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Obama, as has been his style for lo the past 5 plus years, has been good at making speeches but he remains behind the curve of events.
Now that he is doing something about ISIS, keep in mind he told us radical Islamists were defeated and he then withdrew all our forces in Iraq creating the vacuum he now is reluctant to fill with American 'booties.'
Before his tragic presidency is over we will be deeper in debt, the employed will be earning less, the number on government on support will be historical, our military will be depleted, we will continue to be energy dependent and the nation will have been divided racially.
The baton Obama will hand to whomever his successor, will be trapped by these events and will find their own ability to govern seriously restrained.
Iran, most likely, will have achieved nuclear status, unless Israel pre-empts, and the world, which his administration told us was more 'tranquil' will be engaged in outright war while our status as a world power will have been radically diminished.
This is the legacy the Nobel Peace President will leave and objective historians will have no option but to reveal these facts in a cold and objective manner.
Yes, there will be spinners and Obama will be around to distort his record, blame others, as is his pathetic want, but facts are facts and eventually they will wag the dog - they always do!
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Dagny, at 2 plus, will be here Friday with "Chunky Blake" her brother. Cannot wait.
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A Stratfor analyst discusses his view of the emergence of certain nations. (See 1 below.)
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I have always maintained, bring Arabs together for a unity meeting and it eventually creates disunity.
If Hamas won a great victory why the sharing of governance? (See 2 below.)
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Finally it happened. Blond Men jokes! (See 3 below.)
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Tobin responds to Israel critics. (See 4 below.)
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Sowell on Obama and ISIS. (See 5 below.)
and
A Harvard Professor speaks out about Obama.
Click on: Obama Most Radical US President ever" states prestigious Harvard Phd
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A reasonable market analysis that I am in synch with. (See 6 below.)
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Let's hear from the U.N. (See 7 below.)
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My folks loved to go to Las Vegas, not because they were gamblers, though my father played roulette and baccarat, but they loved the shows and were very good dancers.
My father also loved swapping jokes with Shecky Green and when he returned home his buddies got together to hear his new material.
Below are old jokes from a few of the Jewish comedians who appeared in Las Vegas. (See 8 below.)
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But lets end on a serious note. Kagan gets it. (See 9 below.)
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Dick
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1) Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces at Work in the Nation-State
By Zhixing Zhang
"Here begins our tale: The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." This opening adage of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, China's classic novel of war and strategy, best captures the essential dynamism of Chinese geopolitics. At its heart is the millennia-long struggle by China's would-be rulers to unite and govern the all-but-ungovernable geographic mass of China. It is a story of centrifugal forces and of insurmountable divisions rooted in geography and history — but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, of centripetal forces toward eventual unity.
This dynamism is not limited to China. The Scottish referendum and waves of secession movements — from Spain's Catalonia to Turkey and Iraq's ethnic Kurds — are working in different directions. More than half a century after World War II triggered a wave of post-colonial nationalism that changed the map of the world, buried nationalism and ethnic identity movements of various forms are challenging the modern idea of the inviolable unity of the nation-state.
Yet even as these sentiments pull on the loose threads of nations, in China, one of the most intractable issues in the struggle for unity — the status of Tibet — is poised for a possible reversal, or at least a major adjustment. The long-running but frequently unnoticed negotiations have raised the possibility that the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, may be nearing a deal that would enable him to return to his Tibetan homeland. If it happens, it would end the Dalai Lama's exile in Dharamsala, India — an exile that began after the Tibetan uprising in 1959, nine years after the People's Republic of China annexed Tibet. More important, a settlement between Beijing and the Dalai Lama could be a major step in lessening the physical and psychological estrangement between the Chinese heartland and the Tibetan Plateau.
Tibet, the Dalai Lama and Self-Determination
The very existence of the Tibetan issue bespeaks several overlapping themes of Chinese geopolitics. Most fundamentally, it must be understood in the context of China's struggle to integrate and extend control over the often impassable but strategically significant borderlands militarily and demographically. These borderlands, stretching from northeast to the southwest — Manchuria, Mongolian Plateau, Xinjiang, Tibet and the Yunnan Plateau — form a shield, both containing and protecting a unified Han core from overland invasion. In attempting to integrate these regions, however, China confronts the very nature of geographic disintegration and the ethnic identities in these restive borderlands, which have sought to resist, separate or drift away from China at times when weak central power has diminished the coherence of China's interior.
Tibet in many ways represents the extreme edge of this pattern. Indeed, while the formidable geography of the Tibetan Plateau (its altitude averages 4.5 kilometers, or almost 2.8 miles, above sea level) largely inured it from most frontier threats to the Han core compared with the more accessible Manchuria, Mongolian Plateau or Xinjiang. Perhaps no borderland is as fraught with as much consequence as Tibet under China's contemporary geopolitical circumstances. The Tibetan Plateau and its environs constitute roughly one-quarter of the Chinese landmass and are a major source of freshwater for China, the Indian subcontinent and mainland Southeast Asia. The high mountains of the Himalayas make a natural buffer for the Chinese heartland and shape the complex geopolitical relationship between China and India.
Historically, China's engagement with the Tibetan Plateau has been lacking and not characterized by national unity. Starting in the 7th century, China made sporadic attempts to extend its reach into the Tibetan Plateau, but it wasn't until the Qing dynasty that the empire made a substantial effort to gain authority over Tibetan cultural and social structures through control of Tibetan Buddhist institutions. The weakening of China after the Qing dynasty led peripheral states, including Tibet, to slip from Chinese central rule.
