Middle East and Other Musings

Biblical Ethics, Capitalism and The Food Fight!

2012-01-31T10:48:00.000-08:00

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Media takes a page from the president and stonewalls news of the case in the Georgia courts relating to eligibility.

The president's actions could come back to haunt him because if he is unwilling to respond to a legitimate case then how can he argue against any stonewalling by an opponent. (See 1 below.)
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Is the noose tightening on Assad? (See 2 below.)
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Barry Rubin speaks the unvarnished and unspoken truth about the American threat to Israel. It relates to a foreign policy that ignores/allows Muslim influence to rise throughout the region.

If allowed to continue it will also become a threat to our own nation. (See 3 below.)
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To Newt's credit he began his campaign by professing to take the high road and did not direct his comments and criticisms at his fellow candidates. Over time, his poll results improved and he became a threat to Mitt Romney, the avowed front-runner. Mitt's 'Super PAC' targeted Newt bringing his poll results down and Newt asked Mitt to leash the attack dogs. Mitt responded he did not control them. Newt responded with his own scorched earth attacks and thus began the food fight which has served to besmear them both and heighten the prospects of the re-election of our current president.

The below op ed piece is worth reading. It ties the ethics of The Bible to Capitalism. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)Media Blackout in Obama Georgia Ballot Eligibility Case
By Cindy Simpson

Last week, I noted that Obama turned his back not just on Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer, but also on the laws of the State of Georgia. I closed my column, "Georgia Ballot Challenge: Obama Walks on By," with the observation: "And most of the media has followed along right behind him."

At the time, I had just witnessed an historic hearing that actually discussed the eligibility of the sitting president of the United States to run for a second term. The president had been subpoenaed to appear, and instead of his attorney respectfully following protocol to have that subpoena recalled, both Obama and his attorney, Michael Jablonski, simply failed to show up at all or offer any defense whatsoever.

Isn't there a headline in there somewhere?

The hearing proceeded as planned, even though the table for the defense was empty. Attorneys Van Irion and J. Mark Hatfield presented their cases first and offered compelling arguments -- not regarding Obama's birthplace, but rather that the non-U.S. citizenship of Obama's father precluded Obama's "natural born" eligibility under the Constitution and existing Supreme Court precedent. Attorney Orly Taitz, however, did present interesting evidence that questioned the validity of Obama's birth certificate and questions surrounding his Social Security number.

When the hearing ended, the media in attendance almost literally pounced on Taitz. Irion and Hatfield and their clients had left the premises earlier, while Taitz was still presenting her case; however, Irion asserted to me that not one member of the press stopped them on their way out. Doubtless the media did not want to discuss the law -- they'd rather write their usual stories on the birth certificate and interview the one they've dubbed the "birther queen."

Attorney Taitz handled herself well, even though the press taunted her with rudeness and leading questions she has doubtless experienced many times. After the reporters finished letting Taitz feel the full extent of their contempt for both her and the entire morning's event, they packed up to leave.

I walked up to one particular reporter from one of the prominent mainstream entities, noting that he seemed frustrated that he didn't get a clear answer from Taitz to one of his questions, and I informed him that I did know the exact answer, if he'd like to hear more about it. He said no, he didn't. I asked then, wasn't he a reporter, and why did he ask the question if he didn't want the answer? And as I was speaking, he turned and walked away from me.

The same thing happened with another reporter from another major network. He had asked Taitz why no one cared that there were past presidents who had fathers not born in the country. I explained to him that it was not the place of birth of the presidents' fathers that was the issue, but rather the status of their citizenship at the time of their sons' births. The reporter scoffed and told me that that was just my opinion, but when I attempted to inform him that it was also the opinion of the Supreme Court, he turned and walked away from me while I was in mid-sentence.

Does this behavior seem familiar?

Even though I saw reporters from every major network on the scene, the actual reporting of the event was scant -- primarily only in blogs or local news. Google "Georgia Ballot Challenge" and note the non-mainstream coverage of the event.

Rachel Maddow must not have gotten the memo, though, because she dedicated a full 8 minutes of her January 26 show to telling her viewers why they should "feel almost duty-bound as a patriot to ignore" the hearing and not to "dignify this nonsense or elevate it by paying it any attention." Not only were none of the legal points addressed in the hearings brought up by Maddow, but Maddow excused the extraordinary fact that Obama and his counsel, instead of respecting the law, had simply snubbed it, calling the case "ridiculous."

As Sunny of Sunny TV points out in this hilarious but uncomfortably true video, "Tyranny is as Tyranny Does"; "[l]et's just hope the next President is just as benevolent as Obama because they could really use that power for bad." At the end of the clip, as Sunny pretends she is Obama, issuing orders right and left, she points to her crown and says: "This makes me in charge." As Teri O'Brien noted in her interview discussing Obama's penchant for walking away from those with whom he disagrees, "[g]ods don't debate. They issue decrees."

Attorney Irion, in this follow-up letter from his Liberty Legal Foundation, pointed out: "Yesterday President Obama completely ignored a court subpoena, and the world shrugged."

Yes, Obama shrugged, and the media has shrugged along. Irion further noted:

Obama's behavior yesterday is even more disturbing than Nixon's. Nixon at least respected the judicial branch enough to have his attorneys show up in court and follow procedure[.] ... Nixon acknowledged the authority of the judicial branch even while he fought it. Obama, on the other hand, essentially said yesterday that the judicial branch has no power over him. He ordered his attorneys to stay away from the hearing. He didn't petition a higher court in a legitimate attempt to stay the hearing[.] ... Rather than respecting the legal process, Obama went around the courts and tried to put political pressure directly on the Georgia Secretary of State. When that failed, he simply ignored the judicial branch completely.

It is disconcerting to see that the president, whose primary duty is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, has turned his back on the rule of law of one of those states. Especially, as Sunny uncomfortably reminded us, since this is the same president who routinely sidesteps the law or places himself above it.

Even more troubling is the fact that the mainstream media not only seems to approve -- but they fail to report it at all.

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2)Assad masses loyal troops in Damascus after he was warned of a military coup

President Bashar Assad supported by his brother and cousin

According to exclusive reports President Bashar Assad pulled in the Syrian Republican Guard and the 4th armored divisions commanded by his brother Maher Assad from the northern rebel centers and over to Damascus. He ordered them into battle positions in the capital for the first time in the ten month uprising after receiving an intelligence tipoff that western powers had won over one of the armored division commanders posted in the capital and persuaded him to stage a coup d'etat to topple him.

The renegade general, whose identity is unknown, was reported to be planning to take advantage of the absence of the most trusted regime troops in trouble spots across the country to lead 300 tanks into the capital and seize power.

The conspirators were planning to make their move on the night of Monday Jan. 30 or early Tuesday Jan. 31, just before the UN Security Council was to convene in New York and air plans for him to step down. The putsch would have presented its members with the accomplished fact of Assad's overthrow by the military.

The information passed to Assad, apparently from an external source, did not name the division commander who accepted this role from Western hands. If it turns out to be true, the scheme would strongly recall the US-led NATO-Qatari-Jordanian operation for the Libyan rebels to seize power in Libya by taking Tripoli by storm in the third week of August 2011.

Forewarned, the Syrian ruler is making every effort to ward off the threatened coup.
Military sources report, aside from the Republican Guard and 4th division which Assad recalled to the capital, there are the 1st, 3rd and 9th armored divisions.

The fight rebel forces put up at the gates of Damascus Monday night was perceived by the Assad regime as part of the coup conspiracy. Western and military sources described the combat as a search, arrest and kill operation to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance around the capital, rather than battles.

Monday night, the White House issued a statement saying the UN Security Council must not let the Syrian President Assad continue the violence.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to address the Council meeting Tuesday. She has urged the forum to act before the violence in Syria spills over and destabilizes its neighbors.
Moscow has made it very clear in recent weeks that it will on no account let the Assad regime go the way of Qaddafi. Russia is adamant about vetoing the Security Council motion the US and European powers are gathering Tuesday in New Yorkto table in support of the Arab League transition plan for a national unity government to rise in Damascus within two months and implement Assad's handover of power to vice president Farouk a-Shara. A Russian bid to bring the opponents to the negotiating table failed after the main Syrian opposition party demanded that Assad step down first.

At least 27 people were killed Monday in the central city of Homs – which was heavily shelled again - the northern province of Idlib and southern province of Daraa, where the revolt against Assad began in mid-March. Another 41 deaths were reported Sunday.The Syrian regime stepped up the violence in the days before the Security Council session to quell resistance and demonstrate its grip on the country.

Ten months after the Syrian people launched an uprising against its ruler, Bashar Assad, if not yet safe in the saddle, has recovered the bulk of his army's support and his grip on most parts of the country

Protesters have mostly been pushed into tight corners in the flashpoint towns and villages, especially in the north, hemmed in by troops and security forces loyal to the president.
Monday, Jan. 30, Syrian forces were close to purging the suburbs and villages around Damascus of rebel fighters. The operation began Sunday with 2,000 troops backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers. Six soldiers were killed when their vehicle blew up on a roadside bomb near Sahnaya, east of the capital.

The rebel Free Syrian Army and opposition groups continue to report heavy fighting in the Damascus area, and especially the international airport where they claim to have prevented Assad's wife and children from fleeing the country. However, military watchers do not confirm either the fighting or the Assad family's attempted flight.

While both sides spin propaganda, the extreme hyperbole of opposition claims attests to their hard straits and the Syrian president's success in weathering their efforts and the huge sacrifices in blood paid by the people (estimated at 8,000 dead and tens of thousands injured) to oust him.
Having got rid of the Arab League monitoring mission, which gave up in despair of halting the savage bloodbath, Assad will shrug off the Arab-Western backed motion put before the UN Security Council Tuesday, Jan. 30, calling on him to step down and hand power to his vice president Farouk a-Shara. He will treat it as yet another failed effort by the combined Arab-Western effort to topple his regime.

The conflict is not over. More ups and downs may still be to come and there are signs of sectarian war evolving. But for now, Assad's survival is of crucial relevance in seven Middle East arenas:
1. The Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah bloc is strengthened, joined most recently by Iraq;

2. Iran chalks up a first-class strategic achievement for counteracting the US and the Saudi-led Gulf Arab emirates' presentation of the Islamic regime as seriously weighed down under by the crushing burden of crushing international sanctions imposed to halt its drive for a nuclear bomb.

3. Hizballah has won a chance to recover from the steep slide of its fortunes in Lebanon. The Pro-Iranian Lebanese Shiite group stands to regain the self-assurance which ebbed during Assad's hard times against massive dissidence, re-consolidate its bonds with Tehran, Damascus and Baghdad and rebuild its political clout in Beirut.

4. It is hard to calculate the enormous extent of the damage Saudi Arabia and Turkey have suffered from their colossal failure in Syria. The Palestinians too have not emerged unscathed.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and their security agencies, which invested huge sums in the Syrian rebellion's removal of the Assad regime, were trounced by Syria's security and intelligence services and the resources Iran provided to keep Bashar Assad afloat.

The Arab League, which for the first time tried its hand at intervening in an Arab uprising by sending observers into Syrian trouble spots to cut down the violence, watched impotently as those observers ran for their lives. Assad for his part first accepted than ignored the League's peace plan.

Turkey, too, after indicating its military would step across the border to support the Syrian resistance and giving the FSA bases of operation, backed off for the sake of staying on good terms with Iran.

5. Russia and China have gained credibility in the Middle East and points against the United States by standing up for Assad and pledging their veto votes against any strong UN Security Council motions against him. Moscow's arms sales and naval support for the Assad regime and China's new military and economic accords with Persian Gulf emirates have had the effect of pushing the United States from center stage of the Arab Revolt, held in the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions, to the sidelines of Middle East action.

6. The Syrian ruler has confounded predictions by Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak that he can't last more than a few weeks. His survival and the cohesion of his armed forces have contributed to the tightening of the Iranian military noose around Israel.
The Syrian army was in sustained operation for almost a year without breaking and suffered only marginal defections. It is still in working shape with valuable experience under its belt in rapid deployment between battlefronts. Syria, Iran and Hizballah have streamlined the cooperation among their armies and their intelligence arms.

7. The Palestinian rivals, Fatah and Hamas, have again put the brakes on the on-again, off-again reconciliation after it was galvanized by Hamas' decision to create some distance between Iran and the embattled Syrian regime. Seeing Assad still in place, Hamas' Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh will visit Tehran this week and Meshaal may delay his departure from the Syrian capital.
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3)The Unvarnished Reality of Contemporary U.S.-Israel Relations

The following article was published in newspaper in Hebrew.

By Barry Rubin

Do not speak of it in public. Do not expect any Israeli official to admit it. But Israel is facing an issue unlike anything it has had to deal with during the past 50 years: It cannot depend on the United States.

True, the relationship in terms of weapons’ supply remains good. Old programs continue to provide advanced arms to Israel. Nor is the problem the one most people think of first: on Israel-Palestinian, “peace process” issues.

President Barack Obama’s Administration has seen that no real progress is possible on that front. It tends to blame Israel in public and Obama intensely dislikes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but those problems have little material effect. If that personal matter were the only issue involved Israel could muddle through as it has with other presidents.

The difficulty with Obama is that his entire strategy in the Middle East is contrary to Israeli interests, except for putting some sanction’ pressure on Iran regarding its nuclear weapons’ program. The greatest threat to Israel today is the rise of radical Islamist regimes. Here is how Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh puts it:

"The Palestinian cause is winning. With the Muslim Brotherhood part of the government [in Egypt], they [the Egyptians] will not besiege Gaza. They will not arrest Palestinians. They will not give cover to Israel to launch a war....Israel is disturbed by this. It knows the strategic environment is changing. Iran is an enemy. Relations are deteriorating with Turkey. With Egypt, they are really cold. Israel is in a security situation they have never been in before."

Even though Israel has faced worst strategic situations and the Islamists are badly divided, Haniyeh has put his finger on the central strategic factor today. Radical Islamists who want to open a new round of battle against Israel now rule or are likely to do so very soon in Egypt, Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, and Turkey.

Here is where the problem with the United States comes in. Obama does not really view this trend as a threat. He spent the first half of his term engaging with Iran and its ally Syria. Obama and his administration regards the Islamists as people who are either already moderate or are likely to become so by governing.

This is, of course, the opposite of the Israeli assessment. In Syria, the U.S. government even helped organize and supports an external opposition leadership in which Islamists form the majority even though it is doubtful that this reflects their level of support within the country.

To put it bluntly, the U.S. government does not even recognize the existence of the number-one threat to Israel.

And to make matters worse, the government that Obama looks to for advice, guidance, and interpretation of the region is not Israel but the Islamist regime in Turkey. That government’s sharp turn to a highly emotional anti-Israel policy has not cost it anything at all in terms of its relations with the White House, something that would have been unthinkable under any previous president.

That is why Israel, as well as the Middle East generally, is going to be an important issue in this year’s presidential election. To preserve relations with the United States, Israeli leaders will neither do, nor say anything about that contest. Yet nothing could be more obvious than that Obama’s reelection would be extremely damaging for Israel’s security.

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4)What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism

As the Ten Commandments instruct, envy is corrosive to the individual and to those societies that embrace it.

By ARYEH SPERO

Who would have expected that in a Republican primary campaign the single biggest complaint among candidates would be that the front-runner has taken capitalism too far? As if his success and achievement were evidence of something unethical and immoral? President Obama and other redistributionists must be rejoicing that their assumptions about rugged capitalism and the 1% have been given such legitimacy.

More than any other nation, the United States was founded on broad themes of morality rooted in a specific religious perspective. We call this the Judeo-Christian ethos, and within it resides a ringing endorsement of capitalism as a moral endeavor.

Regarding mankind, no theme is more salient in the Bible than the morality of personal responsibility, for it is through this that man cultivates the inner development leading to his own growth, good citizenship and happiness. The entitlement/welfare state is a paradigm that undermines that noble goal.

The Bible's proclamation that "Six days shall ye work" is its recognition that on a day-to-day basis work is the engine that brings about man's inner state of personal responsibility. Work develops the qualities of accountability and urgency, including the need for comity with others as a means for the accomplishment of tasks. With work, he becomes imbued with the knowledge that he is to be productive and that his well-being is not an entitlement. And work keeps him away from the idleness that Proverbs warns leads inevitably to actions and attitudes injurious to himself and those around him.

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Getty Images

Yet capitalism is not content with people only being laborers and holders of jobs, indistinguishable members of the masses punching in and out of mammoth factories or functioning as service employees in government agencies. Nor is the Bible. Unlike socialism, mired as it is in the static reproduction of things already invented, capitalism is dynamic and energetic. It cheerfully fosters and encourages creativity, unspoken possibilities, and dreams of the individual. Because the Hebrew Bible sees us not simply as "workers" and members of the masses but, rather, as individuals, it heralds that characteristic which endows us with individuality: our creativity.

At the opening bell, Genesis announces: "Man is created in the image of God"—in other words, like Him, with individuality and creative intelligence. Unlike animals, the human being is not only a hunter and gatherer but a creative dreamer with the potential of unlocking all the hidden treasures implanted by God in our universe. The mechanism of capitalism, as manifest through investment and reasoned speculation, helps facilitate our partnership with God by bringing to the surface that which the Almighty embedded in nature for our eventual extraction and activation.

Capitalism makes possible entrepreneurship, which is the realization of an idea birthed in human creativity. Whereas statism demands that citizens think small and bow to a top-down conformity, capitalism, as has been practiced in the U.S., maximizes human potential. It provides a home for aspiration, referred to in the Bible as "the spirit of life."

The Bible speaks positively of payment and profit: "For why else should a man so labor but to receive reward?" Thus do laborers get paid wages for their hours of work and investors receive profit for their investment and risk.

The Bible is not a business-school manual. While it is comfortable with wealth creation and the need for speculation in economic markets, it has nothing to say about financial instruments and models such as private equity, hedge funds or other forms of monetary capitalization. What it does demand is honesty, fair weights and measures, respect for a borrower's collateral, timely payments of wages, resisting usury, and empathy for those injured by life's misfortunes and charity.

It also demands transparency and honesty regarding one's intentions. The command, "Thou shalt not place a stumbling block in front of the blind man" also means that you should not act deceitfully or obscure the truth from those whose choice depends upon the information you give them. There's nothing to indicate that Mitt Romney breached this biblical code of ethics, and his wealth and success should not be seen as automatic causes for suspicion.

No country has achieved such broad-based prosperity as has America, or invented as many useful things, or seen as many people achieve personal promise. This is not an accident. It is the direct result of centuries lived by the free-market ethos embodied in the Judeo-Christian outlook.

Furthermore, only a prosperous nation can protect itself from outside threats, for without prosperity the funds to support a robust military are unavailable. Having radically enlarged the welfare state and hoping to further expand it, President Obama is attempting to justify his cuts to our military by asserting that defense needs must give way to domestic programs.

Both history and the Bible show the way that leads. Countries that were once economic powerhouses atrophied and declined, like England after World War II, once they began adopting socialism. Even King Solomon's thriving kingdom crashed once his son decided to impose onerous taxes.

At the end of Genesis, we hear how after years of famine the people in Egypt gave all their property to the government in return for the promise of food. The architect of this plan was Joseph, son of Jacob, who had risen to become the pharaoh's top official, thus: "Joseph exchanged all the land of Egypt for pharaoh and the land became pharaoh's." The result was that Egyptians became indentured to the ruler and state, and Joseph's descendants ended up enslaved to the state.

Many on the religious left criticize capitalism because all do not end up monetarily equal—or, as Churchill quipped, "all equally miserable." But the Bible's prescription of equality means equality under the law, as in Deuteronomy's saying that "Judges and officers . . . shall judge the people with a just judgment: Do not . . . favor one over the other." Nowhere does the Bible refer to a utopian equality that is contrary to human nature and has never been achieved.

The motive of capitalism's detractors is a quest for their own power and an envy of those who have more money. But envy is a cardinal sin and something that ought not to be.

God begins the Ten Commandments with "I am the Lord your God" and concludes with "Thou shalt not envy your neighbor, not for his wife, nor his house, nor for any of his holdings." Envy is corrosive to the individual and to those societies that embrace it. Nations that throw over capitalism for socialism have made an immoral choice.

Rabbi Spero has led congregations in Ohio and New York and is president of Caucus for America.

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Victim Hood, Hypocrisy and A Poke In The Chest!

2012-01-30T06:33:00.000-08:00

With help from the world press, media and bleeding hearts the Palestinians have been able to win the propaganda war supporting their 'victim hood status.'

Amazing, that after 60 years and billions of aid they still remain victims. In truth, their victim hood, is a by product of their own misguided and corrupt leadership and their own willing follow ship.

The world loves victims and it gives the media and news folks something to write about and wring their pens over. (See 1 below.)
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Buchanan snarls a lot but on this matter I happen to agree it is time to be outspoken. Like (1 below) there is too much hypocrisy associated with claims of black victim hood.(See 2 below.)

Then please watch "THE VOTE PUMP" By Bill Whittle for some revealing information:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u24nH03NccI#! |
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Have no way of verifying but often correct. (See 3 below.)
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Maureen Dowd pokes a finger into President Solyndra's chest. (See 4 below.)
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Humor abounds and runs aground:

# How do they serve alcoholic drinks on Italian cruise ships? - On the rocks

# What vegetables do you get with dinner on Italian cruise ships? - Leeks

# What's the fastest way to get off an Italian cruise ship? - Follow the captain

# When the captain of the ill fated Costa Concordia was asked if he knew where he was going he replied "off course."

# So the captain of the Costa Concordia will soon be in the dock. That's more than can be said for his ship.
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Dick
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1)The Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood
By Michael Curtis

A debatable aspect of modern thought is the thesis that the full truth is unknowable and that the interpretation of historical events and present behavior is a "narrative" reflecting the interests of the group that creates it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the narrative created by the Palestinians and their supporters -- a narrative which is used as the basis of an ideological campaign aimed at condemning the State of Israel and undermining its moral fabric.

The building blocks of this narrative are the "original sin" of the creation of Israel, the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948; the belief in Israeli responsibility for violence and the various wars in the Middle East; the conviction that Israel deliberately created the Palestinian refugee situation by preventing their return to the homeland; and the supposed indignities and injustices done to Palestinians who have become victims of Israeli aggression and colonialism.

All of the elements in this false narrative have become instrumental in the campaign to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and even to call for its elimination. But it is the last point, the concept of Palestinian victimhood, which has fueled international support for the Palestinian cause. It accounts for the obsessive concentration on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by so many who view it as the world's most important and dangerous encounter, disregarding the millions killed or oppressed in other countries today.

The narrative of victimhood uses myths and symbols as well as a controversial interpretation of events and actions. Its language at times becomes wildly extreme. Palestinians are termed the "new Jews" suffering a "new Holocaust." Jews are the new Nazis. Excessive rhetoric and idiosyncratic judgments of this kind are rarely, if ever, applied to the truly despotic and authoritarian regimes in the world that commit crimes against humanity and violations of human rights that are not censured.

The narrative denies Jewish historic national identity. The Palestinians have gone so far in efforts to bolster the argument against Jewish connection to the land as to destroy the archeological evidence of the ancient kingdom of Judea. Nor do they accept the Western Wall in Jerusalem as a Jewish historic site.

The formulation of the Palestinian narrative of victimhood is pernicious in a double-sense. It poisons the attitude to Israel and prevents any kind of accommodation or possible negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians to reach a peaceful settlement of the long conflict. It also reinforces the Palestinians' rejection to take positive action to help resolve their problems and becomes an excuse for the failure to develop an infrastructure for their own society or to take advantage of opportunities to found a sovereign state of their own -- opportunities going back as far as the Peel Commission of 1937.

Equally important is the fact that Israel is the political canary warning of the presence of poisonous political traits that intimate impending danger to the world, particularly to the United States and Western democracies. When Western critics concur in the validity of the Palestinian narrative, they take on the stance of moral relativism. They become appeasers with a mindset that has as its outcome an inability or refusal to defend the West against contemporary threats and the clear and present danger to its culture and way of life. At its worst, this leads to the view that the West is in decline, that the "war on terror" is unwinnable or should not be fought, or that the West is to be eternally found guilty for its past colonial empires and activity.
The world has been through this before. Those who ardently accept the Palestinian narrative of victimhood are like the people who willingly believed the Nazi and Stalinist narratives, equally blind to the realities of those horrific totalitarian regimes. Some of those people were well-meaning, but they were of the kind that Lenin once called "political idiots."

To gain a sense of how events are manipulated to create the Palestinian narrative, it's useful to look at some particular examples. Rachel Corrie, who worked with the International Solidarity Movement, was accidently killed in Gaza in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer that she was deliberately trying to block. She quickly became a symbol of heroic defiance against Israel. The narrative has penetrated the literary, artistic, and theatrical worlds. In her eight-minute play, "Seven Jewish Children," produced in London in 2009, Caryl Churchill builds the plot around the alleged bad treatment by Israelis of Palestinian babies, evoking the historic blood libel charge against Jews.

The Palestinian narrative has benefited from a fanciful, romantic presentation of the superior virtue of Palestinians, regardless of their actual behavior. In this fairy tale, the Palestinians are seen as the embodiment of "the wretched of the earth," the phrase used by Franz Fanon to justify the Algerian struggle against France.

By proclaiming their lack of human rights and their victimhood, the Palestinians have been able to enlist political, economic, military, diplomatic, and propaganda support from individuals and groups who are sympathetic to those they see as subjugated. They have become the main symbol of the oppressed of the world, to the misfortune of Israel.

Using Jews as scapegoats supposedly responsible for most of the problems of the world is a trope of traditional anti-Semitism. By tortuous logic, Israel has become the scapegoat for racism, oppression, and colonialism in the contemporary world. Jewish nationalism is identified as imperialist and racist, while Palestinian nationalism is the nationalism of "the oppressed."
The Palestinians face real problems, as does Israel. It is time to state forthrightly that the Palestinian narrative as presently conceived, with its inherent anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, does not lead to equity for the Palestinians or to steps towards peace. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians can be achieved only when the Palestinians abandon their fallacious narrative and are willing to accept the existence and legitimacy of a Jewish state.

