Double Dip - Not Referring To Ice Cream!

I get an awful lot of e mails because I send an awful lot of e mails. I have over 730people on my e mail list. Below are some unsolicited responses to my most recent memo.

The last from a long time friend and sound investor.(See 1 below.)
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This time silence is not golden. (See 2 below.)
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Robin bears her breast and beats up on Michelle. (See 3 below.)
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Critique of Obama's West Point Commencement speech as well as what he said regarding Daniel Pearl.

I caught snippets of the West Point talk as I awoke and dressed. It was the first time in 24 days I had heard Obama's voice. It was like someone had thrown cold water in my face because I knew I was back home after 24 blissful days away on European travels.

I did not hear Obama's speech about Daniel Pearl but my son called my attention to Steyn's review.

Then there is this matter of oil spewing out of the floor of the Gulf. The Administration blamed BP, then acknowledged the supervising department had some responsibility for failing their oversight duties and finally the blame game has deteriorated to the point where everyone is dumping more verbal oil on the troubled waters.

Obama certainly does not know what to do and wants to duck this 'tar baby.' BP has engaged in a variety of activities trying to plug the leak but the oil still gushes and today Chicago's Sen. Durbin added his two inane cents. A plug nickel would have been more appropriate.

Sarah P said the obvious and no doubt will be chastised for pointing out the press has gone weak kneed because it is their favorite son who is up to his arm pits in oil. However, these same defenders of the truth quickly attacked his predecessor for failing to respond to Katrina in a timely fashion.

Hypocrisy has become commonplace and voters anger is rising with the bubbling oil.

With proper equipment and responsible management offshore drilling can be effectively pursued but this spill serves the emotional cry of those who oppose everything related to such drilling. Sad set back for off shore exploration. Even sadder for those whose economic fortunes and livelihood may be virtually ruined and the beautiful wildlife drowning in oil muck.(See 4 and 4a below.)
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Obama would like for Lebanon to play a constructive role in the Middle East but with Hezballah in control of the country that could prove wishful thinking. (See 5 below.
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So goes the Palestinian and Israeli negotiations and with the EURO's plight, so goes possible aid. (See 6 below.)
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I did not agree but I understand why a dreamy president might want to downplay America's role in the world. I even understand why that same dreamy president might believe our omnipotent presence left little room for other nations.

Obama's public criticism of our nation could even be interpreted as a good will gesture to foreign leaders that he would be a kinder and softer president with whom they would be dealing after 'prickly' GW.


Has it gained Obama or our nation any points? Has Obama's projection of weakness proven successful? Are we better off diplomatically? Has Obama's contrite display reduced the threat from Iran and/or N Korea?

Just in the last few days the president of Mexico came before Congress and lectured us while spitting in our face Chavez style and Turkey and Brazil decided to play shill for Irtan. Not what I would call evidence of their respect for our diplomatic efforts.

Krauthammer gives his view. (See 7 below.)
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It has become vapidly fashionable for politicians to bend the truth their way, torture facts in their behalf and when exposed to offer a mea culpa and repeat that meaningless phrase: "I take full responsibility." What does taking responsibility for lying really mean? What are the actual consequences? If words have meaning then 'I take full responsibility' are empty ones at best.

Voters are the ones who will ultimately determine what responsibility politicians have as they recently did when they rejected Arlen Spector for his duplicity. (See 8 and 8a below.)
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Does any of the above explain why the market is behaving as it is? You betcha it does. When the Oval Office is seen as dysfunctioning it has market implications. When it is becoming evident that debt has reached significant levels as a percent of various nation's GDP that has market implications. When rogue nations are permitted to go unleashed that has market implications. When government ineptness and political corruption become commonplace that too carries market implications. When a nation flirts with bankruptcy that is a wake up call that cannot be denied.


Finally, as I have often written and now am joined by Christopher Wood, don't rule up a Double Dip and we are not referring to ice cream. (See 9 below.)
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Dick
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1)Liberalism is a sort of a contamination like an oil spill which does not wash off easily (particularly when droplets penetrate the brain...)
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"I have gone to several Tea Parties including the one in DC. There are millions who think as you do and worry about the fate of this country. I have talked to people who were never involved politically but are now awakened and see where BHO and his minions are taking us. They are ready to fight.

I was talking to my doctor {he likes to shoot} and he and others he knows feel that violent uprisings will be next. Not a good time for the country. It is amazing the electorate voted an avowed socialist into office and then are surprised when he has a socialist agenda. Stupidity will kill us all."
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SNOPES SAYS IT'S TRUE!!!


DEVOUT MUSLIMS-- HEADING HOME LAND SECURITY????

Well, boys and girls, today we are letting the fox guard the hen house. The wolves will be herding the sheep!Obama appoints two devout Muslims to Homeland Security posts. Doesn't this make you feel safer already?

Obama and Janet Napolitano appointed Arif Alikhan, a devout Muslim, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano swore-in Kareem Shora, a devout Muslim, who was born in Damascus, Syria, as ADC National Executive Director as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council

Has anyone ever heard a new government official being identified as a devout Catholic, a devout Jew or a devout Protestant...?
Just wondering.
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...I think the bubble/debt overhang problems are going to be with us a long time, and that growth prospects are mediocre even on optimistic assumptions. Of course it doesn’t help that the present US government is resolutely anti-business and anti-investor, but I expect the real-world consequences of their incompetence and ideological blindness to result in some righting (pun intended) of the political balance.

I believe Western civilization is declining fast (the deeper meaning of Obama is that he embraces and promotes this decline), and that the future of humanity, like most of its past, is in the East. So, in a sense, ALL rallies are bear market rallies as long as the deep foundations of American and Western strength and vitality are eroding.
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2) Is This Just a Nightmare, or Did It Really Happen?
By Jared E. Peterson

Over the past week we witnessed presidential and congressional disloyalty without precedent in American history, events that should be indelibly imprinted on the American electorate's collective memory. For the first time (at least to this writer's knowledge), a foreign head of state who is promoting an ongoing, aggressive, illegal, and often violent invasion of America came to our country, met with our president, and, from the White House itself, received our president's implicit but obvious public support for that invasion; and that same foreign leader spoke to Congress and received a standing ovation from its Democrat members' for his country's war on America's borders.


Is this just a nightmare, or did it really happen?


During Barrack Hussein Obama's May 19, 2010 joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderón, our president -- constitutionally charged with the duty to defend America from all enemies, foreign and domestic -- earned the scarlet "D": By silence he aligned himself with the invaders of our country and their leader against the citizens of America's own state of Arizona who have been forced by his dereliction to defend themselves.


Nearly as amazing, on Thursday, May 20, 2010, that same foreign president, speaking from where Churchill stood during World War II, received a standing ovation from the Democrat members of Congress when he reviled the citizens of Arizona for daring to try to fashion a defense of their part of the American-Mexican border. And the Republicans did not walk out or offer any other visible, dramatic objection.


An aside: The feckless Republican non-response to the Mexican President's May 20 congressional rant is probably the least astounding of the week's events. Our stodgy Republican opposition, with a few exceptions (e.g., see Congressman Tom McClintock's superlative speech) is notable for its lack of leadership, courage, eloquence, timing, and political prescience. That a foreign head of state who insults the overwhelming majority of America's citizens from a congressional podium might require a dramatic response from them, and at the same time might present a perfect opportunity to make clear which party is aligned with the American people on illegal immigration, would not occur to most of the timid and unimaginative mediocrities in this bunch.


But to return to the point: Consider carefully the stain of disloyalty that President Obama indelibly affixed to himself during the week just past.


On Wednesday, May 19, 2010, Felipe Calderón, President of politically and economically failed Mexico, stood on the South Lawn of the White House as a guest of America. He proceeded to claim that Arizona's recently enacted immigration law "is forcing our people there to face discrimination," and thereby he publicly trashed the State of Arizona, its legislators and governor, and, if polls are accurate, about 70% of its residents (and probably nearly the same percentage of all Americans) who unambiguously want the border sealed and support Arizona's benign efforts to accomplish that goal. He said more, but that was enough.


Standing next to this boor, the President of the United States (sic) responded to the tirade against America with silence. Or as the rest of the world will interpret Obama's muteness, "I agree with everything you just said." Can anyone imagine similar complicit disloyalty from Lincoln, Roosevelt (T. or F.D.), Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan?


Rather than defend the reasonable actions of his countrymen, our president joined in the foreigner's indictment of them. Later, on television, while the offensive Mexican president was still in the country, Obama added his own condemnation of those vile Americans he risibly claims to lead and protect: Of the Arizona statute, he said, "The Justice Department is looking at the legislation to make sure it's consistent with 'our core values' and 'existing legal precedent.'" Again, code-speak for "I agree with El Presedente. The people of Arizona, their legislators and governor, and all those who support them are despicable bigots."


When America is being invaded by a foreign power, one expects the President of the United States to be on America's side. That's how it's worked in the past, anyway. If that's too steep a demand, could we ask that our president not publicly endorse the enemy's characterization of modest defensive efforts as "discriminatory"? If even that decent silence is too much, could our president at least not provide the invaders' leader with a White House venue to denounce our people and our laws?


Note to those Americans who have not yet noticed: Barrack Hussein Obama does not like or sympathize with this country.


His instinctual affinities are with others, particularly if they come from the southern hemisphere or call themselves Muslims, and especially if they vote Democrat when they get here. For a long time, some have known this about America's first anti-American president. Many have not yet perceived it. Had most Republican members of Congress not been asleep, confused, or afraid, the events of last week could have cast a brilliant light on this awful truth.


But exposing the charlatan when he allows the truth to spill out, as he did last week, requires a courageous, clear-thinking, and articulate opposition. Other than Representative McClintock and a few more, who among key GOP officeholders possesses these traits?


An effective, courageous, and astute opposition lacking, the only course for loyal Americans is never to let last week's outrages be forgotten.