Since the People's Republic of China began ruling over Tibet in 1950, the perennial struggle manifested as political, religious and psychological estrangement between political power in Beijing and the Dalai Lama, the charismatic political and spiritual symbol of the Tibetan self-determination movement, who consistently has resisted China's full domination over Tibet. Here, the nominally impersonal process of geopolitics confronts the rare individual who has a lasting impact. The Dalai Lama has concentrated the Tibetan cause into himself and his image. It is the Dalai Lama who represents the Tibetan identity in foreign capitals and holds a fractious Tibetan movement together, holding sway over both indigenous Tibetans in the homeland and the old and new generations of Tibetan exiles.
Perennial Struggle and Contemporary Moves
Under the People's Republic, China has some of the clearest physical control and central authority over one of the largest and most secure states in China's dynastic history. However, the ancient compulsion to secure the Chinese periphery did not go unaddressed by China's Communist leadership.
Over the years, the central government has pushed aggressively to bolster Han Chinese economic and demographic dominance over the borderland while attempting to overcome the physical barriers of distance through grandiose infrastructure projects, including road and rail links. And yet, the estrangement with the Dalai Lama has left Beijing dealing with the perception that its control over the Tibetan Plateau is partial and of questionable legitimacy. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama's international prestige exposed the central power in Beijing to numerous international critics. Moreover, it offered New Delhi an opportunity to exploit Beijing's concerns by hosting the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Beijing sees no space to allow the autonomy demanded by the Tibetan exile movement; it is a short path from robust autonomy to direct challenge. Beijing's strategy has been to try to undermine the Dalai Lama's international prestige, constrain interaction between the exile community and Tibetans at home and hope that when the spiritual leader dies, the absence of his strong personality will leave the Tibetan movement without a center and without someone who can draw the international attention the Dalai Lama does. Central to Beijing's calculation is interference in the succession process whereby Beijing claims the right to designate the Dalai Lama's religious successor and, in doing so, exploit sectarian and factional divisions within Tibetan Buddhism. Beijing insists the reincarnation process must follow the Tibetan religious tradition since the Qing dynasty, meaning that it must occur within Tibetan territory and with the central government's endorsement, a process that highlights Tibet's position as a part of China, not an independent entity.
Beijing's plan could work, but the cost would be high. Without recognition from the Dalai Lama, Beijing's appointed successor — and by extension, Beijing's authority in Tibet — can hardly be accepted by the wider Tibetan community. To resist Beijing's attempt at interference, the Dalai Lama has in recent years made various statements signaling that the ancient traditions of the succession process could break. In particular, the Dalai Lama has discussed the potential for succession through emanation rather than reincarnation. This would place his knowledge and authority in several individuals, each with a part of his spiritual legacy, but none as the single heir. Emanation can occur while the Dalai Lama is alive, thus giving him the ability to manage a transition. He has also mentioned the possibility that no successor will be named — that the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama will end, leaving his legacy as the lasting focus for Tibetans.
More concretely, the Dalai Lama has split the role of spiritual and political leadership of the Tibetan movement, nominally giving up the latter while retaining the former. In doing so, he is attempting to create a sense of continuity to the Tibetan movement even though his spiritual successor has not been identified. However, it also separates the Dalai Lama from any Tibetan political movement, theoretically making it easier for the spiritual leader and Beijing to come to an accord about his possible return as a spiritual — but not political — leader. But the maneuvering by the Dalai Lama reflects a deeper reality. The Tibetan movement is not homogenous. Tibetan Buddhism has several schools that remain in fragile coordination out of respect for the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan political movement is also fragmented, with the younger foreign-born Tibetans often more strongly pressing for independence for Tibet, while the older exiles take a more moderate tone and call for more autonomy. The peaceful path promoted by the Dalai Lama is respected, but not guaranteed forever, by the younger and more radical elements of the Tibetan movement, which have only temporarily renounced the use of violence to achieve their political goals.
The future of the Tibetan movement after the Dalai Lama's death is uncertain. At a minimum, the spiritual leader's fame means no successor will be able to exercise the same degree of influence or maintain internal coherence as he has done. Just as the Dalai Lama was concerned that an extremist wing of the new Tibetan generation would undermine his moderate ideology and dilute the movement's legitimacy, Beijing fears that the post-Dalai Lama era would enable multiple radical, separatist or even militant movements to proliferate, leaving Beijing in a much more difficult position and potentially facing a greater security threat.
Beijing and the Dalai Lama have shown a willingness to reach a political settlement in the past, but their attempts failed. As uncertainties loom for both sides amid concerns about the spiritual leader's age and the changing domestic dynamics facing China's new president, Xi Jinping, both sides could see a departure from previous hostilities as a reasonable step toward a low-cost settlement. In other words, both Beijing and the Dalai Lama — and by extension his mainstream followers — understand how little time they have and how, without a resolution, the uncertainties surrounding the Tibet issue could become permanent after the spiritual leader's death.
Optimism Now, but Caution Ahead
The report of the Dalai Lama's possible return to Tibet comes as Beijing has resumed talks with representatives of the spiritual leader. This round of negotiations comes after nine rounds of failed talks over the past decade and four years after the last attempt. Nonetheless, the mood appears at least somewhat optimistic on both sides. In recent weeks, the Dalai Lama has offered conciliatory comments about Xi and intimated that he could be open to returning to Tibet, a longstanding desire of the 79-year-old spiritual leader. For its part, Beijing has released some Tibetan political prisoners and reportedly allowed the Dalai Lama's image and words to be used in certain Tibetan regions after years of prohibition.
