of my friends thought Trump was wrong not to say he would support the nominee whomever he/she might be. I responded, 'I understood where both he and Trump were coming from and being a business man, Trump was unwilling to give up leverage he had achieved by withdrawing  a threat to run as an independent over the Party's head. Seems subsequent commentary would suggest I was probably right.

Trump is a business man, thinks like a businessman and not a politician even though he is currently engaged in a political venture.  He is totally consumed with self, probably drinks his own bath water daily and is willing to pursue his objective regardless of whom he offends.  In fact, offending is something Trump does with joy.

I too thought the Fox questions were designed to pit the various candidates to confront each other, in other words to stir things up and to create gotcha situations.  It was largely ineffective .

Kelly, who I think is drop dead beautiful, came across too much as a flighty dumb blond, which certainly she is not.

Overall it was a good evening and the candidates generally acquitted themselves with aplomb.

With all the talent on the stage last night I toyed with the idea of constructing a Cabinet and this is what I came up with, on the assumption they  would not be the nominee, and I added a few, non candidates .

John Bolton - Sec. of State

Bush- Sec of Education ( but I would close the entire dept.)

Carson- Sec of Health and Veterans (I would combine the two agencies)

Christie - Atty General

Fiorino - Head of Intelligence

Kasich - Treasury  Sec.

Perry - Head of Immigration, ATF and Homeland Security  (Would combine the agencies)

Gen. David  Petraeus - Sec. of Defense

Trump - Sec.of Commerce
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A continuation of my review of  "Rediscovering America"

Chapter five begins by reminding us The Founders gave us a nation founded on two basic principles: control of government by the people and one that would protect the enjoyment of their natural rights, ie. "Secure the Blessings of Liberty."

The Founders argued over the idea of drafting a "Bill of Rights" and concluded  writing a Bill of Rights was risky, if not impossible ,and argued The Constitution was, in every sense, a Bill of Rights. The matter was resolved by "appending" 10 specific Rights.

In the end, we have a unique written document that both specifies how government is controlled by the people yet, is also "obliged" to control itself.

Furthermore, the founders believed having two legislative bodies constructed with a host of differences was preferable in the hope of passing laws more broadly acceptable and best able to protect  our rights.

Furthermore, the founders realized what differences they were designing served to slow down legislation with the intent of causing greater deliberation, restraining political power and thereby insuring the preservation of the Blessings of Liberty, etc.  Gridlock is not unconstitutional. However, when  a president becomes annoyed by gridlock he does not have the constitutional power to act on his own . (Sound familiar?)

Madison believed that protecting rights was best accomplished when a nation engaged in democracy consisted of a large group of minorities because it would be easier for them to find common ground. Multiplying the number of interest ,groups, associations and trades  weakened the prospect of concentrated political thus leading to moderated demands and compromise. American pluralism worked and protected rights except in one case - slavery.  This issue proved divisive and intractable.

The role of Federalism is that it forces us to work together at a local level and helps make democracy real. That said, the risk of state's "powers"can result in tyrannies close at hand  which are no better than distant despotism's.

There are those who have serious issues with our Constitution and  their way to discredit it is to attack the character of the Founders for when judged against today's 'common man'  it is true they engaged in many anti-social, anti-Constitutional behaviour, namely slavery. The Founders knowing slavery went against the precepts stated in the Constitution, nevertheless, could do nothing to end it because of the position of several southern states , among others,which would not have signed the declaration of Independence or joined the union

It was thought that over time slavery would be abandoned but after the Louisiana Purchase that hoped faded.

The issue of condoning secession raised the question of whether a democracy could endure. The division of America into two irreconcilable factions: free and slave, eventually blew our country part, thereby, validating Madison's greatest fear

Meanwhile The Dred Scott decision validated Hamilton's fear that the best guarantor of our rights was not the courts but the Constitution. (That is why when The Supreme Court ,interprets the Constitution in such manner as to make law it is violating the very document it is sworn to uphold. Rather its role is to review our laws and help citizens live up to the ideals set forth in our Constitution.)

.This leads us to ask:  how do we know what are our rights?  In this regard the role of The Supreme Court should be that it "helps" us govern but it should not govern us.

In the final analysis "We "are, in the largest part, the ultimate determiner of our rights operating through the Democratic Process
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Obama and his enemy list according to Caroline Glick. A powerful and excellent op ed as to why Obama and Kerry's Iran Deal is a miserable and highly dangerous one reflecting abject American weakness and surrender.(See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)

Bill Gross: Global Economy Dangerously Close to Deflation

Bill Gross, money manager at Janus Capital Group Inc., said the global economy is “dangerously close to deflationary growth.”
Once there is a “whiff of deflation, things tend to reverse and go badly,” Gross said Friday in a Bloomberg Radio interview with Tom Keene.