Any Republican candidate who fails to remind the November electorate that Barrack Hussein Obama, and the congressional Democrats en masse, endorsed and applauded America's invaders and condemned its defenders, does not have the requisite qualities of intellect and courage to be helpful in the struggle to reclaim our country.


Jared E. Peterson graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in Political Philosophy, and from the Harvard Law School. He has been a practicing lawyer for more than thirty-five years.
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3)Commencement Address Hell
By Robin of Berkeley

This is the season of college commencement speeches. The only thing I recall about mine was commencement speaker, Sen. Robert Byrd, who seemed ancient even back then, and who put us all to sleep.


Michelle Obama recently gave a speech to graduates at George Washington University. The underlying message? Do as I say, not as I do.


Also: Life sucks, and then you die. There's war and famine and an overcooked planet. Become global citizens and fix the mess! Clean the feet of lepers in Calcutta, eradicate malaria in the Sudan, and live like a monk with no personal needs.


Of course, Michelle's own personal journey has been a tad different. After she graduated from racist-infested Princeton University, Michelle made big bucks as a corporate lawyer. Working as a vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center, she saved the hospital a bundle through patient-dumping -- sending those unable to pay to other hospitals.


Michelle, who as First Lady requires 22 personal assistants, apparently helped Barack make millions by helping convince unrepentant domestic terrorist and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers to ghostwrite his long-overdue autobiography.


Not wanting to live in one of those dreary third-world shacks, Barack and Michelle entered into a shady land deal with corrupt businessman Tony Rezko, who helped the couple buy million-dollar-plus digs that were a financial stretch.


Now, if I were ever invited to give a commencement speech, my theme would be similar to Michelle's. Except instead of "Do as I say, not as I do," I'd preach, "Don't do as I say, and don't do as I do." Because after all, why should some grizzled old commencement speaker force his or her opinions on the young?


My speech would go something like this:


Dear Graduate,


Stop listening to other people. This society has been telling you how to think and what to believe for far too long.


Remember when your 9th-grade teacher said that the U.S. was the root of all evil? She was lying. It took me forty-something years to realize this. Take the time to do what I never did: Read, analyze, and figure things out on your own.


I think you'd all do better without people like Obama and Bill Ayers and that 9th-grade teacher yakking at you all the time. Many of you are doing amazingly well in spite of the Left's mind games.


For instance, there's the lovely Carrie Prejean, a former Miss California-USA, who had the guts to articulate her support for traditional marriage. And then there's the equally lovely Miss Oklahoma, Elizabeth Morgan Woolard, who stood up to the liberal media by supporting states' rights in Arizona.


And I want you to meet my latest, greatest young person: 18-year-old, Celeste Finkenbine.



Celeste's teacher humiliated her in front of the class by smearing her with that vile slang word used for tea-partiers. The teacher also based the final exam on an analysis of Michael Moore's movie Sicko without administrative approval. Celeste walked herself right over to the principal's office to register a complaint.


I'm sure that there are innumerable Celestes out there. You observe the law and expect your leaders to do the same. Remarkably, you maintain personal integrity amidst the constant pressure to shut up, hook up, and tune out.


You offer us all hope -- real hope, not the manufactured kind. Your incandescent spirit helps to illuminate these dark times. Perhaps you had the strong hands of parents and grandparents to guide you. Maybe a connection with God has inoculated you from the propaganda.


Fortunately, you have many adult counterparts, like those strong conservative women, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Malkin, and Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona. But this country doesn't need just bold women. We need you young males too -- desperately, actually. But don't be like the females; be real men instead.


Because this nation doesn't need any more feminized males. Our country is suffering from a paucity of strong men.


My final words are directed toward the adults who are yapping at you all day long. This is for the teachers and politicians and media talking heads who tell you whom to vote for, what to believe, and what you should do with your one precious life.


To them I say: Unless you are the parents, grandparents, or favorite aunt, back off. Leave these kids alone. Stop the indoctrination. Rather than controlling them, start making this country a safe place for them to spread their wings.


Allow these youths to have their dreams, even if among them lies the one you discredit: the American dream. Stop turning their dreams into Kafkaesque nightmares.


Heed the wise words of the poet Kahlil Gibran. Though he wrote them almost a hundred years ago, he could have been preaching to you, Michelle and Barack, and to you, Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings, and to most of the teachers in the land:


Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's
longing for itself. . .
You may give them your love but not
your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not
their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even
in your dreams.


A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley.
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4)Obama Speaks His Mind at West Point
By Jonathan F. Keiler

President Obama used a teleprompter for his West Point commencement address, which means that he took the occasion seriously. What he said, however dull and clichéd, represents not just the sometimes-flighty emanations from his remarkable brain, but also United States policy at large.


Obama's West Point speech was bland, but it is doubtful that the president was simply being lazy. Rather, given the solemn setting of a graduating class of Second Lieutenants setting off for war, presumably Obama was in his most serious mode.


The speech, marked by Obama's frequent slouching into the passive voice, may reflect the fact that the president had little intellectual or emotional sympathy for the ranks of cadets in front of him. Still, his words, however prosaic, matter.


Right off, by way of a lame joke about cadets on restriction, Obama claims "absolute power" as commander-in-chief to "absolve" them, managing in a single phrase to mangle the Constitution (nobody in this country has absolute power over anything) while also going into full messianic mode (who but God can truly absolve?).



For an address to a group of young warrior leaders, Obama focuses mainly on ideas of harmony and cooperation. Accordingly Obama tells them that "understanding of the cultures and traditions of the place where you serve" is just as important as "performance on the battlefield." Nor does Obama call for victory. Rather, in Afghanistan, "with our Afghan and international partners[,] we will succeed." It sounds like he is calling on the cadets to establish a new international foundation, or to fund his presidential library.


He praises the cadets' "international experience" at foreign academies and the "new friendships" forged with visiting cadets. That's all well and good, but in a nearly four-thousand word speech, Obama only once uses the word enemy, and that in the context of the "common enemies" of the American and Afghan peoples. Instead in discussing attacks on the homeland, Obama refers to "violent extremists" from a "distant place." Where? The stars?


Obama spends plenty of time and energy extolling the "diversity of race and ethnicity" within the Corps, from the fact that the top two graduates are women to "all the great religions" represented by the cadets. Fine again, but this is the only part of the speech that is really direct and at all sings -- it is the only point where Obama appears invested. And of course, along the same lines, Obama could not omit a comment rejecting "al Qaeda's gross distortion of Islam[.]"


Of course, there was plenty of pie-in-the-sky new ageism, as in the pursuit of "clean energy" and "research that unlocks wonders" to solve all our problems. Perhaps this rings true with some cadets or their parents. A shame Obama can't just wave his wand and make it happen -- though he often acts like he just might.


More importantly, the speech embodies Obama's core discounting of American exceptionalism in favor of policies that "build new partnerships and shape stronger international standards and institutions." This is predictable from Obama, but asserting it at West Point reinforces the depth of the president's internationalist disposition.


The speech also reeks of the president's insulated moral blindness and hypocrisy. Obama implicitly rejects America's special place among nations, but he is not above wrapping himself in the mantle of historic American moral leadership, at least as he would like it to be. Thus, we have succeeded not by "stepping out of the current of cooperation, but by steering those in the direction of liberty and justice." This is arguably true of our nation's history, but not of Obama's presidency. When has Obama steered a course in the direction of international liberty? Rather, he has coddled the cruelest and most autocratic regimes and turned a deaf ear to those within them fighting for liberty and justice, all the while pressuring, insulting, and betraying our democratic allies.


But perhaps most disturbing of all is Obama's deceptively fine-sounding reference to "universal rights" at the end of the speech. After noting the "inalienable rights" asserted by our founding fathers and embodied in our foundational documents, Obama goes on to assert that these same rights are indeed "claimed by people of every race and religion in every region of the world."


Certainly there are individuals from Pyongyang to Beijing to Tehran who claim these rights, but that is not the point, and the statement is typical of Obama's obfuscation of reality. Obama flatly ignores these individuals while seeking to do business with governments that flatly reject the American creed. These governments control hundreds of millions of people for whom universal rights are meaningless formulation, whether because they cannot obtain them, are unaware of the concept, or are just not interested.


And why not interested? Because, heaven forbid, their political philosophy or religion (or both) just do not accommodate Western concepts of universal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These nations represent our rivals at best, our enemies at worst. One of them, as Obama effectively sits idle, is near to acquiring nuclear weapons with which to attack our democratic allies, and ultimately us, while others are already so armed. But you would never know that from Obama's West Point speech. Nor would the graduating cadets and their parents know from his words that someday we might well have to fight them. And that is why the speech, teleprompter and all, is important.


4a)Obama owed it to Daniel Pearl to speak the truth; Couldn't he have at least done that?
By Mark Steyn


Barack Obama's remarkable powers of oratory are well known: In support of Chicago's Olympic bid, he flew into Copenhagen to give a heartwarming speech about himself, and they gave the games to Rio. He flew into Boston to support Martha Coakley's bid for the U.S. Senate, and Massachusetts voters gave Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican. In the first year of his presidency, he gave a gazillion speeches on health care "reform" and drove support for his proposals to basement level, leaving Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to ram it down the throats of the American people through sheer parliamentary muscle.

Like a lot of guys who've been told they're brilliant one time too often, President Obama gets a little lazy, and doesn't always choose his words with care. And so it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl, upon signing the "Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act." Pearl was decapitated on video by jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That's how I'd put it. This is what the president of the United States said:


"Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world's imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is."
Now Obama's off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he's talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased's family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it's the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving and true. Indeed, for Obama, it's the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.

Instead, he delivered the one above, which in its clumsiness and insipidness is most revealing. First of all, note the passivity: "The loss of Daniel Pearl." He wasn't "lost." He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his "loss" merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none.

Even if Americans don't get the message, the rest of the world does. This week's pictures of the leaders of Brazil and Turkey clasping hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also monuments to American passivity.