Michael Curtis is a distinguished professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University and the author of the forthcoming book Should Israel Exist?: A sovereign nation under attack by the international community.
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2)BUCHANAN TO OBAMA
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to. This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ' 60's on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants. Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated their time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new 'ladders of opportunity' for blacks. Let him go to Altoona. And Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for 'deserving' white kids? Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Taiwan Brawly, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago. This needs to be passed around because, this is a message everyone needs to hear and I am tired of being silent!
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3)US anticipates May as tentative date for clash with Iran. Floating SEALs base for Gulf
boats

A hurried decision not to de-commission the USS Ponce helicopter marine carrier after duty in Libya - but to refit it for deployment by May in the Persian Gulf as a floating base for commando teams - was confirmed by the US Pentagon and Navy Sunday, Jan. 29. This transportable floating base will expand the commandos' range in coastal areas and support counter-measure against mines which Iran has threatened to plant in the Strait of Hormuz in reprisal for the US-EU oil embargo. The SEALs will also take on Iran's menacing fleet of military speedboats.

Tehran operates four different kinds of these craft in the Persian Gulf:

1. Small, fast vessels, each armed with a small missile for striking tankers and coastal oil targets around the Gulf region, such as export terminals. Earlier this month, Tehran claimed to have developed stealth cruise missiles capable of disabling aircraft carriers with a single shot.

2. Small, extra-fast boats armed with torpedoes. Iranian publications claim several such boats are capable of stealing up on US aircraft carriers and large warships from several directions without being detected and cause serious damage.

3. Floating bombs for kamikaze missions. These fast boats cannot be deflected after locking in on target, whether on sea or shore, and explode on contact.

Iran used these floating missiles piloted by suicide squads to attack oil tankers in the Gulf in November 1987. Since then, their naval tacticians have upgraded this fleet with the technology gained from the British Bladerunner 51, a model of which Iran purchased some years ago.
Since early January, the Pentagon has reported four cases of harassment by Iranian military boats sailing close to American warships in the Persian Gulf.

4. Boats carrying teams of Iranian marine frogmen trained for secret suicide underwater missions: One member of the boat's three-man crew dives close to the targeted ship and attaches a magnetic bomb to its hull.

Iran has scattered hundreds of speedboats of different types around uninhabited islands off the Iranian mainland, tucking them out of sight in well-hidden inlets and bays. The US commando teams based on the Ponce platform will have the task of ferreting out and destroying this fleet.
The US Defense Department aims to get the Ponce ready for its new mission as a floating commando base with all possible speed. To save time, the US military published one no-bid contract for the engineering work, waiving normal procurement rules on the grounds that any delay presented a "national security risk."

The contract carries pointers to the timeline expected in Washington for a military confrontation to erupt between the United States and Iran, as well as the form it may take, according to military sources.

The target date for deploying the commando platform in the Persian Gulf in four or five months indicates Washington is preparing for military clashes with Iran in the late spring or early summer.

The Iranian administration has expressed determination to respond instantly to any diplomatic or military move or action of an offensive nature against the Islamic Republic. And so confrontation may come earlier than anticipated.

Sunday, the Iranian parliament was due to vote on a motion to cut off oil supplies to Europe in response to the EU embargo declared last week. Tehran has made it clear it has no intention of standing idly until US and European oil sanctions go fully into effect on July 1 and knows that EU nations are not set up to forego 400,000 barrels of oil a day right now.

Saudi Arabia, which pledged to make up the shortfall arising from oil sanctions against Iran, will not have the missing quantities on stream before May – at about the same time as the Ponce and its complement of SEAL commandoes are due to take up position in the Persian Gulf. Tehran may decide not to wait and opt for letting its speedboats loose before then to try and pre-empt American and European plans.
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4)Tension on the Tarmac
By MAUREEN DOWD

WHAT is it with Barack Obama’s penchant for getting in tangles with blond politicians on airport tarmacs?

Usually, tarmacs are for joyous welcomes or teary goodbyes. But No Drama Obama saves his rare tempests for the runway.

In the last primary season, the tension in the relationship between Hillary Clinton, who had expected to glide to the nomination, and the upstart younger senator from Illinois came to a head one day in December 2007 as both were preparing to board their planes in Washington to go to an Iowa debate.

Hillary had sent word that she wanted to talk to Obama. Standing in front of her plane, she apologized to him for the comments of her co-chairman in New Hampshire, Billy Shaheen, who had warned that Republicans would pounce on Obama’s confessions of cocaine and marijuana use.

But given the opening, Obama dived in, telling Clinton that she should intervene to stop the pattern of insinuations and attacks by her supporters, including one by a volunteer in Iowa who had forwarded an e-mail claiming Obama was a Muslim.

That’s when Hillary got upset and began gesticulating, giving Obama a piece of her mind about what she saw as unfair attacks on his side. Obama gently put his hand on her arm “to chill her out,” as an aide later told me.

But Hillary did not like it, feeling she was being held in place and patronized, even “manhandled,” as her aide put it to a reporter.

On Wednesday, Obama had another bristly tarmac moment with Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, who met Air Force One when the president landed in Phoenix. The toxic dominatrix of illegal immigration, the woman who turned every Latino in her state into a suspect, was flustered and gesticulating at the president as he put his hand on her arm to chill her out. Brewer complained afterward that she had felt “unnerved” and “a little bit threatened” by Obama and that he had walked away while she was in midsentence.

Brewer told Monica Crowley, subbing for Sean Hannity on Fox News, that she had given the president a letter inviting him to join her at the border to discuss enforcement. She said he shot back that her account of a 2010 Oval Office meeting on the topic, published in her book, “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border,” was distorted.

“He was patronizing,” Brewer wrote about the president in her book, adding: “He’s treating me like the cop he had over for a beer after he bad-mouthed the Cambridge police.” (The president’s recent performances are boosting sales of Brewer’s book and Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”)

With typical Fox balance, Crowley told Governor Brewer that she admired her for “getting in the president’s grill,” adding, “You go, girl.”

The president can be thin-skinned, but the governor can be fat-headed. The Constitution is more threatened by Brewer’s racial profiling than the governor was by the president’s fact-checking. Brewer’s grasp of facts is tenuous, after all: she told The Arizona Republic in 2010 that her father died fighting the Nazis in Germany, when he died a decade after the end of the war, which he spent working at an ammunition factory in Nevada.

Both of Obama’s tarmac tiffs worked in his favor. After his encounter with Hillary, he told advisers that it was the first time he knew he could beat her because he saw fear in her eyes.

After his brouhaha with Brewer, dubbed “the dust-up in the desert,” he became a hero to the Hispanics he had gone West to court. They loved seeing their Cruella de Vil get dressed down.

Everything is breaking Barry’s way, as Mitt and Newt rip into each other in vicious ads and debates like alligators going after house pets.

Romney was tutored in Florida by Brett O’Donnell, a new debate coach. Too bad he can’t find a conviction coach.

O’Donnell manned up Mittens and taught him how to pummel Newt in “moments of strength,” as the Republican strategist Alex Castellanos calls them. The funny thing is that the reason Gingrich soared in South Carolina, before faltering here, was that Republicans are so afraid of debates with the president that they are obsessed with sending forth their toughest adversary for him.

They seem to have forgotten that, while Obama has had dazzling moments of strength in executing Osama and in swashbuckling derring-do against Somali pirates — if not in dealing with Congress — he was no Abe Lincoln in debates. He did not like debating, and Michelle urged him to be more visceral. He often faded onstage because he stubbornly refused to accept debates as alpha combat rather than beta seminars. He disdained anything he saw as superficial politics, from sound bites to macho put-downs.

If Obama continues to resist the gladiatorial subtext, while Romney embraces it, the debates could be more evenly matched than the Republicans dare to dream.
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"The Artist," an An Absolute Must See Movie!

2012-01-29T14:15:00.000-08:00

Just came from the silent movie "The Artist." An absolute must see. Fabulous acting.
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Italian Cruise ship captain, Francesco Schettino,
began his new job as a bus driver yesterday.....

Do the two above pictures have a correlation?
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One of my fraternity brothers receives some articulate e mails from his friend and I thought this was worth posting. (See 1 below.)
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This also from a friend and memo reader. Her Marine son just shipped out to Afghanistan. (See 2 below.)
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Gov Brewer's explanation of what happened on the tarmac. Go Brewer. (See 3 below.)
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President Polarization now officially recorded. (See 4 below.)

Meanhile, Investor's Business Daily editorializes Obama is smothering the recovery with his regulations etc. (See 4a below.)
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America's lumbering high profile fleet 's vulnerability. (See 5 below.)
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Not to be an alarmist but please read this. I don't even own a cell phone. Might be forced to get one. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1) OBAMA’S VISION FOR AMERICA
THE NEXT FOUR GREAT YEARS

FIRST, LET’S LOOK AT THE REAL STATE OF THE UNION:
· A FEDERAL DEFICIT WHICH IS FORCING A MASSIVE REDUCTION IN OUR DEFENSE CAPABILITIES…AT A TIME WHEN THERE ARE MORE HOT CONFLICTS AROUND THE WORLD THREATENING OUR SECURITY THAN AT ANY TIME IN OUR HISTORY
· FEDERAL SPENDING OF MONIES WE DON’T HAVE WHICH CONTINUES UNABATED IN ALL OF THE ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS
· A TAX CODE WHICH DEFIES DEFINITION, PREVENTS FEDERAL REVENUE PROJECTIONS AND LITERALLY OBSTRUCTS TAX COLLECTION
· AN UNYIELDING UNEMPLOYED BASE OF 15 MILLION AMERICANS
· A DECLARED ENEMY NATION – IRAN – WHICH IS SOON TO HAVE ATOMIC BOMBS…IN ABSOLUTE DEFIANCE OF WORLD OPINION AND U.S. POLICY
· A STRATEGIC REGION OF THE WORLD (MIDDLE EAST) WHICH IS ENGAGED IN BLOODY STRUGGLES FOR SELF-DETERMINATION (THE ARAB SPRING) AND WHICH SEEMS TO BE MIGRATING TO ISLAMIST DOMINATION AND A RESULTANT ABROGATION OF ALL UNDERSTANDINGS WITH AMERICA
· A RENEWAL OF TERROR AND MURDER IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
· AN ALLEGED ALLY (PAKISTAN) WHOSE SECURITY APPARATUS CONTINUALLY SUPPORTS TERRORIST ACTIVITIES AGAINST THE U.S.
· AN AMERICAN ECONOMY WHICH CONTINUES TO WALLOW IN A NON-GROWTH MODE
· AN ALMOST TOTAL LOSS OF DOMESTIC AMERICAN MANUFACTURING FACTORIES…THE BLUE COLLAR IS NOW THE FRAYED COLLAR…OUT OF WORK, OUT OF HOPE AND OUT OF SIGHT
· AN UNSTOPPABLE, RUN-AWAY FREIGHT TRAIN…MEDICAL CARE COSTS…WITH NO PLAN TO BRING IT UNDER CONTROL

SO HOW DOES PRESIDENT OBAMA PLAN TO DEAL WITH THIS MENU OF THREATS TO THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE? HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF OBAMA’S STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE…HERE IS HIS GREAT VISION OF THE NEXT FOUR YEARS:

· TAX CODE ADJUSTMENTS TO ENCOURAGE HIGH-TECH MANUFACTURING LIKE SOLYANDRA
· NEW WATCH-DOG AGENCIES TO CHASE CHINESE DVD PIRATES
· A PRESIDENTIAL MANDATE TO ALL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO “STAY IN SCHOOL OR ELSE”!
· FAIRNESS…NOT JOB CREATION TO BE THE DRIVER IN NEW TAX CODE REVISIONS…A MODIFICATION OF THE LENIN/MAO MANIFESTO FOR INCOME REDISTRIBUTION.
· HERE IS OBAMA’S RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION,”WOULD YOU SUPPORT INCREASING THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX IF IT RESULTED IN DECREASED GOVERNMENT REVENUES?” OBAMA SAID “YES…IN THE NAME OF FAIRNESS”.
· HIS SPEECH DID NOT MENTION OBAMA CARE, THE STIMULUS, IRAN, A PROGRAM FOR REAL ECONOMIC GROWTH, REDUCING THE DEFICIT…OTHER THAN TAXING THE RICH…WHO ARE NOT PAYING THEIR “FAIR SHARE”. NO MENTION OF THE FACT THAT IF THE GOVERNMENT CONFISCATED 100% OF INCOME OF THESE FAT CATS IT WOULDN’T AMOUNT TO A DECIMAL POINT IN OUR NATIONAL DEBT!
· IT’S ALL ABOUT FAIRNESS…NOT GROWTH AND NOT SECURITY
· IT’S NOT ABOUT A PRESERVATION OF THE AMERICAN FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM WHICH BUILT THIS NATION
· IT WAS ALL ABOUT GETTING VOTES BY CREATING A TARGET FOR AMERICAN FRUSTRATIONS

THAT IS OBAMA’S GREAT VISION FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS! IF THE REPUBLICANS CANNOT BETTER THAT VISION, THEY SHOULD ALL SEEK A CAREER CHANGE!

ABE BERNSTEIN
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2)Obama to the nation: Onward civilian soldiers
By George F. Will

War, said James Madison, is “the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.” Randolph Bourne, the radical essayist killed by the influenza unleashed by World War I, warned, “War is the health of the state.” Hence Barack Obama’s State of the Union hymn: Onward civilian soldiers, marching as to war.

Obama, an unfettered executive wielding a swollen state, began and ended his address by celebrating the armed forces. They are not “consumed with personal ambition,” they “work together” and “focus on the mission at hand” and do not “obsess over their differences.” Americans should emulate troops “marching into battle,” who “rise or fall as one unit.”

Well. The armed services’ ethos, although noble, is not a template for civilian society, unless the aspiration is to extinguish politics. People marching in serried ranks, fused into a solid mass by the heat of martial ardor, proceeding in lock step, shoulder to shoulder, obedient to orders from a commanding officer — this is a recurring dream of progressives eager to dispense with tiresome persuasion and untidy dissension in a free, tumultuous society.

Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian politics with military exertions, thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations — the Constitution and the patience it demands. As a young professor, Woodrow Wilson had lamented that America’s political parties “are like armies without officers.” The most theoretically inclined of progressive politicians, Wilson was the first president to criticize America’s founding. This he did thoroughly, rejecting the Madisonian system of checks and balances — the separation of powers, a crucial component of limited government — because it makes a government that cannot be wielded efficiently by a strong executive.

Franklin Roosevelt agreed. He complained about “the three-horse team of the American system”: “If one horse lies down in the traces or plunges off in another direction, the field will not be plowed.” And progressive plowing takes precedence over constitutional equipoise among the three branches of government. Hence FDR’s attempt to break the Supreme Court to his will by enlarging it.

In his first inaugural address, FDR demanded “broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” He said Americans must “move as a trained and loyal army” with “a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.” The next day, addressing the American Legion, Roosevelt said it was “a mistake to assume that the virtues of war differ essentially from the virtues of peace.” In such a time, dissent is disloyalty.

Yearnings for a command society were common and respectable then. Commonweal, a magazine for liberal Catholics, said that Roosevelt should have “the powers of a virtual dictatorship to reorganize the government.” Walter Lippmann, then America’s preeminent columnist, said: “A mild species of dictatorship will help us over the roughest spots in the road ahead.” The New York Daily News, then the nation’s largest-circulation newspaper, cheerfully editorialized: “A lot of us have been asking for a dictator. Now we have one. . . . It is Roosevelt. . . . Dictatorship in crises was ancient Rome’s best era.” The New York Herald Tribune titled an editorial “For Dictatorship if Necessary.”

Obama, aspiring to command civilian life, has said that in reforming health care, he would have preferred an “elegant, academically approved” plan without “legislative fingerprints on it” but “unfortunately” he had to conduct “negotiations with a lot of different people.” His campaign mantra “We can’t wait!” expresses progressivism’s impatience with our constitutional system of concurrent majorities. To enact and execute federal laws under Madison’s institutional architecture requires three, and sometimes more, such majorities. There must be majorities in the House and Senate, each body having distinctive constituencies and electoral rhythms. The law must be affirmed by the president, who has a distinctive electoral base and election schedule. Supermajorities in both houses of Congress are required to override presidential vetoes. And a Supreme Court majority is required to sustain laws against constitutional challenges.

“We can’t wait!” exclaims Obama, who makes recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess, multiplies “czars” to further nullify the Senate’s constitutional prerogative to advise and consent, and creates agencies (e.g., Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board and Dodd-Frank’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) untethered from legislative accountability.

Like other progressive presidents fond of military metaphors, he rejects the patience of politics required by the Constitution he has sworn to uphold.
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3)Gov. Brewer On Her Tarmac Encounter with President Obama
By Elise Cooper

On January 25^th of this year President Obama showed just how unpresidential he is with the confrontation of Governor Jan Brewer (R-AZ). She had every intention to hand him a letter suggesting they meet to discuss Arizona and to welcome him to her state. American Thinker interviewed the Governor about the incident.

The Governor waited on the tarmac as the President approached. Shortly into the conversation, instead of warm wishes, the President brought up her quote about him in her book, Scorpions For Breakfast. She stated in the book,

"But after a few minutes the president's tone got serious -- and condescending. He proceeded to lecture me about everything he was doing to promote 'comprehensive immigration reform'...he didn't mention the violence on the border, the drug cartels, or the enormous costs being borne by the citizens of states like Arizona...It wasn't long before I realized I was hearing the president's stump speech...His mind seemed made up...He was patronizing...He thinks he can humor me and then get rid of me. I listened to about ten minutes of this. Finally, the president's lecture ended and it was my turn...But now I was ready to give him a piece of my mind..."

The Governor told American Thinker that she was disappointed that she could not tell the President what she had intended, that "Arizona rose in job growth from 47^th to the top ten, and balanced the budget. I wanted to explain how we did this by putting a moratorium on rules and regulations to turn the state around. I was hoping to tell him I was grateful he came to see us. Unfortunately, I did not get to talk with him about any of that. He turned immediately to my book and told me he didn't like the way he was portrayed in it. It unnerved me to say the least. It is my book and my opinion and I have not been challenged on any of the data," including by the President who had over two months to comment on it since its release date.

Because there are those in his administration who criticize without even reading the document, American Thinker wondered if the Governor asked the President, had he read her book? The answer she received from him was "I read excerpts." Governor Brewer continued, "The book is about border security. He has not come to the border with me and frankly he appeared more concerned with talking about what I said about him in the book and how he was offended. Its all about him, not our national security."

Of course some in the media as well as the President are trying to spin it that the Governor was the disrespectful one since she pointed her finger at him. She described herself as being "animated and I speak with my hands. I was not disrespectful, he was. He walked away from me in mid-sentence. I felt brushed aside."

She was obviously not disrespectful when in the hand-written letter of January 25^th, given to the President, she wrote "respectfully," and in her book she states, "I hadn't interrupted the president because I respect the office, and I was determined to show respect." She commented directly that, "I would always be respectful to the office of the President of the US."

She should not be concerned about the criticism since it appears that there is a pattern here. As reported in the Washington Post: President Obama snapped at Congressman Eric Holder (R-VA) during a debt-ceiling discussion and abruptly walked out; and Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) noted that he felt accosted by the President regarding a letter he had sent. He was quoted, "President Obama had personalized this and he was upset. There was not a word about the oil spill. He was concerned about looking bad because of the letter."

On Friday, January 27^th President Obama on Diane Sawyer's ABC interview, commented about the incident, "Its always good publicity for a Republican to get in an argument with me." Actually, Mr. President you have it wrong: it's you that likes to get into arguments with Republicans, not so much for the publicity but because you are petty, thin-skinned, and way too sensitive about criticism. Governor Brewer summarized it best, "The President's feelings were hurt because of what I said in my book. Instead, he should be thinking about the economy, about jobs, and about border security." Maybe instead of reading excerpts the President should take the time to read all of her book, Scorpions For Breakfast

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4)The Most Polarizing President Ever

By Peter Wehner

It’s official now. Barack Obama’s ratings are “historically polarized,” according to a new Gallup survey.

Jeffrey Jones of the Gallup organization writes, “The historically high gap between partisans’ job approval ratings of Barack Obama continued during Obama’s third year in office, with an average of 80 percent of Democrats and 12 percent of Republicans approving of the job he was doing… The 68-point gap between partisans’ approval ratings of Obama last year is nine points higher than that for any other president’s third year.” Obama, by the way, holds the record for the most polarized first and second years in office, too. Which means Obama has set a record for polarization every year he’s been in office.

So now is as good a time as any to remind people one of the core claims made by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign wasn’t simply that he would heal the planet; he would also heal the nation’s political breach. He would elevate the national debate. Reason would prevail over emotion. He would do away with what he called the “50 plus one” style of governing. Obama would “turn the page” on the “old politics” of division and anger. He would end a politics that “breeds division and conflict and cynicism.” He would help us to “rediscover our bonds to each other and … get out of this constant petty bickering that’s come to characterize our politics.” He would “cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past.”

“I will listen to you,” Obama said on a stage in Grant Park on the night of his election, “especially when we disagree.”

His election, he informed us, was a sign we had “chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.” On the day of his inauguration he came to proclaim “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

“The time has come to set aside childish things,” he told us on the day of his inauguration. And to paraphrase the Book of Isaiah, a community organizer shall lead us.

Where Obama has led us, it turns out, is to as much polarization as we have ever seen. Our divisions are deeper than they were. Our common ground is less than we could have imagined. Conflict and discord prevail over unity of purpose. Petty bickering characterizes our politics. Obama has wrapped himself in worn-out ideas and the politics of the past. And we have not even fully engaged in the 2012 presidential campaign, which will make our present disunity look like the land of milk and honey.

Whatever the cause of our divisions – and they are many and complicated – it was Barack Obama who said he would bind up the wounds. This promise was at the centerpiece of his campaign, the heart of his appeal, the meaning behind “hope and change.” And now it lies in ashes.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------4a)The $1.2 Tril Gap: Obama's Subpar Recovery Continues

Economy: The latest economic data make it clear that President Obama's policies aren't helping the country get stronger. Rather, they're smothering what should have been a solid recovery.

Real GDP climbed a less-than-expected 2.8% in final quarter of 2011, and just 1.7% for the entire year, down from 3% in 2010. The trend of subpar growth under Obama continues.

To get a better sense of how bad Obama's recovery is, consider this: Under Obama, real GDP has climbed a total of just 6% in the two-and-a-half years since the recession ended in June 2009.

By comparison, real GDP had grown 16% by this point in the Reagan recovery, after the very deep and painful 1981-82 recession.

Had Obama's recovery been as powerful as Reagan's, the economic pie would be $1.2 trillion bigger today.

And had job growth under Obama kept pace with job growth during the Reagan recovery, there would be 10 million — yes 10 million — more people with jobs today.

So what explains the difference between these two recoveries? Obama and his legion of liberal defenders claim the last recession was so deep that we're just now getting back on our feet.

Plus, they claim that a financial crisis invariably causes a slow recovery.

But even that didn't stop a rip-roaring comeback.Neither excuse holds water. First, the 1981-82 recession was almost as long (16 months vs. 18 months), and as deep (unemployment was actually higher, peaking at 10.8% in that earlier recession).

Second, a recent Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta report found: "U.S. history provides no support for linking low employment and high unemployment in the current recovery with the financial crisis of 2007-2008."

Plus, nobody at the time expected the Reagan recovery to be as fast and as powerful as it was.

So what's different? The presidents' policies.

Reagan enacted sweeping and permanent tax cuts, aggressively eliminated or reduced regulations, reined in domestic spending, and championed the private sector.

Obama's approach has been the opposite — a huge increase in regulations; meager, targeted and temporary tax cuts; a massive increase in size and scope of the federal government; and a barrage of invective against businessmen and the wealthy. Obama has bashed Reagan's approach, saying that cutting taxes and regulations "has never worked" to spur growth.

Obama might think the U.S. is "getting stronger," as he put it in his State of the Union speech, and maybe it is, a little. But if he keeps choking it with his misguided policies, it will never be as strong as it could be, or should be.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5) From Christian Science Monitor:

How Iran Could Beat Up On America's Superior Military.

America's defense budget is roughly 90 times bigger than Iran's. But Iran has a well-honed strategy of asymmetric warfare.

By Scott Peterson, Staff writer

ISTANBUL, Turkey--Tehran has stepped up its bellicose warnings of conflict in the Persian Gulf as potentially crippling new European Union and American sanctions have been approved on Iran's oil exports and central bank.

The US defied the warning of a top Iranian general this week and sent the USS Abraham Lincoln – flanked by British and French warships – through the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf. A senior Iranian lawmaker scoffed that the US "did not dare" to send its ship alone, because of the danger posed by the Islamic Republic. If Iran were to close the strategic waterway, as it has threatened to do, the American aircraft carriers "will become the war booty of Iran," he declared.

Such bluster is not all talk. The US may outspend the Islamic Republic nearly 90-to-1 on defense. But Iran, heir to ancient Persia's naval innovation, has a well-honed asymmetric strategy designed to reverse that advantage.

A 2002 US military exercise simulating such a conflict proved devastating to American warships.

Indeed, Iran can cause immense harm, analysts say, without ever directly facing off against far superior conventional US forces. Even a few incidents – like mines laid in the Gulf, or Iran's small-boat swarming tactics against oil tankers or a US Navy ship – could raise fears of insecurity to unacceptably high levels.

It could also have far-reaching economic consequences, including a spike in oil prices, since roughly a third of all seaborne oil shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz – making it the single most important choke point for oil tankers in the world.

