In a previous memo I suggested it would be wise and constructive if Ryan and Cantor, among others, were allowed to become the new voices and faces of the Republican Party.
This assumes many of the "Old Bulls" would be amenable. That is where the rub enters the picture. Politicians, like all humans, have egos and those who rise in fame and importance have egos that grow commensurately. Many also have historical knowledge and abilities that remain very useful and critical and give them leverage. Time will tell whether Republicans are serious about solving our nation's problems or are more interested in occupying fancy offices, receiving pandering media attention and being in the limelight.
Furthermore, Republicans have a President to deal with who philosophically is not on the same page in many instances but wants to get re-elected at any cost and has proven he is willing to swallow hard, ie. hiring of his new Chief of Staff and the firing of his dubious press secretary. (See 1 below.)
Obama is street smart and does not want to be the first black rejected president. The mid term election was his wake up call and now he must row between the ominous rocks of his Far Left and the more benign cliffs of middle Americans.
The visual contrast of Ryan and Cantor contrasted against Pelosi and Reid are telling. Ryan and Cantor are young, sincere and verbally in command whereas Pelosi and Reid come across as disingenuous hacks, ie. which they truly are. Obama is slick and a proven untrustworthy flip flopper.
Let the fun begin.
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Bernanke on the job market outlook - it will take five more years to improve and then many will have to be retrained if they are still able to work. (See 2 below.)
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Once again we have evidence of a combination of a Palestinian lie, Israeli Leftists buying into it and then selling to a media quick to print anything negative when it comes to Israel.
Caroline Glick comments. (See 3 below.)
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Hitchens on Blair. (See 4 below.)
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According to Krauthammer, fight they will but now over something different. (See 5 below.)
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Only in D.C. can an incompetent, paid $172,000/year, be considered underpaid. (See 6 below.)
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It is an old Liberal trick, ie. spend and spend, break the bank then ask the Pentagon to pay for it through cuts in defense.
I predicted this only a few memos ago while also acknowledging the military is prone to wasteful spending because generally the army with the most and best wins.
Yes, the Pentagon is probably one of the most wasteful bureaucracies in D.C., bloated staff etc. However, constantly asking them to buy equipment, then changing the technical demands along the way to procurement and finally cutting back on the numbers at the time of manufacturing, imposed by the politicians, is part of the cost overrun problem as well. (See 7 below.)
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George Friedman on where we have been and are now going. (See 8 below.)
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Finally, this was sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader who has his own reservations about its conclusions. One might decide Sennels has his own biased agenda. For anyone who read about Lester Jeeter in Erskine Caldwell's "Tobacco Road" it might not seem so distant.
You decide and have a great weekend. (See 9 below.)
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Dick
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1)Chief of staff pick just another cog in the Daley machine
By John Kass
As President Barack Obama knighted Chicago's William Daley as his new chief of staff — and kept the Daley machine in control of the executive branch of our federal government — I couldn't help thinking of the good old days.
Back when I would fondly recount the legend of Obama of Chicago.
Not the political spin that Obama was some kind of reformer promising a different, cleaner kind of politics. But the true mythic history, Obama as a thin, silky creature of the Daleys, eagerly trotting behind them along the Chicago Way:
And lo, the Daley women found the infant Barack floating in a reed basket along the banks of the Chicago River. And they lifted the crying babe from the river, and nurtured and wrapped him in swaddling clothes. They watched him grow to manhood, where he performed great miracles.
Soon he was ready to transcend the broken politics of the past, just as long as it was in Washington, and not in Chicago, where the Daleys eat and play.
Watching Billy and Barack do their thing Thursday, I developed a strange urge to sit in a great leather wing chair, put my feet up on an ottoman, pour out a fistful of 18-year-old single-malt scotch, and light a big maduro cigar.
Ahhhh. It tastes like … vindication.
"He possesses a deep understanding of how jobs are created and how to grow our economy," said Obama. "And, needless to say, Bill also has a smidgen of awareness of how our system of government and politics works. You might say it is a genetic trait."
Genetic trait?
Pardon me, Mr. President, but it's not a trait, exactly. It's more like a reason for being.
Not everyone was amused. Bill's brother, Mayor Richard Daley, became upset when pesky reporters dared ask him whether Bill's ascendency smacked of "the Chicago Way."
They suggested to the mayor that "the Chicago Way" carried a negative connotation. He just hates that.
"What do you mean, negative?" the mayor sneered. "Go to New York. Go to Washington. Go to Texas. Go to California. What 'Way'?' This is all your writing."
Thanks for being a loyal reader, Mayor Daley.
Yet what is truly amusing about the Bill Daley story is the reaction of the Washington media.
They seem quite desperate to paint the Billy appointment as something it is not. They want it to be a symbolic move, one of Daley bringing Obama closer to the political center.
It's a neat construction, quite explainable and reasonable, the kind of thing spinners put together and feed feeble-minded reporters on background, so that a favorable consensus may be reached.
And once a consensus is reached, those who adopt it become zealots intent on hunting down the stray heretics.
"Using Chicago's early history as bare-knuckled politics and back-room dealmaking is a favored tactic among those outside the region seeking to tarnish the reputations of local Illinois political leaders who rise to the national stage," admonished the Christian Science Monitor, offering up my column as evidence of such heresy.
Early history? You mean like Thursday, when the federal grand jury indicted the former business partner of the mayor's son over that city sewer contract deal?
The Daley boys are adept and skillful and ruthless in the pursuit of power and treasure. The family has controlled Chicago and Cook County for more than half a century. The Daleys are without doubt the best politicians on the planet.
Obama knows this. And because he wants to get re-elected in 2012, he'll keep the Daleys around him.
The mayor's mouthpiece, media merlin David Axelrod, once again will be shaping Obama's message and image for the campaign. And Billy and Rich are easing former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel into the mayor's job.
It might look like coincidence. But there's nothing coincidental about the Daleys. They're not fools. They're not dreamers. They're planners.
Yet what's often left out of the official account of the Billy ascendency is his role as media manager. For decades now, Billy's been playing the role of background source to many establishment media types.
It's a role he might well continue to play even as Obama's major-domo.
A politician acting as a reliable source over years gets a break. And given the early coverage — and the beltway media's historic reluctance to let readers in on the political back story of those who move to Washington — it looks like Billy will be getting a break for quite some time.
Washington reporters hoping to maintain favor with the Chicago gatekeeper would be advised to stay away from the following topics while researching the glowing puff pieces to come.
Don't ask about Billy at Fannie Mae and his little buddy Rahm at Freddie Mac in the 1990s, or how that huge SBC deal went through in Illinois in 2003 when Billy was SBC president.
Don't ask about those meetings back in Chicago, in the early 1990s, when Billy and family adviser Tim Degnan and others helped create those City Hall patronage armies — which were later involved in illegal hiring — to keep Rich Daley in power and elect allies like Emanuel to Congress.
And for Pete's sake, never ask about the Chicago Way.
Just stick to the script as Obama begins the 2012 campaign with Billy and Dave and Rahm and Rich behind him.
It's all about moving to the center. It's all about moving to the center. It's all about …
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2)Fed Chief Bernanke: Jobs Market Will Need Five More Years to Recover
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the decline in the unemployment rate is likely to be slow even with a pickup in U.S. growth this year, signaling no change in the central bank’s monetary stimulus.
At the pace of improvement projected by Fed officials, “it could take four to five more years for the job market to normalize fully,” Bernanke said today in prepared testimony to the Senate Budget Committee. Bernanke also stepped up the urgency of his call for a plan to reduce the federal budget deficit, saying “prompt adoption” of one could have economic benefits in the long and short run.
The Fed chief is defending his unorthodox program of buying $600 billion of Treasurys through June to meet the Fed’s mandates for full employment and stable prices. He spoke an hour after the Labor Department reported that employers added 103,000 workers to payrolls last month, less than the 150,000 gain forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey.
“It’s about what we expected,” Bernanke said of the jobs report during a question-and-answer period. “If we continue at this pace, we’re not going to see sustained declines in the unemployment rate.” His prepared testimony was submitted before the Labor Department data were released.
Stocks fluctuated after the jobs report and the testimony. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slipped 0.2 percent to 1,271.16 at 10:54 a.m. in New York after rising as much as 0.2 percent. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.37 percent from 3.40 percent late yesterday.
‘Credible’ Plan
Bernanke urged the lawmakers to draw up a “credible” fiscal plan to address issues that he said are long-term in nature, saying that “strong” actions are needed to control the nation’s debt.
Today’s Labor Department report also showed the jobless rate fell to 9.4 percent from 9.8 percent, reflecting gains in jobs and fewer people in the labor force.
“In a situation in which unemployment is high and expected to remain so and inflation is unusually low,” the Federal Open Market Committee “would normally respond by reducing its target for the federal funds rate,” Bernanke said in his first public remarks on Capitol Hill since September.
Instead, with the rate close to zero since December 2008, the Fed is buying securities in an effort to keep market borrowing costs low, he said, building on the first round of $1.7 trillion in debt purchases that “appeared to be successful in influencing longer-term interest rates, raising the prices of equities and other assets, and improving credit conditions more broadly, thereby helping stabilize the economy and support the recovery.”
Treasury Yields
Without referring to the rise in Treasury yields since the November decision to expand stimulus, Bernanke said in a footnote that “longer-term interest rates are also influenced by market expectations of the future path for short-term interest rates, which in turn depend on the outlook for the economy and so for the target federal funds rate.”
Bernanke, 57, met privately in November with Senate Banking Committee members to defuse criticism of the easing, saying the plan will spur job growth while not impairing the Fed’s ability to control inflation.
Allies in Congress
Bernanke lost allies in Congress last month with the retirement of senators including New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg, formerly the senior Republican on the budget panel, and Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd, who led the banking committee for four years. Republicans took control of the House and narrowed Democrats’ Senate majority in the midterm elections.
Republican leaders have criticized the stimulus. Since its Nov. 3 approval by Bernanke and his colleagues, stocks have risen, the dollar has strengthened and U.S. economic indicators have improved.
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, then the minority leader, and three other Republicans voiced “deep concerns” in a Nov. 17 letter to Bernanke about a policy that they said may undermine the dollar and create asset price bubbles.
In December, former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC said chances had increased of a 5 percent pace of U.S. growth in late 2011. The central bank will probably stop at $600 billion in purchases instead of raising the total to $1 trillion, he said.
‘Inevitable Changes’
Bernanke said that the longer lawmakers wait to deal with the federal budget deficit, “the greater the risks and the more wrenching the inevitable changes to the budget will be.”
“By contrast, the prompt adoption of a credible program to reduce future deficits would not only enhance economic growth and stability in the long run, but could also yield substantial near-term benefits in terms of lower long-term interest rates and increased consumer and business confidence,” Bernanke said.
Republicans have promised to seek cuts to reduce a budget deficit that may widen to $1.34 trillion for fiscal 2011, Credit Suisse Group AG strategists estimated on Dec. 7, a day after the president announced a deal with Republicans on extending Bush- era tax rates. The shortfalls were $1.29 trillion in fiscal 2010 and $1.42 trillion in fiscal 2009.
In October, Bernanke gave one of his most detailed prescriptions for reducing the deficit, urging lawmakers to consider adopting rules that limit federal spending or debt to help put the U.S. on a more sustainable fiscal path.
Extending Tax Cuts
In July, Bernanke told lawmakers that extending at least some of the tax cuts beyond last month would help strengthen a U.S. economy still in need of stimulus and recommended offsetting the move with increased revenue or lower spending.
The U.S. economy probably expanded at a 2.5 percent pace in the fourth quarter, according to the median estimate of 65 analysts in a Bloomberg News survey last month. That compares with 2.6 percent in the third quarter and 1.7 percent in the three months through June.
“The pace of economic recovery seems likely to be moderately stronger in 2011 than it was in 2010,” Bernanke said.
Reports yesterday showed that the best holiday shopping season in five years lost luster after sales at U.S. retailers including Gap Inc. and Target Corp. fell short of analysts’ projections. Sales at stores open more than a year rose 3.2 percent in December, according to Retail Metrics Inc. That compared with the 3.5 percent average of estimates compiled by the firm and a 5.5 percent increase in November.
The Federal Open Market Committee next meets Jan. 25-26, when four regional Fed presidents are scheduled to rotate into voting slots for the year: Chicago’s Charles Evans, Richard Fisher of Dallas, Narayana Kocherlakota of Minnesota and Philadelphia’s Charles Plosser.
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2)When Israeli leftists turn against their country with horrendous lies, the world media is only happy to disseminate them
By Caroline B. Glick
On Sunday December 19, the self-proclaimed "Israeli human rights" group B'tselem disseminated a shocking story to the local and international media. B'tselem claimed that the previous day Palestinian shepherd Samir Bani Fadel was peacefully herding his sheep when he was set upon by a mob of Israeli settlers. He alleged that these kippah-clad Israelis drove up in a car and chased him away. Then they torched the pasture and burned 12 pregnant ewes alive and badly burned five others. B'tselem furnished reporters with graphic photos of the dead sheep.
While the media published the account without a shred of suspicion, the police found Fadel's account hard to believe. Observant Jews neither drive nor light fires on Saturdays.
And indeed, when questioned by police investigators, Fadel admitted he made the whole attack up. He accidentally killed his herd himself when he set fire to a pile of bramble. Too embarrassed to admit his mistake, he decided to blame the Jews and become a local hero. B'tselem was only too happy to spread his lies.
On January 3, Channel 2 aired a video produced by B'tselem. The video purported to show residents of Yitzhar -- a community in Samaria — throwing rocks at Palestinians from the neighboring village Bureen for no reason whatsoever. Channel 2 presented the footage as further proof — if anyone needed it -- that the Israelis who live in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem are a bunch of lawless, hate-filled, violent fanatics.
Unfortunately for B'tselem and Channel 2, Yitzhar residents also own a video camera. And they also filmed the event. The Samaria Regional Council released the video to the media on Tuesday.
The Yitzhar video exposes the B'tselem video as a complete fraud. As it happened, on Monday afternoon a group of Palestinians joined by Israelis and/or foreigners descended on Yitzhar and attacked its residents with bricks and rocks of all sizes. Among the assailants was the cameraman who shot the footage presented on Channel 2. Not only did the videographer — who has blond hair — participate in the violent assault on Yitzhar. He staged the incident by alternately throwing rocks, filming, and directing his fellow attackers where to throw their rocks.
The Jews of Yitzhar only began throwing rocks to fend off their attackers.
This past Saturday the Palestinians' invented what has all the trappings of a new blood libel against Israel.
Every Friday Israeli anti-Zionist activists, Palestinian Authority employees, and foreign anti-Israel groups join forces at Bil'in. Together they attack IDF soldiers guarding construction of the separation barrier adjacent to Bil'in village.
Saturday, the PA claimed that Jawaher Abu-Rahmeh, a woman from Bil'in died from tear gas inhalation at the previous day's riot. The PA's chief negotiator Saeb Erekat claimed that her death was an IDF war crime.
Erekat of course, has not distinguished himself as a paragon of truthfulness. To the contrary. He has a long track record of spreading lies about Israel on the international stage. In just one notable example, in April 2002, Erekat claimed in multiple television appearances that the IDF killed more than 500 people at Jenin refugee camp during Operation Defensive Shield. He also claimed that the IDF buried some 300 people in mass graves.
The UN later reported that during the pitched battle in Jenin refugee camp, 52 Palestinians were killed. 23 IDF soldiers were killed in the battle.
Despite Erekat's rich history of lies, B'tselem's Executive Director Jessica Montell joined his bandwagon immediately. As NGO Monitor documented, in a Twitter post on Saturday, Montell wrote, "Sad start to the year. Jawaher Abu Rahmeh died this morning after inhaling tear gas yesterday in Bil'in demonstration."
Her claim was echoed in similar statements from her fellow Israeli anti-Zionist pressure groups. Anarchists Against the Wall, Yesh Din, Gush Shalom, Physicians for Human Rights — Israel, and attorney Michel Sfard who is associated with Yesh Din, Al Haq and Breaking the Silence all alleged that the IDF murdered Abu Rahmah with tear gas.
As luck would have it though, eyewitnesses say that Abu Rahma didn't even participate in the weekly riot. Ilham Abu Rahma, her 19 year old cousin and neighbor told Britain's Independent that deceased was at home when the riot took place.
For its part, the IDF has reported that the medical information it received about Abu Rahma's death are not consistent with death through overexposure to tear gas. During her hospitalization, Abu Rahma received an unusual mix of drugs that is usually only administered to treat poisoning, drug overdose or leukemia. The IDF also revealed that Abu Rahma had been recently hospitalized at a Palestinian hospital.
The easiest way to determine what caused Abu Rahma's death would of course have been to perform an autopsy. The IDF asked for one to be performed. But the PA refused the request and instead buried her in record time.
The sad truth is that a case can easily be made that all of this might have been avoided if B'tselem hadn't taken it upon itself to delegitimize Israel's right to self-defense. As part of its efforts, in 2002 B'tselem spearheaded the international campaign against Israel's right to build the separation fence to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of its major cities.
As NGO Monitor's recent in-depth report about the lawfare campaign to use the language of law to criminalize Israel shows, B'tselem was the first NGO to launch a campaign against the security fence. It coined the draconian term, "The Wall" to define the barrier which is in most places nothing more than a wire fence. NGO Monitor recalls that in 2002 and 2003 B'tselem "issued two lengthy position papers, which became accepted as the definitive analyses of 'the Wall' and were widely adopted."
B'tselem's campaign against the security fence was quickly joined by other NGOs, the UN and the EU. Its allegations formed the basis of the international campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to build the barrier.
That campaign reached a high point in 2004 with the publication of International Court of Justice's opinion on the matter. The ICJ's opinion parroted B'tselem's charge that Israel has no right to defend itself from Palestinian aggression. So too, the "evidence" against Israel's right to defend itself submitted by the PLO was based largely on the two B'tselem reports.
If B'tselem hadn't launched the campaign against the fence, it is possible that Israel's decision to built it might have been greeted with the same indifference as the security fences erected by the likes of India, Spain and numerous other countries in disputed territories. That is, it might have been seen as the legitimate act of self-defense it is.
The central role that B'tselem and its anti-Zionist comrades in the Israeli NGO community play in the international political war being waged against Israel's right to exist first came under significant public scrutiny following the publication of the UN Human Rights Committee's Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead in 2009.
As NGO Monitor and the Zionist student movement Im Tirtzu demonstrated last year, B'tselem and 15 other Israeli NGOs funded by the New Israel Fund and foreign governments lobbied the UN Human Rights Council to form the Goldstone Commission with the clear agenda of criminalizing Israel and whitewashing Hamas's war crimes against the Jewish state. Moreover, B'tselem and its fellow-NIF grantees, provided 92 percent of the anti-Israel allegations originating from Israeli sources. These allegations — most of which were firmly denied by the IDF — were used by Judge Richard Goldstone and his colleagues to "prove" that Israel committed war crimes in prosecuting its campaign to protect southern Israel from Hamas's illegal missile onslaught.