But what did the "loss" of Daniel Pearl mean? Well, says the president, it was "one of those moments that captured the world's imagination." Really? Evidently it never captured Obama's imagination because, if it had, he could never have uttered anything so fatuous. He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl's fate, and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of therapeutic sedation: "one of those moments" — you know, like Princess Di's wedding, Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, whatever — "that captured the world's imagination."


Notice how reflexively Obama lapses into sentimental one-worldism: Despite our many zip codes, we are one people, with a single imagination. In fact, the murder of Daniel Pearl teaches just the opposite — that we are many worlds, and worlds within worlds. Some of them don't even need an "imagination." Across the planet, the video of an American getting his head sawed off did brisk business in the bazaars and madrassahs and Internet downloads. Excited young men e-mailed it to friends, from cell phone to cell phone, from Karachi to Jakarta to Khartoum to London to Toronto to Falls Church, Virginia. In the old days, you needed an "imagination" to conjure the juicy bits of a distant victory over the Great Satan. But in an age of high-tech barbarism the sight of Pearl's severed head is a mere click away.

And the rest of "the world"? Most gave a shrug of indifference. And far too many found the reality of Pearl's death too uncomfortable, and chose to take refuge in the same kind of delusional pap as Obama. The president is only the latest Western liberal to try to hammer Daniel Pearl's box into a round hole. Before him, it was Michael Winterbottom in his film "A Mighty Heart": As Pearl's longtime colleague Asra Nomani wrote, "Danny himself had been cut from his own story." Or as Paramount's promotional department put it, "Nominate the most inspiring ordinary hero. Win a trip to the Bahamas!" Where you're highly unlikely to be kidnapped and beheaded! (Although, in the event that you are, please check the liability-waiver box at the foot of the entry form.)

The latest appropriation that his "loss" "reminded us of how valuable a free press is." It was nothing to do with "freedom of the press." By the standards of the Muslim world, Pakistan has a free-ish and very lively press. The problem is that some 80 percent of its people wish to live under the most extreme form of Sharia, and many of its youth are exported around the world in advance of that aim. The man convicted of Pearl's murder was Omar Sheikh, a British subject, a London School of Economics student, and, like many jihadists from Osama to the Pantybomber, a monument to the peculiar burdens of a non-deprived childhood in the Muslim world. The man who actually did the deed was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed in March 2007: "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi." But Obama's not the kind to take "guilty" for an answer, so he's arranging a hugely expensive trial for KSM amid the bright lights of Broadway.

Listen to his killer's words: "The American Jew Daniel Pearl." We hit the jackpot! And then we cut his head off. Before the body was found, The Independent's Robert Fisk offered a familiar argument to Pearl's kidnappers: Killing him would be "a major blunder… the best way of ensuring that the suffering" — of Kashmiris, Afghans, Palestinians — "goes unrecorded." Other journalists peddled a similar line: if you release Danny, he'll be able to tell your story, get your message out, "bridge the misconceptions." But the story did get out; the severed headis the message; the only misconception is that that's a misconception.

Daniel Pearl was the prototype for a new kind of terror. In his wake came other victims from Kenneth Bigley, whose last words were that "Tony Blair has not done enough for me," to Fabrizzio Quattrocchi, who yanked off his hood, yelled "I will show you how an Italian dies!" and ruined the movie for his jihadist videographers. By that time, both men understood what it meant to be in a windowless room with a camera and a man holding a scimitar. But Daniel Pearl was the first, and in his calm, coherent final words understood why he was there:

"My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California, USA …"

He didn't have a prompter. But he spoke the truth. That's all President Obama owed him — to do the same.

I mentioned last week the attorney general's peculiar insistence that "radical Islam" was nothing to do with the Times Square bomber, the Pantybomber, the Fort Hood killer. Just a lot of moments "capturing the world's imagination." For now, the jihadists seem to have ceased cutting our heads off. Listening to Obama and Eric Holder, perhaps they've figured out there's nothing much up there anyway.
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5)In Washington talks, U.S. voices hope that Lebanon will play a role in building peace in an 'increasingly volatile and dangerous' Middle East.
By Natasha Mozgovaya and News Agencies


U.S. President Barak Obama used talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Said Hariri in Washington on Monday night to warn of the growing danger of arms smuggling to Hezbollah militants.



"The President stressed [...] the threat posed by the transfer of weapons into Lebanon in violation of UNSCR 1701," the White House said in a statement following the meeting.



United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 was passed after a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 and calls for the disarmament of the Shi'a Muslim group – but despite the presence of a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, it has yet to be enforced.



Hariri's first official visit to the United States took place against a backdrop of tensions in the Middle East, U.S. efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and growing momentum toward new international sanctions on Iran, Hezbollah's major backer.



Lebanon and Syria have said they fear a possible attack by Israel after President Shimon Peres accused Syria in April of supplying Hezbollah with long-range Scud missiles capable of hitting major Israeli cities. Damascus has denied the charge and accused Israel of fomenting war.



Some U.S. officials have expressed doubt that any Scuds were actually handed over in full to Hezbollah, although they believe Syria might have transferred weapons parts.



"We obviously have grave concerns about the transfer of any missile capability to Hezbollah through Lebanon from Syria," a senior Obama administration official said on Friday, saying the issue would likely be raised in Monday's talks.



Hariri has also denied Israel's accusations, while his government has said it backs the right of the guerrilla group to keep its weapons to deter Israeli attacks. Israel has not signaled any imminent plans to strike.



Earlier Hariri met U.S. Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell, who made clear that the Obama administration hoped Lebanon would play a major role in an eventual regional peace deal with Israel.



"I told Prime Minister Hariri that I hope to renew our dialogue in Lebanon in the not-too-distant future," Mitchell said after the meeting. "I look forward to working closely with him and having the benefit of his counsel in our quest for comprehensive Middle East peace."



He said: "Over the past four decades Lebanon has struggled to survive as a beacon of pluralism and tolerance in a neighborhood that has grown increasingly volatile and dangerous."



Mitchell reassured Hariri that peace between Israel and the Palestinians would not force Lebanon to absorb Palestinian refugees, who form a large contingent of the country's population.



"We have made it clear - and I repeated to the Prime Minister today - that comprehensive peace cannot and must not include the forced naturalization of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon," Mitchell said.



Apparently trying to keep the spotlight off Middle East tensions, the White House limited press coverage of the meeting to letting news photographers into the Oval Office at the end of the session. There were no plans for the leaders to appear together for public statements.



Lebanon's changing role



Despite the recent war of words that has heightened tensions in the region, UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Michael Williams, noted on Friday "that recent tension is now diminishing."



Williams, who held talks with Hariri in Beirut, was quoted by the prime minister's office as saying he was pleased "that all sides have scaled back the rhetoric."



Obama and Hariri also discussed U.S.-led international efforts to isolate Iran over its disputed nuclear program, officials said. Lebanon holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council through May 31.



Diplomats said Beirut had quietly asked the permanent members of the Security Council -Britain, France, Russia, China and the United States - not to push for a vote on a new Iran sanctions resolution while it held the presidency.



Lebanon is expected to abstain in any vote because Iranian-backed Hezbollah is in its government, diplomats said.



Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Lebanon no longer enjoyed the status it had under the Bush administration, when it was the "fulcrum" of efforts to spread democracy in the Middle East.



The Obama administration's Middle East policy is more focused on the nuclear stand-off with Iran, war in Afghanistan, and reviving the Middle East peace process, he said.



Nevertheless, the United States has expanded military assistance to Lebanon to strengthen its armed forces as a counterweight to Hezbollah, allocating 500 million euros to training and equipping Lebanese security forces since 2005.
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6)Report: EU may cut aid to PA if talks fail

The EU could reconsider the amount of aid it provides to
the Palestinian Authority if no progress is made in peace talks, EU
diplomats reportedly said Monday, as officials meet to discuss the next
seven-year budget.

The aid, approximately 300 million euros, is meant to prepare the PA for a
peace treaty with Israel that would provide them with a sovereign state, but
"if that isn't coming then I can see a number of questions," said Christian
Berger, the EU's representative in Jerusalem, according to the Reuters news
agency.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, financial assistance to the
PA and Palestinian people constitutes the EU's highest per capita foreign
aid program. Its seven-year budget, which will end in 2013, partly funds UN
support projects.

Additionally, funds are transferred via the EU's PEGASE program which has
contributed to PA salaries and pensions, as well as providing financial
assistance to Palestinian families below the poverty line and encouraging
the growth of small businesses in the West Bank.

A delegation from the European Parliament is visiting Israel and the
Palestinian territories this week and would certainly be asking "if at the
end of the day we don't have a state, then what are we doing with the
money," Berger added, Reuters wrote.

EU Ambassador to Israel Andrew Standley said discussions on the next
seven-year budget would start soon and focus on how best to spend the money.

Israeli and Palestinian officials recently re-entered indirect talks
mediated by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, with the Obama
administration calling on the meetings to swiftly move on to direct
negotiations, which were broken off in December 2008 when Israel launched
Operation Cast Lead.

"If there's a breakthrough then I guess there's a likelihood that our
support will be increased," Berger told reporters at a briefing of EU
delegation heads.

Berger added that Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's plans for the creation of
institutions in preparation for a state, which receive EU support and
funding, were on track and the PA was "performing better than some states
are states already."

In January, Fayyad rebuffed rumors that the EU would slice its funding to
the PA if no new developments are achieved in the peace process. "I have no
idea about this issue at all," Fayyad said at the time.
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7)The fruits of weakness
By C. KRAUTHAMMER


Last week’s uranium deal maneuver between Iran, Brazil and Turkey demonstrates how traditional US allies have decided that there’s no profit in lining up with a president given to apologies and appeasement.