"[Iran's] final aim is not to physically close [the strait] for too long, but to drive up shipping insurance and other costs to astronomical heights – which is just as good, in terms of economic damage, as the physical closing of the strait," says a former senior European diplomat who recently finished a six-year tour in Tehran.

"If you are not sure whether you will get hit, or if you get hit not by conventional force but some wild boat that might float around in the sea – or a mine or two – that will create far more insecurity than a battle line where the strait is closed," he says.

And Iranian harassing tactics are just the start, he adds. Other layers include artillery and rockets stationed at the Strait of Hormuz, Kilo submarines, and mini-submarines from which divers can be sent out to damage ships.

Many options short of full-blown war

Iran's conventional military forces are often aging and of limited capability. Iran spent just $7 billion on defense compared to America's $619 billion defense budget in 2008, the latest year for which Iran's data was available, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's database.

Iran's strategy of asymmetric warfare recognizes that, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has little chance of winning any face-to-face military contest with powerful enemies like the United States.

Instead, Iran aims to "exploit enemy vulnerabilities through the used of 'swarming' tactics by well-armed small boats and fast-attack craft, to mount surprise attacks at unexpected times and places" which will "ultimately destroy technologically superior enemy forces," writes Iranian military expert Fariborz Haghshenass in a 2008 study based on published doctrines of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In any future fight, Iran would likely "avoid escalating the conflict in a way that would play to US strengths in waging mid- to high-intensity warfare – by employing discreet tactics such as covert mine-laying, limited submarine options, and occasional mobile shore-based attacks," writes Mr. Haghshenass, in the study for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In fact, Iran has many options short of a direct challenge in the Persian Gulf.

"Iran could seek to create perpetual, low-grade instability in the strait, mostly through asymmetric means, with the objective of making it an aquatic 'no-man's land,' " says Reza Sanati, in an analysis published by the Tehran Bureau/PBS Frontline website. "For Iran, the choice is not 'to close' or 'not to close,' but rather to clog. A major global choke point, once considered safe, would no longer be so."

The US "would be drawn into providing the manpower and bearing the exorbitant cost for removing the impediments," adds Mr. Sanati, while the risk of inadvertently sparking a war would "vastly multiply."

Devastating result for US in war game

Iran's asymmetric focus is no secret. It has sought to enhance deterrence by claiming repeated triumphs during large military exercises, and by fielding new hardware, from super-fast torpedoes and to kamikaze drones.

During the "Great Prophet V" exercise in April 2010, for example, the IRGC Navy trumpeted the launch of a new "ultra-fast" watercraft that it claimed was less detectable by radar. Across the shimmering Gulf waters, Iran fielded 300 boats in a swarming attack, with commandos landing on one of the target warships.

"The Strait of Hormuz belongs to the region and foreigners must not intervene in it," military spokesman Ali Reza Tangsiri said at the time.

That warning echoed the words of a ranking Iranian cleric in 2008 that the "first shot" fired against Iran would turn the Israeli capital Tel Aviv and the US fleet in the Persian Gulf into "the targets that would be set on fire in Iran's crushing response."

More than a decade earlier, in 1997, then-IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei said "Iran will never start any war," but if the US attacked first "we will turn the region into a slaughterhouse for them. There is no greater place than the Persian Gulf to destroy America's might."

Could Iran do it?

It would seem so, in light of a $250 million classified US war game called Millennium Challenge 2002. The gaming scenario hypothetically pitted the Blue Team (representing US warships) against a Red Team that launched a coordinated assault using swarming boats and missiles – the kind of tactics Iran might employ.

In the game, 16 American ships, including an aircraft carrier and most of its strike group, were sunk before the exercise was suspended and the parameters controversially changed to ensure a US victory.

The Red Team commander, Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, told the New York Times in 2008, "The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack.” He said he had been inspired by Marine Corps studies of the natural world, where everything from ant colonies to wolf packs took on larger prey.

"It is not a matter of size or of individual capability, but whether you have the numbers to come from multiple directions in a short period of time," said Van Riper.

(My Note: Lots of high level unhappiness over Van Riper's strategy which embarrassed the U. S. blue team. The story locally was that they claimed he "didn't play fairly." One report said he was ordered to change his enemy scenario, he refused, and left the war game. Don't know if that is true or not. He was in retirement and had been invited to be the Red Team Commander at the time.)

Since then, American naval strategists have worked to overcome the vulnerabilities of conventional warships to swarm tactics. One solution has been a US Navy project to build a “littoral combat ship” (LCS), designed to operate at high speeds and close-to-shore, with shallow draft and capable of launching helicopters, assault boats and submarines. Only two have been built, the project plagued by delays and cost overruns.

The LCS fits Iran's coastal waters and its methods, and is designed "to counter growing potential 'asymmetric' threat of coastal mines, quiet diesel submarines, and the potential to carry explosives and terrorists on small, fast, armed boats," according to the website www.naval-technology.com.

Iranian units given great independence

Iran also appears to have learned from the 2002 US exercise, just as it learned from a 1988 incident during the Tanker War in the Persian Gulf, when US forces sunk or damaged three Iranian warships in a single day, to retaliate for an American ship hitting a mine.

Part of Iran's strategy includes decentralized decisionmaking.

"The entire [IRGC] structure – if you look at how air defense is organized, the land forces, the combination of the Basij [militia] and the [IRGC] – this is all geared toward what they call the Mosaic Strategy, where you have individual military units who have a great deal of independence to decide what they can do without referring back to the center," says the former European diplomat.

Haghshenass explains one way this could play out in the Gulf.

"In the naval arena, speedboats will be taken out of camouflaged coastal or inland hide sites and bunkers, hauled on trailers to coastal release points, and given mission-type orders that will not require them to remain in contact with their chain of command," he writes.

But Iran's retaliation would not likely be limited to the strait.

"This is only one aspect of their deterrent strategy. Threats about Iraq and Afghanistan... there is Hezbollah and Hamas they could activate," says the diplomat, referring to the militant groups active on Israel's borders. "There is a whole array of deterrent strategies they have put into place, and the Strait of Hormuz is just one aspect. [T]hey have made it very clear the last few years that they have this whole portfolio, and will use it all in case of a military attack."

Labyrinth of ports and 'spiritual' superiority

Historically, the fleets of ancient Persia sailed far afield, and in the Mediterranean used "spy ships, disguised as foreign merchantmen and small warships for clandestine operations," notes Haghshenass's analysis. Ancient Persians, during the reign of Xerxes, "invented the concept of naval infantry."

The geography of Iran's southern coastline hasn't changed, and with 10 large ports and 60 small ones – and an endless labyrinth of fishing villages, inlets, and coves – it is ideal for staging the kind of hit-and-run and stealth operations envisioned by the Iranian strategy.

With a daily transit rate of 3,000 boats and ships in the strait, US forces could have trouble differentiating friend from foe, providing Iran with an upper hand.

And Iranian commanders believe they have another advantage, if the rhetoric about the Strait of Hormuz ever turns into a real conflict.

"The IRGC places religious belief at the core of the Iranian concept of asymmetric warfare," writes Haghshenass. "In Iran's concept of asymmetric warfare, the ideological or 'spiritual' superiority of the community of believers is considered as important as any other factor."

That means, he adds, that Iran's Revolutionary Guard believes that "its chain of command extends through Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to God, thereby investing military orders with transcendent moral authority..."
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6) About Eggs Mixed with Water.......
This could save your life

Important Message!!!!
Please take a few minutes & read.
It could save your life!!!!!!!!!
Didn't know if you knew about eggs mixed with water....... so that is why I'm sending this on.
Be Safe!

A MESSAGE FROM THE OFFICE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL
STATE OF MICHIGAN :

SITUATION..

While driving on a rural end of the roadway on Thursday morning, I saw an infant car seat on the side of the road with a blanket draped over it.
For whatever reason, I did not stop, even though I had all kinds of thoughts running through my head. But when I got to my destination, I called the Canton PD and they were going to check it out. But, this is what the Police advised even before they went out there to check....

"There are several things to be aware of ... gangs and thieves are now plotting different ways to get a person (mostly women) to stop their vehicle and get out of the car.

"There is a gang initiation reported by the local Police Department where gangs are placi ng a car seat by the road...with a fake baby in it....waiting for a woman, of course, to stop and check on the abandoned baby.

"Note that the location of this car seat is usually beside a wooded or grassy (field) area and the person -- woman -- will be dragged into the woods, beaten and raped, and usually left for dead. If it's a man, they're usually beaten and robbed and maybe left for dead, too.

DO NOT STOP FOR ANY REASON!!! DIAL 9-1-1 AND REPORT WHAT YOU SAW, BUT DON 'T EVEN SLOW DOWN.

Oh yea, about the EGGS:
"IF YOU ARE DRIVING AT NIGHT AND EGGS ARE THROWN AT YOUR WINDSHIELD, DO NOT STOP TO CHECK YOUR CAR, DO NOT OPERATE THE WIPERS AND DO NOT SPRAY ANY WATERBECAUSE EGGS MIXED WITH WATER BECOME MILKY, AND BLOCK YOUR VISION UP TO 92.5%, AND YOU ARE THEN FORCED TO STOP BESIDE THE ROAD AND BECOME A VICTIM OF THESE CRIMINALS.

THIS IS A NEW TECHNIQUE USED BY GANGS, SO PLEASE INFORM YOUR FRIENDS AN D RELATIVES.

THESE ARE DESPERATE TIMES AND THESE ARE UNSAVORY INDIVIDUALS WHO WILL TAKE DESPERATE MEASURES TO GET WHAT THEY WANT."

WARNING # 3:
Some knew about the red light on cars, but not Dialing 112.
It was about 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. Lauren's parents have always told her to never pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather to wait until they get to a gas station, etc.

Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called, 112 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she was and there weren't, and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back up already on the way.

Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground. The man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes.
I never knew about the 112 Cell Phone feature. I tried it on my AT&T phone & it said, "Dialing Emergency Number."

Especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car. Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going on to a safe place.

*Speaking to a service representative at Bell Mobility confirmed that112 was a direct link to State trooper info. So, now it's your turn to let your friends know about "Dialing, 112"

You may want to send this to every Man, Woman & Youngster you know; it may well save a life.

This applies to ALL 50 states.
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The Window Is Closing. Time Is Running Like Sand in An Hourglass!

2012-01-28T05:27:00.000-08:00

SWEET TAMMY's gets noticed and reviewed! "Sweet Tammy’s - East Liberty

This is one of the city’s prettiest bakeries, with its chandelier-lit seating area and a fancy wrap-around display case packed with gorgeously decorated cupcakes and pastries. It’s also the place that will finally convince you that non-dairy kosher pareve desserts can be downright delicious (everything here falls into that category). Some standouts include dense apple-spice cupcakes with honey butter cream, terrific challah and lattice-topped fruit pies. Above all, the cookies—in flavors like chocolate chip, maple cranberry oatmeal, cinnamon sugar snicker doodle, ginger chewy and chocolate-filled peanut butter—will keep you coming back time and again.

6595 Hamilton Ave.; 412/450-8445, sweet-tammys.com"
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Continuing SOTU commentary sent by fellow memo readers and other matters. (See 1,1a and 1b below.)
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Obviously intended to embarrass but what impact will Ga. eligibility trial have in the real world of politics? Time will tell. (See 2 below.)
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Warren Buffet has entered the dangerous world of politics and I would venture to say, before it is over, his record of financial achievements will become tarnished. He should not expect to retain his virtuous stance when he may benefit from his political actions and involvement. Whether justified or not stench has a way of finding and/or creating victims. (See 3 below.)
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An explanation why politicians are not held in high esteem. (See 4 below.)
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A warning of Capitalism's vulnerability from the man who did what he pens should be avoided, ie. do not meddle with the markets. (See 5 below.)
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Narrowing the difference? (See 6 below.)
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Caroline Glick's article describes the dichotomy many American Jews face when it comes to defending Israel while remaining faithful to America.

As for myself, unless Israel 's actions are so offensive as to be immoral I support their right to survive. (See 7 below.)

The simple point is, Israel favors economic and diplomatic sanctions against Iran but its calculus must, of absolute security necessity, be based on how much time is left for military strikes to be effective.

Go back to the confrontation we had with Russia over Cuba. Kennedy knew, after the Bay of Pigs disaster, he could not allow Russia to place nuclear weapons in Cuba. He may have consulted with various allies, even maybe the U.N. but JFK knew he could not be deterred from taking action once Russia moved to cross the 'red line.' So it will be with Israel.

In the final analysis, all nations act in their own self interest when their survival is threatened.

If America and/or the West wishes to prevent Israel from acting unilaterally, as it must and will once they conclude Iran has crossed the red line, then America and its allies must take effective and convincing action and discontinue their dalliance on the assumption Israel will submit to unending delays.

A line in the sand will be drawn from which, I am convinced, there will be no backing away.

Israel's Barack warned nations attending the Davos Conference today, time like sand, is rapidly shifting against Israel.

I continue to believe, it is not out of the question, that before the election 'PNF/F' will conclude he can lock up his re-election by taking on Iran and possibly by first provoking them in order to justify his actions.
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Back to the Florida vote and some advice from Kim Strassel to Mitt. It was given prior to last night and may prove premature.

While Newt continues to attack Romney, Romney is now hitting back and Newt was unprepared for the response.

Meanwhile, Santorum effectively whacked Romney on the healthcare issue and Romney did not have an effective response.

It was hoped all the campaigning would harden the candidate ultimately selected but when they got engaged in a food fight they could have done irreparable harm to their prospects. Politics is a nasty business and often brings out the worst.

I have been fortunate to know two outstanding Senators - Sam Nunn and Paul Coverdell. Both epitomized the best in what one would expect of a public servant.

I am getting to know Rep. Jack Kingston and like what I see. He is a serious minded and dedicated person.

I also had the privilege of getting to know the elder President Bush. Already discussed how I came to know Newt. (See 4 and 8 below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama's Misstatements on the Union
BY DAVID LIMBAUGH

Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It's hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation.
Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space.

Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation's and Americans' financial future, yet Obama glossed over it and distorted his record.He said, "We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more." But everyone knows he's had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cutting table. His unrelenting passion is spending. Even The Washington Post said, "Obama does not mention that Republicans forced him to accept $2 trillion in budget cuts during the debt-ceiling impasse."

Obama said, "I'm prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors." Well, that's mighty magnanimous of him, but why is he so grudging about it? As president, he should be singularly focused on entitlement reform. Yet he has obstructed and demagogued such reforms. His condition that the "programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors" is completely dishonest, because Paul Ryan's plan did just that and he rejected it while ridiculing and demonizing Ryan.

Obama said, again, that to avoid Warren Buffett's secretary's paying a higher tax rate than her boss, we should adopt the "Buffett rule," prescribing that "if you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes." The Heritage Foundation tells us that according to Congressional Budget Office data, the top 1 percent of income earners already pay 30 percent of their income in all federal taxes. In addition, when wealthy people pay a lower effective income tax rate, it's a result either of lawful deductions (often charitable) or of capital gains and dividends on property they've acquired with money that has already been taxed. Also, before the wealthy realize many of these gains, the businesses that produce these gains have already paid a corporate income tax rate of 35 percent (the highest in the world). This means that Buffett, on much of this income, pays an effective rate of 50 percent (35 percent corporate plus 15 percent capital gains). Indeed,99.4 percent of millionaires and billionaires pay far more in taxes in actual and relative terms than middle- and low-income earners, and for Obama to suggest otherwise is not only deeply deceitful but also damaging -- because of the class envy he constantly stokes -- to the social fabric of this country.

Obama said he wants to lure American companies home yet has steadfastly refused, notwithstanding his SOTU rhetoric, to agree to rectify the primary reasons they leave: punitive corporate income tax rates and onerous regulations.

Obama suggested that he is not only a pioneer in clean energy but also bullish on domestic energy. His record on the former is disgraceful, and both his claim and record on the latter are insulting. He has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on quixotic green-energy programs with Solyndra and its cousins, spending $5 million for every single "renewable energy" job he has created. He has defiantly refused to take responsibility and is continuing to pursue more. He has waged war on domestic coal, natural gas and oil. He not only imposed a punitive moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf but also lawlessly re-instituted another one after federal district and appellate courts shot down his initial moratorium. When he lifted this revised moratorium, drilling remained in limbo because of the administrative obstacles his administration had imposed on drilling permits. His actions caused devastating losses to the Gulf economy and jobs, which rippled throughout the nation's economy. Most recently, to placate his environmental extremist base, he blocked the job-producing Keystone XL pipeline for no legitimate reason.

Obama threatened to withhold federal subsidies to colleges unless they hold tuition costs down without recognizing that one of the main reasons they've skyrocketed is the profligate subsidies he continues to increase.

He railed against bailouts after having established a record as President Bailout. He blamed banks again for causing the housing crisis and economic meltdown by making loans to people who couldn't afford them, without admitting that government, mainly his party, was the primary culprit.

He said he'd established the closest military cooperation with Israel in history, but he has bullied that nation for three years, and our relationship has rarely been more strained.

Believe me, I could go on.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book, "Crimes Against Liberty," was No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction for its first two weeks.

1a)15 Questions The Mainstream Media Would Ask Barack Obama If He Were A Republican

During the practically endless series of Republican debates, we have heard almost every question imaginable asked to Republican candidates – if by every question imaginable, you mean horribly slanted, often irrelevant questions designed to make them look bad and help Obama. We've heard questions about contraceptives, religion, Newt's angry ex-wife, Gardasil, etc., etc., etc. So, what would happen if the mainstream media treated Barack Obama the exact same way that they treat Republicans? The questions might sound a little something like this.

1) Numerous Mexican citizens and an American citizen have been killed with weapons knowingly provided to criminals by our own government during Operation Fast and Furious. If Eric Holder was aware that was going on, do you think he should step down as Attorney General? Were you aware that was going on and if so, shouldn’t you resign?

2) In 2010 you said Solyndra, which gave your campaign a lot of money, was "leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future." Today, Solyndra is bankrupt and the taxpayers lost $500 million on loans that your administration was well aware might never be paid off when you made them. What do you say to people who say this is evidence of corruption in your administration?

3) Unions invested a lot of time and money in helping to get you elected. In return, they gained majority control of Chrysler, the taxpayers lost 14 billion dollars on General Motors, and General Motors received a special 45 billion dollar tax break. What do you say to people who view this as corruption on a scale never before seen in American history?

4) Through dubious means, you and your allies in Congress managed to push through an incredibly unpopular health care bill that helped lead to the worst election night for the Democratic Party in 50 years. Since the bill has passed, many of your claims about the bill have proven to be untrue. For example, we now know the bill won't lower costs and despite your assurances to the contrary, big companies like McDonald's say they may drop health care because of the health care reform. Since the American people have rejected your health care reform and it doesn't do what you said it would, shouldn't you work with the Republicans to repeal it?

5) When you took office, gas was $1.79 per gallon. Since then, you've demonized the oil industry, dramatically slowed offshore drilling, blocked ANWR, and killed the Keystone Pipeline. Now, gas is $3.54 per gallon. How much higher do you anticipate driving gas prices?

6) Occupy Wall Street has been protesting against Wall Street and the richest 1 percent in America. You are in the top 1 percent of income earners in America and you have collected more cash from Wall Street than any other President in history. So, aren't you exactly the sort of
politician that Occupy Wall Street wants to get rid of?

7) How do you decide which foreign leaders to submissively bow towards and why do you think that's appropriate for an American President?

8) If they could, don't you think the Nobel Committee would take back the Nobel Peace Prize that you were awarded?

9) You made bipartisanship one of the central themes of your campaign in 2008. Yet, you've worked to push bills through Congress with almost no Republican support, spent much less time negotiating with Congress than George Bush, and you've said things like, "But, I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking." Why did you decide to break your campaign promise to pursue bipartisanship?

10) America lost its AAA credit rating for the first time under your watch. What do you think you should have done differently to have prevented that historic failure?

11) You cut more than 500 billion dollars out of Medicare to fund your wildly unpopular health care reform bill. Given that Medicare is running in the red already, don't you think it's irresponsible to cut money out of one entitlement program, that millions of seniors depend on -- to put it into a risky new entitlement program?

12) Back in July, you said, "Nobody’s looking to raise taxes right now. We’re talking about potentially 2013 and the out years." Since you plan to raise taxes if you're elected and you've had kind words for a value added tax, shouldn't every American expect a tax increase if you're reelected?

13) Why should the American people reelect you when your 10 year budget saddles America with more debt than all previous Presidents combined?

14) Your stimulus bill cost more in real dollars than the moon landing and the interstate highway system combined. What do we have to show for all of that money spent?

15) Members of your administration promised that the trillion dollar stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Instead, we've had 35+ months of 8% and above unemployment. Doesn't that mean we wasted a trillion dollars on nothing?

1b)Go to: "Familiar Rhetoric, Failed Record - YouTube" and "Do watch Peter Schiff’s response to BHO’s SOTU."
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2)OBAMA ELIGIBILITY COURT CASE…BLOW BY BLOW
By Craig Andresen

Given the testimony from today’s court case in Georgia, Obama has a lot of explaining to do. His attorney, Jablonski, was a NO SHOW as of course, was Obama.

The following is a nutshell account of the proceedings.

Promptly at 9am EST, all attorneys involved in the Obama Georgia eligibility case were called to the Judge’s chambers. This was indeed a very interesting beginning to this long awaited and important case.

The case revolved around the Natural Born clause of the Constitution and whether or not Obama qualifies under it to serve. More to the point, if found ineligible, Obama’s name would not appear on the 2012 ballot in Georgia.

With the small courtroom crowded, several in attendance could be seen fanning themselves with pamphlets as they waited for the return of the attorneys and the appearance of the judge.

Obama himself, who had been subpoenaed to appear, of course was nowhere near Georgia. Instead, Obama was on a campaign swing appearing in Las Vegas and in Colorado ignoring the court in Georgia.

Over the last several weeks, Obama’s attorney, Michael Jablonski, had attempted several tactics to keep this case from moving forward. He first tried to have it dismissed, then argued that it was irrelevant to Obama. After that, Jablonski argued that a state could not, under the law, determine who would or would not be on a ballot and later, that Obama was simply too busy with the duties of office to appear.

After all these arguments were dispatched by the Georgia Court, Jablonski, in desperation, wrote to the Georgia Secretary of State attempting to place Obama above the law and declared that the case was not to he heard and neither he nor his client would participate.

Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, fired back a letter hours later telling Jablonski he was free to abandon the case and not participate but that he would do so at his and his clients peril.

Game on.

5 minutes.

10 minutes.

15 minutes with the attorneys in the judge’s chambers.

20 minutes.

It appears Jablonski is not in attendance as the attorneys return, all go to the plaintiff table 24 minutes after meeting in the judge’s chambers.

Has Obama’s attorney made good on his stated threat not to participate? Is he directly ignoring the court’s subpoena? Is he placing Obama above the law? It seems so. Were you or I subpoenaed to appear in court, would we or our attorney be allowed such action or, non action?

Certainly not.

Court is called to order.

Obama’s birth certificate is entered into evidence.

Obama’s father’s place of birth, Kenya East Africa is entered into evidence.

Pages 214 and 215 from Obama’s book, “Dreams from My Father” entered into evidence. Highlighted. This is where Obama indicates that, in 1966 or 1967 that his father’s history is mentioned. It states that his father’s passport had been revoked and he was unable to leave Kenya.

Immigration Services documents entered into evidence regarding Obama Sr.

June 27th, 1962, is the date on those documents. Obama’s father’s status shown as a non citizen of the United States. Documents were gotten through the Freedom of Information Act.

Testimony regarding the definition of Natural Born Citizen is given citing Minor vs Happersett opinion from a Supreme Court written opinion from 1875. The attorney points out the difference between “citizen” and “Natural Born Citizen” using charts and copies of the Minor vs Happersett opinion.

It is also pointed out that the 14th Amendment does not alter the definition or supersede the meaning of Natural Born. It is pointed out that lower court rulings do not conflict with the Supreme Court opinion nor do they over rule the Supreme Court Minor vs Happersett opinion.

The point is, to be a natural born citizen, one must have 2 parents who, at the time of the birth in question, be citizens of the United States. As Obama’s father was not a citizen, the argument is that Obama, constitutionally, is ineligible to serve as President.

Judge notes that as Obama nor his attorney is present, action will be taken accordingly.

Carl Swinson takes the stand.

Testimony is presented that the SOS has agreed to hear this case, laws applicable, and that the DNC of Georgia will be on the ballot and the challenge to it by Swinson.

2nd witness, a Mr. Powell, takes the stand and presents testimony regarding documents of challenge to Obama’s appearance on the Georgia ballot and his candidacy.

Court records of Obama’s mother and father entered into evidence.

Official certificate of nomination of Obama entered into evidence.

RNC certificate of nomination entered into evidence.

DNC language does NOT include language stating Obama is Qualified while the RNC document DOES. This shows a direct difference trying to establish that the DNC MAY possibly have known that Obama was not qualified.

Jablonski letter to Kemp yesterday entered into evidence showing their desire that these proceedings not take place and that they would not participate.

Dreams From My Father entered.

Mr. Allen from Tuscon AZ sworn in.

Disc received from Immigration and Naturalization Service entered into evidence. This disc contains information regarding the status of Obama’s father received through the Freedom of Information Act.

This information states clearly that Obama’s father was NEVER a U.S. Citizen.

At this point, the judge takes a recess.

The judge returns.

David Farrar takes the stand.

Evidence showing Obama’s book of records listing his nationality as Indoneasan. Deemed not relevant by the judge.

Orly Taitz calls 2nd witness. Mr. Strunk.

Enters into evidence a portion of letter received from attorney showing a renewal form from Obama’s mother for her passport listing Obama’s last name something other than Obama.