Not surprisingly, when scrutinized, like the story about the scorched pregnant ewes, the Yitzhar "bullies" and the "illegality" of the fence, these allegations came apart under scrutiny.
For instance, B'tselem claimed that during Cast Lead the IDF killed 1,387 Gazans and only 330, or less than a quarter of them were combatants. As NGO Monitor notes, the Goldstone report's claim that "Only one of every five [Gazan] casualties was a combatant," clearly was based on B'tselem's numbers.
The IDF — which B'tselem and its comrades claim has no credibility — reported that of 1166 Palestinian deaths, 709 were fighters killed in combat. Goldstone dismissed the IDF data.
Yet in November, Hamas's "Interior Minister" Fathi Hamad admitted to the London-based Al Hayat newspaper that the IDF's numbers were far more accurate than B'tselem's. According to Hamad, 600-700 Hamas fighters were killed in Cast Lead.
One of the reasons that false stories by the likes of B'tselem and its fellow Israeli-staffed anti-Zionist pressure groups are treated with respect by the local media and the international community alike is because they are perceived as Israeli groups. Why would Israelis lie about their own army?
Wednesday the Knesset voted to form a commission of inquiry to examine these groups' sources of funding. The rationale behind this parliamentary investigation is clear. The time has come to determine just how "Israeli" these organizations that form such an integral part of the international political war against Israel actually are. How much of their funding comes from foreign governments? And if their foreign funding is significant, then how can they claim to be Israeli groups?
B'tselem for instance receives funding from the British, Swiss, and Irish governments, Christian Aid, the Ford Foundation, DanChurchAid, (funded by the Danish Government), Diakonia, (funded by the Swedish and Norwegian governments and the EU), Tr�caire, (funded by the Irish and UK governments),and others.
Yesh Din, which specializes in conducting domestic lawfare against the IDF is funded by the Irish, Dutch, British, German, and Norwegian governments, the EU, and George Soros' Open Society Institute.
Physicians for Human Rights- Israel, Breaking the Silence, Bimkom, Peace Now, Gush Shalom, Adalah, the Geneva Initiative, the Committee for Peace and Security and so on and so forth all receive massive funding from foreign governments. The Samaria Regional Council alleges that over the past decade, foreign governments have donated hundreds of millions of euros, dollars and shekels to these Israeli "grassroots" groups.
The fact is that these groups' claim to grassroots' status is as credible as their allegations of Israeli criminality and Palestinian victimhood. In truth, these NGOs are local agents of foreign governments who use them to advance their anti-Israel policies.
The Knesset's move to investigate these groups was greeted by righteous rage from the groups' leaders and sympathetic Leftist Knesset members. The Knesset's decision was castigated as "McCarthyite," and "anti-democratic." But it is clear these groups and their parliamentary allies doth protest too much.
No one is talking about shutting them down. But the public has a right to know what these groups really are. And our political representatives have an obligation to investigate and expose subversive foreign agents. Israel and Israel's democratic system is weakened, not strengthened when the state's international reputation and domestic discourse is hijacked by foreign governments who hide behind their Israeli foot soldiers.
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4) The Blair Hitch Project
Since leaving 10 Downing Street, Tony Blair has faced continuing public condemnation for leading the U.K. into Iraq, converted to Catholicism, and plunged into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Debating Blair in Toronto, the author finds the former prime minister battered but unapologetic.
By Christopher Hitchens.
Say “Toronto” or “Ontario” and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency. But this part of Canada also has its quixotic and romantic dimension. It was to here that the Tory loyalists fled the American Revolution. In the village of Deptford, Ontario, on the banks of the local river Thames, the great Canadian novelist Robertson Davies cast and situated a trilogy variously composed of the elements of magic and exile. One of his chief characters, Percy “Boy” Staunton, gives up much of his life and energy to the cause of the Prince of Wales, a once dashing and promising young blade who shatters and demoralizes his admirers by falling under the thrall of a designing woman and abdicating the throne without a fight.
As I was led past a phalanx of guards to be admitted to Tony Blair's hotel suite overlooking Toronto and Lake Ontario, I was mentally running through our previous meetings. The first had been in the room of the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons shortly after he had been elected to head the Labour Party and to re-brand—or should I say re-baptize?—it as “New Labour.” Then I had seen him in the private office of the prime minister in Downing Street, just before he became eligible to celebrate an entire decade in the job, almost eclipsing Margaret Thatcher and setting an indoor record for any Labour politician. Most recently he had slipped downstairs to say hello while he was on a private visit to the British Embassy residence in Washington. The surroundings were still grand, but by then he had abdicated and was being forced to watch his disliked and inferior successor throw away an election he knew in his heart he himself could have won.
Now he was traveling with a very small but devoted staff, and looking like a Prince Charming in exile. The high-wattage grin was still there, but framed in a lined face with cropped and graying hair that still gave the ephemeral impression of youth. We were due to have a public debate: the first he had agreed to since he had left office. Blair had made an appearance before the Chilcot committee, which is still investigating Britain's participation in the invasion of Iraq, looking tight-lipped and conceding nothing. The taunts against him had swollen from run-of-the-mill abuse (“Bush's poodle,” “Liar,” or sometimes “Bliar”) to full-out hatred. “War criminal!” “Murderer.” The first two public launches of his new memoir, A Journey, had been disrupted or canceled. At a bookstore signing in Dublin he had been pelted with shoes and other objects by a mixed mob of anti-war types, stiffened with some gaunt lads from the periphery of “the Real I.R.A.” A later event at the Tate Modern, in London, had to be called off. “It just wouldn't have been fair to everyone else to go ahead,” he says with a rather lame shrug. Perhaps he was relying on the legendary politeness of Torontonians, and on the apparently more neutral subject of our dispute, which was religion. He now operates under the somehow touching name of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which can sound rather like a body set up to express faith in Tony Blair. His principal day job is to serve as mediator for the “Quartet” of powers that supervise the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” This means regular efforts to reconcile Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Holy Land. Cheer up, I want to tell him. At least it's a job for life.
Meanwhile, he has not lost his talent for swift parliamentary footwork. The proposition for debate states clearly that religion is “a force for good.” The onus here is always on those who are advocating the motion. Yet somehow, without quite understanding it, I find that I have agreed to speak first and to surrender the traditional advantage of giving the reply. I feel as if I have gone into a revolving door in front of someone and come out behind him: even as if one of Robertson Davies's suburban conjurors had pulled a fast one. During our public exchange I trail my coat on the Roman question, criticizing Cardinal Newman, whose beatification Blair had advocated, and ridiculing the Pope's position on family planning and aids. He doesn't rise to the defense of what he is bound to regard as the One True Church. Can it be true, then, that he did what both Clinton and George W. Bush had done before him, and ended up in the pews of his wife's church? Cherie Blair—who has told us more than we need to know about the times she did and didn't take her highly heretical birth-control kit for fertile weekends with the Queen at Balmoral—is a devout if eclectic Catholic. Her half-sister Lauren announced a few weeks ago that she had converted to Islam after a visit to a mosque in Iran, for whose state-run “Press TV” she works as a journalist. She described the moment of revelation, in terms that would have delighted Karl Marx, as a “shot of spiritual morphine,” and claims not to have had a drink or any pork products ever since. In spite of her brother-in-law's many pretzel-shaped attempts to accommodate himself to the followers of the Prophet, she took the opportunity to describe him as a foe of Islam. Blair, who relates in his memoirs a period when he became too fond of the cocktail and nightcap hours, yet who exhausts himself daily on “outreach” to Muslims, has no alternative but to put on his sadly misunderstood face once again.
And he really does possess one of the most mobile and expressive faces I have ever seen. I asked him in private what it was like to be hated: not hated a bit but hated really quite a lot. The receptive grin stayed in place, even if very slightly contracted, as if he wanted to go on giving the impression of seeing all points of view. Did he feel he had had to unfairly absorb some of the spittle directed at George Bush? He didn't seem to want to take shelter in this refuge. Now, those who fail to register emotion under pressure are often apparently good officer material, but that very stoicism can also conceal—as with officers who don't suffer from battle fatigue or post-traumatic stress—a psychopathic calm that sends the whole platoon into a ditch full of barbed wire and sheds no tears.
Blair on the platform was an almost complete contrast. He virtually pantomimed reaction: smiling readily if a joke was at his expense, wincing here and there, spreading his palms resignedly once or twice. Yet this body candor, too, can have its iffy aspect, like Clinton biting his fat lip in fake empathy. I couldn't quite make up my mind until after the debate was over. He and I had been chatting in his greenroom, and I excused myself to go to my own (for a shot of morphine, I think, to boost the weak scotch I'd been given). Returning rather quickly, I found Blair whispering with one of his aides. As I paused at the door, they both looked up rather shyly. I offered to withdraw, but they said no: they had just been saying to each other how grateful they were that I had said some words that evening in defense of his decision to remove Saddam Hussein. I have spent my life growing a carapace to shield myself from the appeal of politicians, and nine out of ten of my closest friends now regard Blair as the classic example of the trickster exposed, the hollow man calcified by cynicism and media manipulation. I, too, can remember gagging at his uncritical courtship of Rupert Murdoch and his annexation of the Princess Diana obsequies (even if the latter did make him the first Labour prime minister to give instructions to the royal family). But having caught him in this micro-moment of being vulnerable without exactly being wounded, I find that I simply can't lend myself to the glib consensus. There is a moral pulse to be detected here, and it's quite a strong one.
When Tony Blair took office, Slobodan Milošević was cleansing and raping the republics of the former Yugoslavia. Mullah Omar was lending Osama bin Laden the hinterland of a failed and rogue state. Charles Taylor of Liberia was leading a hand-lopping militia of enslaved children across the frontier of Sierra Leone, threatening a blood-diamond version of Rwanda in West Africa. And the wealth and people of Iraq were the abused private property of Saddam Hussein and his crime family. Today, all of these Caligula figures are at least out of power, and at the best either dead or on trial. How can anybody with a sense of history not grant Blair some portion of credit for this? And how can anybody with a tincture of moral sense go into a paroxysm and yell that it is he who is the war criminal? It is as if all the civilians murdered by al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be charged to his account. This is the chaotic mentality of Julian Assange and his groupies.
Scripture warns gloomily that prophets are not honored in their own countries, and given the record of many prophets, that's very probably a good thing. Blair could also join the club of wandering ex-statesmen, including at different times Mikhail Gorbachev and Richard Nixon, who are given respect and recognition only when they visit other peoples' countries. As we said good-bye, he was being taken straight to the airport, staying one jet-lag stage ahead of his demons, and heading back to Jerusalem—that birthplace of all our dreams and graveyard of all our hopes.
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5) Constitutionalism
By Charles Krauthammer
For decades, Democrats and Republicans fought over who owns the American flag. Now they're fighting over who owns the Constitution.
The flag debates began during the Vietnam era when leftist radicals made the fatal error of burning it. For decades since, non-suicidal liberals have tried to undo the damage. Demeaningly, and somewhat unfairly, they are forever having to prove their fealty to the flag.
Amazingly, though, some still couldn't get it quite right. During the last presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama, asked why he was not wearing a flag pin, answered that it represented "a substitute" for "true patriotism." Bad move. Months later, Obama quietly beat a retreat and began wearing the flag on his lapel. He does so still.
Today, the issue is the Constitution. It's a healthier debate because flags are pure symbolism and therefore more likely to evoke pure emotion and ad hominem argument. The Constitution, on the other hand, is a document that speaks. It defines concretely the nature of our social contract. Nothing in our public life is more substantive.
Americans are in the midst of a great national debate over the power, scope and reach of the government established by that document. The debate was sparked by the current administration's bold push for government expansion - a massive fiscal stimulus, Obamacare, financial regulation and various attempts at controlling the energy economy. This engendered a popular reaction, identified with the Tea Party but in reality far more widespread, calling for a more restrictive vision of government more consistent with the Founders' intent.
Call it constitutionalism. In essence, constitutionalism is the intellectual counterpart and spiritual progeny of the "originalism" movement in jurisprudence. Judicial "originalists" (led by Antonin Scalia and other notable conservative jurists) insist that legal interpretation be bound by the text of the Constitution as understood by those who wrote it and their contemporaries. Originalism has grown to become the major challenger to the liberal "living Constitution" school, under which high courts are channelers of the spirit of the age, free to create new constitutional principles accordingly.
What originalism is to jurisprudence, constitutionalism is to governance: a call for restraint rooted in constitutional text. Constitutionalism as a political philosophy represents a reformed, self-regulating conservatism that bases its call for minimalist government - for reining in the willfulness of presidents and legislatures - in the words and meaning of the Constitution.
Hence that highly symbolic moment on Thursday when the 112th House of Representatives opened with a reading of the Constitution. Remarkably, this had never been done before - perhaps because it had never been so needed. The reading reflected the feeling, expressed powerfully in the last election, that we had moved far, especially the past two years, from a government constitutionally limited by its enumerated powers to a government constrained only by its perception of social need.
The most galvanizing example of this expansive shift was, of course, the Democrats' health-care reform, which will revolutionize one-sixth of the economy and impose an individual mandate that levies a fine on anyone who does not enter into a private contract with a health insurance company. Whatever its merits as policy, there is no doubting its seriousness as constitutional precedent: If Congress can impose such a mandate, is there anything that Congress may not impose upon the individual?
The new Republican House will henceforth require, in writing, constitutional grounding for every bill submitted. A fine idea, although I suspect 90 percent of them will simply make a ritual appeal to the "general welfare" clause. Nonetheless, anything that reminds members of Congress that they are not untethered free agents is salutary.
But still mostly symbolic. The real test of the Republicans' newfound constitutionalism will come in legislating. Will they really cut government spending? Will they really roll back regulations? Earmarks are nothing. Do the Republicans have the courage to go after entitlements as well?
In the interim, the cynics had best tread carefully. Some liberals are already disdaining the new constitutionalism, denigrating the document's relevance and sneering at its public recitation. They sneer at their political peril. In choosing to focus on a majestic document that bears both study and recitation, the reformed conservatism of the Obama era has found itself not just a symbol but an anchor.
Constitutionalism as a guiding political tendency will require careful and thoughtful development, as did jurisprudential originalism. But its wide appeal and philosophical depth make it a promising first step to a conservative future.
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6) The Underpaid Robert Gibbs and Washington's Sense of Entitlement
Analysis by Walter Shapiro
With the capital awash in star-spangled sentiment this week, it seems appropriate to recall a patriotic parable so dangerous that it undermines the governing ethos of both Democrats and Republicans in Washington.
Leaving office in 1953, as biographer David McCullough writes, Harry Truman "traveled home from Washington unprotected by Secret Service agents ... He had come home without salary or pension. He had no income or support from the federal government other than his Army pension of $112.56 a month ... Truman had been forced to take out a loan at the National Bank in Washington in his last weeks as president to tide him over."
The Myth of Cincinnatus -- the Roman general who saved the Republic and then humbly returned to his farm -- is as outmoded in 21st century Washington as remembering that slavery and Prohibition were once in the Constitution. Instead, these days the governing philosophy of governing is that doing good by selflessly working in the White House entitles you to do well for the rest of your life.
Barack Obama bid a grateful farewell to Robert Gibbs Wednesday by stressing to The New York Times that his press secretary "had a six-year stretch now where basically he's been going 24/7 with relatively modest pay." As a senior White House aide, Gibbs modestly earned $172,200 last year. That income alone -- leaving out any earnings by his wife -- would put Gibbs in the upper 8 percent of all American families, according to 2009 Census figures.
Yes, Washington and its close-in suburbs are expensive places to live. But it is a safe guess that most print reporters who pepper Gibbs with questions at his daily briefings make less than $172,000 a year -- and they somehow manage to live in Washington as well. Salaries for federal judges (all of whom boast educational pedigrees that outstrip Gibbs' undergraduate degree from North Carolina State) start at $174,000 and waft skyward to $223,000 for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Obama's sympathetic comments about Gibbs' financial sacrifice illustrate that populism remains an abstraction for the president, despite the persistence of the worst economic downturn since the Depression. In the world of Obama (or Clinton or either Bush), it is par for the course that William Daley, the new White House chief of staff, served as Midwest chairman for JP Morgan Chase between his stints in government. Or that Rahm Emanuel made $16 million as an investment banker during the three years between his departure from the Clinton White House and his 2002 election to the House.
If Gibbs were immediately heading to a comparably paid job in the president's 2012 re-election campaign, only a churl would complain about his need for some time off -- as Obama put it -- "to step back, reflect and retool." But at his press briefing Wednesday, Gibbs announced without a flicker of embarrassment, "I will have an opportunity I hope to give some speeches." The Washington Post reported that Gibbs has hired Washington lawyer Robert Barnett to negotiate these speeches and other potentially lucrative engagements after leaving the White House. While the departing White House press secretary ruled out a book "in the near future" and doubted that he would ever work for a political candidate not named Obama, Gibbs did not offer any Sherman-esque denials about taking on corporate work.
To be fair, Gibbs is a portrait in Gandhian self-denial compared to many who have glided from a presidential limousine to a personal one. Little more than a year after he left the Reagan White House, lobbyist Michael Deaver posed for an infamous 1986 Time magazine cover showing him talking on an early car phone from the back seat of a limo as the headline ominously asked: "Who's This Man Calling? Influence Peddling in Washington." While Deaver was an imagemaker, not an attorney, he was following the buck-raking tradition of lawyer-fixers like Tommy Corcoran (FDR) and Clark Clifford (Truman), who learned government from the inside and then greased the levers of power for grateful corporate clients.
Unlike lobbying (on which Obama deserves credit for taking a hard line), Gibbs will be hurting no one if in three months, say, he gets paid $30,000 for telling some harmless anecdotes about the president and the press corps to the annual convention of the Cat Food Producers of America. But there remains something slightly unseemly about cashing in like this while the president who has made your career is still in the Oval Office. The problem is that as long as Gibbs, Obama and the entire political-insider culture of Washington believe that working in the White House for $172,000 is a form of martyrdom, then the only restraint after leaving government will be the fine print in the ethics laws.
There was an era (personified by the likes of Truman and Sam Rayburn in the 1950s) when a high-level career in public service and an upper-middle-class income seemed reward enough. These bygone values endure among many in the military and the federal judiciary -- not to mention among the underpaid denizens of the White House briefing room. But too often power players in Washington believe that if they see the president every day, appear on television and have a permanent seat on Air Force One, they are entitled to get rich as soon as they leave government.