It is perfectly obvious that Iran’s latest uranium maneuver, brokered by Brazil and Turkey, is a ruse. Iran retains more than enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. And it continues enriching at an accelerated pace and to a greater purity (20 percent). Which is why the French Foreign Ministry immediately declared that the trumpeted temporary shipping of some Iranian uranium to Turkey will do nothing to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

It will, however, make meaningful sanctions more difficult. America’s proposed Security Council resolution is already laughably weak – no blacklisting of Iran’s central bank, no sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas industry, no nonconsensual inspections on the high seas. Yet Turkey and Brazil – both current members of the Security Council – are so opposed to sanctions that they will not even discuss the resolution. And China will now have a new excuse to weaken it further.

But the deeper meaning of the uranium-export stunt is the brazenness with which Brazil and Turkey gave cover to the mullahs’ nuclear ambitions and deliberately undermined US efforts to curb Iran’s program.

The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

THAT PICTURE – a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam – is a crushing verdict on President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost in lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a US president given to apologies and appeasement.

They’ve watched Obama’s humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed US negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant US strategic advance in the region in 30 years.


They’ve watched America acquiesce to Russia’s re-exerting sway over Eastern Europe, over Ukraine (pressured by Russia last month into extending for 25 years its lease of the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol) and over Georgia (Russia’s de facto annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer an issue under the Obama “reset” policy).

They’ve watched our appeasement of Syria, Iran’s agent in the Arab Levant – sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it tightens its grip on Lebanon, supplies Hizbullah with Scuds and intensifies its role as the pivot of the Iran-Hizbullah-Hamas alliance. The price for this ostentatious flouting of the US and its interests? Ever more eager US “engagement.”

They’ve observed the administration’s gratuitous slap at Britain over the Falklands, its contemptuous treatment of Israel, its undercutting of the Czech Republic and Poland and its indifference to Lebanon and Georgia. And in Latin America, they see not just US passivity as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez organizes his anti-American “Bolivarian” coalition while deepening military and commercial ties with Iran and Russia. They saw active US support in Honduras for a pro-Chavez would-be dictator seeking unconstitutional powers in defiance of the democratic institutions of that country.

This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat – accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum.

Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It’s the perfect fulfillment of Obama’s adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. Hence his foundational declaration at the UN General Assembly last September that “no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation” (guess who’s been the dominant nation for the last two decades?) and his dismissal of any “world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another.” (NATO? The West?)

Given Obama’s policies and principles, Turkey and Brazil are acting rationally. Why not give cover to Ahmadinejad and his nuclear ambitions? As the US retreats in the face of Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela, why not hedge your bets? There’s nothing to fear from Obama, and everything to gain by ingratiating yourself with America’s rising adversaries. After all, they actually believe in helping one’s friends and punishing one’s enemies. – The Washington Post
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8)Real Marines Don't Lie
By Kathleen Parker

WASHINGTON -- I have a thing for Marines, always have. It began a long time ago when I watched my older brother amble away in the night toward his barracks at Camp Pendleton near San Diego.

I cried myself dry that evening, thinking that I might not see him again, knowing that the next morning he was off to Vietnam. Khe Sanh, his ultimate destination, might as well have been another planet. As it turns out, it was Hell.


Jack came home eventually, a different boy than the one who left. Still just a teenager, he was leaner and meaner. His eyes gave nothing away. When our father and I visited Jack in the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, where he was being treated for "battle fatigue" and other afflictions, we stuck to safe subjects: college, cars and girls, his primary interests at that point.

To this day, I've yet to hear any stories of war from him, nor, for that matter, from any of the men in my family, all of them veterans of various conflicts. A few scattered pictures of tough boys sporting knives and guns occasionally find their way to the top of a shoe box, but there are no videos or journals, no displays of purple hearts.

Like most veterans, with a few notable exceptions, my brother has expressed no desire to revisit that time and place, nor any need to boast of his exploits. When you've witnessed the horrors of war, you apparently don't need to tell anyone.

All of these thoughts surfaced as I pondered Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general recently infamous for exaggerating his role as a Marine reservist during the Vietnam era. At various times, he has accurately said that he wore the uniform during that period; other times, he has said that he wore the uniform in Vietnam. In fact, he received several draft deferments while a student at Harvard and Cambridge, and enlisted in the Marines only when those deferments were running out.

And, he did falsely and knowingly imply that he was a combat veteran. The question is why? And what should voters make of it when they go to the polls?

Blumenthal, a Democrat, is running to fill retiring Sen. Chris Dodd's seat. His fiercest opponent has been Republican Linda McMahon, who says her campaign assisted with a New York Times investigation into Blumenthal's false claims. As an unintended consequence, McMahon's involvement may have provided momentum to her principal Republican rival, former Rep. Rob Simmons, who did serve in Vietnam and received two bronze stars.

On a certain level, it is gratifying that those who served in America's most unpopular war -- and who were vilified back home -- now can enjoy some measure of pride in their service. But the humility common among heroes is in scant evidence these days, and selective memory has rarely been so repugnant.

Blumenthal isn't the first to exaggerate his service, of course. "Stolen Valor" is the title of a book that chronicles phony heroes falsely claiming to have served in Vietnam.

There is, indeed, something unique about the Vietnam era that haunts a generation. All are familiar with the deep divisions that brought students to riot, leaving four dead at Kent State, and others to trek to Canada. The draft was the Maginot Line of America's heart, and too many of the unlucky never came home.

Who knows what motivated Blumenthal to stretch his truth? Perhaps it was survivor's guilt.

"There is nothing that binds Marines together like combat and, if you missed it, I can understand that he (Blumenthal) may have actually convinced himself he was there," my brother wrote in an e-mail. "But those who served in combat consider Marines who did not the same brothers, regardless. We are a team and those in the rear are just as important as those on the line."

The deception, as always, is something else. Blumenthal had every right under the law to seek deferments. He had every right to be proud of his service during the Vietnam era. But he did not have the right to build personal equity on the borrowed suffering of others.

Had he gone to Vietnam, as he apparently thinks he should have, he would have learned that, and this: Real heroes never brag, and real Marines don't lie.


8a)Feeding America's twilight
By Colin McNickle

Something is in dangerous intellectual disrepair in America. And if we don't fix it, America will be lost.

Here are just a few of the scores of examples:

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called ObamaCare "an entrepreneurial bill" that should encourage Americans to be "creative," and be, say, "a musician." Quit your job, she urged; "focus on your talent" and don't worry about not having health care.

Perhaps that's because other hardworking, tax-paying schmucks are paying for this freeloader's socialist care?

• The Obama administration, in its formal response to the several states' class action lawsuit over ObamaCare, has invoked the Commerce and General Welfare clauses as its constitutional warrant to force people to buy health insurance (and, on this slippery slope, whatever else the government damn well commands).

But James Madison, father of the Constitution, clearly stated (in Federalist 41 in 1788) that the General Welfare Clause is applicable only to the 21 items listed in Article I, Section 8. There's nothing about the federal government forcing you to buy health insurance.

And the Commerce Clause, reminded University of Texas law professor Calvin H. Johnson (in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal in 2004), applied strictly to "specific mercantilist proposals related to deep-water shipping and foreign trade." Interstate commerce hardly was a significant issue in the original debates, the professor reminds.

• Then there's Michael Posner, the Obama administration's assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor. During talks in China to address human rights concerns, he cited Arizona's crackdown on illegal aliens as an example of "racial discrimination." It is "a troubling trend," he said.

Let's see ... defending the Arizona border (not to mention the rule of law) from invading illegals is the moral equivalent of China murdering millions of its own people in defense of a Communist thugocracy.

Never has the imbecility of a true moron ever been on more stark display. Well, not exactly ...

• Mexican President Felipe Calderon, during last week's state visit to Washington, publicly chastised as "discriminatory" Arizona's crackdown.

Not only did President Barack Bumfuzzled fail to immediately cite Mexican law that makes illegals felons and eligible for jail time in one of Calderon's dungeons, Mr. No Gonads failed to also click his fingers and command the Secret Service to grab el presidente by the collar and escort him to the White House gates.

Then Barack the Bower hosted Calderon at a state dinner.

• Writing in Salon.com, Gabriel Winant complains of conservatives' "weird fetishism for the Constitution." 'Nuff said.

It was in 1787, as Benjamin Franklin waited to affix his John Hancock to the newly minted Constitution of the United States, that he remarked on the carving of a half sun on the back of George Washington's chair.

"I have often looked at that picture behind the president without being able to tell whether it was a rising or setting sun. Now at length I have the happiness to know that it indeed is a rising, not setting sun."

Shall the few examples of the kind of behavior and thinking that today is legion predominate and prevail, the American aurora will be but a quaint notion, replaced by a sad and tragic dusk.
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9)Don't Rule Out a Double Dip Recession
In addition to Europe's woes, we have slower growth in China and a decline in bank lending and the velocity of money in the U.S
By CHRISTOPHER WOOD

World financial markets reacted bearishly to Germany's surprise announcement last week banning "naked" short-selling of euro-zone government debt, derivatives and some financial stocks. Short selling is considered naked when it involves the sale of an asset that isn't owned by the seller and isn't borrowed to cover the position while it's held. The news disturbed investors because of the unilateral nature of Germany's action. It's also seen as a potential prelude to other antimarket actions from Germany, or for that matter the U.S. and other Western nations, where the political backlash against free markets continues.

Also causing anxiety is the ominous rise in recent weeks in the three-month London interbank offered rate (Libor), the rate the most creditworthy banks charge each other for loans. This could result in yet another European credit crisis with banks becoming increasingly unwilling to lend to each other because of the interconnected holdings of "junk" European government debt. Bank for International Settlements (BIS) data shows that European bank exposure to sovereign debt in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain totalled $2.8 trillion at the end of last year, accounting for 89% of international banks' total exposure to those countries.


Moving beyond Europe, a further negative for investors to contend with has been China's current tightening cycle; most particularly a machine-gun burst of antispeculation measures in the past two months aimed at its booming residential property market. China's leadership, worried by growing social concerns about unaffordable apartment prices, will want to see official confirmation that both residential property transactions and residential property prices are falling, as indeed is now the case. Transaction volumes are down more than 50% from the levels reached in the first half of April. Prices will soon follow.