State Licensed PI takes the stand.

She was hired to look into Obama’s background and found a Social Security number for him from 1977. Professional opinion given that this number was fraudulent. The number used or attached to Obama in 1977, shows that the true owner of the number was born in the 1890. This shows that the number was originally assigned to someone else who was indeed born in 1890 and should never have been used by Obama.

Same SS number came up with addresses in IL, D.C. and MA.

Next witness takes the stand.

This witness is an expert in information technology and photo shop. He testifies that the birth certificate Obama provided to the public is layered, multiple layered. This, he testifies, indicates that different parts of the certificate have been lifted from more than one original document.

Linda Jordan takes the stand.

Document entered regarding SS number assigned to Obama. SS number is not verified under E Verify. It comes back as suspected fraudulent. This is the system by which the Government verifies ones citizenship.

Next witness.

Mr. Vogt.

Expert in document imaging and scanners for 18 years.

Mr. Vogt testifies that the birth certificate, posted online by Obama, is suspicious. States white lines around all the type face is caused by “unsharp mask” in Photoshop. Testifies that any document showing this, is considered to be a fraud.

States this is a product of layering.

Mr. Vogt testifies that a straight scan of an original document would not show such layering.

Also testifies that the date stamps shown on Obama documents should not be in exact same place on various documents as they are hand stamped. Obama’s documents are all even, straight and exactly the same indicating they were NOT hand stamped by layered into the document by computer.

Next witness, Mr. Sampson a former police officer and former immigration officer specializing in immigration fraud.

Ran Obama’s SS number through database and found that the number was issued to Obama in 1977 in the state of Connecticut . Obama never resided in that state. At the time of issue, Obama was living in Hawaii.

Serial number on birth certificate is out of sequence with others issued at that hospital. Also certification is different than others and different than twins born 24 hours ahead of Obama.

Mr. Sampson also states that portion of documents regarding Mr. Sotoroe, who adopted Obama have been redacted which is highly unusual with regards to immigration records.

Suggests all records from Social Security, Immigration, Hawaii birth records be made available to see if there are criminal charges to be filed or not. Without them, nothing can be ruled out.

Mr. Sampson indicates if Obama is shown not to be a citizen, he should be arrested and deported and until all records are released nobody can know for sure if he is or is not a U.S. Citizen.

Taitz shows records for Barry Sotoro aka Barack Obama, showing he resides in Hawaii and in Indonesia at the same time.

Taitz takes the stand herself.

Testifies that records indicate Obama records have been altered and he is hiding his identity and citizenship.

Taitz leave the stand to make her closing arguments.

Taitz states that Obama should be found, because of the evidence presented, ineligible to serve as President.

And with that, the judge closes the hearing.

What can we take away from this?

It’s interesting.

Now, all of this has finally been entered OFFICIALLY into court records.

One huge question is now more than ever before, unanswered.

WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY?

Without his attorney present, Obama’s identity, his Social Security number, his citizenship status, and his past are all OFFICIALLY in question.

One thing to which there seems no doubt. He does NOT qualify, under the definition of Natural Born Citizen” provided by SCOTUS opinions, to be eligible to serve as President.

What will the judge decide? That is yet to be known, but it seems nearly impossible to believe, without counter testimony or evidence, because Obama and his attorney chose not to participate, that Obama will be allowed on the Georgia ballot.

It also opens the door for such cases pending or to be brought in other states as well.

Obama is in it deep and the DNC has some…a LOT…of explaining to do unless they start looking for a new candidate for 2012.
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3)Buffett would profit from Keystone cancellation
By Dave Boyer

Warren Buffett, whom President Obama likes to cite as a fair-minded billionaire while arguing for higher taxes on the wealthy, stands to benefit from the president’s decision to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC, which is among the railroads that would transport oil produced in western Canada if the pipeline isn’t built.

“Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., told Bloomberg News. If Keystone XL “doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul,” she said.

The Obama administration rejected TransCanada’s request for a permit on Jan. 18, saying there was not enough time to review the proposal by Feb. 21, the deadline imposed by congressional Republicans eager to see the pipeline built. The decision came from the State Department, although Mr. Obama said he agreed with it.

TransCanada said it plans to submit another proposal that would avoid an environmentally sensitive route through Nebraska. The State Department had been reviewing the pipeline project tor three years when it rejected the permit.

If completed, the $7 billion Keystone XL would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude from oil sands in Canada to Texas refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It would traverse about 1,600 miles.

The State Department’s review of the project said shipping oil via rail is more costly than delivering it to refineries by pipeline.

Mr. Obama often cites Mr. Buffett as an example of a civic-minded billionaire because the entrepreneur has said he should pay a higher tax rate than his secretary. Mr. Buffett and the president like to tell the story of how Mr. Buffett pays a 15 percent effective tax rate, while his secretary pays a higher rate even though she earns only a fraction of what he does.

The president has called his push for higher taxes on the wealthy the “Buffett rule.”

The secretary, Debbie Bosanek, will sit with first lady Michelle Obama in her box in the House gallery at Tuesday night’s State of the Union speech.

Republicans, labor unions and even some Democrats have criticized the administration’s rejection of the pipeline permit, saying it would create up to 20,000 jobs. Critics accuse the president of buckling to pressure from environmentalists who oppose the project and are important to Mr. Obama’s re-election effort.
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4)Why America Hates Its Politicians So Much
By Monty Pelerin

Another State of the Union speech has come and gone. These speeches are predictable, useless, boring, and purely political.

Supporters of the party in power rave about matters such as "vision," "compassion," "fairness," and "the future." Detractors focus more on reality -- the present and the distortions, contradictions, and, yes, outright lies contained in the message. So it was with the recent SOTU by President Barack Obama.

In the heated political divide, partisan supporters and detractors know no bounds in terms of their defense or attacks. Party and politics, not truth, are what matters. Both sides spin, distort, and lie in their efforts to gain advantage. The spoils for the victor in politics have become so great as to trump integrity and other sacred values. Truth is the biggest victim. To practice truth in modern-day politics is verboten. Loyalty to party and ideology trumps everything else. Truth is a disqualifier in this racket.

With a president who feels unconstrained by law, the Constitution, economic reality, or the truth, interpretations of what he said and its relationship with reality are especially useful. Little of that comes from the so-called mainstream media who put him in office and now desperately seek to defend and re-elect their tragic mistake. For the most part, the media are interested in maintaining their integrity by continuing to distort the truth. Political outcome to them has replaced fact-checking and truth.

This quote from Warren Meyer writing in Forbes expresses the frustration of many Americans:
Had Barack Obama given this State of the Union speech at the beginning of his Presidency, I probably would have been supportive of many of his proposals. Today, though, I am simply dumbfounded at the mismatch between his words last night and his policies and actions over the last three years. The portion that really floored me was Obama's taking credit for the increase in US oil and gas production over the last several years. Oil and gas companies are once again proving Julian Simon's [adage] that the only true scarcity is human brain power, and they should be given a lot of credit for the recent production boom. The one person who deserves no credit for this boom is Barack Obama. In fact, this Administration has bent over backwards to make oil and gas production and exploration as difficult as possible.

Other non-establishment views of Obama's speech can be found here:

The Cato Institute Fact-Checks, Responds to President Obama's State-of-the-Union Address

Alarming Thoughts On The SOTU from Clark Judge

ACTION TRUMPS HOPE

Today, American Idol appears to be the litmus test for electing a president. Is someone cool, hip, and exciting? Is he/she good-looking?

On that basis Obama is eminently qualified. He is good-looking and smooth-talking (with a teleprompter), and he exudes confidence. These characteristics, coincidentally, are the same ones necessary for a successful career as a charlatan or confidence man. What is not coincidental is the overlap between a successful politician and a successful criminal! Success in either of these two fields is dependent upon duplicity, fraud, and coercion.

Based on the substance of our politicians, would we not be better drawing them from the professional acting class? Brad Pitt and/or other talented Hollywood celebrities would be ideal. They are more attractive than the current crop of politicians. Certainly they can handle themselves better in front of a camera. Some puppet-master could write their scripts, which they would regurgitate flawlessly.

Hollywood has enough talent that it could supply both parties. Let's not use rank amateurs to staff our political class. Hollywood should be the training base. Surely this crop of actors exceeds our current politicians in every superficial characteristic that seems to matter.
As we approach the upcoming election, the country appears to have narrowed down the choices to three -- Obama, Romney, and Gingrich. Is there anything more demonstrative as to why people are turned off by politics and politicians? Surely a country of 300 million people, many of whom are laden with talent, character, and integrity, should be capable of producing a better selection than these three. Is this the best that our political system can deliver? Was it any better in prior elections? Of course not.

Gresham's Law in economics explains why bad money drives out good money. Something like that law is at work in our political system. "Bad" people drive out "good" ones. Quality people are repelled by politics.

Truly talented people don't enter politics. They don't need to make a living as a member of the parasite class. Hypocrisy, character assassination, and money-begging are requisites for success in the political world. These qualities are anathema to people of character. Men and women of integrity and talent make their way through life the old-fashioned way. As intoned in the old Smith Barney commercial, they "earn it." They have no need to subject themselves to the filth of politics, where the way to success is to "steal it."

That doesn't mean that quality people don't find it necessary to support politicians. When an economy has been overly politicized and run from Washington, it is important to pretend to like even slimeballs if they are the difference between your success and failure. Political support is not necessarily motivated by respect. Often it is driven by either bribery or extortion. It is a cost of doing business in today's statist world.

One must pretend to worship the wise and sage Washington if one wants to operate successfully in the U.S., a lesson Bill Gates learned the hard way. Gates, a true genius and loner, had no use for Washington or lobbying. As he grew, the pile of riches represented by Microsoft became too large for Washington not to notice. Gates soon found his company under attack by the Justice Department on questionable anti-trust charges.

Gates quickly saw the light and began to worship at Washington's altar. Apparently he recognized that being extorted was more costly than joining the bribery side. Now he, like all other major corporations, lobbies and contributes to the political coffers in Washington, usually both sides. He has had no U.S. anti-trust problems since.

A loser, at least in terms of being able to contribute productively to society, is what defines most politicians. For the less talented and less scrupulous, it is an easier route to wealth than that of markets. It is the same motivation that draws the less talented toward organized crime. Coercion and force make for an easier way to make a living than success in free markets, where cooperation, mutual consent, and value-creation are the essentials for success.
If you are unfortunate enough to meet one of these (political or Mafia) creatures, count your fingers after shaking hands. Then apply liberal amounts of antiseptic soap for as long as it takes for you to sing "Happy Birthday" -- twice! Then get religion and pray that you have not been fatally infected by your encounter.
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5)Greenspan: Battle for Capitalism 'Far From Won'
By Julie Crawshaw

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says meddling with markets invites disaster.

"Capitalism, since it was spawned in the Enlightenment, has achieved one success after another," Greenspan writes in the Financial Times.

"Standards and quality of living, following millennia of near stagnation, have risen at an unprecedented rate over large parts of the globe," he wrote.

"Poverty has been dramatically reduced and life expectancy has more than doubled. The rise in material well-being – a tenfold increase in global real per capita income over two centuries – has enabled the earth to support a six-fold increase in population," he wrote.

While central planning may no longer be a credible form of economic organization, the intellectual battle for its rival – free-market capitalism – is far from won, says Greenspan.

He asks if there is a simple trade-off between civil conduct, as defined by those who find raw competitive behavior deplorable, and the material life most people nonetheless seek.

"During the past century, for example, competitive-market-driven economic growth created resources far in excess of those required to maintain subsistence," Greenspan says.

"That surplus, even in the most aggressively competitive economies such as America’s, has been mainly employed to improve the quality of life: advances in health, greater longevity and pension systems that go with it, a universal system of education and vastly improved conditions of work."

"We have used much of the substantial increases in wealth generated by our market-driven economies to purchase what most would view as greater civility."

He says that “whatever the imperfections of free-market capitalism, no regime that has been tried as a replacement .. has succeeded in meeting the needs of its people.”

“Yet I fear that, in response to the crisis, innumerable ‘improvements’ to the capitalist model will be enacted. I am very doubtful those ‘improvements,’ in retrospect, will appear to have been wise.”

Meanwhile, a four-year economic crisis has left societies battered and widened the gap between the haves and have-nots, financial leaders conceded Wednesday — with one suggesting that Western-style capitalism itself may be endangered, the Associated Press reported.

As Europe struggles with its debt crisis and the global economic outlook remains gloomy at best, there's a sense at the heavily guarded World Economic Forum that free markets are on trial.

Many at the elite economic gathering in the Swiss Alps accept that more must be done to convince critics that Western capitalism has a future and that it can learn from its massive failures.

For David Rubenstein, the co-founder and managing director of asset management firm Carlyle Group, leaders must work fast to overcome the current crisis or else different models of capitalism, such as the form practiced in China, may win the day.

"As a result of this recession, that's lasted longer than anyone predicted and will probably go on for a number more years ... we're going to have a lot of economic disparities," Rubenstein told the AP.

"We've got to work through these problems. If we don't do in three or four years ... the game will be over for the type of capitalism that many of us have lived through and thought was the best type."
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6)War of attrition brewing with Iran over Gulf oil routes

Strait of Hormuz

Military tensions in the Persian Gulf shot up again Thursday, Jan. 26, after Dubai police commander Gen. Dhahi Khalfan said on Al Arabiya television that an imminent Gulf war cannot be ruled out and first signs are already apparent. "The world will not let Iran block Hormuz but Tehran can narrow the strait to the maximum," he said.

He stated Iran will not shut down the Strait of Hormuz completely, but gradually cut down tanker traffic which carries 17 million barrels, or one-fifth of the world's daily consumption, through the waterway. Our Iranian sources report that the rule of thumb Tehran has devised for confront sanctions is to respond to the tightening of an oil embargo by having the Revolutionary Guards gradually narrow the tankers' shipping lanes through the strategic strait. This will progressively cut down the amount of oil reaching the markets.

Tehran will not go all the way and shut the channel down completely for fear of provoking a military showdown with the United States. But each time Washington manages to stop Iran supplying a given country, the IRGC will shut down another section of the strait.

General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted on Jan. 8 that Iran has the capacity to block the Strait of Hormuz temporarily but the US would get it reopened within a short time.

Saudi Arabia and Dubai are skeptical about the ability of the American navy and Gulf forces to keep the Strait of Hormuz open at all times in the face of continuous Iranian attacks.

The prevailing view in Gulf capitals is that for the six months from February through July 1, when the European embargo on Iranian oil and the Iranian national bank freeze kick in, a war of attrition will unfold as Iran carries out sporadic strait closures, either by mining the waterway or firing missiles at tankers from unmarked speedboats.

These operations will push up the price of oil and so drum home to oil-dependent Asian and European governments the high cost to them of the alternate opening and closing of the Strait of Hormuz.

A Saudi official said Wednesday, Jan. 1, that Tehran's threats to punish Riyadh for offering to make up the shortfall incurred from the oil embargo against Iran "could be seen by Saudi Arabia as an act of war."

The Iranian threats followed the pledge made this week by Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi to raise daily production by up to 2.7 million barrels per day to supply the countries caught short of supplies from Iran.

However, the Saudi minister could not say how the oil would make its way out of the Persian Gulf to destination if the Strait of Hormuz were to be shuttered partially or fully.

Military and Gulf sources report Persian Gulf capitals are talking less these days about an outbreak of armed hostilities over Iran's nuclear program and more about the coming war over the oil shipping routes out to market.

The Dubai general's remarks Thursday about an imminent conflict referred not only to the flow of American reinforcements to the Gulf region but also to the new deployments of the armies of Gulf Cooperation Council states. They are moving into position in expectation of a military confrontation with Iran.
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7)Obama: Of course I intend to prevent a nuclear holocaust . . . in a few months
By Caroline B. Glick

In truth, American Jewry's diffidence towards taking a stand on Iran, or recognizing Obama's dishonestly on this issue specifically and his dishonestly regarding his position on US-Israel ties generally, is not rooted primarily in American Jews' devotion to Obama. It isn't even specifically related to American Jewry's devotion to the political Left. Rather it has to do with American Jewish ambivalence to Israel

European and American perfidy in dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program apparently has no end. This week we were subject to banner headlines announcing that the EU has decided to enact an oil embargo on Iran. It was only when we got past the bombast that we discovered that the embargo is only set to come into force on July 1.

Following its European colleagues, the Obama administration announced it is also ratcheting up its sanctions against Iran in two months. Sometime in late March, the US will begin sanctioning Iran's third largest bank.

At the same time as the Europeans and the Americans announced their phony sanctions, they reportedly dispatched their Turkish colleagues to Teheran to set up a new round of nuclear talks with the ayatollahs. If the past is any guide, we can expect for the Iranians to agree to sit down and talk just before the oil embargo is scheduled to be enforced. And the Europeans — with US support — will use the existence of talks to postpone indefinitely the implementation of the embargo.

There is nothing new in this game of fake sanctions. And what it shows more than anything is that the Europeans and the Americans are more concerned with pressuring Israel not to attack Iran's nuclear installations than they are in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

For his part Obama has a second target audience — American Jews. He is using his fake sanctions as a means of convincing American Jews that he is a pro-Israel president and that in the current election season, not only should they cast their votes in his favor, they should sign their checks for his campaign.

For their part, both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were quick this week to make clear that these moves are insufficient. They will not force Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. More is needed. As to American Jewry, the jury is still out.

In truth, American Jewry's diffidence towards taking a stand on Iran, or recognizing Obama's dishonestly on this issue specifically and his dishonesty regarding his position on US-Israel ties generally is not rooted primarily in American Jews' devotion to Obama. It isn't even specifically related to American Jewry's devotion to the political Left. Rather it has to do with American Jewish ambivalence to Israel.

The roots of that ambivalence — which is shared by other Western Jewish communities to varying degrees -- predate Obama's presidency. Indeed, they predate the establishment of Israel. And now, as the US and the EU have given Iran at least another six months to a year to develop its nuclear bombs unchecked, it is worth considering the nature and influence of this ambivalence.

Today's principal form of Jew hatred is anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is similar to previous dominant forms of Jew hatred such as xenophobic and racist anti-Semitism, and Communist anti-Jewish cosmopolitanism in the sense that it takes dominant, popular social trends and turns them against the Jews. Anti-Zionism's current predominance owes to the convergence of several popular social trends which include Western post-nationalism, and anti-colonialism.

The problem that anti-Zionism poses for American Jewry is that it forces them to pay a price for supporting Israel. This is problematic because Zionism has never been fully embraced by American Jewry. Since the dawn of modern Zionism, the cause of Jewish self-determination placed American Jewish leaders in an uncomfortable dilemma.

Unlike every other Diaspora Jewish community, the American Jewish community has always perceived itself as a permanent community rather than an exile community. American Jews have always viewed the United States as the new Promised Land.

With the formation of the modern Zionist movement in the late nineteenth century, American Jews found themselves on the thorns of a dilemma. Clearly, the state of world Jewry was such that national self-determination had become an existential necessity for non-American Jews.

But while supporting Jewish refugees and a scrappy little country was okay, support for the Zionist cause of Jewish national liberation involved an acceptance of the fact that Israel — not the US — is the Jewish homeland. Moreover, it involved accepting that there are Jewish interests that are independent of — if not necessarily in contradiction with — American interests. For instance, irrespective of the prevailing winds in Washington, and regardless of whether the US supports Israel or not, it is a Jewish interest that Israel exists, thrives and survives.

In a recent op ed in Haaretz, Hebrew University political science professor Shlomo Avineri contrasted world Jewry's massive mobilization on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and 1980s and their relative silence today in the face of Iran's Holocaust denial and open calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Avineri is apparently confounded by the disparity between Western Jewry's behavior in the two cases.

But the cause of the disparity is clear. Supporting the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate was easy. Unlike Israel, Soviet Jews were powerless. As such, they were pure victims and supporting them cost Diaspora Jews nothing in terms of their position in their societies. Just as importantly, the cause of freedom for Soviet Jewry was perfectly aligned with the West's Cold War policies against the Soviet Union. The frequent Jewish demonstrations outside Soviet legations provided Western leaders with another tool to fight the Cold War.

In contrast, supporting Israel, and the cause of Jewish freedom and self-determination embodied by Zionism is not cost free for Diaspora Jews. At root, to support Israel and Zionism involves accepting that Jews have inherent rights as Jews. To be a Zionist Jew in the Diaspora means that you embrace and defend the notion that the Jews have the right to their own interests and that those interests may be distinct from other nations' interests. That is, to be a Zionist involves rejecting Jewish assimilation and embracing the fact that Jews require national independence and power to guarantee our survival. And this can be unpleasant.

Pro-Israel American Jews have historically tried to tie their support for Israel to larger, more universal themes in order to extricate themselves from the need to admit that as Jews and supporters of Israel they have a right and a duty to support Jewish freedom even if it isn't always pretty. Again, for Israel's first several decades, it was about helping poor Jews and refugees. In recent years, the predominant defense has been that Israel deserves support because it is a democracy.

Certainly, these are both reasonable reasons for supporting Israel. But neither support for Israel because it was poor nor support for Israel because it is free are specifically Zionist reasons for supporting Israel. You don't have to be a Zionist to support poor Jewish refugees and you don't have to be a Zionist to support democracy.

You do have to be a Zionist however, to defend the Jews in Israel and throughout the world in a coherent manner when the predominant form of Jew hatred is anti-Zionism. You have to be willing to accept and defend the right of the Jewish people to freedom and self-determination in our national homeland against those who deny that right. You have to be a Zionist to defend Israel's right to survive and thrive even though it is no longer poor and its democratically elected government is not liked by the Obama administration.

And you have to be a Zionist to realize that since Jewish survival is dependent on Jewish power, and anti-Zionists reject the right of Jews to have power, that anti-Zionists seek to bring about a situation where Jewish survival is imperiled.

The weakness of American Jewry's response to Iran's genocidal intentions towards Israel is of a piece with its weak response to the forces of anti-Zionism generally and to Jewish anti-Zionists particularly. Since 2007, the US government has effectively ruled out the use of force against Iran's nuclear weapons program and embraced a policy of pursuing negotiations with ayatollahs while enacting impotent sanctions to quell Congressional pressure. At least in part, this policy owes to the US's assessment that a nuclear Iran does not pose a high-level threat to US national security.

At the same time, both then president George W. Bush and Obama determined that an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear weapons program does pose a high-level threat to the US. As a consequence, both administrations have taken concerted steps to prevent Israel from attacking Iran.

On the merits, both of these policies are easily discredited. But the fact that they continue to be implemented shows that they are supported by a large and powerful constituency in Washington.
To oppose Iran's nuclear program effectively, American Jews are required to oppose these strongly supported US policies. And at some point, this may require them to announce they support Israel's right to survive and thrive even if that paramount right conflicts with how the US government perceives US national interests. That is, it may require them to embrace Zionism unconditionally.
No doubt, if they do so, their own conditions will improve. They will finally be able to speak coherently against the gathering forces of anti-Zionism — both from within the Jewish community and from without. This in turn will act as a lightning rod for inspiring American Jews to embrace their Judaism.

With their leaders to date having abjectly failed to contend with the most powerful form of Jew hatred, it is no wonder that so many Diaspora Jews are leaving the fold. If they reverse course and go after their attackers, American Jewish leaders will give community members a meaningful reason to proudly embrace their identity.

In a speech this week at the Knesset, Netanyahu explained the different lessons the Holocaust teaches the international community on the one hand, and the Jews on the other. As far as its universal lessons are concerned, Netanyahu said, "The lesson is that the countries of the world must be woken up, as much as possible, so that they can organize against such crimes. The lesson is that the broadest possible alliances must be forged in order to act against this threat before it is too late."

As for the Jews, Netanyahu embraced Zionism's core principle: "With regard to threats to our very existence, we cannot abandon our future to the hands of others. With regard to our fate, our duty is to rely on ourselves alone."

We must hope that world Jewry will recognize today that the fate of the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world is indivisible and rally to Israel's side whatever the social cost of doing so. But even if they do not recognize this basic truth, the imperatives of Zionism, of the Jewish people, remain in place.
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8)

Mitt Keeps Missing the Message

If Romney wins Florida, it won't be because he's becoming a more effective candidate.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Newt Gingrich's South Carolina bump is fading, and polls show Mitt Romney again leading in Florida. A Romney victory in the Sunshine State could sew this up.

It won't be because Mr. Romney has become a better or more effective candidate. Primaries exist to help with that process, to let contenders read signals from the political landscape, to adapt, become stronger. Successful politicians absorb the signals and change up. Not Mr. Romney. If politics were evolution, the governor would still be swimming in the primordial soup.

That much was clear this week. The first signal was Mr. Gingrich's resounding victory in South Carolina. If Mr. Romney were listening, he'd have understood that vote was as much against him as it was for Mr. Gingrich. It took but one punchy Gingrich debate performance to have voters abandoning the front-runner in droves.

South Carolina voters also clearly explained why. Exit polls showed that Mr. Romney's two (and only) messages—that he is the best suited to turn around the economy and to defeat Barack Obama—aren't working for the majority of voters. Mr. Gingrich beat Mr. Romney on both issues. The electorate explained that they first and foremost want a candidate willing to passionately promote conservative ideals.

Mr. Gingrich then followed his victory with a week in which he all but goaded his opponent into voicing some bigger principles. He kept up the "Massachusetts moderate" label. He again went populist and accused Mr. Romney of not working for all his money and profiting from big banks. He compared Mr. Romney to Charlie Crist. Among Florida conservatives, there is no greater diss.

Mr. Romney had some strong moments in Thursday's debate, but on the Florida stump he's mostly been plodding on. As in Iowa, as in New Hampshire, as in South Carolina, he's still criticizing Mr. Gingrich. He's still running on his biography. He's still sending the media press releases announcing the latest Miami Dade politician to pronounce him most electable against Barack Obama.