When it comes to personal money, there is a sense in Washington that what happens within the Beltway stays within the Beltway. But voters are not dumb, even if more than 90 percent of them survive on less than $172,000 a year. What happens in government is not the only trigger for populist outrage. For it is equally easy to become enraged by career arcs after government.
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8) The Next Decade: Where We've Been... And Where We're Going
By George Friedman
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This book is about the relation between empire, republic, and the exercise of power in the next ten years. It is a more personal book than The Next 100 Years because I am addressing my greatest concern, which is that the power of the United States in the world will undermine the republic. I am not someone who shuns power. I understand that without power there can be no republic. But the question I raise is how the United States should behave in the world while exercising its power, and preserve the republic at the same time.
I invite readers to consider two themes. The first is the concept of the unintended empire. I argue that the United States has become an empire not because it intended to, but because history has worked out that way. The issue of whether the United States should be an empire is meaningless. It is an empire.
The second theme, therefore, is about managing the empire, and for me the most important question behind that is whether the republic can survive. The United States was founded against British imperialism. It is ironic, and in many ways appalling, that what the founders gave us now faces this dilemma. There might have been exits from this fate, but these exits were not likely. Nations become what they are through the constraints of history, and history has very little sentimentality when it comes to ideology or preferences. We are what we are.
It is not clear to me whether the republic can withstand the pressure of the empire, or whether America can survive a mismanaged empire. Put differently, can the management of an empire be made compatible with the requirements of a republic? This is genuinely unclear to me. I know the United States will be a powerful force in the world during this next decade—and for this next century, for that matter—but I don’t know what sort of regime it will have.
I passionately favor a republic. Justice may not be what history cares about, but it is what I care about. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the relationship between empire and republic, and the only conclusion I have reached is that if the republic is to survive, the single institution that can save it is the presidency. That is an odd thing to say, given that the presidency is in many ways the most imperial of our institutions (it is the single institution embodied by a single person). Yet at the same time it is the most democratic, as the presidency is the only office for which the people, as a whole, select a single, powerful leader.
In order to understand this office I look at three presidents who defined American greatness. The first is Abraham Lincoln, who saved the republic. The second is Franklin Roosevelt, who gave the United States the world’s oceans. The third is Ronald Reagan, who undermined the Soviet Union and set the stage for empire. Each of them was a profoundly moral man ... who was prepared to lie, violate the law, and betray principle in order to achieve those ends. They embodied the paradox of what I call the Machiavellian presidency, an institution that, at its best, reconciles duplicity and righteousness in order to redeem the promise of America. I do not think being just is a simple thing, nor that power is simply the embodiment of good intention. The theme of this book, applied to the regions of the world, is that justice comes from power, and power is only possible from a degree of ruthlessness most of us can’t abide. The tragedy of political life is the conflict between the limit of good intentions and the necessity of power. At times this produces goodness. It did in the case of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan, but there is no assurance of this in the future. It requires greatness.
Geopolitics describes what happens to nations, but it says little about the kinds of regimes nations will have. I am convinced that unless we understand the nature of power, and master the art of ruling, we may not be able to choose the direction of our regime. Therefore, there is nothing contradictory in saying that the United States will dominate the next century yet may still lose the soul of its republic. I hope not, as I have children and now grandchildren—and I am not convinced that empire is worth the price of the republic. I am also certain that history does not care what I, or others, think.
This book, therefore, will look at the issues, opportunities, and inherent challenges of the next ten years. Surprise alliances will be formed, unexpected tensions will develop, and economic tides will rise and fall. Not surprisingly, how the United States (particularly the American president) approaches these events will guide the health, or deterioration, of the republic. An interesting decade lies ahead.
INTRODUCTION
Rebalancing America
A century is about events. A decade is about people. I wrote The Next 100 Years to explore the impersonal forces that shape history in the long run, but human beings don’t live in the long run. We live in the much shorter span in which our lives are shaped not so much by vast historical trends but by the specific decisions of specific individuals.
This book is about the short run of the next ten years: the specific realities to be faced, and the specific decisions to be made, and the likely consequences of those decisions. Most people think that the longer the time frame, the more unpredictable the future. I take the opposite view. Individual actions are the hardest thing to predict. In the course of a century, so many individual decisions are made that no single one of them is ever critical. Each decision is lost in the torrent of judgments that make up a century. But in the shorter time frame of a decade, individual decisions made by individual people, particularly those with political power, can matter enormously. What I wrote in The Next 100 Years is the frame for understanding this decade. But it is only the frame.
Forecasting a century is the art of recognizing the impossible, then eliminating from consideration all the events that, at least logically, aren’t going to happen. The reason is, as Sherlock Holmes put it, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
It is always possible that a leader will do something unexpectedly foolish or brilliant, which is why forecasting is best left to the long run, the span over which individual decisions don’t carry so much weight. But having forecast for the long run, you can reel back your scenario and try to see how it plays out in, say, a decade. What makes this time frame interesting is that it is sufficiently long for the larger, impersonal forces to be at play but short enough for the individual decisions of individual leaders to skew outcomes that otherwise might seem inevitable. A decade is the point at which history and statesmanship meet, and a span in which policies still matter.
I am not normally someone who gets involved in policy debates—I’m more interested in what will happen than in what I want to see happen. But within the span of a decade, events that may not matter in the long run may still affect us personally and deeply. They also can have real meaning in defining which path we take into the future. This book is therefore both a forecast and a discussion of the policies that ought to be followed.
We begin with the United States for the same reason that a study of 1910 would have to begin with Britain. Whatever the future might hold, the global system today pivots around the United States, just as Britain was the pivotal point in the years leading up to World War I. In The Next 100 Years, I wrote about the long-term power of the United States. In this book, I have to write about American weaknesses, which, I think, are not problems in the long run; time will take care of most of these. But because you and I don’t live in the long run, for us these problems are very real. Most are rooted in structural imbalances that require solutions. Some are problems of leadership, because, as I said at the outset, a decade is about people.
This discussion of problems and people is particularly urgent at this moment. In the first decade after the United States became the sole global power, the world was, compared to other eras, relatively tranquil. In terms of genuine security issues for the United States, Baghdad and the Balkans were nuisances, not threats. The United States had no need for strategy in a world that appeared to have accepted American leadership without complaint. Ten years later, September 11 brought that illusion crashing to the ground. The world was more dangerous than we imagined, but the options seemed fewer as well. The United States, did not craft a global strategy in response. Instead, it developed a narrowly focused politico-military strategy designed to defeat terrorism, almost to the exclusion of all else.
Now that decade is coming to an end as well, and the search is under way for an exit from Iraq, from Afghanistan, and indeed from the world that began when those hijacked airliners smashed into buildings in New York and Washington. The impulse of the United States is always to withdraw from the world, savoring the pleasures of a secure homeland protected by the buffer of wide oceans on either side. But the homeland is not secure, either from terrorists or from the ambitions of nation-states that see the United States as both dangerous and unpredictable.
Under both President Bush and President Obama, the United States has lost sight of the long-term strategy that served it well for most of the last century. Instead, recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goals because they have framed the issues incorrectly, as if they believed their own rhetoric. As a result, the United States has overextended its ability to project its power around the world, which has allowed even minor players to be the tail that wags the dog.
The overriding necessity for American policy in the decade to come is a return to the balanced, global strategy that the United States learned from the example of ancient Rome and from the Britain of a hundred years ago. These old-school imperialists didn’t rule by main force. Instead, they maintained their dominance by setting regional players against each other and keeping these players in opposition to others who might also instigate resistance. They maintained the balance of power, using these opposing forces to cancel each other out while securing the broader interests of the empire. They also kept their client states bound together by economic interest and diplomacy, which is not to say the routine courtesies between nations but the subtle manipulation that causes neighbors and fellow clients to distrust each other more than they distrust the imperial powers: direct intervention relying on the empire’s own troops was a distant, last resort.
Adhering to this strategy, the United States intervened in World War I only when the standoff among European powers was failing, and only when it appeared that the Germans, with Russia collapsing in the east, might actually overwhelm the English and French in the west. When the fighting stopped, the United States helped forge a peace treaty that prevented France from dominating postwar Europe.
During the early days of World War II, the United States stayed out of direct engagement as long as it could, supporting the British in their efforts to fend off the Germans in the west while encouraging the Soviets to bleed the Germans in the east. Afterward, the United States devised a balance-of-power strategy to prevent the Soviet Union from dominating Western Europe, the Middle East, and ultimately China. Throughout the long span from the first appearance of the “Iron Curtain” to the end of the Cold War, this U.S. strategy of distraction and manipulation was rational, coherent, and effectively devious.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the United States shifted from a strategy focused on trying to contain major powers to an unfocused attempt to contain potential regional hegemons when their behavior offended American sensibilities. In the period from 1991 to 2001, the United States invaded or intervened in five countries— Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia, which was an extraordinary tempo of military operations. At times, American strategy seemed to be driven by humanitarian concerns, although the goal was not always clear. In what sense, for example, was the 1994 invasion of Haiti in the national interest?
But the United States had an enormous reservoir of power in the 1990s, which gave it ample room for maneuver, as well as room for indulging its ideological whims. When you are overwhelmingly dominant, you don’t have to operate with a surgeon’s precision. Nor did the United States, when dealing with potential regional hegemons, have to win, in the sense of defeating an enemy army and occupying its homeland. From a military point of view, U.S. incursions during the 1990s were spoiling attacks, the immediate goal being to plunge an aspiring regional power into chaos, forcing it to deal with regional and internal threats at a time and place of American choosing rather than allowing it to develop and confront the United States on the smaller nation’s own schedule.
After September 11, 2001, a United States newly obsessed with terrorism became even more disoriented, losing sight of its long-term strategic principles altogether. As an alternative, it created a new but unattainable strategic goal, which was the elimination of the terrorist threat. The principal source of that threat, al Qaeda, had given itself an unlikely but not inconceivable objective, which was to re-create the Islamic caliphate, the theocracy that was established by Muhammad in the seventh century and that persisted in one form or another until the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Al Qaeda’s strategy was to overthrow Muslim governments that it regarded as insufficiently Islamic, which it sought to do by fomenting popular uprisings in those countries. From al Qaeda’s point of view, the reason that the Islamic masses remained downtrodden was fear of their governments, which was in turn based on a sense that the United States, their governments’ patron, could not be challenged. To free the masses from their intimidation, al Qaeda felt that it had to demonstrate that the United States was not as powerful as it appeared—that it was in fact vulnerable to even a small group of Muslims, provided that those Muslims were prepared to die.
In response to al Qaeda’s assaults, the United States slammed into the Islamic world—particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. The goal was to demonstrate U.S. capability and reach, but these efforts were once again spoiling attacks. Their purpose was not to defeat an army and occupy a territory but merely to disrupt al Qaeda and create chaos in the Muslim world. But creating chaos is a short-term tactic, not a long-term strategy. The United States demonstrated that it is possible to destroy terrorist organizations and mitigate terrorism, but it did not achieve the goal that it had articulated, which was to eliminate the threat altogether. Eliminating such a threat would require monitoring the private activities of more than a billion people spread across the globe. Even attempting such an effort would require overwhelming resources. And given that succeeding in such an effort is impossible, it is axiomatic that the United States would exhaust itself and run out of resources in the process, as has happened. Just because something like the elimination of terrorism is desirable doesn’t mean that it is practical, or that the price to be paid is rational.
Recovering from the depletions and distractions of this effort will consume the United States over the next ten years. The first step—returning to a policy of maintaining regional balances of power—must begin in the main area of current U.S. military engagement, a theater stretching from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. For most of the past half century there have been three native balances of power here: the Arab-Israeli, the Indo-Pakistani, and the Iranian-Iraqi. Owing largely to recent U.S. policy, those balances are unstable or no longer exist. The Israelis are no longer constrained by their neighbors and are now trying to create a new reality on the ground. The Pakistanis have been badly weakened by the war in Afghanistan, and they are no longer an effective counterbalance to India. And, most important, the Iraqi state has collapsed, leaving the Iranians as the most powerful military force in the Persian Gulf area.
Restoring balance to that region, and then to U.S. policy more generally, will require steps during the next decade that will be seen as controversial, to say the least. As I argue in the chapters that follow, the United States must quietly distance itself from Israel. It must strengthen (or at least put an end to weakening) Pakistan. And in the spirit of Roosevelt’s entente with the USSR during World War II, as well as Nixon’s entente with China in the 1970s, the United States will be required to make a distasteful accommodation with Iran, regardless of whether it attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities. These steps will demand a more subtle exercise of power than we have seen on the part of recent presidents. The nature of that subtlety is a second major theme of the decade to come, and one that I will address further along.
While the Middle East is the starting point for America’s return to balance, Eurasia as a whole will also require a rearrangement of relationships. For generations, keeping the technological sophistication of Europe separated from the natural resources and manpower of Russia has been one of the key aims of American foreign policy. In the early 1990s, when the United States stood supreme and Moscow lost control over not only the former Soviet Union but the Russian state as well, that goal was neglected. Almost immediately after September 11, 2001, the unbalanced commitment of U.S. forces to the Mediterranean-Himalayan theater created a window of opportunity for the Russian security apparatus to regain its influence. Under Putin, the Russians began to reassert themselves even prior to the war with Georgia, and they have accelerated the process of their reemergence since. Diverted and tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has been unable to hold back Moscow’s return to influence, or even to make credible threats that would inhibit Russian ambitions. As a result, the United States now faces a significant regional power with its own divergent agenda, which includes a play for influence in Europe.
The danger of Russia’s reemergence and westward focus will become more obvious as we examine the other player in this second region of concern, the European Union. Once imagined as a supernation on the order of the United States, the EU began to show its structural weaknesses during the financial crisis of 2008, which led to the follow-on crisis of southern European economies (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece). Once Germany, the EU’s greatest economic engine, faced the prospect of underwriting the mistakes and excesses of its EU partners, it began to reexamine its priorities. The emerging conclusion is that potentially Germany shared a greater community of interest with Russia than it did with its European neighbors. However much Germany might benefit from economic alliances in Europe, it remains dependent on Russia for a large amount of its natural gas. Russia in turn needs technology, which Germany has in abundance. Similarly, Germany needs an infusion of manpower that isn’t going to create social stresses by immigrating to Germany, and one obvious solution is to establish German factories in Russia. Meanwhile, America’s request for increased German help in Afghanistan and elsewhere has created friction with the United States and aligned German interests most closely with Russia.
All of which helps to explain why the United States’ return to balance will require a significant effort over the next decade to block an accommodation between Germany and Russia. As we will see, the U.S. approach will include cultivating a new relationship with Poland, the geographic monkey wrench that can be thrown into the gears of a German-Russian entente.
China, of course, also demands attention. Even so, the current preoccupation with Chinese expansion will diminish as that country’s economic miracle comes of age. China’s economic performance will slow to that of a more mature economy—and, we might add, a more mature economy with over a billion people living in abject poverty. The focus of U.S. efforts will shift to the real power in northeast Asia: Japan, the third largest economy in the world and the nation with the most significant navy in the region.
As this brief overview already suggests, the next ten years will be enormously complex, with many moving parts and many unpredictable elements. The presidents in the decade to come will have to reconcile American traditions and moral principles with realities that most Americans find it more comfortable to avoid. This will require the execution of demanding maneuvers, including allying with enemies, while holding together a public that believes—and wants to believe—that foreign policy and values simply coincide. The president will have to pursue virtue as all of our great presidents have done: with suitable duplicity.
But all the cleverness in the world can’t compensate for profound weakness. The United States possesses what I call “deep power,” and deep power must be first and foremost balanced power. This means economic, military, and political power in appropriate and mutually supporting amounts. It is deep in a second sense, which is that it rests on a foundation of cultural and ethical norms that define how that power is to be used and that provides a framework for individual action. Europe, for example, has economic power, but it is militarily weak and rests on a very shallow foundation. There is little consensus in Europe politically, particularly about the framework of obligations imposed on its members.
Power that is both deeply rooted and well balanced is rare, and I will try to show that in the next decade, the United States is uniquely situated to consolidate and exercise both. More important, it will have little choice in the matter. There is an idea, both on the left and on the right, that the United States has the option of withdrawing from the complexities of managing global power. It’s the belief that if the United States ceased to meddle in the affairs of the world, the world would no longer hate and fear it, and Americans could enjoy their pleasures without fear of attack. This belief is nostalgia for a time when the United States pursued its own interests at home and left the world to follow its own course.
There was indeed a time when Thomas Jefferson could warn against entangling alliances, but this was not a time when the United States annually produced 25 percent of the wealth of the world. That output alone entangles it in the affairs of the world. What the United States consumes and produces shapes lives of people around the world. The economic policies pursued by the United States shape the economic realities of the world. The U.S. Navy’s control of the seas guarantees the United States economic access to the world and gives it the potential power to deny that access to other countries. Even if the United States wanted to shrink its economy to a less intrusive size, it is not clear how that would be done, let alone that Americans would pay the price when the bill was presented.
But this does not mean that the United States is at ease with its power. Things have moved too far too fast. That is why bringing U.S. policy back into balance will also require bringing the United States to terms with its actual place in the world. We have already noted that the fall of the Soviet Union left the United States without a rival for global dominance. What needs to be faced squarely now is that whether we like it or not, and whether it was intentional or not, the United States emerged from the Cold War not only as the global hegemon but as a global empire.
The reality is that the American people have no desire for an empire. This is not to say that they don’t want the benefits, both economic and strategic. It simply means that they don’t want to pay the price. Economically, Americans want the growth potential of open markets but not the pains. Politically, they want to have enormous influence but not the resentment of the world. Militarily, they want to be protected from dangers but not to bear the burdens of a long-term strategy.
Empires are rarely planned or premeditated, and those that have been, such as Napoleon’s and Hitler’s, tend not to last. Those that endure grow organically, and their imperial status often goes unnoticed until it has become overwhelming. This was the case both for Rome and for Britain, yet they succeeded because once they achieved imperial status, they not only owned up to it, they learned to manage it.
Unlike the Roman or British Empire, the American structure of dominance is informal, but that makes it no less real. The United States controls the oceans, and its economy accounts for more than a quarter of everything produced in the world. If Americans adopt the iPod or a new food fad, factories and farms in China and Latin America reorganize to serve the new mandate. This is how the European powers governed China in the nineteenth century—never formally, but by shaping and exploiting it to the degree that the distinction between formal and informal hardly mattered.
A fact that the American people have trouble assimilating is that the size and power of the American empire is inherently disruptive and intrusive, which means that the United States can rarely take a step without threatening some nation or benefiting another. While such power confers enormous economic advantages, it naturally engenders hostility. The United States is a commercial republic, which means that it lives on trade. Its tremendous prosperity derives from its own assets and virtues, but it cannot maintain this prosperity and be isolated from the world. Therefore, if the United States intends to retain its size, wealth, and power, the only option is to learn how to manage its disruptive influence maturely.