An easing in policy toward housing by Beijing is unlikely until the end of the third quarter, though an earlier U-turn on policy is plausible in the event of a complete blowup in Europe. For this would reactivate Beijing's concerns about its business abroad. When the green light is turned on again, whenever that may be, all the empirical evidence suggests that this will translate into renewed demand for residential properties—as was also the case at the beginning of 2009, which was the last time the policy was reversed.

China's woes have served to aggravate the concerns of investors who are already negatively focused on Europe, where the Greek crisis has revealed the critical fault line of the euro-zone—namely the difficulty of having monetary union without political union.

Meanwhile, the fundamental trend in the West remains profoundly deflationary. Last week the U.S. government reported that the country's core consumer price index (CPI) inflation rate slid in April to its lowest level in 44 years.

Markets: Renewed Global Anxiety
3:46
Global markets are seeing selling pressure again as concerns about Europe's debt crisis reassert themselves. Spain's nationalization of a regional bank has contributed to the anxiety, Dow Jones Newswires's Paul Vigna and Michael Reid report.
.It is also the case that, if the U.S. headline CPI remains flat from May onwards, the year-on-year headline CPI inflation rate will then fall to 1.4% in June and zero by January from 2.2% in April. This trend will reawaken deflationary concerns prompting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to keep interest rates at zero.

Or consider Ireland, which has suffered an astonishing 16 consecutive months of price deflation. The Irish CPI fell by 2.1% year-on-year in April. This deflation action is beginning to make Japan's experience of the past 20 years look like a picnic because Ireland, unlike Japan in the 1990s, remains in fiscal contraction mode. Thus, the Irish government aims to reduce its deficit to 10% of GDP in 2011 and then to 2.9% in 2014 from 14.3% last year

Others in the euro-zone will surely follow. Spain has potentially a huge deflationary cycle to endure given its level of consumer leverage and the degree of anticipated fiscal tightening. Spain's household debt-to-GDP ratio was 83% at the end of 2009, and Spain has to refinance €165 billion of maturing government debt by the end of 2011.

For the moment Spain has only just sunk into outright price deflation. Spanish core CPI, which excludes unprocessed food and energy products, fell by 0.1% year on year in April. This is the first core CPI deflation in Spain since the data series began in August 1986. But the pattern looks set to endure, and this is in a country that already has 20% unemployment.

Meanwhile, in America bank lending continues to decline as does the velocity of money in circulation. If this persists, markets will face worryingly low GDP growth in the U.S. going into 2011. It's this prospect that's begun to be discounted in the recent stock-market correction, which has already seen the S&P 500 give up all its gains for the year. This will sooner or later pave the way for another round of fiscal easing in Washington when both the Obama administration and Congress give up on their current hopes of a normal U.S. recovery.

That political mood swing will again raise the protectionist risk in Washington, with the lightning rod being the Chinese exchange rate. Beijing has been signaling that it will resume incremental appreciation of the renminbi by the middle of this year. But with the renminbi having appreciated by 24% against the euro since late November, China's leaders may be having second thoughts. A trade row between China and the U.S. on top of the growing concerns about a "double dip" in the West is the last thing markets will want to contend with. But they may have to.

Mr. Wood, equity strategist for CLSA Ltd. in Hong Kong, is the author of "The Bubble Economy: Japan's Extraordinary Speculative Boom of the '80s and the Dramatic Bust of the '90s" (Solstice Publishing, 2005).
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The Dummy Is Pulling our Strings!

The United States Border Patrol is asking citizens to keep on the lookout for a red 1951 Chevy that they suspect is being used to smuggle illegal immigrants across the border from Mexico and into points along the U.S. border. If you see the vehicle, and have reason to believe that it is the suspect vehicle, you are urged to contact your local police department or the U. S. Border Patrol. A picture has been provided to help you better identify the vehicle. I hope you're keeping an eye open!!






This sent by a friend while I was away. (See 1 below.)

I am amazed that our president, who walks on water, is given a free ride by the press and media when it comes to oil spills. The MNS has been an ineffective agency for years and it is our own government that is as much to blame for the Gulf tragedy as was BP .

Had GW been president the howls would be deafening.

Obama, as is his usual style, has attacked BP just as he has attacked Wall Street, fat cat executives, Goldman Sachs, Israel, Netanyahu and the list is starting to become endless.

We need to drill for oil, we need to reduce our energy dependency. Obama knows how to whip up the uniformed but, in the long run, like Gore it will prove hollow and empty. (See 1a below.)
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I got the distinct impression from my recent visit to Europe that Obama is loved because he is weak like the Europeans are. He is one of them.

I will develop this theme further and post as a separate LTE. (See 2 below.)
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Being away helps to clear one's head and give one the chance for a new perspective.

However, when it comes to Roubini's thinking, I tend to agree and have been writing pretty much the same view, ie. still in the eye of the hurricane, second edge starting to hit as Europe pulls in its horns and inevitably so will we. First an attempt at getting out sized spending under control leading to weakening economic activity and deflation. Then the politicians will become frightened by what they are achieving and will re-inflate.

Not ever sure I am right but this is what is rumbling rund my addled brain. (See 3 below.)
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First, failed policies that place solutions outside our grasp then, second, comes the need to shift blame. I've seen it many times.

Carter's weak and inept handling of the Iran situation followed by Clinton 's failure to grasp the growing menace from radical Islamism. Then GW's empty boasts followed by Obama's flacidness and we have a looming disaster in the making which hawkish Ralph Peters sees clearly. (See 4 below.)
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From a dear friend and someone who deeply cares about our nation.:

I am totally conflicted by sending out this article- on the one hand- for years Jews and Blacks could not build in many parts of major cities- and I am a member of a primarily Jewish Golf Club up north because there was no way Jews would be allowed to be members of golf clubs, when our club was built. But this is 2010 and that is not the case for either Jews or Blacks- or anyone else. Proudly, both blacks and non-Jews are now members(as Martin Luther King - not by the color of there skin- but the content of there character)


Having said that- I am stunned at the insensitivity of the board that approved a mosque directly across from ground zero. Call me muslimphobic-and I think I might be- but until I hear loudly(like our Jewish communities constant criticism of Israel(even when I believe they are wrong)- it is that ability to speak out against that which you believe which makes this country great. I believe those Muslims who want to live in this great country should have the same rights as all other Americans- but with those rights come responsibilities. If the Muslim community cannot understand how painful this would be to those who lost love one's on 9/11 shame on them. I was personally stunned to read about this mosque - and unfortunately- the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is gaining in this country. Political correctness has gone too far. (See 5 below.)
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I am not one to embrace conspiratorial thinking but I commend Daniel Greenfield's article and find it closer to the truth than not.

He connects some dots in ways I am not pre-disposed but I share his thinking regarding the end game. (See 6 below.)
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Obama and the unions are incestuous partners. (See 7 below.)
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A 'dummy 'president who actually is the one pulling our strings. (See 8 below.)
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Eric Johnson, who I am supporting for Governor , is no dummy. (See 9 below.)
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Dick
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1)Thoughts on Gorism

From the Sanctimonious to the Ridiculous

I think sometime this year elite radical environmentalism died. And at about the same time perished also the notion of the man in the mansion as the man on the barricades. Let me explain.

Gorism

We all know that Al Gore has become a near billionaire through tirelessly warning the Western world that our daily habits have ruined the planet and nearly doomed us. Gore argues that what we take for granted — the too large homes in which we live, the carbon-spewing cars that we drive, the superfluous vacations and energy-hogging appurtenances that we enjoy — are all pernicious to the environment, and unsustainable.

That advocacy — expressed through investments, partnerships, advertising, movies, lectures, books, private companies, ads, and essays — has made Al Gore fabulously wealthy. The recent Climategate scandal concerning fudged science did not affect the religion of Gore, LTD.

Nor did the horrendous natural ash cloud that blanketed Europe — and in unprecedented fashion shut down all European air travel for days — remind a humbled Gore that sometimes nature in a second has the destructive power to alter the very way we live in a way that man does not over decades.

No, what ended the gospel of Gorism was Al Gore himself.

In this context, the recently purchased Gore second mansion at Montecito, in Oprah country, is of some national interest. Why would Gore purchase a second energy-guzzling estate, replete with several fireplaces, fountains and bathrooms, when he was stung so badly about his hypocritically profligate energy use in his Tennessee compound, his houseboat, and his private-jet junketeering? Does he understand that his newest mansion is a sort of volcanic ash-cloud that has now overwhelmed Earth in the Balance, Inc?

Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

The answer is sort of important, because it is emblematic of the decline of liberalism over the last thirty years. Collate the anti-capital rants of a zillionaire currency speculator George Soros, the green sermons from a late Ted Kennedy who stopped a wind farm from marring his vacation home’s views, a John Edwards of “two nations” fame constructing a Neronian Golden House, a Tom Friedman warning of the consumer habits that lead to a hot, flat earth from a 10,000 square foot English-style estate of the sort that 18th-century English barons built after successful careers in the Raj, the comic case of Jeremiah Wright moving to a mostly white golf course to dream up more sermons about “white folks’ greed runs a world in need,” or a $5 million a year earning Obama — with all his expenses picked up by the government — lamenting out loud why rich people seem to want ever more money they don’t need. Some spread the wealth around.

We can call this malady Gorism — living not merely at odds with your zealotry, but living entirely against your zealotry — and it seems to reflect a few assumptions of the modern progressive elite that are not mutually exclusive:
a) Penances and Indulgences. A life professed spectacularly at odds with one lived seems a psychological mechanism akin to medieval penance. The sinner finds exculpation through loud confession of, or material payment for, his sins. And the payment is not just for past hypocrisies, but works preemptively — in the expectation of present and future enjoyments to come once the pay-as-you-go formula is established: one new docudrama about a polar bear trapped on a melting ice shelf, one new mansion in and about Santa Barbara.