Which gets to the other story of this week: the president's State of the Mitt Address. Mr. Gingrich might have some Republicans spooked, but Democrats are still hoping for the Massachusetts governor. They, too, have noticed that Mr. Romney is ducking the class-warfare debate, and that not even the Gingrich threat has moved him to engage. They take that as an invitation to make it the central theme of the Obama re-elect. The president's Tuesday speech was a direct assault on Mr. Romney's wealth and tax breaks for "the rich."

That challenge, coming on the back of Mr. Romney's tax release, was all the more reason for him to change the narrative by seizing on a big idea like comprehensive tax reform. He could have underlined how the tax code that Mr. Obama wants to further contort only undermines growth and leaves average Americans paying a higher effective rate than does Mr. Romney. Instead, he complained that Mr. Gingrich's tax simplification plan would let off rich guys.

Mr. Romney has his unscripted, inspired moments. Late in South Carolina, a feisty Mr. Romney chastised a heckler—who was slamming him for being the 1%—for seeking to "divide the nation . . . as our President is doing," and then riffed on America's great economic model. Romney strategist Eric Fehrnstrom boasted it was "Mitt Romney at his best." He was right. And it lasted all of 30 seconds. A few days later Mr. Romney was back to borrowing the heckler's language, telling Floridians "the 1% is doing fine. I want to help the 99%."

The Romney camp lives in terror of deviating from the months-old script. It did, and will, defend RomneyCare. It did, and will, stick with a 59-point economic plan. It did, and will, promote only the "middle class." Did. Will. No flip-flops here, folks. Move along.

Yet it is precisely Mr. Romney's past flips that now require him to adjust, to convince conservative voters that the convictions he today claims are real and strong. Mr. Romney likes to repeat that he is a free-market conservative. What voter is going to blame him for proving it by putting out a roaring tax reform? That's not a flip-flop. That's progress.

Mr. Romney isn't beating Mr. Gingrich in Florida on the arguments. He's barely eking ahead of a man whose own history and temperament are his hurdles to victory. Mr. Obama won't have that problem. If a Nominee Romney thinks he can win the White House with the sort of uninspired performance he put in this week, he's got a long 2012 ahead of him.

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The New York Times ,Trigger Happy Israel and A Trusted Friend's Views!

2012-01-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, our president showed a consistent character flaw and leadership failure at the Arizona airport when he demonstrated on the tarmac again how he loves to dish out what he cannot eat.
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Some articles to read:

Ann Coulter:
Re-Elect Obama: Vote Newt!
Thomas Sowell:
Is Anybody Serious?
Victor Davis Hanson:
Fidelity and the Presidency
Larry Elder:
Newt Declares War on Media
Michael Barone:
Unlike Obama, GOP Candidates Talk Seriously About Governing
John Ransom:
UAW, Occupy and Obama Hang Themselves Together

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The title of my last memo evoked several requests to expand on my view that we are in for inflation later this year.

History suggests when you flood the market with money it must seek a home. When the amount of money exceeds the supply of goods produced pricing pressure builds because you have, perhaps unwittingly, created conditions for a seller's market.

Bernanke realizes demand is low because of unemployment , diminished personal wealth (low housing prices, over leveraged borrowing etc.) so by stimulating the economy - printing money - the hope is it will pump up demand. Corporations, realizing demand is soft, are reluctant to produce more goods than demand requires so pressures build favoring supply over demand and eventually you have inflation.

The Fed understands the implications of their actions will produce inflation and though that is their goal they also will tell you they will be able to control it by turning off the spigot at the appropriate time. History suggests otherwise.

Secondly, the Fed knows, and history has proven, it is politically difficult, if not impossible, to pay off our nation's debt through fiscal restraint. Politicians understand visiting direct pain on constituents does not garner votes. Politicians are more likely to opt for the hand print of others to undertake the nefarious job. Cynically speaking, that is why Congress established the Fed. Congress, in essence, said you protect the value of the dollar, keep prices stable thus, allowing us the freedom to spend open endedly.

The consequence has been to make the Fed's difficult more so at the very least and untenable at the very worst.. It is all a game an , to his credit, Rep. Paul, has highlighted this fact during his campaigning.

Inflation erodes purchasing power, lowers the standard of living as it allows the repayment of expensive debt with cheaper dollars. In essence, it is a way of cheating the lender but it does so by ultimately cheating citizens of their savings and net worth even more so.

The '29 Depression wiped out vast wealth and cut across all socio economic lines because the stock market had become the main game in town.

The next wave of inflation, in my opinion, should hit our shores sometime later this year or into 2013 and will have a more severe impact upon lower socio economic sectors because the wealthy have greater avenues of hedging available than in the '20's. That is not to say the wealthy will escape the ravages of inflation but simply they have more ways to protect themselves whereas the average family is more likely to feel the full brunt of inflation.

President Solyndra's campaign strategy is geared towards stirring economic resentment and creating tension between 'haves' and 'have nots' because inflation serves to widen economic and wealth disparity. Inflation plays into the hands of a demagogue and when it spills over it usually gets out of hand and causes enormous societal rifts. Volatility plays into the hands of speculators and politicians whose intent is to also prosper by gaining more power, ie. expand government as a method of tethering the runaway horse.

I fear this is where we are headed because the enormity of our debt will make the argument for policies that result in an ever cheaper and cheaper dollar more acceptable.
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The New York Times, through editorials and some of their op ed writers seek to imply Israel is trigger happy when it comes to thwarting Iran's nuclear ambitions.. That makes for good headlines, sells papers, builds resentment and suspicion but facts tell otherwise. If Israel were trigger happy they would have already attacked Iran rather than seek, through other means, to delay its nuclear progress in the ultimate hope other events and circumstances might overtake the regime.

If Israel were trigger happy they would have already decimated Lebanon's Hezballah and destroyed Hamas' weapons build upon Gaza.

If Israel was trigger happy it would have started wars with its neighbors.

The New York Times, for reasons unbeknown to me, appear to have a sick need to paint Israel as a pariah.

Perhaps the German Jewish founding family members and other Jewish staff writers and managers, of like mind, have a need to buy credibility by attacking Israel. Whatever it is, it has become pathological, defies fact and causes them to distort truth

When one considers Israel is the size of Rhode Island and was established to provide a homeland for those remaining after 6 million of their ancestors were exterminated a single nuclear device would destroy the nation. It is the responsibility of a nation's leaders to protect the governed. Planning for stopping Iran, once it is deemed to have crossed the final red line, is prudent and rational. Israelis did not seek to be in the position they find themselves and continue to encourage other nations to recognize the threat Iran poses not only to themselves but also to regional and world peace.

The writer of the article I cite below is politically known to be far left and appears to suggest Israel is itching to strike and will do so disregarding the consequences. I doubt this to be the fact but world indifference, world timidity, world feckless behaviour can only heighten Israel's concern that there will come a time when they must act alone because their very survival will be their only choice.

My speaker last night, Major Elliot Chodoff, IDF Res., reviewed, one by one, the current situation Israel faces by reason of the so called 'Arab Spring.' As a consequence, Israel remains surrounded by nations increasingly bent on their destruction. The Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power has left egg on the face of our State Department. Its influence is spreading and their commitment to end Israel is their published and stated goal. Iran remains the largest sponsor of terror in the region and their current leadership have also avowed to eliminate Israel from the map and now are moving towards having the capability of implementing their threat.

Elliot believes the current administration persists in making a mistake believing The Muslim Brotherhood will bring economic stability to Egypt and will eventually eliminate their opposition.

Unlike some Israelis the author quotes in the below article, Chodoff accepts the fact that Israel has the capability of doing serious damage to Iran's nuclear efforts and if the red line is deemed to be foreseeably crossed will, in fact, act because they have no alternative if survival is their remaining option.

Elliot is a military historian, has been engaged in war and understands the plight Israel faces on a variety of levels. He teaches a class on terrorism at Haifa University and in a ranging conversation later that evening we discussed his thoughts on capital punishment, the impact of PC'ism on subjective judgement, the article below and a variety of other issues.

Elliot remains a sober judge of a dangerous region and a trusted friend. (See 1and 1a below.)
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1)Will Israel Attack Iran?

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, on right, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

By RONEN BERGMAN

As the Sabbath evening approached on Jan. 13, Ehud Barak paced the wide living-room floor of his home high above a street in north Tel Aviv, its walls lined with thousands of books on subjects ranging from philosophy and poetry to military strategy. Barak, the Israeli defense minister, is the most decorated soldier in the country’s history and one of its most experienced and controversial politicians. He has served as chief of the general staff for the Israel Defense Forces, interior minister, foreign minister and prime minister. He now faces, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 12 other members of Israel’s inner security cabinet, the most important decision of his life — whether to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran. We met in the late afternoon, and our conversation — the first of several over the next week — lasted for two and a half hours, long past nightfall. “This is not about some abstract concept,” Barak said as he gazed out at the lights of Tel Aviv, “but a genuine concern. The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map.”

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When I mentioned to Barak the opinion voiced by the former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and the former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi — that the Iranian threat was not as imminent as he and Netanyahu have suggested and that a military strike would be catastrophic (and that they, Barak and Netanyahu, were cynically looking to score populist points at the expense of national security), Barak reacted with uncharacteristic anger. He and Netanyahu, he said, are responsible “in a very direct and concrete way for the existence of the State of Israel — indeed, for the future of the Jewish people.” As for the top-ranking military personnel with whom I’ve spoken who argued that an attack on Iran was either unnecessary or would be ineffective at this stage, Barak said: “It’s good to have diversity in thinking and for people to voice their opinions. But at the end of the day, when the military command looks up, it sees us — the minister of defense and the prime minister. When we look up, we see nothing but the sky above us.”

Netanyahu and Barak have both repeatedly stressed that a decision has not yet been made and that a deadline for making one has not been set. As we spoke, however, Barak laid out three categories of questions, which he characterized as “Israel’s ability to act,” “international legitimacy” and “necessity,” all of which require affirmative responses before a decision is made to attack:

1. Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project? And can the military and the Israeli people withstand the inevitable counterattack?

2. Does Israel have overt or tacit support, particularly from America, for carrying out an attack?

3. Have all other possibilities for the containment of Iran’s nuclear threat been exhausted, bringing Israel to the point of last resort? If so, is this the last opportunity for an attack?

For the first time since the Iranian nuclear threat emerged in the mid-1990s, at least some of Israel’s most powerful leaders believe that the response to all of these questions is yes.

At various points in our conversation, Barak underscored that if Israel or the rest of the world waits too long, the moment will arrive — sometime in the coming year, he says — beyond which it will no longer be possible to act. “It will not be possible to use any surgical means to bring about a significant delay,” he said. “Not for us, not for Europe and not for the United States. After that, the question will remain very important, but it will become purely theoretical and pass out of our hands — the statesmen and decision-makers — and into yours — the journalists and historians.”

Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s vice prime minister and minister of strategic affairs, is the third leg in the triangle supporting a very aggressive stance toward Iran. When I spoke with him on the afternoon of Jan. 18, the same day that Barak stated publicly that any decision to strike pre-emptively was “very far off,” Ya’alon, while reiterating that an attack was the last option, took pains to emphasize Israel’s resolve. “Our policy is that in one way or another, Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped,” he said. “It is a matter of months before the Iranians will be able to attain military nuclear capability. Israel should not have to lead the struggle against Iran. It is up to the international community to confront the regime, but nevertheless Israel has to be ready to defend itself. And we are prepared to defend ourselves,” Ya’alon went on, “in any way and anywhere that we see fit.”

For years, Israeli and American intelligence agencies assumed that if Iran were to gain the ability to build a bomb, it would be a result of its relationship with Russia, which was building a nuclear reactor for Iran at a site called Bushehr and had assisted the Iranians in their missile-development program. Throughout the 1990s, Israel and the United States devoted vast resources to weakening the nuclear links between Russia and Iran and applied enormous diplomatic pressure on Russia to cut off the relationship. Ultimately, the Russians made it clear that they would do all in their power to slow down construction on the Iranian reactor and assured Israel that even if it was completed (which it later was), it wouldn’t be possible to produce the refined uranium or plutonium needed for nuclear weapons there.

But the Russians weren’t Iran’s only connection to nuclear power. Robert Einhorn, currently special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control at the U. S. State Department, told me in 2003: “Both countries invested huge efforts, overt and covert, in order to find out what exactly Russia was supplying to Iran and in attempts to prevent that supply. We were convinced that this was the main path taken by Iran to secure the Doomsday weapon. But only very belatedly did it emerge that if Iran one day achieved its goal, it will not be by the Russian path at all. It made its great advance toward nuclear weaponry on another path altogether — a secret one — that was concealed from our sight.”

That secret path was Iran’s clandestine relationship with the network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb. Cooperation between American, British and Israeli intelligence services led to the discovery in 2002 of a uranium-enrichment facility built with Khan’s assistance at Natanz, 200 miles south of Tehran. When this information was verified, a great outcry erupted throughout Israel’s military and intelligence establishment, with some demanding that the site be bombed at once. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not authorize an attack. Instead, information about the site was leaked to a dissident Iranian group, the National Resistance Council, which announced that Iran was building a centrifuge installation at Natanz. This led to a visit to the site by a team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who were surprised to discover that Iran was well on its way to completing the nuclear fuel cycle — the series of processes for the enrichment of uranium that is a critical stage in producing a bomb.

Despite the discovery of the Natanz site and the international sanctions that followed, Israeli intelligence reported in early 2004 that Iran’s nuclear project was still progressing. Sharon assigned responsibility for putting an end to the program to Meir Dagan, then head of the Mossad. The two knew each other from the 1970s, when Sharon was the general in charge of the southern command of the Israel Defense Forces and Dagan was a young officer whom he put in charge of a top-secret unit whose purpose was the systematic assassination of Palestine Liberation Organization militiamen in the Gaza Strip. As Sharon put it at the time: “Dagan’s specialty is separating an Arab from his head.”

Sharon granted the Mossad virtually unlimited funds and powers to “stop the Iranian bomb.” As one recently retired senior Mossad officer told me: “There was no operation, there was no project that was not carried out because of a lack of funding.”

At a number of secret meetings with U.S. officials between 2004 and 2007, Dagan detailed a “five-front strategy” that involved political pressure, covert measures, counterproliferation, sanctions and regime change. In a secret cable sent to the U.S. in August 2007, he stressed that “the United States, Israel and like-minded countries must push on all five fronts in a simultaneous joint effort.” He went on to say: “Some are bearing fruit now. Others” — and here he emphasized efforts to encourage ethnic resistance in Iran — “will bear fruit in due time, especially if they are given more attention.”

From 2005 onward, various intelligence arms and the U.S. Treasury, working together with the Mossad, began a worldwide campaign to locate and sabotage the financial underpinnings of the Iranian nuclear project. The Mossad provided the Americans with information on Iranian firms that served as fronts for the country’s nuclear acquisitions and financial institutions that assisted in the financing of terrorist organizations, as well as a banking front established by Iran and Syria to handle all of these activities. The Americans subsequently tried to persuade several large corporations and European governments — especially France, Germany and Britain — to cease cooperating with Iranian financial institutions, and last month the Senate approved sanctions against Iran’s central bank.

In addition to these interventions, as well as to efforts to disrupt the supply of nuclear materials to Iran, since 2005 the Iranian nuclear project has been hit by a series of mishaps and disasters, for which the Iranians hold Western intelligence services — especially the Mossad — responsible. According to the Iranian media, two transformers blew up and 50 centrifuges were ruined during the first attempt to enrich uranium at Natanz in April 2006. A spokesman for the Iranian Atomic Energy Council stated that the raw materials had been “tampered with.” Between January 2006 and July 2007, three airplanes belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards crashed under mysterious circumstances. Some reports said the planes had simply “stopped working.” The Iranians suspected the Mossad, as they did when they discovered that two lethal computer viruses had penetrated the computer system of the nuclear project and caused widespread damage, knocking out a large number of centrifuges.

In January 2007, several insulation units in the connecting fixtures of the centrifuges, which were purchased from a middleman on the black market in Eastern Europe, turned out to be flawed and unusable. Iran concluded that some of the merchants were actually straw companies that were set up to outfit the Iranian nuclear effort with faulty parts.

Of all the covert operations, the most controversial have been the assassinations of Iranian scientists working on the nuclear project. In January 2007, Dr. Ardeshir Husseinpour, a 44-year-old nuclear scientist working at the Isfahan uranium plant, died under mysterious circumstances. The official announcement of his death said he was asphyxiated “following a gas leak,” but Iranian intelligence is convinced that he was the victim of an Israeli assassination.

Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a particle physicist, was killed in January 2010, when a booby-trapped motorcycle parked nearby exploded as he was getting into his car. (Some contend that Mohammadi was not killed by the Mossad, but by Iranian agents because of his supposed support for the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi.) Later that year, on Nov. 29, a manhunt took place in the streets of Tehran for two motorcyclists who had just blown up the cars of two senior figures in the Iranian nuclear project, Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani. The motorcyclists attached limpet mines (also known as magnet bombs) to the cars and then sped away. Shahriari was killed by the blast in his Peugeot 405, but Abbassi-Davani and his wife managed to escape their car before it exploded. Following this assassination attempt, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed Abbassi-Davani vice president of Iran and head of the country’s atomic agency. Today he is heavily guarded wherever he goes, as is the scientific head of the nuclear project, Mohsin Fakhri-Zadeh, whose lectures at Tehran University were discontinued as a precautionary measure.

This past July, a motorcyclist ambushed Darioush Rezaei Nejad, a nuclear physicist and a researcher for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, as he sat in his car outside his house. The biker drew a pistol and shot the scientist dead through the car window.

Four months later, in November, a huge explosion occurred at a Revolutionary Guards base 30 miles west of Tehran. The cloud of smoke was visible from the city, where residents could feel the ground shake and hear their windows rattle, and satellite photos showed that almost the entire base was obliterated. Brig. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ missile-development division, was killed, as were 16 of his personnel. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s spiritual leader, paid respect by coming to the funeral service for the general and visiting the widow at her home, where he called Moghaddam a martyr.

Just this month, on Jan. 11, two years after his colleague and friend Massoud Ali Mohammadi was killed, a deputy director at the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility named Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan left his home and headed for a laboratory in downtown Tehran. A few months earlier, a photograph of him accompanying Ahmadinejad on a tour of nuclear installations appeared in newspapers across the globe. Two motorcyclists drove up to his car and attached a limpet mine that killed him on the spot.

Israelis cannot enter Iran, so Israel, Iranian officials believe, has devoted huge resources to recruiting Iranians who leave the country on business trips and turning them into agents. Some have been recruited under a false flag, meaning that the organization’s recruiters pose as other nationalities, so that the Iranian agents won’t know they are on the payroll of “the Zionist enemy,” as Israel is called in Iran. Also, as much as possible, the Mossad prefers to carry out its violent operations based on the blue-and-white principle, a reference to the colors of Israel’s national flag, which means that they are executed only by Israeli citizens who are regular Mossad operatives and not by assassins recruited in the target country. Operating in Iran, however, is impossible for the Mossad’s sabotage-and-assassination unit, known as Caesarea, so the assassins must come from elsewhere. Iranian intelligence believes that over the last several years, the Mossad has financed and armed two Iranian opposition groups, the Muhjahedin Khalq (MEK) and the Jundallah, and has set up a forward base in Kurdistan to mobilize the Kurdish minority in Iran, as well as other minorities, training some of them at a secret base near Tel Aviv.

Officially, Israel has never admitted any involvement in these assassinations, and after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out against the killing of Ahmadi-Roshan this month, President Shimon Peres said he had no knowledge of Israeli involvement. The Iranians vowed revenge after the murder, and on Jan. 13, as I spoke with Ehud Barak at his home in Tel Aviv, the country’s intelligence community was conducting an emergency operation to thwart a joint attack by Iran and Hezbollah against Israeli and Jewish targets in Bangkok. Local Thai forces, reportedly acting on information supplied by the Mossad, raided a Hezbollah hideout in Bangkok and later apprehended a member of the terror cell as he tried to flee the country. The prisoner reportedly confessed that he and his fellow cell members intended to blow up the Israeli Embassy and a synagogue.

Meir Dagan, while not taking credit for the assassinations, has praised the hits against Iranian scientists attributed to the Mossad, saying that beyond “the removal of important brains” from the project, the killings have brought about what is referred to in the Mossad as white defection — in other words, the Iranian scientists are so frightened that many have requested to be transferred to civilian projects. “There is no doubt,” a former top Mossad official told me over breakfast on Jan. 11, just a few hours after news of Ahmadi-Roshan’s assassination came from Tehran, “that being a scientist in a prestigious nuclear project that is generously financed by the state carries with it advantages like status, advancement, research budgets and fat salaries. On the other hand, when a scientist — one who is not a trained soldier or used to facing life-threatening situations, who has a wife and children — watches his colleagues being bumped off one after the other, he definitely begins to fear that the day will come when a man on a motorbike knocks on his car window.”

As we spoke, a man approached and, having recognized me as a journalist who reports on these issues, apologized before asking: “When is the war going to break out? When will the Iranians bomb us?” The Mossad official smiled as I tried to reassure the man that we wouldn’t be nuked tomorrow. Similar scenes occur almost every day — Israelis watch the news, have heard that bomb shelters are being prepared, know that Israel test-fired a missile into the sea two months ago — and a kind of panic has begun to overtake Israeli society, anxiety that missiles will start raining down soon.

Dagan believes that his five-fronts strategy has succeeded in significantly delaying Iran’s progress toward developing nuclear weapons; specifically “the use of all the weapons together,” he told me and a small group of Israeli journalists early last year. “In the mind of the Iranian citizen, a link has been created between his economic difficulties and the nuclear project. Today in Iran, there is a profound internal debate about this matter, which has divided the Iranian leadership.” He beamed when he added, “It pleases me that the timeline of the project has been pushed forward several times since 2003 because of these mysterious disruptions.”

Barak and Netanyahu are less convinced of the Mossad’s long-term success. From the beginning of their terms (Barak as defense minister in June 2007, Netanyahu as prime minister in March 2009), they have held the opinion that Israel must have a military option ready in case covert efforts fail. Barak ordered extensive military preparations for an attack on Iran that continue to this day and have become more frequent in recent months. He was not alone in fearing that the Mossad’s covert operations, combined with sanctions, would not be sufficient. The I.D.F. and military intelligence have also experienced waning enthusiasm. Three very senior military intelligence officers, one who is still serving and two who retired recently, told me that with all due respect for Dagan’s success in slowing down the Iranian nuclear project, Iran was still making progress. One recalled Israel’s operations against Iraq’s nuclear program in the late 1970s, when the Mossad eliminated some of the scientists working on the project and intimidated others. On the night of April 6, 1979, a team of Mossad operatives entered the French port town La Seyne-sur-Mer and blew up a shipment necessary for the cooling system of the Iraqi reactor’s core that was being manufactured in France. The French police found no trace of the perpetrators. An unknown organization for the defense of the environment claimed responsibility.

The attack was successful, but a year later the damage was repaired and further sabotage efforts were thwarted. The project advanced until late in 1980, when it was discovered that a shipment of fuel rods containing enriched uranium had been sent from France to Baghdad, and they were about to be fed into the reactor’s core. Israel determined that it had no other option but to launch Operation Opera, a surprise airstrike in June 1981 on the Tammuz-Osirak reactor just outside Baghdad.

Similarly, Dagan’s critics say, the Iranians have managed to overcome most setbacks and to replace the slain scientists. According to latest intelligence, Iran now has some 10,000 functioning centrifuges, and they have streamlined the enrichment process. Iran today has five tons of low-grade fissile material, enough, when converted to high-grade material, to make about five to six bombs; it also has about 175 pounds of medium-grade material, of which it would need about 500 pounds to make a bomb. It is believed that Iran’s nuclear scientists estimate that it will take them nine months, from the moment they are given the order, to assemble their first explosive device and another six months to be able to reduce it to the dimensions of a payload for their Shahab-3 missiles, which are capable of reaching Israel. They are holding the fissile material at sites across the country, most notably at the Fordo facility, near the holy city Qom, in a bunker that Israeli intelligence estimates is 220 feet deep, beyond the reach of even the most advanced bunker-busting bombs possessed by the United States.

Barak serves as the senior Israeli representative in the complex dialogue with the United States on this topic. He disagrees with the parallels that some Israeli politicians, mainly his boss, Netanyahu, draw between Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler, and espouses far more moderate views. “I accept that Iran has other reasons for developing nuclear bombs, apart from its desire to destroy Israel, but we cannot ignore the risk,” he told me earlier this month. “An Iranian bomb would ensure the survival of the current regime, which otherwise would not make it to its 40th anniversary in light of the admiration that the young generation in Iran has displayed for the West. With a bomb, it would be very hard to budge the administration.” Barak went on: “The moment Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the region will feel compelled to do the same. The Saudi Arabians have told the Americans as much, and one can think of both Turkey and Egypt in this context, not to mention the danger that weapons-grade materials will leak out to terror groups.

“From our point of view,” Barak said, “a nuclear state offers an entirely different kind of protection to its proxies. Imagine if we enter another military confrontation with Hezbollah, which has over 50,000 rockets that threaten the whole area of Israel, including several thousand that can reach Tel Aviv. A nuclear Iran announces that an attack on Hezbollah is tantamount to an attack on Iran. We would not necessarily give up on it, but it would definitely restrict our range of operations.”

At that point Barak leaned forward and said with the utmost solemnity: “And if a nuclear Iran covets and occupies some gulf state, who will liberate it? The bottom line is that we must deal with the problem now.”