Until the empire is recognized for what it is, it is difficult to have a coherent public discussion of its usefulness, its painfulness, and, above all, its inevitability. Unrivaled power is dangerous enough, but unrivaled power that is oblivious is like a rampaging elephant.
I will argue, then, that the next decade must be one in which the United States moves from willful ignorance of reality to its acceptance, however reluctant. With that acceptance will come the beginning of a more sophisticated foreign policy. There will be no proclamation of empire, only more effective management based on the underlying truth of the situation.
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9)Muslim inbreeding ... An interesting study.
(and not often discussed):
Nicolai Sennels is a Danish psychologist who has done extensive research
into a little-known problem in the Muslim world: the disastrous results of
Muslim inbreeding brought about by the marriage of first-cousins.
This practice, which has been prohibited (for the most part), in the Judeo-Christian traditionsince the days of Moses, was sanctioned by Muhammad and has been going on
now for 50 generations (1,400 years) in the Muslim world.
This practice of inbreeding will never go away in the Muslim world since
Muhammad is the ultimate example and authority on all matters, including
marriage.
The massive inbreeding in Muslim culture may well have done virtually
irreversible damage to the Muslim gene pool, including extensive damage to
its intelligence, sanity, and health.
According to Sennels, close to half of all Muslims in the world are
inbred. In Pakistan , the numbers approach 70%. Even in England, more
than half of Pakistani immigrants are married to their first cousins, and
in Denmark the number of inbred Pakistani immigrants is around 40%.
The numbers are equally devastating in other Muslim countries:
67% in Saudi Arabia, 64% in Jordan and Kuwait, 63% in Sudan, 60% in
Iraq, and 54% in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
According to the BBC, this Pakistani, Muslim-inspired inbreeding is
thought to explain the probability that a British Pakistani family is more
than 13 times as likely to have children with recessive genetic disorders.
While Pakistanis are responsible for three percent of the births in the
UK, they account for 33% of children with genetic birth defects.
The risk of what are called autosomal recessive disorders such as cystic
fibrosis and spinal muscular atrophy is 18 times higher and the risk of
death due to malformations is 10 times higher.
Other negative consequences of inbreeding include a 100 percent increase
in the risk of stillbirths and a 50% increase in the possibility that a
child will die during labor.
Lowered intellectual capacity is another devastating consequence of Muslim
marriage patterns. According to Sennels, research shows that children of
consanguinous marriages lose 10-16 points off their IQ and that social
abilities develop much slower in inbred babies.
The risk of having an IQ lower than 70, the official demarcation for being
classified as retarded, increases by an astonishing 400 percent among
children of cousin marriages.
(Similar effects were seen in the Pharaonic dynasties in ancient Egypt and
in the British royal family, where inbreeding was the norm for a
significant period of time).
In Denmark, non-Western immigrants are more than 300 percent more likely
to fail the intelligence test required for entrance into the Danish army.
Sennels says that the ability to enjoy and produce knowledge and abstract
thinking is simply lower in the Islamic world. He points out that the Arab
world translates just 330 books every year, about 20% of what Greece alone
does.
In the last 1,200 years years of Islam, just 100,000 books have been
translated into Arabic, about what Spain does in a single year. Seven out
of 10 Turks have never even read a book.
Sennels points out the difficulties this creates for Muslims seeking to
succeed in the West. A lower IQ, together with a religion that denounces
critical thinking, surely makes it harder for many Muslims to have success
in our high-tech knowledge societies.
Only nine Muslims have ever won the Nobel Prize, and five of those were
for the Peace Prize. According to Nature magazine, Muslim countries
produce just 10 percent of the world average when it comes to scientific
research (measured by articles per million inhabitants).
In Denmark, Sennels' native country, Muslim children are grossly
over-represented among children with special needs. One-third of the budget
for Danish schools is consumed by special education, and anywhere from 51%
to 70% of retarded children with physical handicaps in Copenhagen have an
immigrant background.
Learning ability is severely affected as well. Studies indicated that 64%
of school children with Arabic parents are still illiterate after 10 years
in the Danish school system. The immigrant drop-out rate in Danish high
schools is twice that of the native-born.
Mental illness is also a product. The closer the blood relative, the
higher the risk of schizophrenic illness. The increased risk of insanity
may explain why more than 40% of the patients in Denmark's biggest ward
for clinically insane criminals have an immigrant background.
The U.S. is not immune. According to Sennels, one study based on 300,000
Americans shows that the majority of Muslims in the USA have a lower income,are less educated, and have worse jobs than the population as a whole.
Sennels concludes:
There is no doubt that the wide spread tradition of first cousin marriages
among Muslims has harmed the gene pool among Muslims. Because Muslims'
religious beliefs prohibit marrying non-Muslims and thus prevents them
from adding fresh genetic material to their population, the genetic damage
done to their gene pool since their prophet allowed first cousin marriages
1,400 years ago are most likely massive. (This has produced) overwhelming
direct and indirect human and societal consequences.
Bottom line:
Islam is not simply a benign and morally equivalent alternative to the
Judeo-Christian tradition. As Sennels points out, the first and biggest victims of Islam are Muslims. Simple Jewish and Christian compassion for Muslims and a common-sense desire to protect Western civilization from the ravages of Islam dictate a vigorous opposition to the spread of this dark and dangerous religion.
These stark realities must be taken into account when we establish public
polices dealing with immigration from Muslim countries and the building
of mosques in the U.S.
Lets hope America wakes up before a blind naivete about the reality of
Islam destroys what remains of our Judeo-Christian culture and our domestic
tranquility.
Bryan Fischer,
"Focal Point": A huge Muslim problem: inbreeding Written by Bryan Fischer
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Friday, January 7, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Ryan & CantorThe Republican Voices of The Future!
A serious investor, Porter Stansberry, remains concerned and this is a precis of his thoughts. (See 1 below.)
Then let's hear from Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton Professor. What keeps him up at night is the same that concerns all of us, as they should. (See 1a below.)
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Knocking 'em off one at a time. There are too many and I can't wait that long. (See 2 below.)
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Israel engaged in 'vulture' investing according to Saudis. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Sent to me by a dear friend and one of the more rational liberals I happen to know. It is a summation of 2010 by Dave Barry - long but humorous. (See 4 below.)
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Yesterday I listened to an NPR discussion of the disaster that would occur if Republicans eliminate Obama's health care (Obamascare.) The NPR participants accepted Obama's claim his health care program resulted in tremendous budget savings and, thus, these savings would disappear if Republicans overturned this law.
I would offer two thoughts;
First, the alleged saving claims come from the CBO but are based on figures presented to them by Obama. Obama cooked the books in order to make Obamascare acceptable so naturally CBO conclusions are patently unreliable on their face.
For example, if I told CBO it would cost $10 a sq ft to buy lumber when in fact lumber was $15/sq ft and we needed 1000 square feet CBO would simply multiply and come up with an inaccurate cost figure.
The CBO is required to take figures submitted to it by whatever Party controls Congress and use them for their projections. Thus we have Trash In and Trash Out accounting.
Second, the NPR discussion purposely? and/or incorrectly assumed Republicans would eliminate Obamascare and offer no better and/or more effective program in its place. That would be like saying we are taking the heavy crutch of wood away and letting the patient simply flop. Perhaps an aluminum cane will work better was never considered as worthy of discussion.
It was selling hysteria to cover up the prospect of an unwanted alternative.
Yesterday a key executive of NPR was fired. NPR receives over $400 million from the government and is a conduit for serving Liberal talking points. One budget cut should be to eliminate this subsidy.
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I urge everyone to watch this excellent conversation between Paul Gigot and Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor are the new and best face of the Republican Party. Ryan and Eric should be allowed to become the voice of the Republican Party. They are bright, focused, intellectually honest and dedicated to reversing the terrible fiscal trend our nation is on and they accept the fact that the blame lies at the feet of those on both aisles. (PJTV.Com)
PJTV Special: The Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot & Rep. Paul Ryan: Can Republicans Cut Spending & Reform Taxes?
Is the GOP serious about spending cuts? Can Republicans accomplish what they were sent to DC to do?
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Dick
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1) "The new subprime bubble... Our muni crisis call... Gross won't buy Illinois bonds... Buffett's latest inflation bet... Another Internet bubble?...
I must be a typical value investor. Everywhere I look I see another bubble bursting and a new one forming. For example, the government doesn't seem satisfied with the first subprime bubble. It's on its way to creating another one...
Remember back in 1992, when the government forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy subprime mortgage loans under the guise of encouraging the development of "affordable housing"? That subprime bubble formed in the early to mid-'00s and popped in 2007... with the rest of the financial world melting down the following year. Today, Fannie and Freddie are essentially bankrupt, on government life support.
That was so much fun, the feds are doing it again. This time, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has taken over where Fannie and Freddie left off. The FHA is the U.S. government's original subprime lender (via guarantees on subprime loans). And the FHA today is in high gear. It now accounts for 60% of all purchase mortgage originations, roughly $1 trillion a year (and rising fast) in subprime loans.
At the height of the first subprime bubble, about 40% of mortgage loans were made with down payments of 5% or less. Today, due to the FHA's massive takeover of the subprime mortgage space, about 60% of all mortgage loans have been made with down payments of 5% or less.
The FHA doesn't care about all the new garbage loans it's guaranteeing, either. It has the pedal to the metal. By 2013, the FHA says it'll insure a total of more than $1.3 trillion in loans. Not all FHA loans are subprime, but it's working on that, too... The FHA recently announced nearly half its purchase volume will be subprime by 2017. Taxpayers, beware. You'll wind up paying for the enormous losses all this new subprime lending will create.
On top of the new subprime lending the FHA is shoving down our throats, there's the fact that we won't need to build another new house in this country for a few years.
The most recent numbers on the national housing supply are from August 2010 (the end of the peak buying season). At that time, more than 4.2 million homes were on the market in the U.S. But... another 2.1 million homes were in the "shadow supply" – homes in some state of delinquency or foreclosure that are unaccounted for by conventional methods.
So with more than 6 million homes in inventory... why would anyone go long a housing stock, except as some kind of very short-term speculation? How long would it take the top 20 U.S. homebuilders to build 6.2 million homes? Because that's how long those companies will appear to be completely redundant.
Yes, I know housing is a regional industry. I know a local builder here who has built and sold a few smaller homes recently. But really... where in the country is there a true housing shortage, except in cities with rent controls (where housing is in perennially short supply)? Nowhere. There's a giant surplus of literally millions of new homes for sale or in some state of foreclosure."
1a) Siegel Up at Night Fearing Catastrophes
Influential economist Jeremy J. Siegel says he remains a long-term bull on the stock market, but he points to several “scary scenarios” that keep him awake at night.
Siegel is no longer worried about a real estate-induced crisis. But the European financial crisis will likely result in some countries defaulting on their debt and could even lead to a breakup of the euro currency area, Siegel writes in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. However, he believes disruptions to the market would probably be short-term.
Siegel is the Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. His seminal book “Stocks for the Long Run” demonstrated that equity stocks outperform all other investment classes over time.
Siegel says another worry keeping him up at night is the massive debt of state and local governments, with mutual funds holding more than $850 billion in municipal debt. But he thinks the federal government would likely step in to deal with repercussions from threatened defaults.
As for the massive federal debt, Siegel writes that most of the current deficit is due to the recession and will shrink when the economy recovers.
In the long run, he argues that Medicare is the biggest concern. “Fixing it will require a fundamental reworking of our entitlement programs, but that won’t threaten stocks in the near future,” Siegel says.
He says the one scenario that “keeps me up at night” is the threat of a terrorist attack, particularly a nuclear attack on a major city.
That would result not only in a great loss of lives and property, but also extraordinary measures to prevent another attack, which would restrict freedom and increase government regulation — bad news for stocks and private enterprise.
One other note: Siegel observes that the financial crisis hasn’t resulted in a backlash against capitalism. Rather, recent elections indicate a public rejection of the notion that government can run the economy better than private enterprise.
The U.S. market has always surmounted crises, he adds. “I see no reason the future should be any different.”
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2)NPR exec resigns as review of Williams’ firing concludes
By Michael Calderone
Ellen Weiss, the NPR executive who fired news analyst Juan Williams by phone in October, resigned Thursday just as NPR's Board of Directors released recommendations based on an independent review of the incident.
NPR released two statements Thursday, both the Board's recommendations and news about Weiss's departure. And each statement mentions the other. Still, NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher told The Cutline that "these are two distinct pieces of news."
Williams was fired two days after making comments on Fox News about how flying with passengers in "Muslim garb" made him nervous. On FoxNews.com, Williams described the phone call with Weiss.
"She took the admission of my visceral fear of people dressed in Muslim garb at the airport as evidence that I am a bigot. She said there are people who wear Muslim garb to work at NPR and they are offended by my comments. She never suggested that I had discriminated against anyone. Instead she continued to ask me what did I mean and I told her I said what I meant. Then she said she did not sense remorse from me. I said I made an honest statement. She informed me that I had violated NPR's values for editorial commentary and she was terminating my contract as a news analyst."
NPR's Board has adopted several recommendations from the Williams review, including setting up a "a committee comprised of NPR personnel, respected journalists, and others from outside NPR to review and update NPR's current Ethics Code" and to "review and define the roles of NPR journalists (including news analysts)."
The Williams firing was legal, according to the review. However, NPR's Board stated that there were "concerns regarding the speed and handling of the termination process."
The Board expressed confidence in chief executive Vivian Schiller, who received ample criticism for the firing, notably from conservatives and on Fox News. However, Schiller will not get a 2010 bonus. (She already apologized to staff for how NPR brass handled the firing).
The NPR statement then simply notes that Weiss—who'd been at NPR since 1982—had resigned.
NPR's spokeswoman said that Weiss, a senior vice president for news, "notified NPR that she will be leaving her position." But that was about it.
"We can't comment further on her departure as it is a personnel matter," Christopher continued. "We respect her decision."
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3)Saudi Arabia 'detains' Israeli vulture for spying
Griffon Vultures can soar at up to 11,000 metres (36,100 ft) above sea level. A perfect vantage point?
Saudi Arabian officials have "detained" a vulture on accusations of being a spy for Israel, media reports say.
The griffon vulture was carrying a GPS transmitter bearing the name of Tel Aviv University, prompting rumours it was part of a Zionist plot.
Israeli wildlife officials dismissed the claims as ludicrous and expressed concern about the bird's fate.
Last month, Egyptian officials implied the Israeli spy agency Mossad was to blame for shark attacks off its coast.
The vulture, which can have a wing span of up to 265cm (8ft 8in), was caught after it landed in the desert city of Hyaal a few days ago.
When locals discovered the GPS transmitter, they suspected the worst and handed it over to the security forces, said Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper.
Conspiracy theories quickly began circulating in Saudi newspapers and on websites that the bird was involved in espionage.
'Terrible price'
Israeli officials told Ma'ariv they were "stunned" by the allegations and concerned that the bird could meet a horrible punishment in the notoriously severe Saudi justice system.
Israeli Park and Nature Authority
"The device does nothing more than receive and store basic data about the bird's whereabouts, and about his altitude and speed," a bird specialist at Israel's Park and Nature Authority told the newspaper.
The data would be used to improve understanding of the endangered species' behaviour.
"Now, this poor bird is paying a terrible price. That's very sad," said the unnamed expert.
"I hope they release the poor thing."
The vulture is the latest animal to be accused of being an unwitting Mossad operative.
In December, the governor of Egypt's South Sinai province, Mohamed Abdul Fadil Shousha, suggested the spy agency may have had a hand in a string of deadly shark attacks off the coast of the Sharm el-Sheikh resort.
He said it was "not out of the question" that Mossad had put the killer shark in the area.
The Israeli foreign ministry dismissed that allegation, saying the governor "must have seen Jaws one time too many, and confuses fact and fiction".
3a)Islamic terrorism on the rise
Dr. Michael Youssef - Guest Columnist
The religion of "peace" just sent out another "peaceful" message of carnage and bloodshed outside of a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, shortly after midnight on New Year's Day. As news emerged from that sorrowful situation, the media reported 21 people killed and at least 80 more injured.
According to an eye witness, the explosives originated from within a car emblazoned with the words, "More to come." This tragic event comes after weeks of open and unveiled threats against Christian leaders and churches in Egypt. A memo recently published by al-Qaeda listed Egyptian churches and pastors -- including some people known to me personally -- that they wanted to reach out to with their brand of "peace." Some of the targeted individuals mentioned are truly some of the most peaceful, loving, and caring human beings I've ever known.
What emboldened this action on the part of Muslim terrorists against Christians? I believe that it was the impotence, or should I say selective impotence, of the government of President Mubarak. In the past, terrorist activities by Islamic extremists that impacted the Egyptian economy caused the government to move swiftly to eliminate the perpetrators. But of late, as attacks on Christians happened again and again and again, the government and its security apparatus dragged its feet.
Weakness or the appearance of weakness always leads to disastrous consequences; this is a lesson that the Obama administration needs to heed. What our government and others around the world need to realize is that our enemies are confused by signs of weakness and mixed messages. They only respect and respond to strength, even though they may resent it.
No wonder terrorists felt that they were on safe ground to attack this very large church. I have often sympathized with President Mubarak's dilemma, but I fear that he is about to commit the same mistake that his immediate predecessor, Anwar Sadat, committed -- namely, taking selective action against Islamic extremists.
This lack of action could bring about the demise of his regime which would spell disaster not only for Egypt, but for the whole region. It is unthinkable to imagine that Egypt could become the Lebanon of the 70's or the Iraq of the 2000's. This would be catastrophic to the U.S. interest in the region, to say nothing of Israel's and other Christian minorities' existence.
Sadly, when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ignorantly and insensitively dressed down President Mubarak and read him the riot act regarding the need for democracy, her rebuke was misguided. It contributed to the weakening of his regime.
Now I hope that current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can read the riot act to Egyptian officials to jolt them back to being (1) fair-minded toward Christians and other minorities by granting them the same liberties as the Muslim majorities; and
(2) willing to bring back law and order to eradicate Islamic terrorism, as only the Egyptian security apparatus can do.
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4) Dave Barry’s 2010 Year in Review
.Let's face it -- 2010 was a disaster. A month-by-month reminder of just how awful it was.
Let’s put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been MUCH worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of all the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes we can, because they were not exposed to Jersey Shore.
So on second thought we see that this was, in fact, the worst year ever. The perfect symbol for the awfulness of 2010 was the BP oil spill, which oozed up from the depths and spread, totally out of control, like some kind of hideous uncontrollable metaphor. (Or, Jersey Shore.) The scariest thing about the spill was, nobody in charge seemed to know what to do about it. Time and again, top political leaders personally flew down to the Gulf of Mexico to look at the situation first-hand and hold press availabilities. And yet somehow, despite these efforts, the oil continued to leak. This forced us to face the disturbing truth that even top policy thinkers with postgraduate degrees from Harvard University — Harvard University! — could not stop it.