The more spectacularly Mr. Gore’s veins bulge, the more he hits the high notes with “digital brownshirts” and “he lied to us!,” and the more he weeps over shrinking ice caps and coastlines on the rise, the more these manors — and others to come — become morally acceptable. In other words, gallantly bearing the environmental cross more than earns the Gores’ hot tub and Pacific view. By now, given the decade of Gore’s indulgences, I think he can do just about whatever he pleases and still enter the green fields of Elysium.

b) The Guardian Mystique. Plato’s Guardians at least took on some sort of sacrifice as the price to dictate to others. Our new ones do not. Al Gore has convinced himself that if he is to triple his productivity on our behalf, he really must, from time to time, endure a ride on a private, carbon-spewing jet — to ensure that there are fewer carbon-spewing jets.


1a)Frustration mounts as oil seeps into Gulf wetlands
By GREG BLUESTEIN

ROBERT, La. – Anger grew along the Gulf Coast as an ooze of oil washed into delicate coastal wetlands in Louisiana, with many wondering how to clean up the monthlong mess — especially now that BP's latest try to plug the blown-out well won't happen until at least Tuesday.

"It's difficult to clean up when you haven't stopped the source," said Chris Roberts, a councilman for Jefferson Parish, which stretches from the New Orleans metropolitan area to the coast. "You can scrape it off the beach but it's coming right back."

Roberts surveyed the oil that forced officials to close a public beach on Grand Isle, south of New Orleans, as globs of crude that resembled melted chocolate washed up. Others questioned why BP PLC was still in charge of the response.

"The government should have stepped in and not just taken BP's word," declared Wayne Stone of Marathon, Fla., an avid diver who worries about the spill's effect on the ecosystem.

The government is overseeing the cleanup and response, but the official responsible for the oversight said he understands the discontent.

"If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I'm frustrated, too," said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen. "Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can't do something about a very big problem."

As simple as it may seem, the law prevents the government from just taking over, Allen said. After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Congress dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents — including paying for all cleanup — with oversight by federal agencies.

BP, which is in charge of the cleanup, said it will be at least Tuesday before engineers can shoot mud into the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf, yet another delay in the effort to stop the oil.

A so-called "top kill" has been tried on land but never 5,000 feet underwater, so scientists and engineers have spent the past week preparing and taking measurements to make sure it will stop the oil that has been spewing into the sea for a month. They originally hoped to try it as early as this weekend.

BP spokesman Tom Mueller said there was no snag in the preparations, but that the company must get equipment in place and finish tests before the procedure can begin.

"It's taking time to get everything set up," he said. "They're taking their time. It's never been done before. We've got to make sure everything is right."

Crews will shoot heavy mud into a crippled piece of equipment atop the well, which started spewing after the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 workers. Then engineers will direct cement at the well to permanently stop the oil.

BP, which was leasing the rig and is responsible for the cleanup, has tried and failed several times to halt the oil.

Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Friday that a mile-long tube inserted into the leaking pipe is sucking about 92,400 gallons of oil a day to the surface, a figure much lower than the 210,000 gallons a day the company said the tube was sucking up Thursday. Suttles said the higher number is the most the tube has been sucking up at any one time, while the lower number is the average.

Crews have been using oil-soaking booms to corral the spill, and BP said Saturday that booms made of hair would not be used because they don't absorb enough oil and sink too quickly.

The company has conceded that more oil is leaking than its initial estimate of 210,000 gallons a day total, and a government team is working to get a handle on exactly how much is flowing. Even under the most conservative estimate, about 6 million gallons have leaked so far, more than half the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

On Saturday, the blossoming investigation into the spill progressed when President Barack Obama announced that former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly will lead a presidential commission probing the spill.

Graham, a Democrat, is a former Florida governor and senator. Reilly ran the Environmental Protection Agency under Republican President George H.W. Bush. His tenure at the agency included the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Obama intends to name five others to the panel.

Meanwhile, frustrated local and state officials were also waiting for the Army Corps of Engineers to issue permits so they can build sand berms in front of islands and wetlands to act as buffers between the advancing oil and the wetlands.

In a statement, corps spokesman Ken Holder said officials understand the urgency, but possible environmental effects must be evaluated before even an emergency permit can be issued.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry also took BP to task for not responding aggressively enough to oil coming ashore in Terrebonne Parish, La., to the west of the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Public interest in the spill is high — after lawmakers pressed BP for a live video feed of the leak this week, so many people tried to view it that they crashed the government Web site where it was posted.

BP executives say the only guaranteed solution to stop the leak is a pair of relief wells crews have already started drilling, but the work will not be complete for at least two months.

That makes the stakes even higher for the top kill.

Scientists say there is a chance a misfire could lead to new problems. Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental studies, said the crippled piece of equipment called a blowout preventer could spring a new leak that could spew untold gallons of oil if there's a weak spot that is vulnerable to pressure from the heavy mud.

BP is also developing several other plans in case the top kill doesn't work, including an effort to shoot knotted rope, pieces of tire and other material — known as a junk shot — to plug the blowout preventer, which was meant to shut off the oil in case of an accident but did not work.



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2)The fruits of weakness
By Charles Krauthammer

It is perfectly obvious that Iran's latest uranium maneuver, brokered by Brazil and Turkey, is a ruse. Iran retains more than enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. And it continues enriching at an accelerated pace and to a greater purity (20 percent). Which is why the French foreign ministry immediately declared that the trumpeted temporary shipping of some Iranian uranium to Turkey will do nothing to halt Iran's nuclear program.


It will, however, make meaningful sanctions more difficult. America's proposed Security Council resolution is already laughably weak -- no blacklisting of Iran's central bank, no sanctions against Iran's oil and gas industry, no nonconsensual inspections on the high seas. Yet Turkey and Brazil -- both current members of the Security Council -- are so opposed to sanctions that they will not even discuss the resolution. And China will now have a new excuse to weaken it further.

But the deeper meaning of the uranium-export stunt is the brazenness with which Brazil and Turkey gave cover to the mullahs' nuclear ambitions and deliberately undermined U.S. efforts to curb Iran's program.

The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

That picture -- a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam -- is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there's no cost in lining up with America's enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.

They've watched President Obama's humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed U.S. negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant U.S. strategic advance in the region in 30 years.

They've watched America acquiesce to Russia's re-exerting sway over Eastern Europe, over Ukraine (pressured by Russia last month into extending for 25 years its lease of the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol) and over Georgia (Russia's de facto annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer an issue under the Obama "reset" policy).

They've watched our appeasement of Syria, Iran's agent in the Arab Levant -- sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it tightens its grip on Lebanon, supplies Hezbollah with Scuds and intensifies its role as the pivot of the Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance. The price for this ostentatious flouting of the United States and its interests? Ever more eager U.S. "engagement."


They've observed the administration's gratuitous slap at Britain over the Falklands, its contemptuous treatment of Israel, its undercutting of the Czech Republic and Poland, and its indifference to Lebanon and Georgia. And in Latin America, they see not just U.S. passivity as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez organizes his anti-American "Bolivarian" coalition while deepening military and commercial ties with Iran and Russia. They saw active U.S. support in Honduras for a pro-Chávez would-be dictator seeking unconstitutional powers in defiance of the democratic institutions of that country.

This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat -- accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum.

Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It's the perfect fulfillment of Obama's adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. Hence his foundational declaration at the U.N. General Assembly last September that "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation" (guess who's been the dominant nation for the last two decades?) and his dismissal of any "world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another." (NATO? The West?)

Given Obama's policies and principles, Turkey and Brazil are acting rationally. Why not give cover to Ahmadinejad and his nuclear ambitions? As the United States retreats in the face of Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela, why not hedge your bets? There's nothing to fear from Obama, and everything to gain by ingratiating yourself with America's rising adversaries. After all, they actually believe in helping one's friends and punishing one's enemies.
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3)Roubini Predicts 20 Percent Stock Market Fall
By: Julie Crawshaw

New York University economist Nouriel Roubini says stocks will tumble another 20 percent, that cash is the safest place to be and that investors can use options to hedge against future market risk he is certain will come.

"There are some parts of the global economy that are now at the risk of a double-dip recession," Roubini says. "From here on I see things getting worse," says the head of Roubini Global Economics.

"What needs to be done is clear. We need to raise taxes and cut spending. Otherwise we're going to get a fiscal train wreck," he told CNBC. "It's going to take years of sacrifices."

WARNING: David Frazier Predicted Correction, Says Looming Market Crash Could Wipe Out Your Wealth.


A slowdown in the U.S. economy coupled with weakness in the euro zone will cause price drops in both stocks and commodities and leaving little room for growth in most investment classes, Roubini says.

"There is that risk because the problems on the macro level are first in the euro zone,” he observes. “Then in China there is evidence of economic slowdown ... Japan is in trouble and U.S. economic growth is going to slow down.”

“There is also regulatory risk because we don't know how financial reform is going to occur."

Other than cash, Roubini suggests investing in short-term government bonds of countries that don't have a serious debt problem, such as Germany and possibly Canada.
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4)Dumping Israel
By Ralph Peters


'It's those damned Jews." That's the muffled message I hear when,
pretending to represent our national interest, voices call for the
abandonment of Israel.

We've heard it from agenda-driven scholars who write that our alliance
with Israel is responsible for our problems in the Middle East.
More worrisome still, I've begun to hear it from a minority of military
officers, as well as from Washington types.

This latest, and sadly lasting, bout of moral cancer can be dated back
to 2006 and the publication of an article that had sought a home for
years, "The Israeli Lobby And US Foreign Policy," by professors
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

The book's assault on Israel was welcomed by figures including
President Jimmy Carter's national-security adviser, Zbigniew
Brzezinski -- a hoary Israel detractor. With their Ivy League
credentials, Mearsheimer and Walt made anti-Israeli diatribes
(semi-)respectable. Their effect has been lasting.

OK, let's get one thing straight: There is no evidence that if Israel
disappeared tomorrow, the Middle East would suddenly blossom into
a pro-American model of justice, hard work and progress.