He warned that no more than one year remains to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weaponry. This is because it is close to entering its “immunity zone” — a term coined by Barak that refers to the point when Iran’s accumulated know-how, raw materials, experience and equipment (as well as the distribution of materials among its underground facilities) — will be such that an attack could not derail the nuclear project. Israel estimates that Iran’s nuclear program is about nine months away from being able to withstand an Israeli attack; America, with its superior firepower, has a time frame of 15 months. In either case, they are presented with a very narrow window of opportunity. One very senior Israeli security source told me: “The Americans tell us there is time, and we tell them that they only have about six to nine months more than we do and that therefore the sanctions have to be brought to a culmination now, in order to exhaust that track.”

Many European analysts and some intelligence agencies have in the past responded to Israel’s warnings with skepticism, if not outright suspicion. Some have argued that Israel has intentionally exaggerated its assessments to create an atmosphere of fear that would drag Europe into its extensive economic campaign against Iran, a skepticism bolstered by the C.I.A.’s incorrect assessment about Iraqi W.M.D. before to the Iraq war.

Israel’s discourse with the United States on the subject of Iran’s nuclear project is more significant, and more fraught, than it is with Europe. The U.S. has made efforts to stiffen sanctions against Iran and to mobilize countries like Russia and China to apply sanctions in exchange for substantial American concessions. But beneath the surface of this cooperation, there are signs of mutual suspicion. As one senior American official wrote to the State Department and the Pentagon in November 2009, after an Israeli intelligence projection that Iran would have a complete nuclear arsenal by 2012: “It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States.”

For their part, the Israelis suspect that the Obama administration has abandoned any aggressive strategy that would ensure the prevention of a nuclear Iran and is merely playing a game of words to appease them. The Israelis find evidence of this in the shift in language used by the administration, from “threshold prevention” — meaning American resolve to stop Iran from having a nuclear-energy program that could allow for the ability to create weapons — to “weapons prevention,” which means the conditions can exist, but there is an American commitment to stop Iran from assembling an actual bomb.

“I fail to grasp the Americans’ logic,” a senior Israeli intelligence source told me. “If someone says we’ll stop them from getting there by praying for more glitches in the centrifuges, I understand. If someone says we must attack soon to stop them, I get it. But if someone says we’ll stop them after they are already there, that I do not understand.”

Over the past year, Western intelligence agencies, in particular the C.I.A., have moved closer to Israel’s assessments of the Iranian nuclear project. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressed this explicitly when he said that Iran would be able to reach nuclear-weapons capabilities within a year. The International Atomic Energy Agency published a scathing report stating that Iran was in breach of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and was possibly trying to develop nuclear weapons. Emboldened by this newfound accord, Israel’s leaders have adopted a harsher tone against Iran. Ya’alon, the deputy prime minister, told me in October: “We have had some arguments with the U.S. administration over the past two years, but on the Iranian issue we have managed to close the gaps to a certain extent. The president’s statements at his last meeting with the prime minister — that ‘we are committed to prevent ’ and ‘all the options are on the table’ — are highly important. They began with the sanctions too late, but they have moved from a policy of engagement to a much more active (sanctions) policy against Iran. All of these are positive developments.” On the other hand, Ya’alon sighed as he admitted: “The main arguments are ahead of us. This is clear.”

Now that the facts have been largely agreed upon, the arguments Ya’alon anticipates are those that will stem from the question of how to act — and what will happen if Israel decides that the moment for action has arrived. The most delicate issue between the two countries is what America is signaling to Israel and whether Israel should inform America in advance of a decision to attack.

Matthew Kroenig is the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked as a special adviser in the Pentagon from July 2010 to July 2011. One of his tasks was defense policy and strategy on Iran. When I spoke with Kroenig last week, he said: “My understanding is that the United States has asked Israel not to attack Iran and to provide Washington with notice if it intends to strike. Israel responded negatively to both requests. It refused to guarantee that it will not attack or to provide prior notice if it does.” Kroenig went on, “My hunch is that Israel would choose to give warning of an hour or two, just enough to maintain good relations between the countries but not quite enough to allow Washington to prevent the attack.” Kroenig said Israel was correct in its timeline of Iran’s nuclear development and that the next year will be critical. “The future can evolve in three ways,” he said. “Iran and the international community could agree to a negotiated settlement; Israel and the United States could acquiesce to a nuclear-armed Iran; or Israel or the United States could attack. Nobody wants to go in the direction of a military strike,” he added, “but unfortunately this is the most likely scenario. The more interesting question is not whether it happens but how. The United States should treat this option more seriously and begin gathering international support and building the case for the use of force under international law.”

In June 2007, I met with a former director of the Mossad, Meir Amit, who handed me a document stamped, “Top secret, for your eyes only.” Amit wanted to demonstrate the complexity of the relations between the United States and Israel, especially when it comes to Israeli military operations in the Middle East that could significantly impact American interests in the region.

Almost 45 years ago, on May 25, 1967, in the midst of the international crisis that precipitated the Six-Day War, Amit, then head of the Mossad, summoned John Hadden, the C.I.A. chief in Tel Aviv, to an urgent meeting at his home. The meeting took place against the background of the mounting tensions in the Middle East, the concentration of a massive Egyptian force in the Sinai Peninsula, the closing of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and the threats by President Gamal Abdel Nasser to destroy the State of Israel.

In what he later described as “the most difficult meeting I have ever had with a representative of a foreign intelligence service,” Amit laid out Israel’s arguments for attacking Egypt. The conversation between them, which was transcribed in the document Amit passed on to me, went as follows:

Amit: “We are approaching a turning point that is more important for you than it is for us. After all, you people know everything. We are in a grave situation, and I believe we have reached it, because we have not acted yet. . . . Personally, I am sorry that we did not react immediately. It is possible that we may have broken some rules if we had, but the outcome would have been to your benefit. I was in favor of acting. We should have struck before the build-up.”

Hadden: “That would have brought Russia and the United States against you.”

Amit: “You are wrong. . . . We have now reached a new stage, after the expulsion of the U.N. inspectors. You should know that it’s your problem, not ours.”

Hadden: “Help us by giving us a good reason to come in on your side. Get them to fire at something, a ship, for example.”

Amit: “That is not the point.”

Hadden: “If you attack, the United States will land forces to help the attacked state protect itself.”

Amit: “I can’t believe what I am hearing.”

Hadden: “Do not surprise us.”

Amit: “Surprise is one of the secrets of success.”

Hadden: “I don’t know what the significance of American aid is for you.”

Amit: “It isn’t aid for us, it is for yourselves.”

That ill-tempered meeting, and Hadden’s threats, encouraged the Israeli security cabinet to ban the military from carrying out an immediate assault against the Egyptian troops in the Sinai, although they were perceived as a grave threat to the existence of Israel. Amit did not accept Hadden’s response as final, however, and flew to the United States to meet with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Upon his return, he reported to the Israeli cabinet that when he told McNamara that Israel could not reconcile itself to Egypt’s military actions, the secretary replied, “I read you very clearly.” When Amit then asked McNamara if he should remain in Washington for another week, to see how matters developed, McNamara responded, “Young man, go home, that is where you are needed now.”

From this exchange, Amit concluded that the United States was giving Israel “a flickering green light” to attack Egypt. He told the cabinet that if the Americans were given one more week to exhaust their diplomatic efforts, “they will hesitate to act against us.” The next day, the cabinet decided to begin the Six-Day War, which changed the course of Middle Eastern history.

Amit handed me the minutes of that conversation from the same armchair that he sat in during his meeting with Hadden. It is striking how that dialogue anticipated the one now under way between Israel and the United States. Substitute “Tehran” for “Cairo” and “Strait of Hormuz” for “Straits of Tiran,” and it could have taken place this past week. Since 1967, the unspoken understanding that America should agree, at least tacitly, to Israeli military actions has been at the center of relations between the two countries.

During my lengthy conversation with Barak, I pulled out the transcript of the Amit-Hadden meeting. Amit was his commander when Barak was a young officer, in a unit that carried out commando raids deep inside enemy territory. Barak, a history buff, smiled at the comparison, and then he completely rejected it. “Relations with the United States are far closer today,” he said. “There are no threats, no recriminations, only cooperation and mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty.”

In our conversation on Jan. 18, Ya’alon, the deputy prime minister, was sharp in his criticism of the international community’s stance on Iran. “These are critical hours on the question of which way the international community will take the policy,” he said. “The West must stand united and resolute, and what is happening so far is not enough. The Iranian regime must be placed under pressure and isolated. Sanctions that bite must be imposed against it, something that has not happened as yet, and a credible military option should be on the table as a last resort. In order to avoid it, the sanctions must be stepped up.” It is, of course, important for Ya’alon to argue that this is not just an Israeli-Iranian dispute, but a threat to America’s well-being. “The Iranian regime will be several times more dangerous if it has a nuclear device in its hands,” he went on. “One that it could bring into the United States. It is not for nothing that it is establishing bases for itself in Latin America and creating links with drug dealers on the U.S.-Mexican border. This is happening in order to smuggle ordnance into the United States for the carrying out of terror attacks. Imagine this regime getting nuclear weapons to the U.S.-Mexico border and managing to smuggle it into Texas, for example. This is not a far-fetched scenario.”

Ehud Barak dislikes this kind of criticism of the United States, and in a rather testy tone in a phone conversation with me on Jan. 18 said: “Our discourse with the United States is based on listening and mutual respect, together with an understanding that it is our primary ally. The U.S. is what helps us to preserve the military advantage of Israel, more than ever before. This administration contributes to the security of Israel in an extraordinary way and does a lot to prevent a nuclear Iran. We’re not in confrontation with America. We’re not in agreement on every detail, we can have differences — and not unimportant ones — but we should not talk as if we are speaking about a hostile entity.”

Over the last four years, since Barak was appointed minister of defense, the Israeli military has prepared in unprecedented ways for a strike against Iran. It has also grappled with questions of how it will manage the repercussions of such an attack. Much of the effort is dedicated to strengthening the country’s civil defenses — bomb shelters, air-raid sirens and the like — areas in which serious defects were discovered during the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Civilian disaster exercises are being held intermittently, and gas masks have been distributed to the population.

On the operational level, any attack would be extremely complex. Iran learned the lessons of Iraq, and has dispersed its nuclear installations throughout its vast territory. There is no way of knowing for certain if the Iranians have managed to conceal any key facilities from Israeli intelligence. Israel has limited air power and no aircraft carriers. If it attacked Iran, because of the 1,000 or so miles between its bases and its potential targets, Israeli planes would have to refuel in the air at least once (and more than once if faced with aerial engagements). The bombardment would require pinpoint precision in order to spend the shortest amount of time over the targets, which are heavily defended by antiaircraft-missile batteries.

In the end, a successful attack would not eliminate the knowledge possessed by the project’s scientists, and it is possible that Iran, with its highly developed technological infrastructure, would be able to rebuild the damaged or wrecked sites. What is more, unlike Syria, which did not respond after the destruction of its reactor in 2007, Iran has openly declared that it would strike back ferociously if attacked. Iran has hundreds of Shahab missiles armed with warheads that can reach Israel, and it could harness Hezbollah to strike at Israeli communities with its 50,000 rockets, some of which can hit Tel Aviv. (Hamas in Gaza, which is also supported by Iran, might also fire a considerable number of rockets on Israeli cities.) According to Israeli intelligence, Iran and Hezbollah have also planted roughly 40 terrorist sleeper cells across the globe, ready to hit Israeli and Jewish targets if Iran deems it necessary to retaliate. And if Israel responded to a Hezbollah bombardment against Lebanese targets, Syria may feel compelled to begin operations against Israel, leading to a full-scale war. On top of all this, Tehran has already threatened to close off the Persian Gulf to shipping, which would generate a devastating ripple through the world economy as a consequence of the rise in the price of oil.

The proponents of an attack argue that the problems delineated above, including missiles from Iran and Lebanon and terror attacks abroad, are ones Israel will have to deal with regardless of whether it attacks Iran now — and if Iran goes nuclear, dealing with these problems will become far more difficult.

The Israeli Air Force is where most of the preparations are taking place. It maintains planes with the long-range capacity required to deliver ordnance to targets in Iran, as well as unmanned aircraft capable of carrying bombs to those targets and remaining airborne for up to 48 hours. Israel believes that these platforms have the capacity to cause enough damage to set the Iranian nuclear project back by three to five years.

In January 2010, the Mossad sent a hit team to Dubai to liquidate the high-ranking Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was coordinating the smuggling of rockets from Iran to Gaza. The assassination was carried out successfully, but almost the entire operation and all its team members were recorded on closed-circuit surveillance TV cameras. The operation caused a diplomatic uproar and was a major embarrassment for the Mossad. In the aftermath, Netanyahu decided not to extend Dagan’s already exceptionally long term, informing him that he would be replaced in January 2011. That decision was not well received by Dagan, and three days before he was due to leave his post, I and several other Israeli journalists were surprised to receive invitations to a meeting with him at Mossad headquarters.

We were told to congregate in the parking lot of a movie-theater complex north of Tel Aviv, where we were warned by Mossad security personnel, “Do not bring computers, recording devices, cellphones. You will be carefully searched, and we want to avoid unpleasantness. Leave everything in your cars and enter our vehicles carrying only paper and pens.” We were then loaded into cars with opaque windows and escorted by black Jeeps to a site that we knew was not marked on any map. The cars went through a series of security checks, requiring our escorts to explain who we were and show paperwork at each roadblock.

This was the first time in the history of the Mossad that a group of journalists was invited to meet the director of the organization at one of the country’s most secret sites. After the search was performed and we were seated, the outgoing chief entered the room. Dagan, who was wounded twice in combat, once seriously, during the Six-Day War, started by saying: “There are advantages to being wounded in the back. You have a doctor’s certificate that you have a backbone.” He then went into a discourse about Iran and sharply criticized the heads of government for even contemplating “the foolish idea” of attacking it.

“The use of state violence has intolerable costs,” he said. “The working assumption that it is possible to totally halt the Iranian nuclear project by means of a military attack is incorrect. There is no such military capability. It is possible to cause a delay, but even that would only be for a limited period of time.”

He warned that attacking Iran would start an unwanted war with Hezbollah and Hamas: “I am not convinced that Syria will not be drawn into the war. While the Syrians won’t charge at us in tanks, we will see a massive offensive of missiles against our home front. Civilians will be on the front lines. What is Israel’s defensive capability against such an offensive? I know of no solution that we have for this problem.”

Asked if he had said these things to Israel’s decision-makers, Dagan replied: “I have expressed my opinion to them with the same emphasis as I have here now. Sometimes I raised my voice, because I lose my temper easily and am overcome with zeal when I speak.”

In later conversations Dagan criticized Netanyahu and Barak, and in a lecture at Tel Aviv University he observed, “The fact that someone has been elected doesn’t mean that he is smart.”

In the audience at that lecture was Rafi Eitan, 85, one of the Mossad’s most seasoned and well-known operatives. Eitan agreed with Dagan that Israel lacked the capabilities to attack Iran. When I spoke with him in October, Eitan said: “As early as 2006 (when Eitan was a senior cabinet minister), I told the cabinet that Israel couldn’t afford to attack Iran. First of all, because the home front is not ready. I told anyone who wanted and still wants to attack, they should just think about two missiles a day, no more than that, falling on Tel Aviv. And what will you do then? Beyond that, our attack won’t cause them significant damage. I was told during one of the discussions that it would delay them for three years, and I replied, ‘Not even three months.’ After all, they have scattered their facilities all over the country and under the ground. ‘What harm can you do to them?’ I asked. ‘You’ll manage to hit the entrances, and they’ll have them rebuilt in three months.’ ”

Asked if it was possible to stop a determined Iran from becoming a nuclear power, Eitan replied: “No. In the end they’ll get their bomb. The way to fight it is by changing the regime there. This is where we have really failed. We should encourage the opposition groups who turn to us over and over to ask for our help, and instead, we send them away empty-handed.”

Israeli law stipulates that only the 14 members of the security cabinet have the authority to make decisions on whether to go to war. The cabinet has not yet been asked to vote, but the ministers might, under pressure from Netanyahu and Barak, answer these crucial questions about Iran in the affirmative: that these coming months are indeed the last opportunity to attack before Iran enters the “immunity zone”; that the broad international agreement on Iran’s intentions and the failure of sanctions to stop the project have created sufficient legitimacy for an attack; and that Israel does indeed possess the capabilities to cause significant damage to the Iranian project.

In recent weeks, Israelis have obsessively questioned whether Netanyahu and Barak are really planning a strike or if they are just putting up a front to pressure Europe and the U.S. to impose tougher sanctions. I believe that both of these things are true, but as a senior intelligence officer who often participates in meetings with Israel’s top leadership told me, the only individuals who really know their intentions are, of course, Netanyahu and Barak, and recent statements that no decision is imminent must surely be taken into account.

After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012. Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that. Instead there is that peculiar Israeli mixture of fear — rooted in the sense that Israel is dependent on the tacit support of other nations to survive — and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.

Ronen Bergman, an analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, is the author of ‘‘The Secret War With Iran’’ and a contributing writer for the magazine.

Editor: Joel Lovell

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

-1a)The Hizbullah Threat Would Be Intolerable for Any Nation

Moshe Arens (Ha'aretz)

· UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made news during his recent visit to Beirut. "I am deeply concerned about the military capacity of Hizbullah and the lack of progress in disarmament," he said. "All these arms outside of the authorized state authority, it's not acceptable."

· The weapons in question are tens of thousands of ballistic missiles supplied to Hizbullah by Iran via Syria, that are not under the authority of the Lebanese government. They are deployed all over Lebanon and aimed at Israel. Their range is sufficient to cover all of Israel and rain destruction on Israel's civilian population. They are terror weapons in the hands of a terrorist organization.

· For Israel, as for any other nation faced by a similar terrorist threat, the Hizbullah missile threat from Lebanon is intolerable. It is a ticking time bomb and, in addition, a violation of Lebanese sovereignty.

· It also represents a threat to the physical existence of Lebanon and the people of Lebanon. The Hizbullah missiles have been deliberately emplaced in the midst of Lebanon's civilian population centers, in the vicinity of schools, mosques and hospitals. They will be launched against Israel whenever Nasrallah so decides, or the order is given in Tehran. They are a protective shield for Iran's nuclear ambitions.

· The Hizbullah missiles will have to be removed. When the time comes for Israel to neutralize this missile threat, the result will be wholesale destruction all over Lebanon. Of course, it is preferable that the removal of the Hizbullah missiles be accomplished by diplomatic action rather than by military measures.

· For too long there has been a conspiracy of silence about the deployment of these missiles in Lebanon. The issue should be taken up at the UN Security Council, and the necessary diplomatic action should be taken by the U.S. and the countries of Europe and Asia.

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INFLATION: COMING but PROBABLY NOT TILL LATER THIS YEAR!

2012-01-26T13:20:00.000-08:00

Is this our future?

A little silver-haired lady calls her neighbor and says, "Please come over here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I can't figure out how to get started."

Her neighbor asks, "What is it supposed to be when it's finished?"

The little silver haired lady says, "According to the picture on the box, it's a rooster."

Her neighbor decides to go over and help with the puzzle.

She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table.

He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says,

"First of all, no matter what we do, we're not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a rooster."

He takes her hand and says, "Secondly, I want you to relax. Let's have a

nice cup of tea, and then," he said with a deep sigh ............

"

Let's put all the Corn Flakes back in the box."
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President Solyndra would have us believe Capitalism is faulty. No doubt it is not a perfect system. However, empirically speaking, it has produced more wealth and improved the standard of living for more peoples than any other system.

The abuses of the system are those made by people and we have laws that, when properly enforced, address them. To believe changing the system and substituting government decision making and solutions is the answer is beyond sane.

Yet, that is what our president would have us believe. His SOTU ideas are the soap he suggests we lather ourselves with because, in the final analysis, they enrich him and those of like mind who seek power over our freedom to live and to pay the consequences of free choice and reap the benefits of those choices.

While railing against the rich, our president and his wife enjoy the riches of his office, have spent more on travel and hiring of various czars and czarinas and staff than any of their predecessors. Nixon dressed White House staff in Imperial Uniforms and that bombed. This president believes in empire building and that does not accord with our republic form of government.

Freedom is the best and only path for our nation's citizens and education is the best antidote to this president's sick ideas. "We have a Republic if we can keep it." was allegedly said by Ben Franklin and of late we have allowed this president to do everything to destroy it and he must be stopped.

These are various other thoughts and comments about SOTU.(See 1, 1a,1b,1c, 1d and 1e below.)
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In typical fashion when Democrat presidents take over their unabridged spending eventually is covered by cuts in defense. This time is no different except the cuts are more draconian and the ultimate cost will be greater both to those who have to fight with inferior equipment and supplies and to the nation whose safety will be threatened. Yes, The Pentagon is not a paragon of virtuous spending and much can be done to save money and get more for the buck spent but this administration is prepared to jump ship.

Many of the plans being implemented were proposed and sought by Sec. Rumsfeld but he was vilified by the media and press folks who were fed information by their Pentagon friends who opposed Rumsfeld's thinking. Now the press and media's voices are quiet. Interesting!!! (See 2 below.)
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Greenspan kept rates low and along with progressives in Congress and, most particularly, Dodd and Barney's efforts helped create the housing boom and subsequent crash.

Bernanke is keeping rates low because of this housing bust so now we are likely to have rampant inflation at some point and it will also drive many small/local banks out of business. Ah, but the administration tells you it does not like big banks but, once again, actions belie their words. (See 3 below.)

There are those who argue gridlock is the basis of our problem and blame Congress for the inability to compromise.

I understand their frustration and certainly Congress is due its share of blame for the mess we are in but I submit compromise is what got us into the mess in the first place. The philosophical differences between progressives and conservatives is as wide as the gulf that exists between Palestinians and Israelis. Believing half a loaf is better than none is not an effective answer. A liberal friend argued that with half a loaf you at least do not starve and I responded if the bread is tainted it can kill.

The point being, progressives believe government is the solution and that has proven a false assumption and every time conservatives become 'progressive light' we simply move down a compromised path which takes us in the wrong direction.

Every time we move further and further away from our Constitution's intent we become a nation our founders would neither recognize nor intended us to be and every time we bash Capitalism and seek to supplant free market solutions we muddy the water and undercut Free Market's self corrective ability and every time we try and free ourselves of the consequences of choices we weaken ourselves as a people and trade freedom for enslavement.

That is not to say every progressive idea is a bad one but the half loaf that embodies the concept that ever bigger government can be successful and deliver on its promises, government dependency is preferable to freedom and religion has no place in family structure, and unbridled deficits and the decline in a nation's currency has no consequences in destroying the very fiber of that nation is a half loaf I rather reject than digest.

Compromise has allowed the progressive pendulum to swing beyond the force of the free market's physical self-correction and it must be stopped. Consequently,if gridlock is the price we must pay it is preferable to the cost of continuing the myth there is a 'free lunch.'

Gingrich rise is due to the fact of his appeal to anger and frustration whereas, Romney has failed in this effort though his credentials are worthier than perceived. Obama's class warfare approach is campaign slick but leadership void.

This is why defeating Obama is essential and why those in Congress who, like Horatio, are defending our Republic's bridge by unyielding to compromise have my support.
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Yeah, what we need is more government and tax deficient aids. (See 4 below.)

5) Elliot Chodoff will discuss the Iranian situation this evening. (See 5 below.)

Dick
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1)Barack Obama is still driving America towards decline
By Nile Gardiner

Two words hardly mentioned in Barack Obama’s 65-minute State of the Union address to Congress: freedom and liberty. President Obama’s fourth and possibly last State of the Union speech was long on big government proposals, but short on the principles that have made America the world’s greatest power. His lecturing tone exuded arrogance, and he failed to present a coherent vision for getting the United States back on its feet after three years of economic decline. It was heavy on class-war rhetoric, punitive taxation, and frequent references to the Left-wing mantra of “fairness”, hardly likely to instil confidence in a battered business community that is the lifeblood of the American economy.

Above all, he remains in denial over the levels of federal debt that threaten the country's long-term prosperity. This was not a speech that was serious about the biggest budget deficits since World War Two. There was no sense at all that America is a superpower on a precipice, sinking in a sea of debt that threatens to undermine America’s power to project global leadership for generations to come. In fact, his interventionist proposals will only make matters worse.

From new federally funded infrastructure projects to increasing regulations on financial institutions, President Obama remains wedded to big government – an approach rejected by a clear majority of Americans, who view it as a millstone around their necks. As Gallup’s polling has found, nearly two thirds of Americans see big government as "the biggest threat" to their country.
This should have been a serious speech addressing the economic problems facing the United States. Instead it was a laundry list of half-baked proposals designed to appease the Left. The president should have been talking about reining in spending, lowering taxes, and fostering greater economic freedom, but he opted for policies that will speed America’s decline, not reverse it.

It is a pity that Mr Obama’s uninspired speechwriters did not spend a bit more time learning from both the policies and the message of a truly visionary president, Ronald Reagan. In the last State of the Union address of his first term in office, in 1984, he had these stirring words for the American people, reminding them that it is freedom and liberty that drive this great country:

As we came to the decade of the eighties, we faced the worst crisis in our postwar history. In the seventies were years of rising problems and falling confidence. There was a feeling government had grown beyond the consent of the governed. Families felt helpless in the face of mounting inflation and the indignity of taxes that reduced reward for hard work, thrift, and risktaking. All this was overlaid by an evergrowing web of rules and regulations.

On the international scene, we had an uncomfortable feeling that we'd lost the respect of friend and foe. Some questioned whether we had the will to defend peace and freedom. But America is too great for small dreams. There was a hunger in the land for a spiritual revival; if you will, a crusade for renewal. The American people said: Let us look to the future with confidence, both at home and abroad. Let us give freedom a chance.

… How can we not believe in the greatness of America? How can we not do what is right and needed to preserve this last best hope of man on Earth? After all our struggles to restore America, to revive confidence in our country, hope for our future, after all our hard-won victories earned through the patience and courage of every citizen, we cannot, must not, and will not turn back. We will finish our job. How could we do less? We're Americans.