Of course, many uncertainties surround the return of the Dalai Lama; it is even uncertain whether it could happen at all. Indeed, overcoming 55 years of hostile relations takes enormous effort, and even if the Dalai Lama is allowed to return to Tibet, it is only one of several steps in much broader negotiations between Beijing and the Tibetan exile community over how to reach a resolution, including the possible resettlement of 200,000 Tibetans in exile, the status of the government-in-exile, the authority of the Dalai Lama and, ultimately, the succession process for the spiritual leader.
Over the years, the Dalai Lama repeatedly has expressed a strong desire to return to the Tibetan homeland, seeing it as an end goal in his longstanding efforts to gain Tibetan autonomy. Although Beijing had always left the option open, it repeatedly emphasized that any dialogue with the Dalai Lama would be confined to the scope of an arrangement for the spiritual leader and would carry no political implications. In other words, any agreement will be based on the premise that expanded Tibetan autonomy is not an option and that Beijing's authority over Tibetan regions — and by extension, the borderland in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia — will remain intact. Similarly, the Dalai Lama will not accept a weakening of his spiritual authority among the Tibetan community or of his role in choosing successors. Nonetheless, with Beijing's concern over the proliferation of radical wings of the Tibetan movement abroad, allowing the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet could mitigate some of the tension and give Beijing a way to divide and weaken the Tibetan movement.
In moving toward an agreement, both sides would have to prepare for some political risk. For Beijing, the foremost concern would be managing the enormous religious influence of the Dalai Lama at home, where he is seen as a challenger to the Communist Party's political leadership. For the Dalai Lama, the main concerns would be managing the role of the Tibetan political leadership overseas and the potential repercussions within the exile movement from the developing settlement's contrast with their goal for Tibetan autonomy.
Perhaps more important, even if there were signs of a resolution developing, the succession issue is likely to be a roadblock. Beijing is unlikely to give any concession in its authority to appoint a reincarnated spiritual leader, and the Dalai Lama shows little intention of allowing Beijing's unilateral move.
Confronting a Geopolitical Curse
Despite various uncertainties, questions and risks, the potential ramifications of even the slim possibility of rapprochement illustrate China's ancient geopolitical dynamism at work.
Again illustrating how an individual can play a role in geopolitics, the potential for reconciliation between Beijing and the Dalai Lama could affect the balance between China and India. China has long viewed India's decision to host the Tibetan government-in-exile as a hostile gesture. However, India's ability to exploit China's concerns about Tibet has diminished along with the government-in-exile's influence and claim to represent Tibet as a legitimate entity. Already, New Delhi has shown waning enthusiasm for accepting Tibetan refugees and greater concern that the internal fragmentation of the Tibetan community will make hosting the exile community more of a liability than a benefit. However, a settlement would not eliminate the underlying geopolitical rivalry between India and China on other fronts — from their 4,000-kilometer land border to the maritime competitions in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea and their competition for energy and other resources.
Even if a settlement on the Tibet issue emerges in the distant future, it does not mean the end of the China-Tibet struggle. Indeed, since 2009 there have been many Tibetan self-immolations, and Beijing's economic developments in many parts of the ethnic borderlands widely are perceived as flawed or incomplete. Quite likely, a detente with the Dalai Lama will result in radicalized and more extremist elements emerging overseas, seeking self-determination and, like many of their counterparts around the world — from Scotland to the Kurds in the Middle East — challenging the centripetal forces of nation-states.
Historically, when Han China is strong, so is its control over these buffer regions. Control of the buffer regions, in turn, is a key precondition for a strong and secure Han China. This arrangement will become crucial as Beijing grapples with the potential challenges in the social, economic and political transformation in the Han core in the coming years. Therefore, despite the flux mentioned in the aphorism from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, for Beijing the ultimate goal is to confront an ancient geopolitical curse by cementing its control over its borderlands and uniting China permanently and irreversibly, however unrealistic this goal might be.
Editor's Note: Writing in George Friedman's stead this week is Stratfor Asia-Pacific Analyst Zhixing Zhang.
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2) Palestinian unity gov't to take 'immediate control' of Gaza
Fatah, Hamas reach agreement settling recent rift: Hamas government employees in Gaza will be paid, and the management of the border crossing will be handed over to the unity government.
AFP, Reuters
Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah reached an agreement on Thursday by which the unity government run by President Mahmoud Abbas would take "immediate control" of the Gaza Strip, negotiators in Egypt-mediated reconciliation talks told reporters.
"Fatah and Hamas have reached a comprehensive agreement for the return of the unity government to the Gaza Strip," Jibril Rajoub, a member of the Fatah delegation in Cairo, told AFP.
The information was confirmed by Azzam Al-Ahmad, the head of the Fatah delegation and Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official based in Cairo.
Negotiations in Cairo over implementation of unity government (Photo: EPA)
The Gaza ceasefire struck in August between Israel and the Palestinians included stipulations that the Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas, should take over civil administration in Gaza from Hamas.
The Palestinian rivals had set up a unity government of independents in June but are at loggerheads again, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas threatening to end the administration and accusing Hamas of running a "parallel government" as de facto ruler in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas, on its part, accused the Palestinian Authority of not paying salaries to Gaza's 45,000 public sector workers.
Azzam al-Ahmed, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian factions have now formed a committee to look into a number of pressing issues in Gaza, including the salary question. "The national committee will be able to sort this out," he said.
Ahmed said the two factions had agreed on "eliminating all the obstacles before the national unity government".