Gross pointed to how the CRB Commodity Index isn’t just at a cyclical low, but lower than in 2008 when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt.

The commodity markets tell a truer story of what is happening in the economy because they are subject to real-time supply and demand, Gross said. Oil, metals and crops have plunged as China’s economy has decelerated and gluts in multiple markets have further depressed prices.

Gross, who joined Janus in September after abruptly leaving Pacific Investment Management Co., manages the $1.5 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund.
He said the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next month by 25 basis points.
“September is the number for sure,” said Gross, who used to manage the world’s largest bond fund.

The Fed is “mentally committed to moving before year end,” he said, despite the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee this week voting 8-1 to keep its key rate at a record low and talking about changing policy next year.

A move in September is “not unanimous” but is the “majority opinion” now, Gross said. Any increase will likely be 25 to 50 basis points. A 50 basis point move would “scare the market,” he added.
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2)

The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist

David Brooks

3 U.S. Defeats: Vietnam, Iraq and Now Iran

 The purpose of war, military or economic, is to get your enemy to do something it would rather not do. Over the past several years the United States and other Western powers have engaged in an economic, clandestine and political war against Iran to force it to give up its nuclear program.

Over the course of this siege, American policy makers have been very explicit about their goals. Foremost, to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Second, as John Kerry has said, to force it to dismantle a large part of its nuclear infrastructure. 
Third, to take away its power to enrich uranium.

Fourth, as President Obama has said, to close the Fordo enrichment facility. Fifth, as the chief American negotiator, Wendy Sherman, recently testified, to force Iran to come clean on all past nuclear activities by the Iranian military. Sixth, to shut down Iran 's ballistic missile program. Seventh, to have “anywhere, anytime 24/7”  access to any nuclear facilities Iran retains. Eighth, as Kerry put it, to not phase down sanctions until after Iran ends its nuclear bomb-making capabilities.

As a report from the Foreign Policy Initiative exhaustively details, the U.S. has not fully achieved any of these objectives. The agreement delays but does not end Iran’s nuclear program. It legitimizes Iran’s status as a nuclear state. Iran will mothball some of its centrifuges, but it will not dismantle or close any of its nuclear facilities. Nuclear research and development will continue.

Iran wins the right to enrich uranium. The agreement does not include “anywhere, anytime”  inspections; some inspections would require a 24-day waiting period, giving the Iranians plenty of time to clean things up. After eight years, all restrictions on ballistic missiles are lifted. Sanctions are lifted once Iran has taken its initial actions.

Wars, military or economic, are measured by whether you achieved your stated objectives. By this standard the U.S. and its allies lost the war against Iran, but we were able to negotiate terms that gave only our partial surrender, which forces Iran to at least delay its victory. There have now been three big U.S. strategic defeats over the past several decades: Vietnam, Iraq and now Iran.

The big question is, Why did we lose? Why did the combined powers of the Western world lose to a ragtag regime with a crippled economy and without much popular support?

The first big answer is that the Iranians just wanted victory more than we did. They were willing to withstand the kind of punishment we were prepared to mete out.
Further, the Iranians were confident in their power, while the Obama administration emphasized the limits of America’s ability to influence other nations. It’s striking how little President Obama thought of the tools at his disposal. He effectively took the military option off the table. He didn’t believe much in economic sanctions.   “Nothing we know about the Iranian government suggests that it would simply capitulate under that kind of pressure,” he argued. 

The president concluded early on that Iran would simply not budge on fundamental things. As he argued in his highhanded and counterproductive speech Wednesday, Iran was never going to compromise its sovereignty (which is the whole point of military or economic warfare).

The president hoped that a deal would change the moral nature of the regime, so he had an extra incentive to reach a deal. And the Western, Russian and Chinese sanctions regime was fragile while the Iranians were able to hang together.
This administration has given us a choice between two terrible options: accept the partial-surrender agreement that was negotiated or reject it and slide immediately into what is in effect our total surrender -- a collapsed sanctions regime and a booming Iranian nuclear program.

Many members of Congress will be tempted to accept the terms of our partial surrender as the least bad option in the wake of our defeat. I get that. But in voting for this deal they may be affixing their names to an arrangement that will increase the chance of more comprehensive war further down the road.

Iran is a fanatical, hegemonic, hate-filled regime. If you think its radicalism is going to be softened by a few global trade opportunities, you really haven’t been paying attention to the Middle East over the past four decades.