I've never felt more strongly that America's best days and democracy's best days lie ahead. We're a powerful force for good. With faith and courage, we can perform great deeds and take freedom's next step… Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

1a)State of the Union speech is full of soaring rhetoric but skips over some major challenges
By Washington Post Editorial Board

A STATE OF THE UNION address from a president seeking reelection is always an odd event. Especially in the face of a divided Congress, the president’s proclaimed program stands little chance of enactment. The ambitious agenda of years past gives way to the knowledge, born of painful experience, of how difficult that will be to achieve. Meanwhile, the president’s proposals are made in the context of the race about to be joined, stacked up against the pie-in-the-sky promises of his opponents. The subtext is, inevitably, less a blueprint of the year to come than an explanation of why the president deserves reelection and a sneak preview of a second-term agenda.

In that context, President Obama’s speech Tuesday night combined soaring rhetoric with crowd-pleasing, often small-bore proposals. Mr. Obama spoke movingly about the eroding economic security of much of the middle class. Building on themes he sounded a few months ago in Osawatomie, Kan., the president argued against, as he put it, “settl[ing] for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by.” To raise this issue is not, as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) asserted even before the president’s speech, “divisive rhetoric from a desperate campaigner in chief.”

The president’s biggest new idea was attaching a number to his previously articulated “Buffett Rule” — billionaire Warren Buffett’s position that he should not pay a smaller share of his income in taxes than his secretary’s; she was in attendance in the first lady’s box. Mr. Obama announced that not only billionaires but all those earning $1 million or more a year should pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. Think of this as a new version of the alternative minimum tax.

This position sets up a politically useful contrast between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney. It is not a fleshed-out proposal that the administration expects, for example, to produce as a line item in the forthcoming budget. Administration officials could not tell us how much revenue such a change would produce. But Mr. Obama is right to take on the unlevel and distorting playing field of a code that taxes ordinary earned income at a much higher rate than investment income.

Mr. Obama has said he wants to make the tax code simpler, but his proposals would further complicate it, adding or reshuffling preferences for manufacturing. This kind of picking and choosing between manufacturing and other businesses, or between different kinds of manufacturers (the president said he wants to double the deduction for high-tech manufacturers), or between towns that have lost factories and towns that haven’t, introduces needless complexity into an already unwieldy code. It also relies on a vision of manufacturing as an engine of jobs that may not be realistic in an age of increasingly automated factories.

Once again Mr. Obama slighted the threat that the federal deficit poses to the growth he said he wants. As with last year’s State of the Union speech, when he relegated the debt to a near-aside late in the speech, Mr. Obama did not go beyond a rhetorical nod to the issue. Indeed, in arguing for increased investment in U.S. infrastructure — a worthy idea — Mr. Obama gave up on the traditional approach of paying with an increase in the gasoline tax or similar user fees. Instead, he relied on the dodge of “paying for” those costs by using some of the savings from winding down operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration is right to be frustrated by congressional unwillingness to consider real pay-fors, but wrong to respond with a measure that would just make the deficit worse.

Mr. Obama’s discussion of foreign policy focused on the two achievements likely to be a major focus of his election campaign, the withdrawal of the last troops from Iraq and the killing of Osama bin Laden. He vowed that America would remain (borrowing President Clinton’s phrase) the one “indispensable” nation, even as he cuts a half-trillion dollars from the military budget. The president did not hint at any significant foreign policy initiatives for the coming year; even on Iraq, he failed to discuss future relations with that strategic oil producer, which has headed toward renewed internal conflict since the last U.S. soldiers pulled out.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, delivering the Republican rebuttal, had the fiscal question right when he said: “If we drift, quarreling and paralyzed, over a Niagara of debt, we will all suffer, regardless of income, race, gender, or other category.” But his eloquence is undercut by his party’s refusal, far more doctrinaire than Mr. Obama’s, to entertain responsible proposals to pay for the nation’s needs.

1b)Obama: Make the Economy Work...for Everybody
Jonathan Cohn

We’ve come to expect grand things from the State of the Union: Major revelations about the president’s agenda, bold policy initiatives, memorable turns of phrase. And sometimes that’s what we get, for better and for worse. In 2009, for example, Obama used his budget speech (the de facto State of the Union) to lay out his ambitious first-year agenda. In 2011, he reacted to his party’s defeat at the polls by calling for bipartisan cooperation and emphasizing deficit reduction.

Obama offered a few new and intriguing policy ideas on Tuesday – among them, a proposal to get more taxes from companies with operations overseas and an initiative to develop partnerships between community colleges and local businesses. He also called for some political reforms, most important among them an end to filibusters of judicial appointees. Mostly, though, he stuck to the proposals and themes he’s put out in the last six months, most memorably in his September address on jobs and his December speech on fairness.

But those happened to be very good speeches – not only because their tough rhetoric but also because of their substance. Together, they sketched out an ambitious vision of government, as an engine of economic growth and protector of opportunity for the lower- and middle-classes. Tonight, Obama was doubling down on those arguments – in no small part because, as policy and politics, they seem to be paying off.

Although the speech began and ended with foreign policy, the heart of it was domestic policy – with a heavy focus on job creation. Unlike in September, when the economy was at its absolute worst, Obama could point to a recent run of (moderately) good news about overall growth and job creation. And he could boast about the results of what has become his administration’s most unambiguous success: The rescue of General Motors and Chrysler, which has been a catalyst for a rebirth of American manufacturing in the Midwest.

Pivoting from that discussion, Obama called for more action to boost American workers and the industries that employ them – whether it was tax changes to deter American companies from relocating overseas or more spending on infrastucture, an idea that both parties once supported. He also renewed his call for investments in clean energy, suggesting (at least implicitly) that with early government support the U.S. could create a manufacturing nucleus – the kind that now exists for computers abroad.

I'm not qualified to judge all of the policies: Some, I know, are better than others. The overall scale of what he outlined on Tuesday was modest. But in principle Obama is absolutely right: "What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries."

Later in the speech Obama focused on the theme of “fairness” – and he was not shy about what he meant. He once again decried a system in which Warren Buffett’s secretary – whom the White House cleverly invited to sit with the First Lady – has a higher tax burden, proportionally, than Buffett himself. And for the first time he put a number on his proposed “Buffett tax”: In a reformed tax system, Obama said, nobody making more than a million dollars a year should pay less than 30 percent of his or her income in taxes. (Obama didn't talk much about the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, or the rest of welfare state, but his recent defense of those programs has been loud and firm, so I'm not reading too much into it.)

Thematically and in some cases programmatically, these calls were identical to what Obama said in the jobs speech and in Kansas. But politically that makes a lot of sense, as polls suggest the country is on his side: They like public works, they like spending on education, they like a secure welfare state, and they like higher taxes on the rich.

This speech also adopted the more aggressive tone Obama has maintained since September. Obama's most telling line was "I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place." But that approach, too, seems to be popular, if the president's (slowly) rising poll ratings are indicative. And, besides, Obama has tried offering accommodation before: As we saw last year, it didn't get him anywhere.

Of course, that also means his agenda isn't likely to get far in Congress this year. The Republicans who run the House didn't like it before and they won't like it now. Most likely, it will take the election – and the stark choice between Obama and the eventual Republican presidential nominee – to settle the dispute.

But after the election, there will be a chance to govern again. Expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the onset of spending cuts from last summer’s budget deal will force decisions on fiscal policy. With this speech, Obama is not merely trying to win reelection, although he is quite obviously trying to do that. He is also laying the groundwork for those negotiations, should he have a chance, as the president-reelect, to drive them. And if he sounds a lot like he’s sounded for the last few months, that’s only because what he’s been saying seems to be working.

1c)Commentary
A Diminished Obama Strikes a Tepid Tone
Jonathan S. Tobin

President Obama launched his re-election campaign tonight with a State of the Union speech that attempted to conjure up the spirit of an earlier era of national unity even as he sought to focus national resentment on wealthy Americans and his political opponents in Congress.

With no record of accomplishment to his credit, other than the unpopular Obamacare and stimulus, Obama put forward a limited agenda of government intervention in the economy and the tax code in a laundry list of initiatives that did little to break new ground on any issue and was bereft of the passion and vision that drove his 2008 campaign for the presidency. All in all, it was 65 minutes that ought to worry Democrats more than it annoyed Republicans.

The president knows he will get nothing passed this year, and his speech reflected that reality. He began and ended with the killing of Osama bin Laden. In between he spoke of a peace dividend from the end of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he would use on building projects and green energy production. He called for a massive bailout of homeowners even as he pandered to public opinion by saying there would be no more bailouts for banks. He vowed to prosecute those responsible for the mortgage crisis and said teenagers would no longer be allowed to drop out of high school, no matter how much trouble they were causing. No mention was made of either Obamacare or the stimulus. Nor did he speak of the Keystone XL pipeline project that he cancelled. He called for lower taxes, less regulation and more exploitation of our natural resources even though he has raised taxes, increased regulation and made it more difficult for the nation to use more of its oil and gas and that of our neighbor Canada.

On foreign affairs, Obama spoke of victory in Iraq and Afghanistan and pretended he had increased Iran’s isolation rather than wasting three years on failed engagement and feckless diplomacy that gave the Islamist regime more time to build a nuclear weapon. He claimed to be Israel’s greatest friend even though he has used his time in office to pick constant fights with the government of the Jewish state. The shout out to wavering liberal Jewish Democrats betrayed an administration clearly worried about November.

The only substantive portion of the speech dealt with his desire to raise taxes on millionaires. Even if he got his way and raised the rates for millionaires to 30 percent it would do little to deal with the deficit or pay for the runaway costs of entitlements. But that isn’t really the point of his advocacy. Obama isn’t interested in raising those taxes to achieve an economic purpose. He has seized on this phony issue in order to exploit it politically this fall. For all of his talk about unity, his decision to let loose the dogs of class warfare rhetoric doesn’t so much seek division as to treat it as his golden ticket to re-election.

While Democrats may have been encouraged in recent weeks by the spectacle of Republican presidential candidates tearing each other apart, often employing the rhetorical devices of the left, they could not have been encouraged by the tepid tone and lack of vision in Obama’s speech. His unwillingness to speak about what he has done and instead concentrate on bashing the rich seemed to be more the strategy of a challenger rather than an incumbent.

His claim that America “is back” was empty braggadocio that makes little sense given the grave state of the economy. Obama’s rally cry about American greatness seemed stuck in nostalgia for a bygone era of massive government spending projects and an economy based in manufacturing rather than information and technology. The result of this empty talk was a speech that struck a sour, flat note just when he needed to inspire.

All of this should cause Democrats to worry just at the moment when they were starting to feel good about 2012. Though the president has many advantages heading into the campaign, including weak potential opponents, his inability to stand on his record and his loss of faith in the grand vision he ran in 2008 foreshadows serious problems later this year.

1d) Obama’s State of the Union Speech: My Response Discovers Some Curious Insights and Strange
By Barry Rubin

In his State of the Union message, President Barack Obama began by wrapping himself in the flag, patriotism, and love of the armed forces while trying to highlight his foreign policy achievements. Among his points:

–“The United States [is] safer and more respected around the world.”

Presumably, a lot of Americans will believe this. The United States may be said to be safer in terms of facing direct terror attacks but that was basically true in 2002. As for “more repected”—a phrase no doubt chosen to seem more statesmanlike than saying “more popular,” that is a joke. If there’s one thing that should be obvious (and this is often revealed even by international public opinion polls) the United States is not more respected at all.

Moreover, while individual Americans may be relatively safe from terrorist attacks in their homes, neighborhoods and workplaces within the territory of the United States—a perception partly reinforced by redefining terrorist attacks as something else—U.S. interests abroad are far less safe.

“For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.”

True, though the remaining forces may have to fight to defend themselves. This withdrawal, of course, was planned by Obama’s predecessor and Iraq is not doing so well today.

“For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated.”

Aside from the lack of grammar here—was Obama trying to avoid saying that these people were killed?—the statement is true. The problem is that Hamas, Hizballah, the Turkish regime, Iran, Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood add up to a far bigger threat, a problem magnified by Obama refusing to acknowledge they are a threat.

–“The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.”

While the latter point about withdrawal is true, the Taliban is still quite strong. It would be quite possible for the Taliban to return to power within five years.

Then Obama rearranges history—quite obviously though no one in the mass media will point this out:

“Ending the Iraq war has allowed us to strike decisive blows against our enemies. From Pakistan to Yemen, the al Qaeda operatives who remain are scrambling, knowing that they can’t escape the reach of the United States of America.”

In fact, of course, the successes against al-Qaeda were obviously achieved before the withdrawal. Are al-Qaeda operatives trembling in fear before the might of America? Of course not. And in both Pakistan and Yemen (one should add Somalia) they are doing quite well. Obama could have done better by referring to the defeat of al-Qaeda as being part of the American “victory” in Iraq.

“From this position of strength, we’ve begun to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Ten thousand of our troops have come home. Twenty-three thousand more will leave by the end of this summer. This transition to Afghan lead will continue, and we will build an enduring partnership with Afghanistan, so that it is never again a source of attacks against America.”

Again, Obama tells an unnecessary lie. The withdrawal from Iraq is a correct move but hardly puts the United States in a position of strength, especially given Obama’s deep cuts on the military. And of course the end of the war in Afghanistan was planned long before any withdrawal in Iraq; indeed it was basically planned during his predecessor’s term.

As for an “enduring partnership with Afghanistan,” that’s the kind of statement bound to come back to haunt Obama. Afghanistan remains unstable, its government is angry with Obama, and the tide may well turn there after a U.S. withdrawal.

Next, Obama turns to the Arab Spring. He refers to his success in Libya:

“A year ago, Qadhafi was one of the world’s longest-serving dictators – a murderer with American blood on his hands. Today, he is gone.”

True, but what will replace him?

“And in Syria, I have no doubt that the Assad regime will soon discover that the forces of change can’t be reversed, and that human dignity can’t be denied.”

In fact, for two and a half years, Obama strongly backed—in contrast to predecessors—that regime which denied “human dignity.” And he’s doing very little to help that transformation now.

My number-one complaint about Obama—not that there aren’t others but this is in first place—is that he never hints at the dangers in the region precisely because he doesn’t recognize that they exist.

And, in total contrast to his actual policy, he gives lip service to doing something productive:

“While it is ultimately up to the people of the region to decide their fate, we will advocate for those values that have served our own country so well. We will stand against violence and intimidation. We will stand for the rights and dignity of all human beings – men and women; Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We will support policies that lead to strong and stable democracies and open markets, because tyranny is no match for liberty.”

In fact, though, Obama has basically ignored the “violence and intimidation” against Israel; the people of the Gaza Strip; the Turkish people; the Iranian people; the tyranny taking shape in Lebanon; the Christians in Iraq and Syria; and elsewhere.

How can “tyranny” be “no match for liberty” when U.S. policy is largely on the side of tyranny, indeed a tyranny of a worse kind that has previously prevailed in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Turkey?

When it comes to U.S. security interests, Obama can only talk about Iran, where he claims success:

“Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one. The regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent.”

Nice. But Iran is still advancing in its nuclear program and its influence in Lebanon and Iraq increases while Tehran adequately defends its interests in Syria. If the State Department had not restrained Obama, he would also have handed Iran a victory in Bahrain.

On nuclear weapons, Obama repeats the standard line:

“America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.”

And if it doesn’t? Yes, it is quite true that Obama led a move to tougher sanctions on Iran but he did so only by excluding Russia, Turkey, and China from compliance. I would argue that the same result could have been achieved far earlier than Obama did it.

Here is the worst sentence of the speech: “The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe.” It is precisely the lack of American leadership that is being felt.

“Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever.” Really? The South Koreans would probably agree but generally the alliances are not stronger than ever but about as weak as they have ever been.

“Our ties to the Americas are deeper.” Actually, Latin American leaders are very unhappy, feeling that Obama has coddled the Chavez dictatorship while ignoring them.

“Our iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history.”

This is a carefully constructed sentence which I find makes me even more suspicious about Obama’s commitment toward Israel. Why? Because it is true that the bilateral military cooperation is as good as it has ever been. But all other areas of relations are terrible. This sentence tells me that Obama understands that and wants to accentuate the positive without doing anything to improve the negative. He thinks U.S.-Israel relations are good enough and will not—even if, or especially if, elected to a second term.

Another point to notice is Obama’s failure to mention–much less highlight–the Israel-Palestinian “peace process.” They’ve given up on that one, at least for 2012.

And then he concludes with this statement, remarkable for being so directly opposite to the truth:

“America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

Wow, first, America is NOT back because Obama has reduced U.S. influence, leverage, and activism. Second, who has done more than Obama to assert that U.S. power is in decline? And, third, this fact is totally obvious to leaders in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Obama, however, is always one for doubling down on his lies or errors. (You choose the word you prefer.):

“That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world, all of whom are eager to work with us. That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Capetown to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.”

The truth is generally the exact opposite and even in the polls one can see this. Obama can be daring because he knows the media won’t bash him for saying stuff like this.

There’s something else I find fascinating and generally ignored about this speech. All presidents, of course, want to put the accent on the positive. But with Obama I don’t see any real consideration of threats and problems. Yes, he mentions al-Qaida and the Taliban (no longer a problem, he says) and Iran (under control and they will be pressed into making a deal), and democratic transitions (we don’t know what will happen but…).

Nevertheless, America faces no real threats or enemies. revolutionary Islamism doesn’t exist as an issue; Russia poses no problem; Chavez and Castro and various other dictators are vanished; even underdevelopment or instability aren’t mentioned. There is a Pollyanna aspect to Obama arising from his belief that everything would be okay as long as America behaves properly and he is president. In his world there are no real conflicts; few true enemies but only misunderstandings. With Obama the problem is not merely his politics and views but also his total lack of true understanding about international affairs, security issues, and strategy.

Governor Mitch Daniels gave the Republican response and stuck completely to domestic economic issues, which was after all Obama’s main theme. Yet international affairs was the only other theme and if Obama’s critics can’t do a better job of analyzing his claims, responding to his policies, and offering an alternative to his strategies he is more likely to remain president for five more years.

13)A Shrinking Obama

Is that all there is? Watching Obama deliver the State of the Union last night (with precautionary blood pressure medication at my side) I was struck by how diminished the “hope and change” President has become. Long gone is the candidate who told his supporters, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Nowhere to be seen was the man who said his election would result in the “earth healing” and the “oceans stopping their rise.” Instead we got an hour of low expectations, distorted facts, divisive class warfare all wrapped up in the hope that the public has collective amnesia about what actually happened in the last three years while Obama was in charge.

Fact checking the speech would take all day. But we made a short video catching Obama on a few of his misstatements. You can watch it here.

My first shoe hit the T.V. set when Obama asserted that our oil imports have fallen under his watch. Indeed they have, but Obama counts on you not knowing why they dropped. Oil imports always drop when the American economy isn’t growing and Obama’s policies have guaranteed slow to no growth. Fewer people employed means less gasoline used. Imports have also dropped because oil industry engineers have developed new drilling techniques that have increased our domestic oil production. Obama has done everything he can to stop that increase in production, including cutting drilling back on federal land and restricting off-shore drilling. The increased production has come on private land by oil companies that Obama regularly demonizes.

Did you notice his intentional distortions on the taxes paid by millionaires compared to average folks? Here is what Obama said: “Now you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as the secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

Yes that would be common sense if it were a factual description of reality. Instead it is an intentional effort to deceive. Obama is counting on Americans confusing tax rate with net taxes. Let’s say you are a worker making approximately $50,000 a year. You would be in the 25% tax bracket and you would pay approximately $8,600 in federal taxes. Now let’s say you are a millionaire and almost all of your income comes from dividends and capital gains. For years the U.S. has taxed that kind of investment income at 15% because we want to encourage the investment that creates jobs. So the $1 million in dividends times 15% would be $150,000 in federal taxes.

Yes the millionaire has a lower rate (15%) than the wage earner (25%), but the millionaire pays $150,000 compared to $8,600 for the worker. This is why, in spite all of Obama’s attempts to claim otherwise, the top 1% in America pay into the federal treasury 38% of all taxes collected. The bottom 50% of all Americans pay less than 3% of all taxes collected.

This is what is so disgusting about what Obama is doing. He wants you to be angry at and despise those who have done well in the hope you won’t notice how his policies are leading us down the road to European socialism and national bankruptcy. The man who campaigned in 2008 saying he would bring us together can only remain in power if he deeply divides us by class. Obama is a Hugo Chavez democrat.

Something else was obvious last night too. It was not only what he said but what he left out. There was no direct mention of Obamacare nor of the 3,000-page stimulus bill, both of which are politically toxic. Both issues should be a central part of the eventual GOP presidential nominee’s campaign. There was very little on job creation, and there were zero proposals to get our horrendous debt under control. This man must not be given a second term.

The GOP Response

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels gave the GOP response. It is a tough job to answer any President’s State of the Union, and Daniels did a reasonably good job, even if his passion seemed in short supply. This sentence jumped out at me: Speaking of the Obama Administration, Daniels said, “The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperatures is a pro-poverty policy.”

Eureka! There it is. Obama is a left wing extremist. His policies will promote poverty, not growth. Every conservative in America needs to make that point every day – at work, over the back fence, at church, at school or around the dinner table. The GOP nominee has to drive it home. We can win. We must win!
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2)Slashing America's Defense: A Suicidal Trajectory
Author: Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies

The U.S. armed forces have spent the past decade fighting two of the largest counterinsurgency campaigns in their history. In Iraq, they have dramatically reduced the threat from al-Qaeda and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdist Army, and they are now in the process of doing the same to the Taliban and the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But just as they are drawing down in both Iraq and Afghanistan, they have met an opposing force that might prove more formidable than any of those terrorist groups. These adversaries do not carry guns and do not plant IEDs. They wear green eyeshades and wield complex spreadsheets, and with these tools alone they have the potential to devastate our armed forces—and, if left unchecked, will do more damage to their fighting capacity than the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or any other external foe could inflict.

As the comic strip Pogo famously put it in another context, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Shortly before Thanksgiving the congressional "supercommittee" charged with finding $1.2 trillion in budget cuts gave up and admitted failure. Under the terms of the budget deal struck in August 2011 to raise the debt ceiling, there must now be $1.2 tillion in automatic, across-the-board cuts to the federal budget, with half hitting defense and the other half domestic programs. (Social Security and Medicare are exempt.) This draconian "sequester" was supposedly designed to frighten the members of the supercommittee and compel them to find cuts to ensure it did not come to pass. They didn't, and now the sequester will come to pass if there is not a major policy reversal before the beginning of 2013.

This came about during a year in which defense spending had already been substantially reduced, with roughly $450 billion in cutbacks over 10 years. Hundreds of billions more will be gone from Pentagon coffers due to the fact that funding for Overseas Contingency Operations will vanish to nothing as we wind down operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In all, the defense budget could shrink by 31 percent over the next decade, according to Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. That compares with cuts of 53 percent after the Korean War, 26 percent after the Vietnam War, and 34 percent after the Cold War.

Some might argue (and have argued, and will continue to argue) that there is nothing wrong or damaging to the United States in this, that we always downsize our military after the conclusion of hostilities. But it is beyond bizarre that we are rushing to spend the peace dividend at a time when we are not actually at peace. Hostilities have not yet ended, as our troops are still in combat every day in Afghanistan and continue to conduct military operations against Somali pirates and al-Qaeda terrorists that put them in harm's way on a regular basis. But leave that aside, and simply consider the consequences of past drawdowns.

After the American Revolution, the size of the military plummeted from 35,000 men in 1778 to 10,000 by 1800. As a result, the nascent republic was ill-prepared to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, fight the quasi-war with France, repress the Barbary pirates preying on our shipping, and, most spectacularly, defend the new national capital from British attack in the War of 1812. The burning of the White House stood as a melancholy testimony to the consequences of military unpreparedness.

Yet we made the same mistake after the Civil War, when for a brief moment we deployed the largest military in the world. The federal armed forces fell from more than a million men in 1865 to merely 50,000 in 1870. Luckily we did not face a foreign attack in the postwar decades. But we did face the challenge of Reconstruction. Its failure was made inevitable by the inability (or unwillingness) of Presidents Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant to station enough federal troops in the South to repress the Ku Klux Klan and to enforce the guarantees of equality contained in the newly enacted 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. By 1876, the federal troops were all withdrawn and the era of Jim Crow had begun. The full promise of Reconstruction would not be realized for another century.

If we discount the Indian Wars (the main focus of the U.S. Army from 1865 to 1890), the next major conflicts we faced were the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars. Our Army, which in the late 19th century numbered only 25,000 men—smaller than the New York Police Department today—was unready for both conflicts but did not pay too high a price for its unreadiness because of the poor condition of its enemies (the decrepit Spanish army and the meagerly armed Filipino insurrectos).

The costs of our unreadiness for the Great War were also somewhat masked, this time by the considerable capacity of our allies, Britain and France, whose veteran armies provided on-the-job training, leadership, and support for newly mobilized American doughboys. But after World War I, both Britain and France were so drained by their exertions that they could not effectively police a fragile peace. And neither could we—not when our armed forces were shrinking in number from 2.9 million men in 1918 to 250,000 in 1928. Even if we had wanted to remain committed to European security, we did not have the resources to do the job. Our abdication of leadership made a second world war more likely and, when it came, practically guaranteed that we and our allies would lose the early battles. Both the Nazis and the Japanese might have been deterred from aggression if they had had to face large numbers of forward-deployed American forces. But they did not, and so they were led to believe that launching wars of conquest could pay off.