Nor is there any evidence that anti-American terrorism would slacken.
In al Qaeda's list of complaints, Israel barely makes the top dozen.
A US turn away from Israel would only encourage and empower
terrorists, convincing them of our cowardice and folly.

The grotesquely failed societies of the Middle East desperately need
Israel and the US to blame for their self-wrought problems.
Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are responsible for
the Arab world's pervasive corruption, stagnation, oppression of
women and lack of creativity or a work ethic.

Neither the US nor Israel is to blame for the unprecedented
squandering of wealth by Arab oil powers, for their failure to invest
in human capital or productive infrastructure, for the absence of
democracy and respect for human rights, or for the region's mockery
of the rule of law.

Given the vast homemade tragedy of the greater Middle East,
it's inevitable that Israel's hated for its shining success amid the
local squalor. Likewise, the US is hated for our might -- and the
seductiveness of our civilization.

But if that explains why Arabs, Persians and others would relish,
but not reward, our abandonment of Israel, it doesn't explain the
American voices repeating Arab propaganda about devious Jews
controlling our foreign policy.

I divide the dump-Israel movement's leaders and fellow travelers into
four groups:

Old-fashioned anti-Semites: It's no longer socially acceptable to
accuse Jews of sacrificing Christian infants. But it's quite fashionable
to blame Israelis for the suffering of Palestinian children. One doesn't
mention "Jews." But calumnies against "Israelis" are the new,
politically correct blood libel.

Academics: It's more than simply the juvenile leftism that diseases
liberal-arts faculties. This is also a financial transaction. Massive Arab
gifts and endowments have turned many of our "leading" universities
into intellectual brothels.

President Obama's left-wing base: From the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's
congregation to the administration's "social activists," this bunch long
has accepted as gospel the notion that Palestinian terrorists are
"freedom fighters" while Israelis are "fascists." Don't try to reason with
them -- this really is their "gospel."

Military officers: I take this one personally. While only a sliver of the
officer corps mumbles about Israel's purported negative effect on our
regional policy, this is nonetheless an alarming development.
I read this uniformed lunacy as a schizophrenic reaction to a decade's
involvement in Iraq.

On one hand, extended first-hand experience of Arab culture has not
filled our troops with respect for the same (any officer who had
fairy-tale, Lawrence-of-Arabia notions about the region has had
them extinguished, to put it mildly). Yet the daily drone of Arab
complaints about Israel -- blamed for every Arab misfortune back to
the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols -- has had a cumulative
effect. Criticism takes the form of "A plague on both their houses."

I ask the gripers categorized above for any evidence that our betrayal
of Israel would have the slightest positive effect. The Saudis wouldn't
even drop the price of oil for 24 hours.

Go back to the bordello side of all this: Wealthy Arabs have bought a
great deal of influence in Washington, lavishing money on think tanks,
contracts on US firms and expensive gifts on individuals. (A few years
back, one American "authority" on the Middle East delightedly told me
that he'd been given five Rolexes.)

In contrast to these ingratiating, deep-pocketed Arabs, Israelis are
brusque and dismissive, relying on American Jews to smooth things
over. Well, sorry, Israel needs to rediscover public relations.
With the global media rabidly pro-Palestinian, Israel had better get
back in the information fight.

The recent attacks on Israel that masquerade as sober analysis boil
down to the age-old anti-Semitic query: "Wouldn't we better off without
those Jews?"

My answer, as an American, is "No."

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Endless War."
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5)Mosque to go up near New York's ground zero
By Nicole Bliman, CNN

The mosque project has gotten mixed reviews from families and friends of 9/11 victims.

New York Plans to build a mosque two blocks away from ground zero have set off an emotional debate among area residents and relatives of victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Cordoba House project calls for a 15-story community center including a mosque, performance art center, gym, swimming pool and other public spaces.

The project is a collaboration between the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, both of which work to improve relations with followers of the religion.

The two groups presented their vision to part of the Community Board of lower Manhattan on Wednesday night.

Ro Sheffe, a board member who attended the meeting, said the project did not need to get the board's approval.

"They own the land, and their plans don't have any zoning changes," Sheffe said. "They came to us for our opinions and to let us know their plans. It was purely voluntary on their part."

The 12 members who were at the meeting voted unanimously to support the project. Community board members are appointed by the borough president and serve as advisers to the borough president and the mayor's office.

Daisy Khan, executive director of the Muslim society, described her vision of a center led by Muslims, but serving the community as a whole.

"It will have a real community feel, to celebrate the pluralism in the United States, as well as in the Islamic religion," Khan said. "It will also serve as a major platform for amplifying the silent voice of the majority of Muslims who have nothing to do with extremist ideologies. It will counter the extremist momentum."

The need for the center is twofold, Khan said, because it will support the needs of the growing Muslim community.

"The time for a center like this has come because Islam is an American religion," Khan said. "We need to take the 9/11 tragedy and turn it into something very positive."

Sheffe said a community center for lower Manhattan residents is "desperately needed." The area was mostly commercial, Sheffe said, but as more people move downtown, the lack of residential amenities is a problem.

The project got mixed reviews from families and friends of September 11 victims.

"I think it's the right thing to do," said Marvin Bethea, who was a paramedic at ground zero. "I lost 16 friends down there. But Muslims also got killed on 9/11. It would be a good sign of faith that we're not condemning all Muslims and that the Muslims who did this happened to be extremists. As a black man, I know what it's like to be discriminated against when you haven't done anything."

Herbert Ouida, whose son was killed in the attacks, supports the project as a way to bridge cultural divide.

"I understand the anger, the bitterness and hatred, but it only generates more hatred," Ouida said. "Such a large part of the world has this faith, and to say anyone who has this faith is a terrorist, it's terrible."

Others decried the idea of building a mosque so close to where their relatives died.

"Lower Manhattan should be made into a shrine for the people who died there," said Michael Valentin, a retired city detective who worked at ground zero. "It breaks my heart for the families who have to put up with this. I understand they're [building] it in a respectful way, but it just shouldn't be down there."

Others such as Barry Zelman said the site's location will be a painful reminder.

"[The 9/11 terrorists] did this in the name of Islam," Zelman said. "It's a sacred ground where these people died, where my brother was murdered, and to be in the shadows of that religion, it's just hypocritical and sacrilegious. "

However, Khan emphasized that the attacks killed Muslims, too.

"Three hundred of the victims were Muslim, that's 10 percent of the victims," she said. "We are Americans too. The 9/11 tragedy hurt everybody including the Muslim community. We are all in this together and together we have to fight against extremism and terrorism."

Cordoba House is still in its early stages of development. The American Society for Muslim Advancement is hoping to raise funds for the center to be completed in three to five years.
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6)Obama's Plan to Destroy Israel
By Daniel Greenfield

If there's one thing that the Carter Administration can be given credit for, it's creating the new wave of Islamist terrorism, both Sunni, operating out of Afghanistan, and Shiite, operating out of Iran. The Carter Administration cracked down on Israel and put its "faith" in Muslim terrorists, who then went on to wage war on America, even while Carter was in office. 28 years after Carter was removed from office, we're in reruns again with the Obama Administration, which is not only following the Carter line, but whose plans greatly exceed it.

28 years ago, Wahhabi Sunni and Shiite terrorists were generally an afterthought when compared to the standard

Iran is to be our new best friend under this arrangement, Israel is to be our new best enemy.
USSR backed Marxist terrorist groups, such as the PLO.

Today, thanks in part to the Carter Administration, they control several countries and have designs on several more. From Pakistan to Afghanistan, from Gaza to Lebanon, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, the threat is very real and bigger than ever particularly as the race by both Sunni and Shiite groups to build and deploy nuclear weapons continues.

Like Carter before him, Obama has chosen to cut backdoor deals with the Mullahs in Iran, offering them power over Iraq and Afghanistan, in exchange for quieting things down enough to let him hang up a Mission Accomplished banner and pull the troops out. "Peace with honor", preferably before the next election. The rape law for Shiites in Afghanistan, the push for a US funded Hamas/Fatah Unity government in the territories and the rising expansion of the Taliban are all fruits of this arrangement.

If Iran is to be our new best friend under this arrangement, Israel is to be our new best enemy.
Obama stacked the deck by deploying Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in a position that gave her an important title, but absolutely no power to go with it, while stacking the National Security Council and even the Pentagon with oil appointees in the pockets of the Saudis or his own left wing radical friends.

Israel electing a conservative government really put the ball into play, freeing up even more resources for attacking Israel. The strategy runs something like this.

The Obama Administration has broken down the Israel problem into two subsections, Israel itself, and American Jews.

Obama's people have studied the problem and understand where Carter went wrong. Obama does not want to have the same image problems as Carter in the Jewish community. Should that happen, the Beloved Leader and his lapdog press are fully prepared to unleash a Chavez style hate-on targeting American Jews. But that would be inconvenient and messy. Even with the changing face of America, there are significant differences between the average American and European or Venezuelan, and what kind of ugliness they are willing to tolerate. So Obama's people have split their attention in handling the two factors as two different problems.

American Jews - Obama has been clever about putting his Jewish appointees front and center. Like many minorities, some American Jews suffer from self-esteem problems that are soothed when they see a seeming acceptance. Of course what they fail to realize is that exploitation is not acceptance. And that Obama's appointees are creatures of his backers, Nazi collaborators like Soros, who have nothing but contempt for Jews, individually or collectively.While outwardly courting Jews, Obama's people have also been quietly shoving Jewish organizations and their leaders into a corner. Within the Jewish organizational world there has been a silent but deadly takeover of major Jewish groups by left wing radicals. Former alumni of the far left wing and anti-Israel groups like Breira or Coname in the 70's have been elevated to key positions in such organizations as the UJA Federation. Behind the scenes any Jewish leaders who expressed even doubts about Obama during the primaries

Much as with conservatives, a list has been drawn up of those figures who can be won over, and those who cannot. The ones who can be won over are described as "moderates", the ones who cannot be won over are described as "extremists".