The leak was eventually plugged by non-policy people using machinery of some kind. But by then our faith in our leaders had been shaken, especially since they also seemed to have no idea what to do about this pesky recession. Congress tried every remedy it knows, ranging all the way from borrowing money from China and spending it on government programs, to borrowing MORE money from China and spending it on government programs. But in the end, all of this stimulus created few actual jobs, and most of those were in the field of tar-ball collecting.
Things were even worse abroad. North Korea continued to show why it is known as “the international equivalent of Charlie Sheen.” The entire nation of Greece went into foreclosure and had to move out; it is now living with relatives in Bulgaria. Iran continued to develop nuclear weapons, all the while insisting that they would be used only for peaceful scientific research, such as — to quote President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — “seeing what happens when you drop one on Israel.” Closer to home, the already strained relationship between the United States and Mexico reached a new low following the theft, by a Juarez-based drug cartel, of the Grand Canyon.
This is not to say that 2010 was all bad. There were bright spots. Three, to be exact:
1. The Yankees did not even get into the World Series.
2. There were several days during which Lindsay Lohan was neither going into, nor getting out of, rehab.
3. Apple released the hugely anticipated iPad, giving iPhone people, at long last, something to fondle with their other hand.
Other than that, 2010 was a disaster. To make absolutely sure that we do not repeat it, let’s remind ourselves just how bad it was. Let’s put this year into a full-body scanner and check out its junk, starting with...
JANUARY
...which begins grimly, with the pesky unemployment rate remaining high. Every poll shows that the major concerns of the American people are federal spending, the exploding deficit, and — above all — jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs: This is what the public is worried about. In a word, the big issue is: jobs. So the Obama administration, displaying the keen awareness that has become its trademark, decides to focus like a laser on: health-care reform. The centerpiece of this effort is a historic bill that will either (a) guarantee everybody excellent free health care, or (b) permit federal bureaucrats to club old people to death. Nobody knows which, because nobody has read the bill, which in printed form has the same mass as a UPS truck.
The first indication that the health-care bill is not wildly popular comes when Republican Scott Brown, who opposes the bill, is elected to the U.S. Senate by Massachusetts voters, who in normal times would elect a crustacean before they would vote Republican. The vote shocks the Obama administration, which — recognizing that it is perceived as having its priorities wrong — decides that the president will make a series of high-profile speeches on the urgent need for: health-care reform.
In other economic news, Toyota announces a huge recall following reports that its popular Camry model is behaving unpredictably — accelerating, decelerating, downloading Internet porn and traveling backward in time to unstable historical periods. This is expected to benefit Toyota’s competitors, especially troubled GM, which is hoping to score big with the new “Volt,” a revolutionary vehicle capable of traveling nearly six miles before its 19,500 triple-A batteries must be replaced.
But January’s biggest story, watched with growing alarm by observers around the world and threatening to force the United Nations to intervene, is the tense confrontation between Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno over who gets to be on NBC at 11:35 p.m. and tell jokes until the viewing audience falls asleep at 11:43. After a brutal struggle, Leno triumphs; O’Brien, vowing revenge, flees into the hills above Los Angeles with a small but loyal band of agents.
In other entertainment news, the runaway movie hit is Avatar, a futuristic epic about humans who travel to an alien planet to mine a precious mineral that they believe will give them the power to emit believable dialogue. This being a James Cameron movie, they fail.
Speaking of alien planets, in...
FEBRUARY
...Iran triumphantly announces (we are not making this item up) that it has launched into sub-orbital space a rocket carrying a rodent, two turtles and several worms. Iranian state television reports that the nation’s space program is “peaceful,” and that the rodent (we are still not making this up) is named “Helmz 1.”
In U.S. politics, President Obama, responding to the mounting public concern about jobs, invites Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to the White House for a historic daylong summit on: health-care reform. Despite their deep philosophical differences, the two sides are able, after hours of sometimes-heated debate, to hammer out an agreement on when to break for lunch. They fail to make any progress on health care, although in his closing remarks President Obama notes that the historic summit produced “only minor furniture damage.”
In business news, Toyota suffers yet another blow when a U.S. Department of Transportation study links the Camry to both diabetes and the JFK assassination. The CEO of Toyota appears before a congressional committee and offers a sincere and heartfelt apology for his company’s problems. At least that’s what his translator claims; it is later determined that what the CEO actually told the committee was, quote, “you have an eggplant in your bottom.”
Speaking of apologies: Tiger Woods delivers a nationally televised speech in which he says he is very, very sorry and has sworn off having sex with as many as eight different hot women per day. His golf game immediately goes into the toilet.
In other sports news, the Vancouver Winter Olympics begin on an uncertain note when it is discovered that Vancouver — apparently nobody realized this ahead of time — is a seaside city with a mild climate, so there is no snow. This hampers some of the competition, as for example when the Latvian cross-country ski team gets bogged down in mud and is eaten by alligators. Despite these setbacks, the games are deemed a big success, at least by the Canadians, because they won in hockey
In Super Bowl XMLLMMXVIIX, the underdog New Orleans Saints defeat the Indianapolis Colts, setting off a celebration so joyous that people on Bourbon Street are still throwing up.
Speaking of celebrations, in...
MARCH
...Democratic congressional leaders, responding to polls showing that the health-care bill is increasingly unpopular with the public, manage, with a frantic, last-minute effort, to pass the health-care bill, or at least a giant mass of paper that is assumed to be the health-care bill. This leads to a triumphant White House signing ceremony, the highlight of which is Vice President Joe “Joe” Biden dropping the f-bomb moments before being hustled off by aides to have an important meeting with somebody important.
Everyone at the ceremony agrees that the new law is historic and will become hugely popular with the American people once they have the opportunity to hear a few dozen more high-profile speeches about it from President Obama. But opposition is “brewing” in the form of the Tea Party movement, consisting of regular Americans who are fed up with costly big-government programs except for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They are determined to elect a new breed of representatives who are not career politicians, or even necessarily sane.
In international news:
• Greece asks the International Monetary Fund if it can borrow 17 billion euro for “cigarettes.”
• Somali pirates, becoming increasingly brazen, seize the Staten Island Ferry.
• Iranian hero space rodent Helmz 1 is captured attempting to scurry across the Lebanese border into Israel. Iran claims this is a peaceful mission, but the Israelis note that Helmz 1 is wearing a tiny backpack filled with enough explosives to — in the words of one military analyst — “put somebody’s eye out.”
On a more hopeful note, on March 27 people in more than 4,000 cities around the world turn off their lights in observance of Earth Hour, saving an estimated 45 million megawatts of electricity — enough to power one of Al Gore’s houses for nearly three days.
But the environment suffers a big setback in...
APRIL
...when the Deepwater Horizon rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico after being struck by a runaway Toyota Camry. BP initially downplays the magnitude of the problem, claiming that the resulting oil leak is smallish and might go away on its own or even prove to be, quote, “nutritious for oysters.” Soon, however, large patches of crude oil are drifting toward land, and it becomes clear that this is a major disaster — a challenge that we, as a nation, will have to meet, as we have met other challenges, with a combination of photo opportunities, lawsuits and tweeting.
Elsewhere on the disaster scene, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull (literally, “many syllables”) volcano erupts, sending huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and forcing airlines throughout northern Europe to ground all flights. Greece, although not directly affected, announces that it will take six months off, just in case; France, as an added precaution, surrenders.
In domestic news, Arizona passes a controversial new law designed to crack down on illegal immigrants; this draws a sharp rebuke from the Mexican government, currently headquartered in Tucson.
President Obama outlines his bold vision for the U.S. space program, calling for a manned mission to establish comprehensive health-care reform on Mars by 2030. The president also signs a historic arms-reduction treaty with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev under which both countries will destroy one-third of their older nuclear missiles by upgrading them to Windows Vista. In a related development, Iran purchases $78 million worth of used nuclear-missile parts on Craigslist.
Speaking of growing menaces, in...
MAY
...the pesky Deepwater Horizon oil spill dominates the news as BP tries a series of increasingly desperate measures to plug the leak, including, at one point, a 167,000-pound wad of pre-chewed Juicy Fruit. President Obama, eager to show that he is on top of the situation, develops severe forehead cramps from standing on the shore and frowning with concern at the water. Meanwhile, Congress holds televised hearings that establish, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Congress is very upset about, and totally opposed to, large oil spills. Despite these heroic efforts, the leak continues to grow, and by the end of the month is threatening suburban Des Moines.
On the terror front, New York City police, alerted by Times Square street vendors, discover a smoking SUV packed with explosives — a violation of many city ordinances, including the ban on smoking. Fortunately, the car bomb is disarmed, and a suspect is later captured at Kennedy Airport by sharp-eyed TSA officers trained to spot suspicious behavior.
Ha ha! Just kidding, of course. The suspect is captured by U.S. Customs agents at the last minute after boarding a Dubai-bound plane filled with passengers who, like the suspect, had all been carefully screened by the TSA to make sure they were not carrying more than three ounces of shampoo.
In other air-travel news, the boards of directors of United and Continental approve a merger that will create one of the world’s largest airlines, with a combined total of 700 planes, 88,000 employees, and nearly two dozen packets of peanuts.
But the big financial news is the May 6 stock market “Flash Crash.” The Dow at one point is down nearly 1,000 points, including a drop of 600 points in five minutes, resulting in what financial analysts say is the largest mass purchase of emergency replacement underwear in Wall Street history. The SEC investigates the crash and later issues a 350-page report concluding: “You know that eTrade baby? In the commercials? With the grown man’s voice? That baby is REAL.”
Abroad, thousands of people riot in the streets of Athens to protest a report by the International Monetary Fund concluding that Greece should “think about maybe getting a part-time job.”
In sports, yet another major-league pitcher pitches yet another perfect game, and the baseball world wets its collective pants, because there is nothing more exciting to a true baseball fan than a game in which one of the teams can’t even manage to get on base.
The excitement mounts in...
JUNE
...as the Deepwater Horizon oil leak continues to gush, with each day bringing alarming new media reports claiming that it is an even worse environmental disaster than had been reported the previous day. The furor culminates in a New York Times story stating that eventually all the oil in the world will leak out through the hole in the Gulf floor and cover the entire planet with a layer of oil 27 feet deep, which, according to The Times, would be “potentially devastating for polar bears.” BP attempts to stop the leak using a high-tech robot submarine, only to see the effort fail when the sub is seized by Somali pirates. In Washington, the CEO of BP appears before an angry House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which votes unanimously, after 7 1/2 half hours of testimony, to give him a noogie. Still, somehow, the oil keeps leaking.
Rolling Stone magazine publishes a controversial article in which Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is quoted as saying that the Beatles’ version of Twist and Shout is better than the Isley Brothers.’ President Obama has no choice but to relieve the general of his command.
Abroad, U.S. intelligence intercepts a top-secret cable from Iran to North Korea, apparently written in code, stating: “Thanks for selling us the buclear beapons.” In response, the U.S. threatens to impose harsh new sanctions that, in the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “will make the previous harsh sanctions that we threatened to impose seem like only moderate threatened sanctions, and this time we are not kidding around.”
On the world economic front, thousands of rock-throwing rioters take to the streets of both Athens and Rome to protest punishing new austerity measures under which they would no longer be provided by the government with free rocks.
In consumer news, Apple finally releases the long-awaited iPhone 4, which incorporates many subtle improvements, the cumulative result of which is that it can neither make nor receive telephone calls. It is, of course, a huge hit.
In sports, the World Cup gets under way in South Africa; despite fears of violence, the massive event is totally peaceful, except for the estimated 13,000 people who leap to their deaths from the tops of stadiums to escape the sound of the vuvuzelas. The early tournament highlight (which we are not making up) is provided by the French team, which, after getting off to a bad start, goes on strike.
Speaking of bad, in...
JULY
...the Deepwater Horizon oil spill officially becomes, according to the news media, the worst thing that has ever happened, with environmental experts reporting that tar balls have been sighted on the surface of the moon. Just when all appears to be lost, BP announces that it has stopped the leak, using a 75-ton cap and what a company spokesperson describes as “a truly heroic manatee named Wendell.” Although oil is no longer leaking, much damage has been done, so this important story remains the focus of the nation’s attention for nearly 45 minutes, after which the nation’s attention shifts to Lindsay Lohan.
In other national news, Congress passes and President Obama signs into law a financial-reform act designed to curb Wall Street excesses by mandating the death penalty for anybody caught wearing a watch costing more than a house. Having guaranteed that the financial community will behave in a responsible manner, Washington returns to the important work of running up the deficit. On the foreign economic front, anger builds over plans by the governments of both Greece and France to raise the retirement age, which means workers would have to continue striking for several years longer before they could start collecting pensions. In protest, everybody in both nations goes on strike.
In the World Cup final, Spain defeats Holland, only to have the trophy snatched away by the North Korean team, which, despite a U.S. threat of “really, really harsh sanctions,” turns it over to the Iranian team, which was not even in the tournament. Eerily, all of this was predicted by a psychic octopus named Paul, who is immediately hired by Goldman Sachs.
But the big sports story is the decision by LeBron James, announced in a one-hour television special watched by a worldwide audience estimated at 127 billion, to take his talents to South Beach and play for the Miami Heat, where he will join Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Michael Jordan, the late Wilt Chamberlain and Jesus to form a dream basketball team so supremely excellent that it cannot possibly lose, not even one single game, EVER, in theory. Miami erupts in a joyous weeks-long victory celebration. During the excitement Fidel Castro dies, an event that goes unreported in The Miami Herald, which has devoted all its staff resources to a nine-part series speculating on whom LeBron will select as his dentist.
The month ends on a troubling note as the United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to send a peacekeeping force to quell Mel Gibson.
Speaking of troubling, in...
AUGUST
...concern over the direction of the U.S. economy deepens when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in what some economists see as a sign of pessimism, applies for Canadian citizenship.
In other economic news, the first family, seeking to boost Gulf tourism, vacations in Panama City, where President Obama, demonstrating that the water is perfectly safe despite the oil spill, plunges in for a swim. Quick action by the Secret Service rescues him from the jaws of a mutant 500-pound shrimp sprouting what appear to be primitive wings. The first family hastily departs for Martha’s Vineyard to demonstrate that the water is also perfectly safe there.
Speaking of getaways: JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater becomes a national sensation when he curses out a passenger, deploys the evacuation chute, grabs two beers and slides out of the plane. He is immediately hired as director of customer relations by the TSA.
In the month’s most dramatic story, 33 copper miners in Chile are trapped 2,300 feet underground following a cave-in caused by a runaway Toyota Camry. The good news is that the men are still alive; the bad news is that the only drilling equipment capable of reaching them quickly belongs to BP. Informed of this, the men elect to stay down there for the time being.
In legal news, Elena Kagan is sworn in as the newest Supreme Court justice, having established, in three days of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, that she went to either Harvard or Yale. Elsewhere, a federal jury deadlocks on 22 of 24 charges against former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, convicting him only of, quote, “being some kind of enormous rodent.” Outside the courtroom, Blagojevich tearfully thanks his supporters, then robs a convenience store.
In New York City, the big issue is a proposal to build, two blocks from Ground Zero, a Muslim community center that proponents claim will promote dialogue. Even in the purely conceptual phase it promotes a huge amount of dialogue, to the point where National Guard troops may need to be called in.
Another heartwarming interfaith story erupts in...
SEPTEMBER
...when Terry Jones, pastor of a tiny church in Florida, declares that he will proceed with plans to burn a Koran on 9/11. The media, recognizing that this is not really news, ignore him, and the matter is quickly forgotten.
But seriously: Jones becomes a major international story, comparable in magnitude to all of the Kardashians combined. President Obama speaks out against Jones’ plan, as do members of Congress, the military and virtually every American religious leader; abroad, there are fatal riots. Finally, after a great deal of soul-searching TV exposure, Jones decides not to burn the Koran, explaining, “I finally figured out that I’m just an attention-seeking jerkwater idiot.” The news media vow never again to encourage this kind of mindless hysteria. Abroad, the rioters agree to stop taking everything so darned seriously.
Getting back to reality: The 2010 election season enters its final days with polls showing that Congress enjoys the same overall level of voter popularity as hemorrhoids. Incumbents swarm out of Washington and head for their home districts to campaign on the theme of how much they hate Washington, in the desperate hope that the voters will return them to Washington. President Obama, basking in the glow of the health-care reform act, offers to campaign for Democratic candidates, only to find that many of them have important dental appointments and are unable to join him on whatever day he is planning to visit. Adding zest to the Republican stew is the presence of many “Tea Party” candidates, including Delaware Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell, who at one point in her campaign releases a TV commercial that begins with her stating, in a calm and reassuring tone, that she is not a witch.
Meanwhile in Chile, an attempt to deliver food to the 33 trapped copper miners ends in a tragic accident involving what mining officials describe as “an incredibly courageous Domino’s driver.”
Speaking of tragic, in...
OCTOBER
...the U.S. economy suffers another blow as the Federal Bureau of Never Expecting Unemployment To Be As High As It Actually Is reports that, for the 37th consecutive month, unemployment is unexpectedly high. “Darned if we didn’t get fooled again!” exclaims a bureau spokesperson, adding, “We expect it to be lower next month.” Meanwhile Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, speaking from his new office in Toronto, announces a plan to drastically increase the U.S. money supply by “quantitative easing,” a controversial process involving what Bernanke describes as “a major job for Kinko’s.”
The economy remains the big theme as the congressional elections enter the home stretch, with incumbents from both parties declaring their eagerness to go back to Washington and knock some sense into whatever incompetent morons are in charge. Polls show that the voters are in a very cranky mood, which tends to favor outsiders such as the Tea Party candidates, although O’Donnell definitely hurts her chances in Delaware when, during a televised debate, she turns her opponent into a toad.
President Obama, continuing his quest to find candidates willing to accept his help, winds up campaigning in what White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs describes as “some very key student-council races.” Meanwhile Sarah Palin, raising her stature as a potential 2012 GOP presidential contender, weighs in on the issues with a number of important tweets.
On the legal front, the Supreme Court, as it does every October, begins a new term, which is hastily adjourned when the justices discover that their robes have bedbugs.
In the month’s most dramatic story, the 33 trapped Chilean miners are all brought safely to the surface, only to be sent right back down because they failed to bring up any copper — which, as the mining company points out, “was the whole point of sending them down there in the first place.” Meanwhile in France, millions of workers again take to the streets to demonstrate, in no uncertain terms, that they are French.