Iran will use its $150 billion windfall to spread terror around the region and exert its power. It will incrementally but dangerously cheat on the accord. Armed with money, ballistic weapons and an eventual nuclear breakout, it will become more aggressive. As the end of the nuclear delay comes into view, the 45th or 46th president will decide that action must be taken.

Economic and political defeats can be as bad as military ones. Sometimes when you surrender to a tyranny you lay the groundwork for a more cataclysmic conflict to come
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3)


Column One: Obama’s enemies list
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
Today Iran is harming America directly in multiple ways.

In President Barack Obama’s defense of his nuclear deal with Iran Wednesday, he said there are only two types of people who will oppose his deal – Republican partisans and Israel- firsters – that is, traitors.

At American University, Obama castigated Republican lawmakers as the moral equivalent of Iranian jihadists saying, “Those [Iranian] hard-liners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal... are making common cause with the Republican Caucus.”

He then turned his attention to Israel.

Obama explained that whether or not you believe the deal endangers Israel boils down to whom you trust more – him or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And, he explained, he can be trusted to protect Israel better than Netanyahu can because “[I] have been a stalwart friend of Israel throughout my career.”

The truth is that it shouldn’t much matter to US lawmakers whether Obama or Netanyahu has it right about Israel. Israel isn’t a party to the deal and isn’t bound by it. If Israel decides it needs to act on its own, it will.

The US, on the other side, will be bound by the deal if Congress fails to kill it next month.

So the real question lawmakers need to ask is whether the deal is good for America. Is Obama right or wrong that only partisan zealots and disloyal Zionists could oppose his great diplomatic achievement? To determine the answer to that question, you need to do is ask another one. Does his deal make America safer or less safe? The best way to answer that question is to consider all the ways Iran threatens America today, and ask whether the agreement has no impact on those threats, or whether it mitigates or aggravates them.

Today Iran is harming America directly in multiple ways.

The most graphic way Iran is harming America today is by holding four Americans hostage. Iran’s decision not to release them over the course of negotiations indicates that at a minimum, the deal hasn’t helped them.

It doesn’t take much consideration to recognize that the hostages in Iran are much worse off today than they were before Obama concluded the deal on July 14.

The US had much more leverage to force the Iranians to release the hostages before it signed the deal than it does now. Now, not only do the Iranians have no reason to release the hostages, they have every reason to take more hostages.

Then there is Iranian-sponsored terrorism against the US.

In 2011, the FBI foiled an Iranian plot to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington and bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in the US capital.

One of the terrorists set to participate in the attack allegedly penetrated US territory through the Mexican border.

The terrorist threat to the US emanating from Iran’s terrorist infrastructure in Latin America will rise steeply as a consequence of the nuclear deal.

As The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote last month, the sanctions relief the deal provides to Iran will enable it to massively expand its already formidable operations in the US’s backyard. Over the past two decades, Iran and Hezbollah have built up major presences in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Iran’s presence in Latin America also constitutes a strategic threat to US national security. Today Iran can use its bases of operations in Latin America to launch an electromagnetic pulse attack on the US from a ballistic missile, a satellite or even a merchant ship.

The US military is taking active steps to survive such an attack, which would destroy the US’s power grid. Among other things, it is returning the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to its former home in Cheyenne Mountain outside Colorado Springs.

But Obama has ignored the findings of the congressional EMP Commission and has failed to harden the US electronic grid to protect it from such attacks.

The economic and human devastation that would be caused by the destruction of the US electric grid is almost inconceivable. And now with the cash infusion that will come Iran’s way from Obama’s nuclear deal, it will be free to expand on its EMP capabilities in profound ways.

Through its naval aggression in the Strait of Hormuz Iran threatens the global economy. While the US was negotiating the nuclear deal with Iran, the Revolutionary Guards unlawfully interdicted – that is hijacked – the Marshall Islands-flagged Maersk Tigris and held its crew hostage for weeks.

Iran’s assault on the Tigris came just days after the US-flagged Maersk Kensington was surrounded and followed by Revolutionary Guards ships until it fled the strait.

A rational take-home message the Iranians can draw from the nuclear deal is that piracy pays.

Their naval aggression in the Strait of Hormuz was not met by American military force, but by American strategic collapse at Vienna.

This is doubly true when America’s listless response to Iran’s plan to use its Houthi proxy’s takeover of Yemen to control the Bab el-Mandab strait is taken into consideration. With the Bab el-Mandab, Iran will control all maritime traffic from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Rather than confront this clear and present danger to the global economy, America abandoned all its red lines in the nuclear talks.