Meanwhile a bevvy of left wing Jewish In Name Only groups have been organized to play their part. Key among them is the Soros funded J Street, a group created as an anti-Israel lobby meant to eventually replace AIPAC. Meanwhile AIPAC itself has been kept on the ropes with such things as the well timed Harman leak. The message once again is fairly clear, cooperate and keep quiet, or we'll destroy you.

The multi-layered approach to American Jews can then be summed up as follows;

1.) Co-opt existing Jewish organizations and swing them to the left using old school 70's leftists.

2.) Create new "progressive" organizations to appeal to a younger generation of ethnically Jewish youth detached from any actual identity. Have these organizations generate attacks on the Israeli government and pro-Israel Jews, while creating phony polls indicating that most American Jews are behind them and Obama.

3.) Silence and intimidate remaining Jewish organizations and leaders behind the scenes.
The overall idea is to keep a happy face pasted on American Jewry while the knives are out in the dark.

Israel - The basic understanding in the Obama Administration is that Israel Must Go. In the worldview of the more moderate Obama appointees, Israel is a destabilizing factor in the Middle East. To the more left wing Obama advisors, Israel is a Western imperialist colonialist state that must be destroyed in the name of revolutionary justice. To the Islamist mindset, Israel is a Kufir state that has no right to exist in the Dar Al Islam.While intractably hostile to Israel, the Obama Administration wants to avoid the kind of public confrontations that marked the Carter and Bush Sr administrations. Instead they would much rather model the way that the Clinton Administration waged a quiet war against Israel, removing one government, and forcing extensive concessions to terrorists, all the while keeping a happy face pasted on the whole affair.
On the one hand that means avoiding harsh public attacks on Israel, but keeping the pressure up for Israel to make extensive far reaching one sided concessions, to accept Saudi and Arab League "peace plans", to legitimize Hamas as the new government of the Palestinian Authority, and to insure that Israel does not reply to any rocket or terrorist attacks.

There are two forms of quiet leverage that the United States has on Israel, the first is financial and the second is military.

On the financial side, the goal will be to bring down the Netanyahu government coalition by destabilizing Israel economically. This is the surest and most direct path to bringing down Israel's conservative government and replacing it with a left of center coalition. The Obama Administration has a wide variety of tactics at its disposal for doing so, from the overt, such as targeting Israeli exports and imports, to the covert, that would involve targeting the Shekel. Additionally fundraising in the US could be investigated and groups such as the Jewish National Fund, prevented from raising money in the US. All of these have been in play before at one time or another.

On the military side, Obama's people will make their non-existent efforts to stop Iran's nukes conditional on more concessions to terrorists. Since Israel will never be able to make enough concessions and since Obama is working with Iran, rather than working to stop Iran's nukes, this is a hollow charade.

Furthermore while Israel has already been locked out of the military technology pipeline for anything cutting edge, it still remains dependent on US military equipment for parts and supplies. The decades of US foreign aid have also served to create dependency. Unlike many other countries, including even Sweden, Israel does not have its own jet fighter. Israel's Air Force is heavily dependent on US weapons, parts and equipment. Cutting Israel off, would leave the Israeli military dangerously vulnerable in the case of a war. This is an effective chokehold that has been used before to prevent Israel from attacking Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, as well as preventing Israel from carrying out a preemptive strike against its enemies before the Yom Kippur War.

The overall Obama policy will be to push Israel to the brink, using financial and military blackmail against the Netanyahu government, while maintaining control over American Jews to prevent any protests or backtalk. ...American Jewish groups will support Obama... some because they were created precisely for that purpose, and others because they have been hijacked, cowed or subverted.

The more Israel will offer, the more the Obama Administration will tighten the screws. No offer will be good enough, and Israel will be blamed for every breakdown in talks and every bit of violence that takes place. The media will portray Israel and particularly Netanyahu as extremist and intransigent. Hamas will be slowly whitewashed in the media, the same way that Arafat's goons were, (assuming that they prove more willing to cooperate in creating a positive media image of themselves than Ahmadinejad is.)

The plan is to destroy Israel, and to do it by pushing Israel to the edge of the cliff and then over the cliff. Israel's enemies will be getting top of the line US military equipment. Israel will not. Israel will be squeezed economically until the Netanyahu government collapses, leaving a weak left wing leader like Livni in charge of Israel, and in charge of acceding to the new Pharaoh's demands.


That is the game plan and some of it's coming. The rest is already here.
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7) Rule change favors unions at airlines, railroads
New rule makes union organizing easier at airline, railroad companies
By Sam Hananel

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a major victory for organized labor, unions will have an easier time signing up airline and railroad workers after the Obama administration Monday changed a 76-year-old rule on union elections.

The change is the most significant so far in a string of White House moves designed to boost unions, which are struggling to reverse years of decline in membership.

The new rule, announced by the three-member National Mediation Board, would recognize a union if a simple majority of workers who cast ballots approve organizing. The previous rule required a majority of the entire work force to favor unionizing. That meant workers choosing not to vote at all were effectively counted as "no" votes.

Airlines that fought the change say it will lead to more labor disputes that could disrupt commerce and increase delays in an industry already reeling from recession, higher fuel costs and stepped-up security measures.

The most immediate impact of the change would be at Delta Air Lines Inc., where unions are trying to organize about 20,000 flight attendants. Unions are also expected to target workers at smaller carriers, including Allegiant Air, JetBlue Airways, Republic Airways and SkyWest.

"We applaud the NMB for taking this historic and courageous step to bring democracy to union elections," said Patricia Friend, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.

But the Air Transport Association, which represents most major airlines, is expected to file a lawsuit challenging the new rule.

"It is quite clear to us that the NMB was determined to proceed despite the proposed rule's substantive and procedural flaws, leaving us no choice but to seek judicial review," the industry group said in a statement.

The rule will take effect 30 days after publication Tuesday in the Federal Register. The flight attendants' union said it would seek a representation election at Delta soon afterward.

Proponents of the change say the old rule ran contrary to democratic standards, where the outcome of an election is determined by the majority of those who vote. The change puts union elections at airlines and railroads under the same procedures followed by most other companies, which are overseen by the National Labor Relations Board.

"After decades of operating within a system that is rigged against them, rail and aviation workers have at least gained a right that most of us take for granted," said Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department.

The board proposed the rule change in October after a request from the AFL-CIO. That request came soon after President Barack Obama named Linda Puchala -- the former head of a flight attendant union -- to a seat on the board, shifting the balance of power.

The final rule was approved 2-1, with chairwoman Elizabeth Dougherty issuing a fierce dissent. Dougherty, appointed by President George W. Bush, said the change is "an unprecedented departure for the NMB and represents the most dramatic policy shift in the history of the agency."

Delta spokeswoman Gina Laughlin said Delta would support an industry lawsuit challenging the rule change.

"While disappointed, we are not surprised by the majority members' decision in view of the way this rule change has been handled," Laughlin said.

Airlines and railroads employ more than 500,000 workers, and about two-thirds of those are already in unions. That's much higher than the overall union membership rate of 12 percent.

One exception to the higher rate of union representation is at Delta, where only about 15 percent of workers were union members before the carrier merged with heavily unionized Northwest Airlines two years ago. Unions representing flight attendants and ground workers who worked for Northwest want the new rules to cover elections at the combined carrier.

In a 2008 election, 5,253 Delta flight attendants voted to be represented by the AFA. But the union lost under the old election rules because the roughly 8,000 flight attendants who didn't vote were counted as "no" votes.

The new election rules will also help the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents Northwest ground workers such as baggage handlers and gate agents. Delta says it has roughly 30,000 workers in that group, including roughly 10,000 who came from Northwest.

AP Airlines Writer Joshua Freed in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
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8)Wall Street Journal Sizes up Obama
By Eddie Sessions:

"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author.

His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska . It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, over a full year into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.

Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain .

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.

Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.

Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.

He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America . He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.

Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life.

When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.

We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America ?"
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9) Fellow Georgian,

My name is Eric Johnson, and I want you to hire me to be Georgia’s next Governor. I know who we are and what we believe in. And you can trust me to continue to fight for our conservative values as Governor.

There is a lot of talk from politicians these days about what they’re going to do. But the proof isn’t in slick talking points and poll tested sound bites. It’s in their deeds.

I began fighting for our conservative values in the trenches as a county party chairman. As Republican Leader in the State Senate, I battled Roy Barnes in his first and only term as Governor. By standing up for what we believe in- strong families, smaller government, and free markets- I led Georgia Republicans to our first majority in the Senate in 130 years.

Today, all that we have worked for is under attack. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of the top down, government knows best approach we’re seeing from Barrack Obama and his allies like Roy Barnes. I’m taking a stand! Will you join me by clicking here to volunteer?

Liberals in Washington are raising our taxes, taking over private industries, killing our banks, and running up our national debt to record levels. Here in Georgia, I worked to pass over $2 billion in tax relief, empower the private sector, and balance the budget every year! As Governor, I will do everything in my power to fend off the overreaching federal government and protect the common sense, conservative actions we have taken in our state.

We have passed tough laws cracking down on illegal immigrants, and I will enforce those laws. We empowered parents to decide where and how their children are educated and I will expand those opportunities. We have protected unborn life, the 2nd Amendment, and traditional marriage, and I will make sure that no politician, liberal interest group, or activist judge overturns the will of the people.

With your support, my top priority as Governor will be creating new jobs by cutting taxes, prioritizing government spending, and getting rid of silly regulations. I know these are challenging times, but don’t let anybody tell you that our best days are behind us. With the right leadership, we can make sure our state emerges out of this recession faster than the rest of the nation and be stronger than ever before! And folks, I’m just the guy to do it.

You can learn more about my proven record, my ideas for the future, and how to help our campaign by visiting www.JohnsonForGeorgians.com. Together, let’s put Georgia back to work!

Yours for a better Georgia,


Eric Johnson
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