Elsewhere abroad, terrorists in Yemen attempt to send mail bombs to the United States, confirming the long-held suspicions of U.S. intelligence that there really is a country named “Yemen.” The plot, which involves explosives concealed inside printer cartridges, is foiled, but as a precaution the TSA decides to prohibit air travelers in the Unites States from carrying anything capable of printing, including pens, pencils, and children in grades 2 through 5.
In sports, the National Football League, seeking to reduce violence, imposes stiff fines for defensive beheading.
Speaking of gory, in...
NOVEMBER
...the elections turn out to be a bloodbath for the Democrats, who lose the House of Representatives, a bunch of Senate seats, some governorships, some state legislatures and all of the key student-council races. Also a number of long-term Democratic incumbents are urinated on by their own dogs. President Obama immediately departs for a nine-day trip to Asia to see if anybody over there wants to hear about the benefits of health-care reform.
Speaking of health: Some air travelers express concern about radiation from the TSA’s new high-resolution scanners, especially after screeners at O’Hare are seen using one to make popcorn. TSA chief John Pistole insists that the scanners are completely safe “as long as you move through quickly.” He also assures passengers that their body images “are not saved for any purpose whatsoever, such as entertainment at the TSA Christmas party.” Nevertheless some passengers refuse to be scanned; they are required to undergo a manual procedure that is known, within the agency, as “the full gerbil.”
World tension mounts as North Korea, in what is widely seen as a deliberate act of provocation, fires artillery shells at Denver. Meanwhile, in another indication of the worsening global debt crisis, the directors of the International Monetary Fund vote to have Ireland’s legs broken.
The U.S. economy also continues to struggle, as the unemployment rate, catching everybody by surprise, turns out to be higher than expected for yet another month. The lone bright spot is provided by the president’s deficit-reduction commission, which, after months of work, releases a draft of a tough plan that, if Congress can muster the backbone to enact it, would reduce the deficit by trillions of dollars and put the nation on the path back to fiscal sanity. This is a welcome bit of comic relief in the stressed-out capital; everybody enjoys a hearty bipartisan laugh, then gets back to maneuvering for the 2012 elections.
In other entertainment news, Bristol Palin’s bid to win Dancing With the Stars falls short when the judges throw out 147 million votes from Palm Beach County. She winds up finishing third, behind actress Jennifer Grey and Vice President Biden.
In sports, President Obama’s upper lip is injured in a basketball game when he is hit in the mouth by an elbow believed to have been thrown by North Korea.
International tension continues to mount in...
DECEMBER
...with the continued release by Wikileaks of classified cables leaked from the State Department, which apparently has the same level of data security as an Etch-a-Sketch. The cables reveal a number of embarrassing diplomatic secrets, such as:
The last three rounds of Middle East peace talks have consisted entirely of delegates playing Twister.
• The Republic of Tajikistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan frequently, as a prank, exchange places in the United Nations, and nobody has ever noticed.
• High-ranking officials of Scotland, speaking in private, admit that they don’t understand what the hell they’re saying either.
• In 2007, Hungary paid $170 million to Russia for pictures of Sweden naked.
In domestic politics, a partisan debate rages over what to do about the expiring Bush tax cuts. The Democrats, suddenly alarmed about the deficit, want to raise taxes on people making $250,000 a year – or, as the Democrats routinely refer to them, “billionaires.” The Republicans want to extend tax cuts for everybody, but compensate by cutting federal spending at a later date using an amazing new spending-cutting device they have seen advertised on TV.
Finally, President Obama and the Republican leaders reach a compromise under which income-tax rates will stay the same for everybody, but the death tax will be expanded to include people who are merely hung over. Also, in a concession to the Iowa congressional delegation, the federal government will continue to fund a “green energy” program under which corn is converted into ethanol, which is then converted back into corn, which is then planted to grow more corn. This will cost $5 billion a year, but it is expected to create or save literally dozens of Iowa jobs.
President Obama, trying to sell the compromise, appears ambivalent, saying that “it is less than ideal,” but also pointing out that “it totally sucks,” adding, “I hate it.” Despite this smooth sales pitch, many Democrats are unhappy. There is even talk of a primary challenge to Obama in 2012, a notion dismissed as “nonsense” by Hillary Clinton, who speaks to reporters while traveling on what aides describe as routine State Department business in New Hampshire.
In another potential setback for the president, a federal judge in Virginia rules that the health-care reform act violates the constitution’s tonnage clause. On the environmental front, delegates from 193 countries at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico, pass a resolution stating that they should not have had those last four rounds of margaritas.
Time Magazine, in a controversial decision, names, as its Person of the Year, Iranian space pioneer Helmz 1. In television news, Fidel Castro makes a surprise guest appearance on The Walking Dead.
Speaking of entertainment: As the year finally draws to a close, all eyes are on Seaside Heights, N. J., where MTV plans to ring in the new year by dropping a ball containing Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, one of the leading bimbos of Jersey Shore. Millions eagerly tune in, only to find that the ball has been attached to something that makes it drop slowly. A bitterly disappointing end to a bitterly disappointing year.
But at least it’s over, right? And we can take comfort in the fact that 2011 cannot possibly be worse. Unless, of course, this newly discovered asteroid — maybe you read about it — continues on a trajectory that...
Try not to think about it. Have another margarita. Happy New Year.
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Then let's hear from Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton Professor. What keeps him up at night is the same that concerns all of us, as they should. (See 1a below.)
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Knocking 'em off one at a time. There are too many and I can't wait that long. (See 2 below.)
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Israel engaged in 'vulture' investing according to Saudis. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Sent to me by a dear friend and one of the more rational liberals I happen to know. It is a summation of 2010 by Dave Barry - long but humorous. (See 4 below.)
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Yesterday I listened to an NPR discussion of the disaster that would occur if Republicans eliminate Obama's health care (Obamascare.) The NPR participants accepted Obama's claim his health care program resulted in tremendous budget savings and, thus, these savings would disappear if Republicans overturned this law.
I would offer two thoughts;
First, the alleged saving claims come from the CBO but are based on figures presented to them by Obama. Obama cooked the books in order to make Obamascare acceptable so naturally CBO conclusions are patently unreliable on their face.
For example, if I told CBO it would cost $10 a sq ft to buy lumber when in fact lumber was $15/sq ft and we needed 1000 square feet CBO would simply multiply and come up with an inaccurate cost figure.
The CBO is required to take figures submitted to it by whatever Party controls Congress and use them for their projections. Thus we have Trash In and Trash Out accounting.
Second, the NPR discussion purposely? and/or incorrectly assumed Republicans would eliminate Obamascare and offer no better and/or more effective program in its place. That would be like saying we are taking the heavy crutch of wood away and letting the patient simply flop. Perhaps an aluminum cane will work better was never considered as worthy of discussion.
It was selling hysteria to cover up the prospect of an unwanted alternative.
Yesterday a key executive of NPR was fired. NPR receives over $400 million from the government and is a conduit for serving Liberal talking points. One budget cut should be to eliminate this subsidy.
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I urge everyone to watch this excellent conversation between Paul Gigot and Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor are the new and best face of the Republican Party. Ryan and Eric should be allowed to become the voice of the Republican Party. They are bright, focused, intellectually honest and dedicated to reversing the terrible fiscal trend our nation is on and they accept the fact that the blame lies at the feet of those on both aisles. (PJTV.Com)
PJTV Special: The Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot & Rep. Paul Ryan: Can Republicans Cut Spending & Reform Taxes?
Is the GOP serious about spending cuts? Can Republicans accomplish what they were sent to DC to do?
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Dick
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1) "The new subprime bubble... Our muni crisis call... Gross won't buy Illinois bonds... Buffett's latest inflation bet... Another Internet bubble?...
I must be a typical value investor. Everywhere I look I see another bubble bursting and a new one forming. For example, the government doesn't seem satisfied with the first subprime bubble. It's on its way to creating another one...
Remember back in 1992, when the government forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy subprime mortgage loans under the guise of encouraging the development of "affordable housing"? That subprime bubble formed in the early to mid-'00s and popped in 2007... with the rest of the financial world melting down the following year. Today, Fannie and Freddie are essentially bankrupt, on government life support.
That was so much fun, the feds are doing it again. This time, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has taken over where Fannie and Freddie left off. The FHA is the U.S. government's original subprime lender (via guarantees on subprime loans). And the FHA today is in high gear. It now accounts for 60% of all purchase mortgage originations, roughly $1 trillion a year (and rising fast) in subprime loans.
At the height of the first subprime bubble, about 40% of mortgage loans were made with down payments of 5% or less. Today, due to the FHA's massive takeover of the subprime mortgage space, about 60% of all mortgage loans have been made with down payments of 5% or less.
The FHA doesn't care about all the new garbage loans it's guaranteeing, either. It has the pedal to the metal. By 2013, the FHA says it'll insure a total of more than $1.3 trillion in loans. Not all FHA loans are subprime, but it's working on that, too... The FHA recently announced nearly half its purchase volume will be subprime by 2017. Taxpayers, beware. You'll wind up paying for the enormous losses all this new subprime lending will create.
On top of the new subprime lending the FHA is shoving down our throats, there's the fact that we won't need to build another new house in this country for a few years.
The most recent numbers on the national housing supply are from August 2010 (the end of the peak buying season). At that time, more than 4.2 million homes were on the market in the U.S. But... another 2.1 million homes were in the "shadow supply" – homes in some state of delinquency or foreclosure that are unaccounted for by conventional methods.
So with more than 6 million homes in inventory... why would anyone go long a housing stock, except as some kind of very short-term speculation? How long would it take the top 20 U.S. homebuilders to build 6.2 million homes? Because that's how long those companies will appear to be completely redundant.
Yes, I know housing is a regional industry. I know a local builder here who has built and sold a few smaller homes recently. But really... where in the country is there a true housing shortage, except in cities with rent controls (where housing is in perennially short supply)? Nowhere. There's a giant surplus of literally millions of new homes for sale or in some state of foreclosure."
1a) Siegel Up at Night Fearing Catastrophes
Influential economist Jeremy J. Siegel says he remains a long-term bull on the stock market, but he points to several “scary scenarios” that keep him awake at night.
Siegel is no longer worried about a real estate-induced crisis. But the European financial crisis will likely result in some countries defaulting on their debt and could even lead to a breakup of the euro currency area, Siegel writes in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. However, he believes disruptions to the market would probably be short-term.
Siegel is the Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. His seminal book “Stocks for the Long Run” demonstrated that equity stocks outperform all other investment classes over time.
Siegel says another worry keeping him up at night is the massive debt of state and local governments, with mutual funds holding more than $850 billion in municipal debt. But he thinks the federal government would likely step in to deal with repercussions from threatened defaults.
As for the massive federal debt, Siegel writes that most of the current deficit is due to the recession and will shrink when the economy recovers.
In the long run, he argues that Medicare is the biggest concern. “Fixing it will require a fundamental reworking of our entitlement programs, but that won’t threaten stocks in the near future,” Siegel says.
He says the one scenario that “keeps me up at night” is the threat of a terrorist attack, particularly a nuclear attack on a major city.
That would result not only in a great loss of lives and property, but also extraordinary measures to prevent another attack, which would restrict freedom and increase government regulation — bad news for stocks and private enterprise.
One other note: Siegel observes that the financial crisis hasn’t resulted in a backlash against capitalism. Rather, recent elections indicate a public rejection of the notion that government can run the economy better than private enterprise.
The U.S. market has always surmounted crises, he adds. “I see no reason the future should be any different.”
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2)NPR exec resigns as review of Williams’ firing concludes
By Michael Calderone
Ellen Weiss, the NPR executive who fired news analyst Juan Williams by phone in October, resigned Thursday just as NPR's Board of Directors released recommendations based on an independent review of the incident.
NPR released two statements Thursday, both the Board's recommendations and news about Weiss's departure. And each statement mentions the other. Still, NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher told The Cutline that "these are two distinct pieces of news."
Williams was fired two days after making comments on Fox News about how flying with passengers in "Muslim garb" made him nervous. On FoxNews.com, Williams described the phone call with Weiss.
"She took the admission of my visceral fear of people dressed in Muslim garb at the airport as evidence that I am a bigot. She said there are people who wear Muslim garb to work at NPR and they are offended by my comments. She never suggested that I had discriminated against anyone. Instead she continued to ask me what did I mean and I told her I said what I meant. Then she said she did not sense remorse from me. I said I made an honest statement. She informed me that I had violated NPR's values for editorial commentary and she was terminating my contract as a news analyst."
NPR's Board has adopted several recommendations from the Williams review, including setting up a "a committee comprised of NPR personnel, respected journalists, and others from outside NPR to review and update NPR's current Ethics Code" and to "review and define the roles of NPR journalists (including news analysts)."
The Williams firing was legal, according to the review. However, NPR's Board stated that there were "concerns regarding the speed and handling of the termination process."
The Board expressed confidence in chief executive Vivian Schiller, who received ample criticism for the firing, notably from conservatives and on Fox News. However, Schiller will not get a 2010 bonus. (She already apologized to staff for how NPR brass handled the firing).
The NPR statement then simply notes that Weiss—who'd been at NPR since 1982—had resigned.
NPR's spokeswoman said that Weiss, a senior vice president for news, "notified NPR that she will be leaving her position." But that was about it.
"We can't comment further on her departure as it is a personnel matter," Christopher continued. "We respect her decision."
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3)Saudi Arabia 'detains' Israeli vulture for spying
Griffon Vultures can soar at up to 11,000 metres (36,100 ft) above sea level. A perfect vantage point?
Saudi Arabian officials have "detained" a vulture on accusations of being a spy for Israel, media reports say.
The griffon vulture was carrying a GPS transmitter bearing the name of Tel Aviv University, prompting rumours it was part of a Zionist plot.
Israeli wildlife officials dismissed the claims as ludicrous and expressed concern about the bird's fate.
Last month, Egyptian officials implied the Israeli spy agency Mossad was to blame for shark attacks off its coast.
The vulture, which can have a wing span of up to 265cm (8ft 8in), was caught after it landed in the desert city of Hyaal a few days ago.
When locals discovered the GPS transmitter, they suspected the worst and handed it over to the security forces, said Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper.
Conspiracy theories quickly began circulating in Saudi newspapers and on websites that the bird was involved in espionage.
'Terrible price'
Israeli officials told Ma'ariv they were "stunned" by the allegations and concerned that the bird could meet a horrible punishment in the notoriously severe Saudi justice system.
Israeli Park and Nature Authority
"The device does nothing more than receive and store basic data about the bird's whereabouts, and about his altitude and speed," a bird specialist at Israel's Park and Nature Authority told the newspaper.
The data would be used to improve understanding of the endangered species' behaviour.
"Now, this poor bird is paying a terrible price. That's very sad," said the unnamed expert.
"I hope they release the poor thing."
The vulture is the latest animal to be accused of being an unwitting Mossad operative.
In December, the governor of Egypt's South Sinai province, Mohamed Abdul Fadil Shousha, suggested the spy agency may have had a hand in a string of deadly shark attacks off the coast of the Sharm el-Sheikh resort.
He said it was "not out of the question" that Mossad had put the killer shark in the area.
The Israeli foreign ministry dismissed that allegation, saying the governor "must have seen Jaws one time too many, and confuses fact and fiction".
3a)Islamic terrorism on the rise
Dr. Michael Youssef - Guest Columnist
The religion of "peace" just sent out another "peaceful" message of carnage and bloodshed outside of a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, shortly after midnight on New Year's Day. As news emerged from that sorrowful situation, the media reported 21 people killed and at least 80 more injured.
According to an eye witness, the explosives originated from within a car emblazoned with the words, "More to come." This tragic event comes after weeks of open and unveiled threats against Christian leaders and churches in Egypt. A memo recently published by al-Qaeda listed Egyptian churches and pastors -- including some people known to me personally -- that they wanted to reach out to with their brand of "peace." Some of the targeted individuals mentioned are truly some of the most peaceful, loving, and caring human beings I've ever known.
What emboldened this action on the part of Muslim terrorists against Christians? I believe that it was the impotence, or should I say selective impotence, of the government of President Mubarak. In the past, terrorist activities by Islamic extremists that impacted the Egyptian economy caused the government to move swiftly to eliminate the perpetrators. But of late, as attacks on Christians happened again and again and again, the government and its security apparatus dragged its feet.
Weakness or the appearance of weakness always leads to disastrous consequences; this is a lesson that the Obama administration needs to heed. What our government and others around the world need to realize is that our enemies are confused by signs of weakness and mixed messages. They only respect and respond to strength, even though they may resent it.
No wonder terrorists felt that they were on safe ground to attack this very large church. I have often sympathized with President Mubarak's dilemma, but I fear that he is about to commit the same mistake that his immediate predecessor, Anwar Sadat, committed -- namely, taking selective action against Islamic extremists.
This lack of action could bring about the demise of his regime which would spell disaster not only for Egypt, but for the whole region. It is unthinkable to imagine that Egypt could become the Lebanon of the 70's or the Iraq of the 2000's. This would be catastrophic to the U.S. interest in the region, to say nothing of Israel's and other Christian minorities' existence.
Sadly, when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ignorantly and insensitively dressed down President Mubarak and read him the riot act regarding the need for democracy, her rebuke was misguided. It contributed to the weakening of his regime.
Now I hope that current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can read the riot act to Egyptian officials to jolt them back to being (1) fair-minded toward Christians and other minorities by granting them the same liberties as the Muslim majorities; and
(2) willing to bring back law and order to eradicate Islamic terrorism, as only the Egyptian security apparatus can do.
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4) Dave Barry’s 2010 Year in Review
.Let's face it -- 2010 was a disaster. A month-by-month reminder of just how awful it was.
Let’s put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been MUCH worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of all the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes we can, because they were not exposed to Jersey Shore.
So on second thought we see that this was, in fact, the worst year ever. The perfect symbol for the awfulness of 2010 was the BP oil spill, which oozed up from the depths and spread, totally out of control, like some kind of hideous uncontrollable metaphor. (Or, Jersey Shore.) The scariest thing about the spill was, nobody in charge seemed to know what to do about it. Time and again, top political leaders personally flew down to the Gulf of Mexico to look at the situation first-hand and hold press availabilities. And yet somehow, despite these efforts, the oil continued to leak. This forced us to face the disturbing truth that even top policy thinkers with postgraduate degrees from Harvard University — Harvard University! — could not stop it.
The leak was eventually plugged by non-policy people using machinery of some kind. But by then our faith in our leaders had been shaken, especially since they also seemed to have no idea what to do about this pesky recession. Congress tried every remedy it knows, ranging all the way from borrowing money from China and spending it on government programs, to borrowing MORE money from China and spending it on government programs. But in the end, all of this stimulus created few actual jobs, and most of those were in the field of tar-ball collecting.