"All civil servants will be paid by the unity government because they are all Palestinians and it is the government of all Palestinians," he said.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, chairman of Hamas' political bureau, said control of Gaza's border crossings, another contentious issue, would lie with the United Nations in addition to the unity government..
"The United Nations will come to an agreement with Israel and the unity government on how to run the crossings," Marzouk said.
The agreement states that 3,000 members of the security forces employed by the Palestinian Authority will be merged into Gaza's security services and tasked with running the territory's border crossings.
Marzouk said the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was not part of the deal.
Marzouk also said this week's meetings yielded broad agreement on creating mechanisms to permit the import of construction materials into Gaza to let rebuilding efforts go ahead. With thousands of housing units and other buildings destroyed during the war, reconstruction is a key priority for all Palestinians.
But concerned that building materials like cement and some metals could be used by Hamas to manufacture weapons, Israel has demanded clear-cut safeguards against the materials' diversion from foreign governments and international organizations involved in the reconstruction process.
Abu Marzouk appeared to be sensitive to this concern.
"What we did now is facilitating ... and providing all mechanisms to help donors, and give them assurances about the process from the beginning to the end," he said.
An unidentified Hamas official told the Associated Press, however, that the agreement reached between the two factions was only partial, and did not address for ex-Hamas employees and control over the coastal territory's security forces.
The official did not provide details of the partial deal and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss with media the negotiations between rival Palestinian factions that are under way in Cairo. Other figures in Hamas and Fatah provided only vague accounts of the accord.
Fatah and Hamas announce signing of Palestinian reconciliation agreement in April (Photo: Reuters)
The two-day talks, which began Wednesday, come after a joint Palestinian delegation and Israel agreed to hold separate indirect talks in late October to thrash out a lasting truce after this summer's 50-day Gaza war between Hamas and Israel.
The talks between the two sides were crucial for internal Palestinian divisions to be set aside and to agree on a unified strategy during talks with Israeli negotiators in October.
The talks between the warring factions was also crucial for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, that suffered great devastation in the war with Israel. The Palestinian Authority said in a study reconstruction work would cost $7.8 billion, two and a half times Gaza's gross domestic product.
International concerns about Hamas' inclusion in the unity government could undermine a donors' conference intended to raise reconstruction funds for Gaza, which Egypt is set to host on October 12.
Under Egyptian mediation, Israel and the Palestinians agreed on August 26 to a cease-fire that ended Operation Protective Edge between Hamas and Israeli forces.
The conflict ended with an agreement to hold future talks on Palestinian demands to end an eight-year blockade of Gaza and exchange prisoners in Israeli jails for the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza.
Ahmed also said on Thursday Palestinians would seek membership in UN organisations including the international criminal court "to enable our people to hold Israel accountable for the war crimes it has committed".
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4) Israeli Reality Check for Liberal Critics
Israel’s American critics viewed the latest conflict in Gaza as more evidence of how the Jewish state needs to be saved from itself. That is particularly true of Jewish groups like the left-wing lobby J Street whose attacks on the Netanyahu government and support for Obama administration pressure on Israel have continued even as anti-Zionist and pro-BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction) efforts have intensified. But the latest opinion poll from Israel illustrates yet again just how out of touch these liberal know-it-alls are with reality as seen by the majority of Israelis.
A new opinion poll from Israel’s Channel 10 provides sobering results for those who continue to hope that Israelis will listen to them and both push for a new prime minister and resolve to begin leaving the West Bank. While many, if not most Americans, actually believe the press when they call Netanyahu a “hard-liner,” the perception of his conduct at home is very different. Far from convincing Israel to start ceding more territory to the Palestinians, after their 50-day ordeal during the summer as thousands of rockets fell on their heads and a new threat of terror tunnels made them feel even less safe, more Israelis seem inclined to view Netanyahu as not tough enough.
Netanyahu’s personal approval ratings dropped once the fighting ended and many of his countrymen were disappointed with his failure to end the threat from Hamas-run Gaza once and for all. These latest numbers confirm that the big winner if elections were to be held today would be the prime minister’s most strident critic on the right. Even more discouraging for the “save it from itself” crowd is the fact that the right-wing parties as a whole are gaining strength while those on the left are dropping even lower in public esteem.
The Channel 10 poll shows that the public would give Netanyahu’s Likud Party 26 seats in a new Knesset. That’s less than the 31 it got when it ran on a joint ticket in 2013 with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu Party. But that right-wing rival would get 14, representing a gain of four for the two natural coalition partners. But the big winner would be Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home Party which has been highly critical of what it considers to be Netanyahu’s timid approach to Gaza and negotiations with the Palestinians. It would get 16 in a new election, an increase of four over their current total.
While these three men are more or less continually at each other’s throats, it must be understood that the combination of the three—which represent the core of any center-right government—would stand at 56, almost enough for them to govern on their own and reminiscent of the old days of Labor Party dominance when the left ruled the country for its first three decades. That would give Netanyahu the option of putting together a right-wing government with the religious parties that would, however fractious its character, dominate the Knesset.
At the same time, the biggest losers would be the parties that Israel’s critics are counting on to form the core of a new “pro-peace” Cabinet. The centrist Yesh Atid Party led by current Finance Minister Yair Lapid is the big loser in the poll, going down to only 8 seats from its current 19. That leaves any potential center-left coalition led by Labor, which went down to 13 from its current 15 seats, hopelessly short of any sort of majority. Even if you added in the seats that may be won by a new party focused on economics led by former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon to the total of all the left-wing, centrist, and Arab parties, it adds up to only 49. And that is an inconceivable coalition since in all likelihood Kahlon and his supporters would join any Cabinet led by Netanyahu.