Then there is Iran’s partnership 20-year partnership with al-Qaida.

The 9/11 Commission found in its report that four of the 9/11 terrorists transited Iran before traveling to the US. As former Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Mike Flynn told Fox News in the spring, Iranian cooperation with al-Qaida remains deep and strategic.

When the US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, they seized hard drives containing more than a million documents related to al-Qaida operations. All but a few dozen remain classified.

According to Flynn and other US intelligence officials who spoke to The Weekly Standard, the documents expose Iran’s vast collaboration with al-Qaida.

The agreement Obama concluded with the mullahs gives a tailwind to Iran. Iran’s empowerment will undoubtedly be used to expand its use of al-Qaida terrorists as proxies in their joint war against the US.

Then there is Iran’s ballistic missile program.

The UN Security Council resolution passed two weeks ago cancels the UN-imposed embargoes on conventional arms and ballistic missile acquisitions by Iran. Since the nuclear deal facilities Iranian development of advanced nuclear technologies that will enable the mullahs to build nuclear weapons freely when the deal expires, the Security Council resolution means that by the time the deal expires, Iran will have the nuclear warheads and the intercontinental ballistic missiles required to carry out a nuclear attack on the US.

Obama said Wednesday that if Congress votes down his nuclear deal, “we will lose... America’s credibility as a leader of diplomacy. America’s credibility,” he explained, “is the anchor of the international system.”

Unfortunately, Obama got it backwards. It is the deal that destroys America’s credibility and so upends the international system which has rested on that credibility for the past 70 years.

The White House’s dangerous suppression of seized al-Qaida-Iran documents, like its listless response to Iran’s maritime aggression, its indifference to Iran’s massive presence in Latin America, its lackluster response to Iran’s terrorist activities in Latin America, and its belittlement of the importance of the regime’s stated goal to destroy America – not to mention its complete collapse on all its previous redlines over the course of the negotiations – are all signs of the disastrous toll the nuclear deal has already taken on America’s credibility, and indeed on US national security.

To defend a policy that empowers Iran, the administration has no choice but to serve as Iran’s agent. The deal destroys America’s credibility in fighting terrorism. By legitimizing and enriching the most prolific state sponsor of terrorism, the US has made a mockery of its claimed commitment to the fight.

The deal destroys the US’s credibility as an ally.

By serving as apologists for its worst enemy, the US has shown its allies that they cannot trust American security guarantees. How can Israel or Saudi Arabia trust America to defend them when it is endangering itself? The deal destroys 70 years of US nonproliferation efforts. By enabling Iran to become a nuclear power, the US has made a mockery of the very notion of nonproliferation and caused a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

The damage caused by the deal is already being felt. For instance, Europe, Russia and China are already beating a path to the ayatollahs’ doorstep to sign commercial and military deals with the regime.

But if Congress defeats the deal, it can mitigate the damage. By killing the deal, Congress will demonstrate that the American people are not ready to go down in defeat. They can show that the US remains committed to its own defense and the rebuilding of its strategic credibility worldwide.

In his meeting with Jewish leaders Tuesday, Obama acknowledged that his claim – repeated yet again Wednesday – that the only alternative to the deal is war, is a lie.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Greg Rosenbaum, chairman of the National Democratic Jewish Council, which is allied with the White House, said that Obama rejected the notion that war will break out if Congress rejects the deal with veto-overriding majorities in both houses.

According to Rosenbaum, Obama claimed that if Congress rejects his nuclear deal, eventually the US will have to carry out air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to prevent them from enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels.

“But,” he quoted Obama as saying, “the result of such a strike won’t be war with Iran.”

Rather, Obama said, Iran will respond to a US strike primarily by ratcheting up its terrorist attacks against Israel.

“I can assure,” Obama told the Jewish leaders, “that Israel will bear the brunt of the asymmetrical responses that Iran will have to a military strike on its nuclear facilities.”

What is notable here is that despite the fact that it will pay the heaviest price for a congressional defeat of the Iran deal, Israel is united in its opposition to the deal. This speaks volume about the gravity with which the Israeli public views the threats the agreement unleashed.

But again, Israel is not the only country that is imperiled by the nuclear deal. And Israelis are not the only ones who need to worry.

Obama wishes to convince the public that the deal’s opponents are either partisan extremists or traitors who care about Israel more than they care about America. But neither claim is true. The main reason Americans should oppose the deal is that it endangers America. And as a consequence, Americans who oppose the deal are neither partisans nor turncoats.

They are patriots.
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