Things were even worse abroad. North Korea continued to show why it is known as “the international equivalent of Charlie Sheen.” The entire nation of Greece went into foreclosure and had to move out; it is now living with relatives in Bulgaria. Iran continued to develop nuclear weapons, all the while insisting that they would be used only for peaceful scientific research, such as — to quote President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — “seeing what happens when you drop one on Israel.” Closer to home, the already strained relationship between the United States and Mexico reached a new low following the theft, by a Juarez-based drug cartel, of the Grand Canyon.
This is not to say that 2010 was all bad. There were bright spots. Three, to be exact:
1. The Yankees did not even get into the World Series.
2. There were several days during which Lindsay Lohan was neither going into, nor getting out of, rehab.
3. Apple released the hugely anticipated iPad, giving iPhone people, at long last, something to fondle with their other hand.
Other than that, 2010 was a disaster. To make absolutely sure that we do not repeat it, let’s remind ourselves just how bad it was. Let’s put this year into a full-body scanner and check out its junk, starting with...
JANUARY
...which begins grimly, with the pesky unemployment rate remaining high. Every poll shows that the major concerns of the American people are federal spending, the exploding deficit, and — above all — jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs: This is what the public is worried about. In a word, the big issue is: jobs. So the Obama administration, displaying the keen awareness that has become its trademark, decides to focus like a laser on: health-care reform. The centerpiece of this effort is a historic bill that will either (a) guarantee everybody excellent free health care, or (b) permit federal bureaucrats to club old people to death. Nobody knows which, because nobody has read the bill, which in printed form has the same mass as a UPS truck.
The first indication that the health-care bill is not wildly popular comes when Republican Scott Brown, who opposes the bill, is elected to the U.S. Senate by Massachusetts voters, who in normal times would elect a crustacean before they would vote Republican. The vote shocks the Obama administration, which — recognizing that it is perceived as having its priorities wrong — decides that the president will make a series of high-profile speeches on the urgent need for: health-care reform.
In other economic news, Toyota announces a huge recall following reports that its popular Camry model is behaving unpredictably — accelerating, decelerating, downloading Internet porn and traveling backward in time to unstable historical periods. This is expected to benefit Toyota’s competitors, especially troubled GM, which is hoping to score big with the new “Volt,” a revolutionary vehicle capable of traveling nearly six miles before its 19,500 triple-A batteries must be replaced.
But January’s biggest story, watched with growing alarm by observers around the world and threatening to force the United Nations to intervene, is the tense confrontation between Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno over who gets to be on NBC at 11:35 p.m. and tell jokes until the viewing audience falls asleep at 11:43. After a brutal struggle, Leno triumphs; O’Brien, vowing revenge, flees into the hills above Los Angeles with a small but loyal band of agents.
In other entertainment news, the runaway movie hit is Avatar, a futuristic epic about humans who travel to an alien planet to mine a precious mineral that they believe will give them the power to emit believable dialogue. This being a James Cameron movie, they fail.
Speaking of alien planets, in...
FEBRUARY
...Iran triumphantly announces (we are not making this item up) that it has launched into sub-orbital space a rocket carrying a rodent, two turtles and several worms. Iranian state television reports that the nation’s space program is “peaceful,” and that the rodent (we are still not making this up) is named “Helmz 1.”
In U.S. politics, President Obama, responding to the mounting public concern about jobs, invites Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to the White House for a historic daylong summit on: health-care reform. Despite their deep philosophical differences, the two sides are able, after hours of sometimes-heated debate, to hammer out an agreement on when to break for lunch. They fail to make any progress on health care, although in his closing remarks President Obama notes that the historic summit produced “only minor furniture damage.”
In business news, Toyota suffers yet another blow when a U.S. Department of Transportation study links the Camry to both diabetes and the JFK assassination. The CEO of Toyota appears before a congressional committee and offers a sincere and heartfelt apology for his company’s problems. At least that’s what his translator claims; it is later determined that what the CEO actually told the committee was, quote, “you have an eggplant in your bottom.”
Speaking of apologies: Tiger Woods delivers a nationally televised speech in which he says he is very, very sorry and has sworn off having sex with as many as eight different hot women per day. His golf game immediately goes into the toilet.
In other sports news, the Vancouver Winter Olympics begin on an uncertain note when it is discovered that Vancouver — apparently nobody realized this ahead of time — is a seaside city with a mild climate, so there is no snow. This hampers some of the competition, as for example when the Latvian cross-country ski team gets bogged down in mud and is eaten by alligators. Despite these setbacks, the games are deemed a big success, at least by the Canadians, because they won in hockey
In Super Bowl XMLLMMXVIIX, the underdog New Orleans Saints defeat the Indianapolis Colts, setting off a celebration so joyous that people on Bourbon Street are still throwing up.
Speaking of celebrations, in...
MARCH
...Democratic congressional leaders, responding to polls showing that the health-care bill is increasingly unpopular with the public, manage, with a frantic, last-minute effort, to pass the health-care bill, or at least a giant mass of paper that is assumed to be the health-care bill. This leads to a triumphant White House signing ceremony, the highlight of which is Vice President Joe “Joe” Biden dropping the f-bomb moments before being hustled off by aides to have an important meeting with somebody important.
Everyone at the ceremony agrees that the new law is historic and will become hugely popular with the American people once they have the opportunity to hear a few dozen more high-profile speeches about it from President Obama. But opposition is “brewing” in the form of the Tea Party movement, consisting of regular Americans who are fed up with costly big-government programs except for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They are determined to elect a new breed of representatives who are not career politicians, or even necessarily sane.
In international news:
• Greece asks the International Monetary Fund if it can borrow 17 billion euro for “cigarettes.”
• Somali pirates, becoming increasingly brazen, seize the Staten Island Ferry.
• Iranian hero space rodent Helmz 1 is captured attempting to scurry across the Lebanese border into Israel. Iran claims this is a peaceful mission, but the Israelis note that Helmz 1 is wearing a tiny backpack filled with enough explosives to — in the words of one military analyst — “put somebody’s eye out.”
On a more hopeful note, on March 27 people in more than 4,000 cities around the world turn off their lights in observance of Earth Hour, saving an estimated 45 million megawatts of electricity — enough to power one of Al Gore’s houses for nearly three days.
But the environment suffers a big setback in...
APRIL
...when the Deepwater Horizon rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico after being struck by a runaway Toyota Camry. BP initially downplays the magnitude of the problem, claiming that the resulting oil leak is smallish and might go away on its own or even prove to be, quote, “nutritious for oysters.” Soon, however, large patches of crude oil are drifting toward land, and it becomes clear that this is a major disaster — a challenge that we, as a nation, will have to meet, as we have met other challenges, with a combination of photo opportunities, lawsuits and tweeting.
Elsewhere on the disaster scene, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull (literally, “many syllables”) volcano erupts, sending huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and forcing airlines throughout northern Europe to ground all flights. Greece, although not directly affected, announces that it will take six months off, just in case; France, as an added precaution, surrenders.
In domestic news, Arizona passes a controversial new law designed to crack down on illegal immigrants; this draws a sharp rebuke from the Mexican government, currently headquartered in Tucson.
President Obama outlines his bold vision for the U.S. space program, calling for a manned mission to establish comprehensive health-care reform on Mars by 2030. The president also signs a historic arms-reduction treaty with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev under which both countries will destroy one-third of their older nuclear missiles by upgrading them to Windows Vista. In a related development, Iran purchases $78 million worth of used nuclear-missile parts on Craigslist.
Speaking of growing menaces, in...
MAY
...the pesky Deepwater Horizon oil spill dominates the news as BP tries a series of increasingly desperate measures to plug the leak, including, at one point, a 167,000-pound wad of pre-chewed Juicy Fruit. President Obama, eager to show that he is on top of the situation, develops severe forehead cramps from standing on the shore and frowning with concern at the water. Meanwhile, Congress holds televised hearings that establish, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Congress is very upset about, and totally opposed to, large oil spills. Despite these heroic efforts, the leak continues to grow, and by the end of the month is threatening suburban Des Moines.
On the terror front, New York City police, alerted by Times Square street vendors, discover a smoking SUV packed with explosives — a violation of many city ordinances, including the ban on smoking. Fortunately, the car bomb is disarmed, and a suspect is later captured at Kennedy Airport by sharp-eyed TSA officers trained to spot suspicious behavior.
Ha ha! Just kidding, of course. The suspect is captured by U.S. Customs agents at the last minute after boarding a Dubai-bound plane filled with passengers who, like the suspect, had all been carefully screened by the TSA to make sure they were not carrying more than three ounces of shampoo.
In other air-travel news, the boards of directors of United and Continental approve a merger that will create one of the world’s largest airlines, with a combined total of 700 planes, 88,000 employees, and nearly two dozen packets of peanuts.
But the big financial news is the May 6 stock market “Flash Crash.” The Dow at one point is down nearly 1,000 points, including a drop of 600 points in five minutes, resulting in what financial analysts say is the largest mass purchase of emergency replacement underwear in Wall Street history. The SEC investigates the crash and later issues a 350-page report concluding: “You know that eTrade baby? In the commercials? With the grown man’s voice? That baby is REAL.”
Abroad, thousands of people riot in the streets of Athens to protest a report by the International Monetary Fund concluding that Greece should “think about maybe getting a part-time job.”
In sports, yet another major-league pitcher pitches yet another perfect game, and the baseball world wets its collective pants, because there is nothing more exciting to a true baseball fan than a game in which one of the teams can’t even manage to get on base.
The excitement mounts in...
JUNE
...as the Deepwater Horizon oil leak continues to gush, with each day bringing alarming new media reports claiming that it is an even worse environmental disaster than had been reported the previous day. The furor culminates in a New York Times story stating that eventually all the oil in the world will leak out through the hole in the Gulf floor and cover the entire planet with a layer of oil 27 feet deep, which, according to The Times, would be “potentially devastating for polar bears.” BP attempts to stop the leak using a high-tech robot submarine, only to see the effort fail when the sub is seized by Somali pirates. In Washington, the CEO of BP appears before an angry House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which votes unanimously, after 7 1/2 half hours of testimony, to give him a noogie. Still, somehow, the oil keeps leaking.
Rolling Stone magazine publishes a controversial article in which Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is quoted as saying that the Beatles’ version of Twist and Shout is better than the Isley Brothers.’ President Obama has no choice but to relieve the general of his command.
Abroad, U.S. intelligence intercepts a top-secret cable from Iran to North Korea, apparently written in code, stating: “Thanks for selling us the buclear beapons.” In response, the U.S. threatens to impose harsh new sanctions that, in the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “will make the previous harsh sanctions that we threatened to impose seem like only moderate threatened sanctions, and this time we are not kidding around.”
On the world economic front, thousands of rock-throwing rioters take to the streets of both Athens and Rome to protest punishing new austerity measures under which they would no longer be provided by the government with free rocks.
In consumer news, Apple finally releases the long-awaited iPhone 4, which incorporates many subtle improvements, the cumulative result of which is that it can neither make nor receive telephone calls. It is, of course, a huge hit.
In sports, the World Cup gets under way in South Africa; despite fears of violence, the massive event is totally peaceful, except for the estimated 13,000 people who leap to their deaths from the tops of stadiums to escape the sound of the vuvuzelas. The early tournament highlight (which we are not making up) is provided by the French team, which, after getting off to a bad start, goes on strike.
Speaking of bad, in...
JULY
...the Deepwater Horizon oil spill officially becomes, according to the news media, the worst thing that has ever happened, with environmental experts reporting that tar balls have been sighted on the surface of the moon. Just when all appears to be lost, BP announces that it has stopped the leak, using a 75-ton cap and what a company spokesperson describes as “a truly heroic manatee named Wendell.” Although oil is no longer leaking, much damage has been done, so this important story remains the focus of the nation’s attention for nearly 45 minutes, after which the nation’s attention shifts to Lindsay Lohan.
In other national news, Congress passes and President Obama signs into law a financial-reform act designed to curb Wall Street excesses by mandating the death penalty for anybody caught wearing a watch costing more than a house. Having guaranteed that the financial community will behave in a responsible manner, Washington returns to the important work of running up the deficit. On the foreign economic front, anger builds over plans by the governments of both Greece and France to raise the retirement age, which means workers would have to continue striking for several years longer before they could start collecting pensions. In protest, everybody in both nations goes on strike.
In the World Cup final, Spain defeats Holland, only to have the trophy snatched away by the North Korean team, which, despite a U.S. threat of “really, really harsh sanctions,” turns it over to the Iranian team, which was not even in the tournament. Eerily, all of this was predicted by a psychic octopus named Paul, who is immediately hired by Goldman Sachs.
But the big sports story is the decision by LeBron James, announced in a one-hour television special watched by a worldwide audience estimated at 127 billion, to take his talents to South Beach and play for the Miami Heat, where he will join Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Michael Jordan, the late Wilt Chamberlain and Jesus to form a dream basketball team so supremely excellent that it cannot possibly lose, not even one single game, EVER, in theory. Miami erupts in a joyous weeks-long victory celebration. During the excitement Fidel Castro dies, an event that goes unreported in The Miami Herald, which has devoted all its staff resources to a nine-part series speculating on whom LeBron will select as his dentist.
The month ends on a troubling note as the United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to send a peacekeeping force to quell Mel Gibson.
Speaking of troubling, in...
AUGUST
...concern over the direction of the U.S. economy deepens when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in what some economists see as a sign of pessimism, applies for Canadian citizenship.
In other economic news, the first family, seeking to boost Gulf tourism, vacations in Panama City, where President Obama, demonstrating that the water is perfectly safe despite the oil spill, plunges in for a swim. Quick action by the Secret Service rescues him from the jaws of a mutant 500-pound shrimp sprouting what appear to be primitive wings. The first family hastily departs for Martha’s Vineyard to demonstrate that the water is also perfectly safe there.
Speaking of getaways: JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater becomes a national sensation when he curses out a passenger, deploys the evacuation chute, grabs two beers and slides out of the plane. He is immediately hired as director of customer relations by the TSA.
In the month’s most dramatic story, 33 copper miners in Chile are trapped 2,300 feet underground following a cave-in caused by a runaway Toyota Camry. The good news is that the men are still alive; the bad news is that the only drilling equipment capable of reaching them quickly belongs to BP. Informed of this, the men elect to stay down there for the time being.
In legal news, Elena Kagan is sworn in as the newest Supreme Court justice, having established, in three days of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, that she went to either Harvard or Yale. Elsewhere, a federal jury deadlocks on 22 of 24 charges against former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, convicting him only of, quote, “being some kind of enormous rodent.” Outside the courtroom, Blagojevich tearfully thanks his supporters, then robs a convenience store.
In New York City, the big issue is a proposal to build, two blocks from Ground Zero, a Muslim community center that proponents claim will promote dialogue. Even in the purely conceptual phase it promotes a huge amount of dialogue, to the point where National Guard troops may need to be called in.
Another heartwarming interfaith story erupts in...
SEPTEMBER
...when Terry Jones, pastor of a tiny church in Florida, declares that he will proceed with plans to burn a Koran on 9/11. The media, recognizing that this is not really news, ignore him, and the matter is quickly forgotten.
But seriously: Jones becomes a major international story, comparable in magnitude to all of the Kardashians combined. President Obama speaks out against Jones’ plan, as do members of Congress, the military and virtually every American religious leader; abroad, there are fatal riots. Finally, after a great deal of soul-searching TV exposure, Jones decides not to burn the Koran, explaining, “I finally figured out that I’m just an attention-seeking jerkwater idiot.” The news media vow never again to encourage this kind of mindless hysteria. Abroad, the rioters agree to stop taking everything so darned seriously.
Getting back to reality: The 2010 election season enters its final days with polls showing that Congress enjoys the same overall level of voter popularity as hemorrhoids. Incumbents swarm out of Washington and head for their home districts to campaign on the theme of how much they hate Washington, in the desperate hope that the voters will return them to Washington. President Obama, basking in the glow of the health-care reform act, offers to campaign for Democratic candidates, only to find that many of them have important dental appointments and are unable to join him on whatever day he is planning to visit. Adding zest to the Republican stew is the presence of many “Tea Party” candidates, including Delaware Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell, who at one point in her campaign releases a TV commercial that begins with her stating, in a calm and reassuring tone, that she is not a witch.
Meanwhile in Chile, an attempt to deliver food to the 33 trapped copper miners ends in a tragic accident involving what mining officials describe as “an incredibly courageous Domino’s driver.”
Speaking of tragic, in...
OCTOBER
...the U.S. economy suffers another blow as the Federal Bureau of Never Expecting Unemployment To Be As High As It Actually Is reports that, for the 37th consecutive month, unemployment is unexpectedly high. “Darned if we didn’t get fooled again!” exclaims a bureau spokesperson, adding, “We expect it to be lower next month.” Meanwhile Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, speaking from his new office in Toronto, announces a plan to drastically increase the U.S. money supply by “quantitative easing,” a controversial process involving what Bernanke describes as “a major job for Kinko’s.”
The economy remains the big theme as the congressional elections enter the home stretch, with incumbents from both parties declaring their eagerness to go back to Washington and knock some sense into whatever incompetent morons are in charge. Polls show that the voters are in a very cranky mood, which tends to favor outsiders such as the Tea Party candidates, although O’Donnell definitely hurts her chances in Delaware when, during a televised debate, she turns her opponent into a toad.
President Obama, continuing his quest to find candidates willing to accept his help, winds up campaigning in what White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs describes as “some very key student-council races.” Meanwhile Sarah Palin, raising her stature as a potential 2012 GOP presidential contender, weighs in on the issues with a number of important tweets.
On the legal front, the Supreme Court, as it does every October, begins a new term, which is hastily adjourned when the justices discover that their robes have bedbugs.
In the month’s most dramatic story, the 33 trapped Chilean miners are all brought safely to the surface, only to be sent right back down because they failed to bring up any copper — which, as the mining company points out, “was the whole point of sending them down there in the first place.” Meanwhile in France, millions of workers again take to the streets to demonstrate, in no uncertain terms, that they are French.
Elsewhere abroad, terrorists in Yemen attempt to send mail bombs to the United States, confirming the long-held suspicions of U.S. intelligence that there really is a country named “Yemen.” The plot, which involves explosives concealed inside printer cartridges, is foiled, but as a precaution the TSA decides to prohibit air travelers in the Unites States from carrying anything capable of printing, including pens, pencils, and children in grades 2 through 5.
In sports, the National Football League, seeking to reduce violence, imposes stiff fines for defensive beheading.
Speaking of gory, in...
NOVEMBER
...the elections turn out to be a bloodbath for the Democrats, who lose the House of Representatives, a bunch of Senate seats, some governorships, some state legislatures and all of the key student-council races. Also a number of long-term Democratic incumbents are urinated on by their own dogs. President Obama immediately departs for a nine-day trip to Asia to see if anybody over there wants to hear about the benefits of health-care reform.