What does this mean?
The first conclusion is that although anything can happen in the two or three years between now and the next election, barring some sort of spectacular and currently unforeseen collapse, Netanyahu will almost certainly lead the next Israeli government.
Second, Lapid’s party appears fated to follow that of every other centrist party in Israeli political history. Voters are always hungry for alternatives to the old left and right choices but even though circumstances occasionally thrust a centrist to the fore, they are inevitably, as Lapid has been, marginalized by the continued centrality of war and peace issues on which they cannot compete. Lapid also made the same mistake of all his predecessors (including his father) of joining a government and thus became both tarnished and diminished by the hard choices any Cabinet must make on economics or peace. These poll numbers also lessen Lapid’s leverage in the current budget dispute he’s been waging with Netanyahu.
Third, and most importantly, these numbers reflect the fact that, unlike most liberal Jews–or most Americans for that matter–Israelis have been paying attention to events in the region. They know the continued rule of Hamas over Gaza and the Islamists’ increased popularity among Palestinians at the expense of the supposedly more moderate Fatah and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas renders any idea of withdrawing from the West Bank, as was done in Gaza, an impossibility. No sane Israeli leader would risk turning that far larger and more strategic territory into another Gaza.
This will, no doubt, heighten the frustrations of American left-wingers about Israel. But their anger tells us more about them and their refusal to think seriously about what Palestinians have done and believe than it does about what Israel should do. Israelis want peace as much if not more than American liberals. But they understand that dreams of peace are meaningless to Hamas and Palestinian rejectionists. Those who claim to be pro-Israel as well as pro-peace need to come to terms with the fact that the people who understand their country’s dilemmas far better than they could are still firmly rejecting their advice
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5)Success or Failure?
Those people who say that President Obama has no clear vision and no clear strategy for dealing with the ISIS terrorists in the Middle East may be mistaken. It seems to me that he has a very clear and very consistent strategy. And a vision behind that strategy.
First the strategy -- which is to get each crisis off the front pages and off television news programs as quickly as he can, in whatever way he can, at the lowest political cost. Calling ISIS a junior varsity months ago accomplished that goal.
Saying before the 2012 elections that "bin Laden is dead" and that terrorism was defeated accomplished the goal of getting reelected.
Ineffective sanctions against Iran and Russia likewise serve a clear purpose. They serve to give the illusion that Obama is doing something that will stop Iran from getting nuclear bombs and stop Russia from invading Ukraine.
This forestalls the massive and enraged outcries there would be if the public were fully aware that he was doing nothing serious enough to prevent either of these things from happening. Generations of Americans yet unborn may curse us all for leaving them hostage to a nuclear terrorist Iran. But generations yet unborn do not vote, so they carry no weight with Barack Obama.
No one has a perfect batting average in any field, so Obama has been caught in some dicey situations, such as the sudden eruption of ISIS on the world stage, with their videotaped beheadings that make it hard to get them off the front pages and off the TV newscasts.
Caught off guard, the president has played for time -- time for Iraq to get its internal politics fixed, time for our allies to come together, time for the military to create a strategy. Ideally, from his standpoint, time for the whole ISIS crisis to blow over.
There is always someone else to blame for whatever goes wrong in the Obama administration. Supposedly the intelligence services had not kept him informed about how imminent the ISIS threat was. But others who received top-secret briefings by the intelligence services say otherwise.
Some people are wondering how someone of obvious intelligence like Barack Obama could be so mistaken about so many things, especially in deadly foreign policy issues. But there is no way of knowing whether anyone is succeeding or failing without first knowing what they are trying to do.
If you assume that Barack Obama is trying to protect the safety and interests of the United States and its allies, then clearly he has been a monumental failure. It is hard to think of any part of the world where things have gotten better for us since the Obama administration began.
Certainly not in Iraq. Or Iran. Or Libya. Or China. Things went from bad to worse after Obama intervened in Egypt and helped put the murderous Muslim Brotherhood in power. Fortunately for Egypt -- and for the whole Middle East -- the Egyptian military took the Muslim Brotherhood out of power, in defiance of Obama.
If you start from the assumption that Barack Obama wanted to advance America's interests, this is truly an unbelievable record of failure. But what is there in Obama's background that would justify the assumption that America's best interests are his goal?
He has, from childhood on, been mentored by, or allied with, people hostile to the United States and to American values. His mentors and allies have all been very much like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, even if they were not as flamboyant.
Barack Obama has succeeded in reducing America's military strength while our adversaries are increasing theirs, and reducing our credibility and influence with our allies. That is completely consistent with his vision of how the world ought to be, with the West taken down a peg and humbled.
We are currently at a point where we can either kill as many of the ISIS terrorists as possible over there -- where they are bunched together and visible against a desert background -- or else leave the job half done and have them come over here, where they will be hard to find, and can start beheading Americans in America.
Everything in Barack Obama's history suggests that he is going to leave the job half done, so long as that gets the issue off the front pages and off the TV newscasts.
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6) The Stock Market Has Fewer Reasons to Rise
Stocks and bonds are telling different stories about the future of the U.S. economy — a contrast that is becoming harder to reconcile as the Federal Reserve gradually removes its support for the recovery.
Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average registered five straight days of gains to reach another record high — a trend that would typically reflect an improving outlook for the economy. At the same time, rising prices on longer-term Treasury bonds pushed down their yields — a flattening of the yield curve that suggests disappointing longer-term growth and low inflation.
Until recently, the unusual tendency of stock and bond prices to move together has had a sensible explanation: Bond investors expected the Fed to maintain its extraordinary monetary stimulus far into the future, a situation that would keep borrowing costs low and support the stock market.