With the lessons of the 1920s and 1930s fresh in their minds, American statesmen in the late 1940s were determined to maintain a presence in Europe. But they also responded to the war-weariness of the country by demobilizing so rapidly that the ranks of the armed forces shrank from a wartime high of 12 million men to just 1.4 million by 1950. Not coincidentally, that was the year that Kim Il-sung chose to launch an invasion of South Korea, confident that the American armed forces would not stand in his way. He was almost right. The terrible experience of Task Force Smith, the first American Army unit thrown against the North Korean juggernaut, still makes for sad and sobering reading: The task force was made up of soldiers who did not have enough training or even ammunition, and they were brushed aside with heavy losses by the invaders. Eventually the U.S. recovered half the peninsula, but only at the cost of 36,000 dead Americans—a toll that might have been avoided or at least lessened if we had kept a substantial force in South Korea in the first place to deter Communist aggression.

The decline in the size of the armed forces after the Korean War buildup was less drastic than after World War II (we went from 3.6 million men in 1952 to 2.5 million in 1959), but the Army still lost almost half its active-duty strength in the 1950s. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was enamored of a New Look strategy that sought to minimize conventional forces in favor of nuclear forces. This was the era of the "pentomic army" equipped with weapons such as the Davy Crockett nuclear launcher. That may have sufficed to deter a Red Army invasion of Western Europe, but it did nothing to prevent the Soviet Union and Red China from pursuing proxy wars against the United States, most successfully in Vietnam. This was not a conflict we were well prepared for, and we paid a high price for unpreparedness—the U.S. consistently lost ground to the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army from 1964 to 1968. By the time the U.S. troops staged a post–Tet resurgence under the leadership of Gen. Creighton Abrams, public support for the conflict had evaporated.

The 1970s saw yet another massive drawdown with the military falling from 3.5 million strong in 1969 to 2 million in 1979. Along the way the draft ended and the era of the all-volunteer forces began. Drug use, racial tensions, insubordination, even "fragging" (soldiers attacking their officers) were hallmarks of this era, which culminated in a hollow army that could not deter the Soviet Union from invading Afghanistan or rescue the American hostages in Iran.

The Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s, which actually began under Carter, rescued the military from the doldrums of the 1970s and created the force that won the Gulf War in such spectacular and unexpected fashion. This military also helped apply the pressure needed for the final collapse of the Soviet Union.

But then after Desert Storm and the end of the Cold War, the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations rushed to spend the "peace dividend." The military shrank from 2.1 million active-duty personnel in 1989 to 1.3 million in 1999. The Army was particularly hard hit: It shrank from 769,000 to 479,000 soldiers.

The "end of history" reverie ended in 2001, but, even after 9/11, the Army was too small to fight in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We are still paying a price for not sending enough troops to pacify both countries after we toppled their previous regimes. Partly this was a matter of miscalculation on the part of Bush administration officials who thought that American troops would do more harm than good. But that calculation itself was driven by the paucity of available troops.

After our early failures in Iraq, President Bush belatedly expanded the size of the Army and Marine Corps—although not enough to make up for the post–Cold War cuts. (The Army today has 200,000 fewer active-duty troops than in 1991.) Emergency appropriations also provided hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the wars, enabling the purchase of thousands of new armored vehicles, unmanned aircraft, and other important enablers. But there was never enough money to make up for the procurement holiday of the 1990s.

We are still suffering the consequences of the post–Cold War drawdown. The Navy, down from 546 ships in 1990 to 284 today (the lowest level since 1930), is finding it hard to fight Somali pirates, police the Persian Gulf, and deter Chinese expansion in the Western Pacific. The Army and Marine Corps are forced to maintain a punishing operational tempo that drives out too many bright young officers and non-commissioned officers. The Air Force, which has been reduced from 82 fighter squadrons in 1990 to 39 today, has to fly decades-old aircraft until they collapse. The average age of our tanker aircraft is 47 years, of strategic bombers 34 years, and some older fighter aircraft are literally falling out of the sky.

The bipartisan Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel led by Stephen Hadley and William Perry found last year "a growing gap between our interests and our military capability to protect those interests in the face of a complex and challenging security environment." The panel further noted:

There is increased operational tempo for a force that is much smaller than it was during the years of the Cold War. In addition, the age of major military systems has increased within all the services, and that age has been magnified by wear and tear through intensified use….The Department of Defense now faces the urgent need to recapitalize large parts of the force. Although this is a long-standing problem, we believe the Department needs to come to grips with this requirement. The general trend has been to replace more with fewer more-capable systems. We are concerned that, beyond a certain point, quality cannot substitute for quantity.

The Hadley-Perry commission recommended that "as the force modernizes, we will need to replace inventory on at least a one-for-one basis, with an upward adjustment in the number of naval vessels and certain air and space assets." It also recommended maintaining the size of our current ground forces because "the increased capability of our ground forces has not reduced the need for boots on the ground in combat zones."

Both of those recommendations are absolutely on the mark. And both are increasingly difficult to carry out given the magnitude of defense cuts already agreed upon. They will become an utter impossibility if sequestration occurs.

According to the majority staff of the House Armed Services Committee, this is what could happen after sequestration: the Army fall from 569,000 active-duty soldiers today to 426,000; the Marine Corps from 202,000 to 145,000; the Navy from 284 ships to 238; the Air Force from 1,990 fighter aircraft to 1,512 and from 135 bombers to 101. Even if the full impact of sequestration is not felt, the consequences for our military readiness will still be dire.

Those who argue in favor of cuts point out that defense spending has doubled in real terms since 9/11. That is true, but much of the spending has gone to current operations, personnel costs, ballooning health-care costs, and other necessities. It has not been used to recapitalize our aging inventory of weapons systems or to expand a ground force cut by a third since the Cold War.

Instead, even as we continue to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defense Department has been eliminating or reducing one system after another. Before his retirement last summer, Defense Secretary Robert Gates cancelled or capped 30 procurement programs that, if taken to completion, would have cost more than $300 billion. The cancellations included the Army's Future Combat System, the Marines' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the VH-71 presidential helicopter, the Navy's CG(X) next-generation cruiser, the Air Force's F-22 fighter and C-17 cargo plane, and the Airborne Laser. Other programs, such as the Navy's new aircraft carrier, were delayed, while the number of F-35 fighters, Littoral Combat Ships, and other systems planned to be purchased was reduced.

It's not only weapons systems we're losing. It's personnel. Gates closed headquarters, eliminated general-officer slots, and even shut down the whole U.S. Joint Forces Command. He announced that he was whittling down Army and Marine end-strength by 47,000 personnel, reversing the increase in the size of the ground force that he had pushed through to deal with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Further cuts in end-strength are undoubtedly coming as a result of greater budget cuts, thus throwing out of work—at a time of already high unemployment—tens of thousands of men and women who have signed up to serve their country.

That may make sense if you assume we will have no need for large numbers of ground combat forces in the future, but as Gates himself said earlier this year: "When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more—we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged." Because the world is such an uncertain, dangerous place, we need the deterrence and flexibility provided by a large ground force. But maintaining soldiers in an all-volunteer force is expensive, and it is almost a certainty that they will be sacrificed to achieve arbitrary budget targets.

What strategy are we following here? Is there any strategy at all? None is apparent from the outside—or, from what people at the Pentagon tell me, from the inside. It has been said that this is a budget in search of a strategy, but we will be hard put to it to achieve all, or even most, of our strategic objectives with a third less resources.

The Hadley-Perry commission identified four enduring security interests for the United States: "The defense of the American homeland; assured access to the sea, air, space, and cyberspace; the preservation of a favorable balance of power across Eurasia that prevents authoritarian domination of that region; providing for the global common good through such actions as humanitarian aid, development assistance, and disaster relief." None of those interests will change, no matter what budget decisions are made in Washington; all that will change will be our ability to defend those interests.

Certainly there has not been—nor is there likely to be—a decreased demand for the armed forces. They are constantly having new missions thrown their way, from defending our nation's computer networks to deposing a dictator in Libya and providing relief to Japanese tsunami survivors. Those who call for austerity in our defense budget do not suggest which missions, which specific operations, they will willingly forego. And when they do, the suggestions are usually insufficient to achieve serious savings.

I am not by any stretch of the imagination claiming that every penny of defense spending is sacrosanct. It is impossible to deny that there is waste, fraud, and abuse in the defense budget. The problem is that there is no line item for waste, fraud, and abuse, and hence no way to pare only wasteful spending. Indeed it is hard to agree about what constitutes wasteful spending, because every defense program has its passionate defenders, especially on Capitol Hill, and it is possible to make compelling arguments in favor of them all.

At the end of the day, less money results in less capability. And less capability is something we cannot afford at a time when we face a rising China, a nuclear North Korea, an Iran on the verge of going nuclear, a Pakistan threatened as never before by jihadists, and numerous terrorist groups, ranging from the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban to the Shabab in Somalia and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. These groups threaten not only vital U.S. interests abroad but also increasingly the American homeland itself, as evidenced by AQAP's attempt to mail parcel bombs to the U.S. and by the Pakistani Taliban's sponsorship of an attempt to set off a car bomb in Times Square.

China presents a particularly worrisome long-term problem. It is in the midst of a rapid defense buildup which has allowed it to field a stealth fighter, an aircraft carrier, diesel submarines, cyberweapons, "carrier-killer" and satellite-killer ballistic missiles, and numerous other missiles. Even as things stand, China is increasingly able to contest the U.S. Navy's freedom of movement in the Western Pacific. As long ago as 2008, Rand predicted that by 2020 the U.S. would not be able to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack, and that was before the surprise unveiling of China's J-20 Stealth fighter or its new aircraft carrier. The timeline for American dominance being threatened is shortening. The safety of U.S. bases in Okinawa, Guam, and elsewhere in the region can no longer be assured, creating the potential for a 21st-century Pearl Harbor. That trend will be exacerbated—leading to a potentially dangerous shift in the balance of power—unless we build up our shrinking fleet. But given the budget cuts being discussed, we will have trouble maintaining the current size of our fleet, much less expanding it.

We have already cancelled the F-22 and cut back the procurement of the F-35. Is the F-35 to be cancelled altogether or cut back to such an extent that we will have no answer to the fifth-generation fighters emanating from Russia and China? If that were to come to pass, it would signal the death knell for American power in the Pacific. If our power wanes, our allies will have to do what they need to do to ensure their own security. It's easy to imagine, under such a scenario, states such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan acquiring their own nuclear weapons, thus setting off a dangerous and destabilizing nuclear arms race with China.

Even given the dire consequences, it might still make sense to cut the defense budget—if it were bankrupting us and undermining our economic well-being, which is the foundation of our national security. But that's not the case. Defense spending, including supplemental appropriations, is less than 5 percent of gross domestic product and less than 20 percent of the federal budget. Both figures are lower than the historic norm. That means our armed forces are much less costly in relative terms than they were throughout much of the 20th century. Even at roughly $550 billion, our core defense budget is eminently affordable. It is, in fact, a bargain, considering the historic consequences of letting our guard down.

The United States' armed forces have been the greatest force for good the world has seen during the past century. They defeated Nazism and Japanese imperialism, deterred and defeated Communism, and stopped numerous lesser evils—from Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing to the oppression perpetrated by Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Imagine a world in which America is not the leading military power. It would be a brutal, Hobbesian place in which aggressors rule and the rule of law is trampled on. And yet Congress will be helping to usher in such a New World Disorder if it continues to slash defense spending at the currently contemplated rate—just as previous Congresses did with previous rounds of "postwar" budget cuts going back to the dawn of the Republic.

But there is nothing inevitable about the outcome. The first tranche of sequestration cuts is not scheduled to take effect until the 2013 fiscal year. That means Congress has most of 2012 to find an alternative. Unfortunately, President Obama has threatened to veto any bill that tries to exempt the defense budget from sequestration. But that should not prevent pro-defense Democrats and Republicans from pushing such a bill anyway. If even one year of sequestration were to occur, major weapons systems (which will be costly and difficult to restart) might be cancelled—and great numbers of veterans (whose experience would be lost forever) might be layed off.

In the long run, the question of whether or not—and to what extent—we will cut defense will be decided in the 2012 elections. Obama appears sanguine about the impact of defense cuts, but his Republican challengers are not. Mitt Romney has promised to protect the defense budget and expand naval shipbuilding. Rick Perry has called on Leon Panetta to resign rather than accept massive cuts. Even Newt Gingrich, who has been critical of wasteful Pentagon spending, has said that sequestration would be "totally destructive" and "very dangerous to the survival of the country."

It is commonly said that every election is a turning point in our history. In many cases that's nothing more than partisan hype. In the case of the 2012 election, it's true: The future of the U.S. armed forces, and of American power in general, could depend greatly on the outcome.

Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is completing a history of guerrilla warfare and terrorism. This article is adapted from testimony he delivered to the House Armed Services Committee on September 13, 2011.
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3)Fed to Keep Rates ‘Exceptionally Low’ at Least Through Late 2014
By Forrest Jones

The Federal Reserve has downgraded its outlook for economic growth this year but is slightly more optimistic about the unemployment rate.

The Federal Reserve also says it plans to keep interest rates “exceptionally low” until at least late 2014, longer than previously forecast, while it expects unemployment will stay high and inflation will remain “subdued.”

The central bank said in a statement after a two-day policy meeting that the economy is expanding moderately, despite some slowing in global growth. It held off on any further bond-buying programs to try to increase growth.

The Fed expects the economy to grow between 2.2 percent and 2.7 percent this year. That's down from November's forecast of between 2.5 percent and 2.9 percent, the Associated Press reported. But it sees unemployment falling as low as 8.2 percent, an improvement from November's bottom rate of 8.5 percent.

The Fed also offered a firmer target for inflation — 2 percent — in a statement of its long-term policy goals.

The Fed on Wednesday also held its key benchmark lending target, the federal-funds rate, at 0.25 percent, citing a "depressed" housing market and high unemployment as reasons for brushing inflationary fears aside and opting for loose policies to keep consumer prices and unemployment rates at more dynamic levels.

The monetary authority said economic conditions meriting loose monetary policies should stick around through late 2014, longer than a previous forecast for 2013, as more than two years of economic growth haven't pushed the unemployment rate below 8.5 percent.

Some Fed officials have said further easing might be needed to revive the housing market and lower the jobless rate.

The central bank has kept its key rate at a record low near zero for about three years. Its new time frame suggests the rate will stay there for roughly an additional three years.

"While indicators point to some further improvement in overall labor market conditions, the unemployment rate remains elevated," the Fed said in a statement. "Household spending has continued to advance, but growth in business fixed investment has slowed, and the housing sector remains depressed. Inflation has been subdued in recent months, and longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable," the statement said.

"In particular, the Committee decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and currently anticipates that economic conditions — including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run — are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through late 2014."

In 2011, the Fed said the economy wouldn't heat up enough to require interest-rate hikes or other tightening measures through 2013, although a weak economy has prompted Fed officials to extend that forecast for another year.

The Fed, meanwhile, said it would continue its policy of selling short-term Treasurys while stocking up on longer-term such instruments with the aim of keeping long-term borrowing costs low.

The Fed didn't say if it planned a third round of quantitative easing, where the central bank buys assets from banks in an effort to flood the economy with liquidity to steer the country away from deflation, but said it would keep an eye on the economy and react as necessary should the need arise.

"The Committee will regularly review the size and composition of its securities holdings and is prepared to adjust those holdings as appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery in a context of price stability."

The Fed has rolled out two rounds of quantitative easing so far, snapping up more than $2 trillion in assets like Treasurys or mortgage-backed securities with the aim of stimulating the economy.

Loose monetary policies, such as interest-rate cuts or measures aimed to boost liquidity, are used to steer an economy away from crippling deflation but threaten to increase inflationary pressures as a side effect.

"We have seen slightly better performance in the labor market, consumer sentiment has improved, industrial production has been relatively strong. There are some positive signs, no doubt," Bernanke told reporters at a press conference.
However, potholes remain, Bernanke added.

"At the same we have had mixed results in some other areas such as retail sales, and we continue to see headwinds emanating from Europe coming from the slowing global economy and some other factors as well."

While hoping for the best, the Fed will remain alert for the worst, and that means it won't rule out further easing at this time should inflation rates veer away from target or if unemployment rates rise beyond comfort zones.

"I don't think we are ready to declare that we have entered a newer and stronger phase at this point," Bernanke said.

"We are prepared to take further steps in that direction if we see that the recovery is faltering or if inflation is not moving towards target. It's an option that's certainly on the table. I think it would be premature to say definitively one way or the other but we continue to look at that option and if conditions warrant we will certainly consider using it."

The Federal Reserve adheres to a dual mandate of keeping both inflation and unemployment rates at optimal levels.

Analysts say the Federal Reserve's language suggested that while inflation remains within comfort zones, unemployment rates remain a little too high, while the slowdown in business investment won't t help the U.S. central bank live up to its mandates.

"I think what they are seeing is that the rate of growth is not sufficient to bring down the unemployment rate," says Brian Dolan, chief strategist at FOREX.com in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to Reuters.

Currently, unemployment rates stand at 8.5 percent although they spent a good chunk of 2011 hovering above 9 percent and are still well above pre-recession levels, approaching twice as high in some instances.

Inflation rates were unchanged in December when compared with November and up 3 percent on year.

"Rates are not going to go up anytime soon," says Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial Inc. in Chicago, according to Bloomberg.

"They don’t see a lot of inflation out there."
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4)Race Matters

ByPaul Fain

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Education has acknowledged using flawed data in a study on the impact of race on student loan repayment rates, having omitted black students from its calculation. The analysis was conducted during the debate over gainful employment regulations, in response to complaints that the rules would hurt colleges that enroll relatively high percentages of minority students.

Department officials disclosed the error in a December court filing, which is part of the ongoing legal challenge to gainful employment by the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, the primary for-profit trade group. That lawsuit appears to have led to the mistake’s discovery.

The Obama administration designed the federal rules in an attempt to ensure that most programs at for-profit colleges and certificate and vocational programs at nonprofit institutions prepare students for "gainful employment." For programs to be eligible for federal financial aid, they must adhere to benchmarks related to student loan repayment and debt-to-income ratios.

The original analysis was included in the introduction section of the final rules, which were issued last June. It asserted that the “percentage of the students that are members of a minority group explains 1 percent of the total variance in repayment rates” at for-profit institutions. The low figure, the department concluded at the time, meant the racial composition of students was not a statistically significant contributor to how an institution stacks up on loan repayments. The percentage of lower-income students an institution enrolled was a better measure.

But by failing to count black students, the study understated the impact of race: the actual variance is 20 percent over all, the department said in the December filing.

Eduardo Ochoa, the department’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education, described the mistake in that filing, but said accurate figures would have had no impact on the final regulations.

A subsequently corrected analysis “does not justify altering the regulations,” Ochoa said, because “factors other than student demographics account for the success or failure of institutional repayment rates.”

The for-profit association, however, said in a January court filing that the mistake is fundamental and validates concerns aired by scores of public commenters that for-profits were unfairly targeted by gainful employment regulations.

“The department’s error demolishes its decision to reject commenters’ concerns about the relationship between its regulations and race and educational opportunity,” the association said. “This error, by itself, requires that the regulations be vacated.”

Monday's Federal Register contained the department’s correction, which noted that the final regulations remain unchanged.

"We've known for a long time that race and poverty are linked," Justin Hamilton, a department spokesman, said in a written statement. "But the data shows that demography is not destiny and can't be used as a reliable indicator for predicting loan defaults, most especially at for-profit colleges."

The publicly acknowledged mistake is certain to fuel claims by for-profits and their advocates here that the sector is being picked on by lawmakers and politically motivated regulators. They point to what they see as a pattern of flawed data or other information being used by the department, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions and, perhaps most notably, the Government Accountability Office.

Critics of for-profits, however, say the industry has pored over language in federal documents to look for procedural mistakes in an effort to undermine legitimate concerns about their practices.

Last April, the Education Department said it had made an error in tabulating draft loan default rates that reflected poorly on for-profits, having improperly included loans that defaulted up to three months after the three-year period that was being measured.

Ochoa, in his statement, said Pell recipient rates remain more significant in the corrected analysis. Pell rates explain 23 percent of the variance while minority enrollment accounts for 20 percent, he said.

However, the association said in its filing that the department’s revised figures show that race is a significant predictor of loan repayment rates. “The public policy consequences of the department’s error are clear -- schools that enroll a higher percentage of minority students are more likely to fail the department’s repayment test.”

4a)36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes

Pete Souza / White House (Obama addresses his White House staff, file)

How embarrassing this must be for President Obama, whose major speech theme so far this campaign season has been that every single American, no matter how rich, should pay their "fair share" of taxes.

Because how unfair -- indeed, un-American -- it is for an office worker like, say, Warren Buffet's secretary to dutifully pay her taxes, while some well-to-do people with better educations and higher incomes end up paying a much smaller tax rate.

Or, worse, skipping their taxes altogether.

A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share.

Previous reports have shown how well-paid Obama's White House staff is, with 457 aides pulling down more than $37 million last year. That's up seven workers and nearly $4 million from the Bush administration's last year.

Nearly one-third of Obama's aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each.

The IRS' 2010 delinquent tax revelations come as part of a required annual agency report on federal employees' tax compliance. Turns out, an awful lot of folks being paid by taxpayers are not paying their own income taxes.

The report finds that thousands of federal employees owe the country more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. That's up 3% in the past year.

That scale of delinquency could annoy voters, hard-pressed by their own costs, fears and stubbornly high unemployment despite Joe Biden's many promises.

The tax offenders include employees of the U.S. Senate who help write the laws imposed on everyone else. They owe $2.1 million. Workers in the House of Representatives owe $8.5 million, Department of Education employees owe $4.3 million and over at Homeland Security, 4,697 workers owe about $37 million. Active duty military members owe more than $100 million.

The Treasury Department, where Obama nominee Tim Geithner had to pay up $42,000 in his own back taxes before being confirmed as secretary, has 1,181 other employees with delinquent taxes totaling $9.3 million.

As usual, the Postal Service, with more than 600,000 workers, has the most offenders (25,640), who also owe the most -- almost $270 million. Veterans Affairs has 11,659 workers owing the IRS $151 million while the Energy Department that was so quick to dish out more than $500 million to the Solyndra folks has 322 employees owing $5 million.

The country's chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, has 2,069 employees who are nearly $17 million behind in taxes. Like Operation Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder has apparently missed them too.

As with ordinary people, the IRS attempts to negotiate back-tax payment plans with all delinquents, whose names cannot be released. But according to current federal law, the only federal employees who can be fired for not paying taxes are IRS workers.

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5) IRAN PREPARING NOW FOR ARMAGEDDON
Select fighters being described as 'Soldiers of Imam Mahdi.'
By Reza Kahlili

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has held several secret meetings with his economic and military advisers in recent days to prepare for the possibility of war with the United States.

Sources report the preparations are to include the execution of those Iranians who oppose the regime.

Khamenei has been heard to say that the coming of the last Islamic Messiah, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, is near and that specific actions need to be taken to protect the Islamic regime for upcoming events.

Mahdi, according to Shiite belief, will reappear at the time of Armageddon.

Selected forces within the Revolutionary Guards and Basij reportedly have been trained under a task force called “Soldiers of Imam Mahdi” and they will bear the responsibility of security and protecting the regime against uprisings. Many in the Guards and Basij have been told that the 12th Imam is on earth, facilitated the victory of Hezbollah over Israel in the 2006 war and soon will announce publicly his presence after the needed environment is created.

According to SepahOnline, sources within the Vali’eh Amr, the revolutionary forces in charge of the supreme leader’s protection, report that Khamenei held several meetings in recent days at which the leader instructed his advisers to tighten the grip on anyone who opposes or might oppose the regime in case of war.

These actions include investigations of every person or group that was pro-regime but now hold opinions contrary to regime policies. Also being created is a list, to be presented to Khamenei, to decide the fate of any opponents.

It also was decided that those political prisoners who will not repent will be executed, the sources said.

This action also was taken by the founder of the Islamic regime in 1988, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In the book, “A Time to Betray,” it is documented when Khomeini announced the campaign, he said, “If the person at any stage or at any time maintains his (or her) support for the opposing groups, the sentence is execution. Annihilate the enemies of Islam immediately.”

The fatwa led to the execution of thousands of innocent men and women of all ages in a very short period.

The list of actions by Khamenei includes investigation of private business owners. If records show that at any time in the past they have not supported the Islamic regime, their businesses and belongings could be confiscated.

Journalists, writers and publishers who are deemed to be against the regime would be arrested and punished. Even high religious authorities who do not fully support Khamenei will be put under surveillance and dealt with if they become outspoken about the direction of the country.

Several journalists already have been arrested in the past week. In a recent speech, Khamenei hinted of a warlike environment and warned those clerics who might doubt his direction of the country that their survival is tied to the survival of the Islamic regime. Many Iranians who resent the regime resent the religion it promotes, so even opposition clerics might not fare well should the regime fall.

The plan by the leader calls for total control of Tehran, the capital where the presence of the Basij and Hezbollah militias would be quite visible so that no one would dare to challenge the regime.

This news comes in light of the formation of the “Removal Committee,” which secretly would eliminate all deemed as opponents, even within the military and the government.

Khamenei’s extraordinary measures are based either on an understanding that war could be imminent or that the regime has decided to announce it has nuclear capability and is getting ready for a possible reaction from Israel or America.

Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, an influential cleric and a radical Twelver, previously had stated that Khamenei ascends to the sky every year to take direction from Imam Mahdi, and sources close to the cleric have disclosed that Khamenei has been ordered by Imam Mahdi to continue with the nuclear program despite worldwide objection as it will facilitate his coming.

Last March, a Iranian secret documentary, “The Coming Is Upon Us,” was revealed to depict Khamenei as the mythical figure who creates the environment for the reappearance of Mahdi by leading Iran to destroy Israel.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy who requires anonymity for safety reasons. He is a senior fellow with EMPact America and the author of “A Time to Betray,” a book about his double life as a CIA agent in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. “A Time to Betray” was the winner of the 2010 National Best Book Award, and the 2011 International Best Book Award.
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