With the Fed leaving the scene, the ability of stocks to keep rising in a lackluster economic environment will depend more and more on private money, be it the idle cash of people and companies or borrowed funds that ultimately draw on the huge excess reserves held by banks at the Fed.
Both the corporate sector and retail investors have been rather slow to loosen their purse strings after the shock of the global financial crisis, so there are still plenty of resources that can be deployed. Consider, for example, the huge demand for the initial public offering of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba.
Still, the reasons for stocks and bonds to rise together are no longer as broad-based as they used to be. The trend's survival will rely on the market's ability to keep attracting private money from the sidelines, and do so at ever-higher prices.
© Copyright 2014 Bloomberg Insider. All rights reserved.
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7) UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY – MULTIPLE CRISES, FEW SOLUTIONS
Author: Edith Lederer
Facing a world in turmoil from multiple crises ranging from wars in the Mideast and Africa to the deadly scourge of Ebola and growing Islamic radicalism, leaders from more than 140 countries open their annual meeting at the United Nations on Wednesday with few solutions. The issue certain to top the agenda is the threat from Islamic terrorists intent on erasing borders, with the first U.S. and Arab airstrikes in Syria delivered Monday night in response.
Many diplomats hope that crisis won't drown out the plight of millions of civilians caught in conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza; the misery of the largest number of refugees since the Second World War; and global support for new UN goals to fight poverty and address climate change.
Looking at the array of complex challenges, Norway's Foreign Minister Borge Brende told The Associated Press: “It's unprecedented in decades, that's for sure.” He pointed to the situation confronting the UN and international donors: four top-level humanitarian crises at the same time in Iraq, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Syria, which is now in the fourth year of a civil war which the UN says has killed more than 190,000 people.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who will deliver his state of the world report at Wednesday's opening of the General Assembly ministerial session, gave a bleak preview to reporters last week: The world is facing “multiple crises,” with all featuring attacks on civilians and having dangerous sectarian, ethnic or tribal dimensions.
In addition to the major conflicts, Ban said the world must not forget the continuing violence in Mali, the volatile situation in and around Ukraine, the chaos in Libya, the greater polarization between Israelis and Palestinians following the recent devastating war, and the advances of Boko Haram in Nigeria which “grow more alarming every day.” The secretary-general said he will call on world leaders to unite to uphold human dignity and the rule of law.
Soon after, U.S. President Barack Obama will step to the podium, and he is certain to dwell on the terrorist threat. Rights groups have called for him to explain how the campaign against the Islamic State extremist group is in accordance with international law. Obama also will chair a Security Council meeting later Wednesday at which members are expected to adopt a resolution that would require all countries to prevent the recruitment and transport of foreign fighters preparing to join terrorist groups such as the Islamic State.
The opening of the annual UN meeting, which ends Sept. 30, follows the highest-level meeting ever on climate change, with some 120 world leaders responding to the secretary-general's call for increased political momentum to address the warming planet. “For all the immediate challenges that we gather to address this week — terrorism, instability, inequality, disease — there's one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate,” Obama said.
But Obama, along with China, the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, said he would not propose targets to reduce carbon pollution beyond 2020 until early next year. The summit also exposed longstanding political divisions between rich and poor countries, raising questions about whether a new climate pact will be reached by the end of 2015.
Such divisions on a wide range of issues are certain to be addressed in the week ahead. This year's VIPs include Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, French President Francois Hollande, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Two prominent no-shows are Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf because of the Ebola crisis that has hit her country hardest and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who gave no public reason.
Two prominent no-shows are Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf because of the Ebola crisis that has hit her country hardest and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who gave no public reason.
While the assembly's newly renovated chamber will be the scene of constant speech-making, most of the real “business” during the General Assembly takes place in private meetings and dinners. This year's side events cover a number of crisis countries including Iran, South Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen and Somalia, with a recently added high-level meeting on Ebola.
Iyad Madani, secretary general of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, said there are “a multiplicity of crises” that are unpredictable, but “I think we are relatively a more peaceful world than in World War I, II, Korea, Vietnam or the Cold War.”
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8)You may or may not remember the old-time Jewish comedians: Shecky Green, Red Buttons, Totie Fields, Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, and many others?
Perhaps you may have only heard of them. I for one miss their kind of humor. Not a single “F”-bomb word in any of their comedic routines : * A car hit an elderly Jewish man. The paramedic says, "Are you comfortable? " The man says, "I make a good living."
* I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the airport.
* I've been in love with the same woman for 49 years. If my wife finds out, she'll kill me!
* Someone stole all my credit cards, but I won't be reporting it. The thief spends less than my wife.
* We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.
* My wife and I went to a hotel where we got a waterbed. My wife calls it the Dead Sea.
* My wife and I revisited the hotel where we spent our wedding night. This time I was the one who stayed in the bathroom and cried.
* My Wife was at the beauty shop for two hours. That was only for the estimate. She got a mudpack and looked great for two days. Then the mud fell off.
* The Doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so the doctor gave him another six months.
* The Doctor called Mrs. Cohen saying, "Mrs. Cohen, your check came back." Mrs. Cohen replied, "So did my arthritis!"
* Doctor: "You'll live to be 60!" Patient: "I AM 60!" Doctor: "See! What did I tell you?"
* A doctor held a stethoscope up to a man's chest. The man asks, "Doc, how do I stand? "The doctor says, "That's what puzzles me!"
* Patient: "I have a ringing in my ears. " Doctor: "Don't answer!"
* A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says, "You've been brought here for drinking. "The drunk says, "Okay, let's get started."
*Why do Jewish divorces cost so much? They're worth it.
*The Harvard School of Medicine did a study of why Jewish women like Chinese food so much. The study revealed that the reason for this is because Won Ton spelled backward is Not Now.
*There is a big controversy on the Jewish view of when life begins. In Jewish tradition, the fetus is not considered viable until it graduates from law school.
Q : Why don't Jewish mothers drink?
A : Alcohol interferes with their suffering.
*Q : Have you seen the newest Jewish-American-Princess horror movie?
A : It's called, "Debbie Does Dishes."
*Q : Why do Jewish mothers make great parole officers?
A : They never let anyone finish a sentence.
*A man called his mother in Florida . "Mom, how are you?" Not too good," said the mother. "I've been very weak. "The son said, "Why are you so weak?" She said, "Because I haven't eaten in 38 days. "The son said, "That's terrible. Why haven't you eaten in 38 days? "The mother answered, "Because, I didn't want my mouth to be full in case you should call."
*A Jewish boy comes home from school and tells his mother he has a part in the play. She asks, "What part is it?" The boy says, "I play the part of the Jewish husband. "The mother scowls and says, "Go back and tell the teacher you want a speaking part."
Q : Where does a Jewish husband hide money from his wife?
A : Under the vacuum cleaner.
Q : How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb?
A : (Sigh) "Don't bother. I'll sit in the dark. I don't want to be a nuisance to anybody."
A Jewish mother gives her son a blue shirt and a brown shirt for his birthday.
On the next visit, he wears the new brown one. The mother says, "What's the matter already? Didn't you like the blue one?"
Did you hear about the bum who walked up to a Jewish mother on the street and said, "Lady I haven't eaten in three days." "Force yourself," she replied.
Q : What's the difference between a Rottweiler and a Jewish mother?
A : Eventually, the Rottweiler lets go.
Q : Why are Jewish Men circumcised?
A : Because Jewish women don't like anything that isn't 20% off
Q: A kid, whose mother constantly called him 'bubbala,' went to school for his first day. When he came home his mother asked what did he learn?
A: The kid said I learned my name was Irving
W.C Fields went to the doctor. The doctor told W.C. if he kept drinking it would destroy his hearing. W.C said the stuff he drank was better than what he heard.
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9) Democracy Requires a Patriotic Education
The Athenians knew it. Jefferson knew it. Somehow we have forgotten: Civic devotion, instilled at school, is essential to a good society.
By Donald Kagan
Adapted from remarks by Yale University historian and professor emeritus Donald Kagan at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., Sept. 18, a talk based in part on a lecture he delivered at Yale on Nov. 4, 2001:
What is an education for? It is a question seldom investigated thoroughly. The ancient philosophers had little doubt: They lived in a city-state whose success and very existence depended on the willingness of citizens to overcome the human tendency to seek their individual, self-interested goals and to make the sacrifices needed for the community's well-being. Their idea of education, therefore, was moral and civic, not merely instrumental. They reasoned that if a state or community is to be good, its citizens must be good, so they aimed at an education that would produce virtuous people and good citizens.
Some two thousand years later, from the 16th through the 18th centuries, a different group of philosophers in Italy, England and France introduced a powerful new idea. Their world was dominated by ambitious princes and kings who were rapidly asserting ever greater authority over the lives of their people and trampling on the traditional expectations of individuals and communities. In the philosophers' view, every human being was naturally endowed with three essential rights: to defend his life, liberty and lawfully acquired property.
The responsibility of the state, therefore, was limited and largely negative: to protect the people from external enemies and not to interfere with the rights of individual citizens. Suspicious of the claims of church and state to inculcate virtue as mere devices to serve the selfish interests of their rulers, most philosophers of the Enlightenment believed that moral and civic instruction was not the business of the state.
Among our country's founders, none was a more devoted son of the Enlightenment than Thomas Jefferson, yet as he considered the needs of the new democratic republic he had helped to establish, he came to very different conclusions. Like the ancient philosophers, Jefferson regarded education as essential to the establishment and maintenance of a good polity— Plato, in "The Republic," spends many pages on the nature of the citizens' education, as does Aristotle in "Politics." Jefferson regarded a proper educational system as so important that in the epitaph he wrote for himself, he did not mention that he had twice been elected president of the United States but proudly recorded that he was the "Father of the University of Virginia."
Jefferson was convinced that there needed to be an education for all citizens if they and their new kind of popular government were to flourish. He understood that schools must provide "to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts, and accounts, in writing."
For Jefferson, though, the most important goals of education were civic and moral. In his "Preamble to the 1779 Virginia Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge" he addresses the need for all students to have a political education through the study of the "forms of government," political history and foreign affairs. This was not meant to be a "value free" exercise; on the contrary, its purpose was to communicate the special virtues of republican representative democracy, the dangers that threatened it, and the responsibility of its citizens to esteem and protect it. This education was to be a common experience for all citizens, rich and poor, for every one of them had natural rights and powers, and every one had to understand and esteem the institutions, laws and traditions of his country if it was to succeed.
It is striking to notice the similarity between Jefferson's ideas and those of a leader of the last great democracy prior to Jefferson's fledgling democracy. In 431 B.C., Pericles of Athens described the character of the great democratic society he wished for his community: A city "governed by the many, not the few," where in the "matter of public honors each man is preferred not on the basis of his class but of his good reputation and merit. No one, moreover, if he has it in him to do some good for the city, is barred because of poverty or humble origins."
Both great democratic leaders knew that democracy, properly understood, requires a careful balance between the political and constitutional rights of the individual, where absolute equality is the only acceptable principle, and the other aspects of life, where equality of opportunity and reward on the basis of merit are appropriate. They also agreed on the need for individuals to limit their desires and even to curtail their own rights, when necessary, to make sacrifices in the service of the community without whose protection those rights could not exist. In short, democracy and patriotism were inseparable.
These values have not disappeared, but in our own time they have been severely challenged. With the shock of the 9/11 terror attacks, most Americans reacted by clearly and powerfully supporting their government's determination to use military force to stop such attacks and to prevent future ones. Most Americans also expressed a new unity, an explicit patriotism and love of their country not seen among us for a very long time.
That is not what we saw and heard from the faculties on most elite campuses in the country, and certainly not from the overwhelming majority of people designated as "intellectuals" who spoke up in public. They offered any and all explanations, so long as they indicated that the attackers were really victims, that the fault really rested with the United States.
As most of us have come to know too well, the terrorists of al Qaeda and other jihadists regard America as "the great Satan" and hate the U.S. not only because its power stands in the way of the achievement of their Islamist vision, but also because its free, open, democratic, tolerant, liberal and prosperous society is a powerful competitor for the allegiance of millions of Muslims around the world. No change of American policy, no retreat from the world, no repentance or increase of modesty can change these things.
Yet many members of the intelligentsia decried the outburst of patriotism that greeted the new assault on America. The critics were exemplified by author Katha Pollitt, who wrote in the Oct. 1, 2001, edition of the Nation about her daughter wanting to fly the American flag outside their window after 9/11. "Definitely not," Ms. Pollitt replied. "The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war."
Such ideas still have a wide currency, reflecting a serious flaw in American education that should especially concern those of us who take some part in it. The encouragement of patriotism is no longer a part of our public educational system, and the cost of that omission has made itself felt. This would have alarmed and dismayed the founders of our country.
Jefferson meant American education to produce a necessary patriotism. Democracy—of all political systems, because it depends on the participation of its citizens in their own government and because it depends on their own free will to risk their lives in its defense—stands in the greatest need of an education that produces patriotism.
I recognize that I have said something shocking. The past half-century has seen a sharp turn away from what had been traditional attitudes toward the purposes and functions of education. Our schools have retreated from the idea of moral education, except for some attempts at what is called "values clarification," which is generally a cloak for moral relativism verging on nihilism of the sort that asserts that whatever feels good is good.
Even more vigorously have the schools fled from the idea of encouraging patriotism. In the intellectual climate of our time, the very suggestion brings contemptuous sneers or outrage, depending on the listener's mood. There is no end of quoting Samuel Johnson's famous remark that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," but no recollection of Boswell's explanation that Johnson "did not mean a real and generous love for our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest."
Many have been the attacks on patriotism for intolerance, arrogance and bellicosity, but that is to equate it with its bloated distortion, chauvinism. My favorite dictionary defines the latter as "militant and boastful devotion to and glorification of one's country," but defines a patriot as "one who loves, supports, and defends his country."
That does not require us to denigrate or attack any other country, nor does it require us to admire our own uncritically. But just as an individual must have an appropriate love of himself if he is to perform well, an appropriate love of his family if he and it are to prosper, so, too, must he love his country if it is to survive. Neither family nor nation can flourish without love, support and defense, so that an individual who has benefited from those institutions not only serves his self-interest but also has a moral responsibility to give them his support.
Thus are assaults on patriotism failures of character. They are made by privileged people who enjoy the full benefits offered by the country they deride and detest, but they lack the basic decency to pay it the allegiance and respect that honor demands. But honor, of course, is also an object of their derision.
Every country requires a high degree of cooperation and unity among its citizens if it is to achieve the internal harmony that every good society requires. Most countries have relied on the common ancestry and traditions of their people as the basis of their unity, but the United States can rely on no such commonality. We are an enormously diverse and varied people, almost all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. The great strengths provided by this diversity are matched by great dangers. We are always vulnerable to divisions among us that can be exploited to set one group against another and destroy the unity and harmony that have allowed us to flourish.
We live in a time when civic devotion has been undermined and national unity is under attack. The idea of a common American culture, enriched by the diverse elements that compose it but available equally to all, is under assault, and attempts are made to replace it with narrower and politically divisive programs that are certain to set one group of Americans against another.
The answer to these problems and our only hope for the future must lie in education, which philosophers have rightly put at the center of the consideration of justice and the good society. We look to education to solve the pressing current problems of our economic and technological competition with other nations, but we must not neglect the inescapable political, and ethical, effects of education.
We in the academic community have too often engaged in miseducation. If we encourage separatism, we will get separation and the terrible conflict in society it will bring. If we encourage rampant individualism to trample on the need for a community and common citizenship, if we ignore civic education, the forging of a single people, the building of a legitimate patriotism, we will have selfish individuals, heedless of the needs of others, the war of all against all, the reluctance to work toward the common good and to defend our country when defense is needed.
The civic sense that America needs can come only from a common educational effort. In telling the story of the American political experience, we must insist on the honest search for truth; we must permit no comfortable self-deception or evasion, no seeking of scapegoats. The story of this country's vision of a free, democratic republic and of its struggle to achieve it need not fear the most thorough examination and can proudly stand comparison with that of any other land.
In the long and deadly battle against those who hate Western ideals, and hate America in particular, we must be powerfully armed, morally as well as materially. To sustain us through the worst times we need courage and unity, and these must rest on a justified and informed patriotism.
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