Speaking of health: Some air travelers express concern about radiation from the TSA’s new high-resolution scanners, especially after screeners at O’Hare are seen using one to make popcorn. TSA chief John Pistole insists that the scanners are completely safe “as long as you move through quickly.” He also assures passengers that their body images “are not saved for any purpose whatsoever, such as entertainment at the TSA Christmas party.” Nevertheless some passengers refuse to be scanned; they are required to undergo a manual procedure that is known, within the agency, as “the full gerbil.”
World tension mounts as North Korea, in what is widely seen as a deliberate act of provocation, fires artillery shells at Denver. Meanwhile, in another indication of the worsening global debt crisis, the directors of the International Monetary Fund vote to have Ireland’s legs broken.
The U.S. economy also continues to struggle, as the unemployment rate, catching everybody by surprise, turns out to be higher than expected for yet another month. The lone bright spot is provided by the president’s deficit-reduction commission, which, after months of work, releases a draft of a tough plan that, if Congress can muster the backbone to enact it, would reduce the deficit by trillions of dollars and put the nation on the path back to fiscal sanity. This is a welcome bit of comic relief in the stressed-out capital; everybody enjoys a hearty bipartisan laugh, then gets back to maneuvering for the 2012 elections.
In other entertainment news, Bristol Palin’s bid to win Dancing With the Stars falls short when the judges throw out 147 million votes from Palm Beach County. She winds up finishing third, behind actress Jennifer Grey and Vice President Biden.
In sports, President Obama’s upper lip is injured in a basketball game when he is hit in the mouth by an elbow believed to have been thrown by North Korea.
International tension continues to mount in...
DECEMBER
...with the continued release by Wikileaks of classified cables leaked from the State Department, which apparently has the same level of data security as an Etch-a-Sketch. The cables reveal a number of embarrassing diplomatic secrets, such as:
The last three rounds of Middle East peace talks have consisted entirely of delegates playing Twister.
• The Republic of Tajikistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan frequently, as a prank, exchange places in the United Nations, and nobody has ever noticed.
• High-ranking officials of Scotland, speaking in private, admit that they don’t understand what the hell they’re saying either.
• In 2007, Hungary paid $170 million to Russia for pictures of Sweden naked.
In domestic politics, a partisan debate rages over what to do about the expiring Bush tax cuts. The Democrats, suddenly alarmed about the deficit, want to raise taxes on people making $250,000 a year – or, as the Democrats routinely refer to them, “billionaires.” The Republicans want to extend tax cuts for everybody, but compensate by cutting federal spending at a later date using an amazing new spending-cutting device they have seen advertised on TV.
Finally, President Obama and the Republican leaders reach a compromise under which income-tax rates will stay the same for everybody, but the death tax will be expanded to include people who are merely hung over. Also, in a concession to the Iowa congressional delegation, the federal government will continue to fund a “green energy” program under which corn is converted into ethanol, which is then converted back into corn, which is then planted to grow more corn. This will cost $5 billion a year, but it is expected to create or save literally dozens of Iowa jobs.
President Obama, trying to sell the compromise, appears ambivalent, saying that “it is less than ideal,” but also pointing out that “it totally sucks,” adding, “I hate it.” Despite this smooth sales pitch, many Democrats are unhappy. There is even talk of a primary challenge to Obama in 2012, a notion dismissed as “nonsense” by Hillary Clinton, who speaks to reporters while traveling on what aides describe as routine State Department business in New Hampshire.
In another potential setback for the president, a federal judge in Virginia rules that the health-care reform act violates the constitution’s tonnage clause. On the environmental front, delegates from 193 countries at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico, pass a resolution stating that they should not have had those last four rounds of margaritas.
Time Magazine, in a controversial decision, names, as its Person of the Year, Iranian space pioneer Helmz 1. In television news, Fidel Castro makes a surprise guest appearance on The Walking Dead.
Speaking of entertainment: As the year finally draws to a close, all eyes are on Seaside Heights, N. J., where MTV plans to ring in the new year by dropping a ball containing Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, one of the leading bimbos of Jersey Shore. Millions eagerly tune in, only to find that the ball has been attached to something that makes it drop slowly. A bitterly disappointing end to a bitterly disappointing year.
But at least it’s over, right? And we can take comfort in the fact that 2011 cannot possibly be worse. Unless, of course, this newly discovered asteroid — maybe you read about it — continues on a trajectory that...
Try not to think about it. Have another margarita. Happy New Year.
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Sunday, January 2, 2011
Conversation With Family Member!
In my last memo writing about my mother in law, I stated she was 94 when in fact she is only 90. My father in law, who recently passed away, was 94 and I must have been thinking of him. Miss him.
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I was speaking with a dear relative, a very accomplished executive, a person with an extraordinary career both in business, politics and world matters. We were discussing the economy and why he was more upbeat and then our conversation turned to Israel, Iran and The United Nation's UNRA Agency.
He told me something I was unaware of, ie. Israel is the only U.N. nation member that has an 'asterisk' by its name and is specifically singled out as to what it cannot become within the organization, ie. never a member of The Security Council etc..
We both were in agreement about UNRA as the agency specifically formed to deal with the Palestinian refugee problem. Since UNRA began, the Palestinian refugee problem, which came as a result of their betting their Arab friends would defeat Israel, has not been resolved. In fact there are more refugees today than when UNRA started and this after billions have been allocated to the refugee problem. Why is this so and why has UNRA morphed into an Agency perpetuating victim hood?
I personally saw where many of its employees live in The French Hill section of Jerusalem. Lovely, comfortable homes with nice white cars sporting U.N. symbols parked outside. Its proponents and employees know a good thing when they see it and benefit from the world's largess. Ending UNRA would be like politicians voting themselves out of a job.
The second reason for UNRA's continued existence is that Palestinian refugees serve a political purpose. By allowing the problem to fester it dictates policy away from the problems facing the Arab Street by reason of their morally bankrupt and dishonest leadership.
Were UNRA a division of a for profit corporation and measured by its accomplishments it would have been out of existence years ago.
UNRA is simply another reason why funding so much of the U.N. is throwing good money after bad and proves my dictum that if you want more of something fund it.
In terms of his economic outlook he sees corporate momentum, spending to remain technologically competitive and bank lending beginning to loosen as ultimately driving the economy forward, albeit at a less than historic pace.
Iran remains the thorniest canker and we agree here as well but I added that one cannot think of Iran without conjuring a N Korean connection.
He too is reading and enjoying GW's book, has serious issues with Obama and Michelle so we are on the same page in that regard.
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I love humor, all kind of humor and the more anti-PC and irreverent the better. I like to start the New Year off with humor so here are a few oldies but still goodies. (See 1 below.)
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Now for an interesting article on what factors will drive the next political
upheaval. (See 2 below.)
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One of Israel's best retires and Iran breathes a sigh of relief. (See 3 below.)
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Netanyahu holds forth. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Chaim Yankel, Chelm's first doctor, was becoming a knowledgeable medical
practitioner but was still struggling with his bedside manner.
One morning, Chaim Yankel walked into his office where one of his patients
was sitting. Chaim Yankel told the patient, "I have good news, and I have
bad news. Which do you want me to tell you first?"
The patient answered, "Give me the good news first, doctor." So Chaim
Yankel said, "You only have 24 hours to live." The patient screamed,
"That's the good news? What's the bad news?"
Chaim Yankel replied, "I forgot to tell you this yesterday..."
You know you were raised Jewish if...
The only good advice that your Jewish mother gave you was: "Go! You might
meet somebody!"
You were as tall as your grandmother by the age of seven and you were as tall as your grandfather by age seven and a half.
Sam owned a furniture store and went back to the store late at night only to find his wife and his top salesman making love on a Thomasville Bed.
He was aghast and the next morning told his Rabbi.
The Rabbi said he had to divorce his wife but Sam said after 38 years he could not do so. Then the Rabbi said you have to fire your salesman but Sam said he sells 50% of my furniture, I cannot fire him.
The Rabbi said you must come back in two days with an answer.
Sam returns and tells the Rabbi his problem is solved. He would not have to divorce his wife nor fire the salesman. Why the Rabbis asked. Sam said because the Thomasville bed had been sold.
Subject: IMPORTANT AIRPORT DATA .........
Year to date statistics on Airport screening from the Department of Homeland Security
Terrorist Plots Discovered 0
Transvestites 133
Hernias 1,485
Hemorrhoid Cases 3,172
Enlarged Prostates 8,249
Breast Implants 59,350
Natural Blondes 3
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2)The Coming Political Upheaval
By Monty Pelerin
The late Murray Rothbard, famous Austrian economist and libertarian, published a collection of essays under the title Making Economic Sense. One subsection was entitled "Politics as Economic Violence." That phrase described, in Rothbard's view, politics' contribution to society.
Rothbard's reasoning was simple: Economics is the interaction of people freely making choices while subject to minimal restriction (no theft, coercion, fraud, etc.). Politics is coercion to force outcomes that otherwise would not occur. Thus, politics is violence against economics, or people, because it precludes freedom's running its natural course.
A couple of centuries earlier, Thomas Jefferson expressed the same sentiment:
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Rothbard, as was often his way, came up with an incisive way of categorizing government activity. Little that government does is not violence against economics. Virtually every government program involves coercion to achieve an outcome that free individuals otherwise would not choose. Otherwise, there would be no need for the program or legislation.
After decades of violence against economics, the economy hovers on the brink of destruction. There are too many to list, but some of the political fallacies that brought us to this point are the following:
•Bigger government means more prosperity.
•Everyone is entitled to own a house.
•Non-producers are entitled to live at the expense of producers.
•Deficits are good for the economy.
•Government can spend your money better than you can.
•Printing money can increase real wealth.
•The economy can be managed by a central authority.
As a result of these and other false precepts and decades of applying them, the economy is in shambles:
•Few jobs are being produced.
•Dependency has become a way of life for many citizens.
•Wealth of current and future generations has been squandered.
•Infrastructure has been neglected.
•Government is drowning in debt and other promises that will never be honored.
•Jobs, investment, and talent have been driven overseas.
•Businesses face arbitrary penalties, sanctions, and a weakened rule of law.
•Living standards have been reduced.
The continuing political violence against the economy has rendered the milk cow dry.
The damaged economy can no longer sustain the lifestyles that the American people have experienced for the past couple of decades. Much "prosperity" was phony in the sense that the credit bubble encouraged people to live beyond their means. Now begins the de-leveraging phase, where people must live "below" their means in order to pay down debt.
The corpulent political class cannot be sustained, either. Government tax revenues are insufficient to support spending. Government faces its own de-leveraging problem. Debt obligations and social promises cannot be met. Deficits cannot continue indefinitely, and the eventual rise in interest rates will impose new burdens.
For the first time since 1913, when the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve were instituted, government no longer can count on ever-increasing resources.
If politics can exercise violence on economics, might the reverse be true?
Economic laws, abused for so long, are now back in charge. They, rather than politics, are reshaping our economic and political possibilities.
In the fantasy land that is politics and modern-day media, assertions will be made that economics is now committing political violence. Such statements reflect ignorance and prejudice. The public sector is more important than the private sector, at least to these convoluted minds. Crass concepts such as supply and demand, limited resources, and other constraints should apply only to the hoi polloi, not the political elite.
But economics is not a force. It cannot commit violence or coerce in the sense that politics can. Economics is merely a loose body of "laws," not unlike physics. To say that economics commits something would be equivalent to saying that gravity commits murder when a person jumps off a building.
Politically outrageous promises have hit the wall of limited resources. Reality is here. No amount of bluster or legislation can alter this fact. The laws of economics and mathematics are controlling.
Government greed and mismanagement seriously wounded the golden goose. It is poetic justice that the political excesses that created the financial crisis will be instrumental in terminating the era of political dominance of economies.
It is tragic that so many citizens and their descendants will have to pay such a high price.
Here Come the Casualties
The first governmental casualties will come at the state and municipal level because these have no access to a money printing press. The first sign has already appeared:
Alabama Town Defaults on Pensions, Breaks State Law; Renewed Calls For San Diego Bankruptcy; "Prichard is the Future"
The dubious honor of being the first city in the nation to completely default on pension obligations goes to Prichard, Alabama. The city has sought bankruptcy protection twice and is flat broke. It faces a choice of paying to keep city services like police and garbage running or pay pensions. It selected the former.
There is no other way out. Prichard is merely the leader of a forming parade which will stretch out over several years and include hundreds if not thousands of others. Unfunded pensions will generate defaults, if not outright sovereign bankruptcies.
Precarious conditions in three other locales were recently highlighted by Mish:
•Pensions Eat 70% Decatur, Illinois Budget
•New York's Exploding Pension Costs
•Houston Mayor Wants Pension Benefit Cuts
Shortfalls developed as states and municipalities diverted pension funds to current expenditures. Politicians try to fudge the laws of economics, which sometimes provides a short-term political expediency. Eventually, though, economic laws take on the force of mathematical certainties.
When the money is gone, it is gone. We are very near that point, and that will make for interesting politics.
The Political Upheaval
The world has changed as a result of the economy. More than living standards will be affected. The political calculus of the country has been irreparably altered.
The states in need of the biggest bailouts are the blue states. The 2012 election will be Democrats eating their own as a result of state budgetary problems. As I wrote last year:
States should recognize their coming vulnerability and commence real budgetary reforms. Given the nature of politics, proactive steps are unlikely. Rather, we are likely to experience the bizarre scene of large Democrat states flirting with financial ruin while Obama attempts to avoid personal ruin.
By the 2012 election, the federal government will be struggling to avoid its own default, even with Ben Bernanke running his presses. Some municipalities and states will have reneged on various obligations. Survival of government at all levels will be an issue.
The 2012 election will be a pivotal event for the Democratic Party. President Obama will be unable to bail out one of his last remaining support bases: the public service unions. The disparate interests that represented the party will be under great strain. Failure to uphold public pensions and wage levels may be the catalyst that ends the modern Democratic Party.
Undoubtedly, it may seem foolish to some that such definitive comments have been made with respect to political outcomes. After all, two weeks is a lifetime in politics. Yet there is an inevitability to this financial crisis that is destined to run over the excesses of both government and private behavior.
Republicans will not help Obama or his union supporters in this matter. Even if it were not good politics, it would be irresponsible to do so. Governments must live within their means. Given where we are, that requires draconian budget cuts everywhere.
The social welfare state, a dystopian vision from the beginning, has had its fifteen minutes of history. It now begins its slow descent into the dust bin, alongside so many other tragic experiments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)C-in-C of Israel's covert war on Iran retires at its high point
The Israeli cabinet quietly took leave Sunday, Jan. 2, of Meir Dagan, marking the end of his eight remarkable years as head of the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence, espionage and covert warfare service. His retirement - after several extensions - also won a backhanded mention in Tehran.
Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards aerial arm, told the Fars news agency: "Many spy planes and ultra-modern aircraft of our enemies have been shot down. We have also shot down two Western reconnaissance drones in the Persian Gulf." He did not say when this happened, only: "It is the first time we are announcing it."
The Iranian official, according to intelligence sources, was aiming a dig at Meir Dagan by hinting at Tehran too may have had successes against "our enemies." That was the best – or worst - Tehran could do after the French Le Canard Enchaine's glowing account of Israel's secret war against Iran's nuclear program. Thursday, Dec. 30, the journal, known for its good connections with French intelligence, reported Israel had won the help of the American CIA and British MI6 for its covert operations after promising to hold back from a direct military attack on Iran's nuclear installations.
The publication describes Mossad as responsible for the liquidation of five senior Iranian nuclear scientists and planting the Stuxnet cyber worm in the program's computer systems. Also attributed to Israeli intelligence is the explosion in Iran's most important Shihab-3 ballistic missile arsenal at the Imam Ali mountain base near Khorramabad on Oct. 12 last year. Le Canard reported that 18 Iranian nuclear technicians died in that attack and many of the missiles were destroyed.
Judging from the French intelligence description, Meir Dagan led this successful secret war on Iran not just for Israel but for the West at large.
Even if Le Canard embellished those feats somewhat, they are still pretty impressive. The measure of their success was conveyed in a laconic comment by Moshe Yaalon, Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Strategic Affairs in a radio interview on Dec. 29. He said: "Iran does not currently have the ability to make a nuclear bomb on its own" – throwing out all previous forecasts of Iran's close approach to this capability as no longer valid.
Was this delay due to Stuxnet? Yaalon did not say. But he referred to Western pressure (sanctions) when he predicted that this pressure would force a decision in Tehran between stopping the nuclear program or stopping to exist.
"I don’t know whether this will happen in 2011 or 2012," he said, "but we are talking in terms of the next three years" – i.e. 2014 will be the critical year," said the minister. By then, either Iran will have a bomb or the Revolutionary Islamic regime will be gone.
Yaalon's timeline, the clearest heard thus far from any Israeli official, means that Meir Dagan is ending his tour of duty at the high point of the undercover war he managed, having successfully tipped the scales against Iran's nuclear progress.
The minister said cautiously in the same interview: "We cannot talk about a point of no return" – meaning that the greater part of the contest still lies ahead - until the moment comes for the Iranian regime to abandon its drive for a nuclear bomb if it wants to survive.
While the Western media by and large has high praise for Dagan's accomplishments, the consciousness of the inevitable failures on his record colored his parting address to the Israeli cabinet Sunday. He used it to pay tribute to Mossad and its agents: "Our people," he said, "have only two weapons: their cover stories and their sharp wits. Otherwise, they are on their own with no chance of rescue."
So where was the Israeli Defense Forces in the fateful secret war with Iran? The answer is nowhere.
In the four years since the 2006 war with Hizballah, the IDF's role has been progressively sidelined in most proactive efforts to safeguard Israel's national security and enhance its strategic standing. History may one day determine whether this decline was the outcome was dictated by circumstances or a function of the personalities of the last two chiefs of staff, Dan Halutz and Gaby Ashkenazi who too is about to retire.
Both began building their political careers and platforms before taking off their uniforms. During their watch, not only did the IDF not face up to the Iranian threat, but it avoided grappling with Iran's junior allies, Hizballah and Hamas, taking no action to prevent them tightening a noose strung with missiles and rockets around Israel's borders. In more ways than one, Meir Dagan stood in for the chief of staff - and the Mossad for the IDF – in bearing the brunt of cutting down Israel's foremost enemies.
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4)PM: I agreed to freeze, US didn't
By Roni Sofer
Benjamin Netanyahu discusses US role in removal of construction freeze from negotiating table, possibility of peace with Syria and efforts to restore relations with Turkey. As for talks with PA he says unlike Israel, Palestinians haven't moved an inch to promote peace
After opposing an extension of the settlement construction freeze, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprising statement Monday and said Israel was willing to extend the freeze "but ultimately the US rightfully decided not go in that direction and instead decided to go ahead with an outline for gap bridging talks in order to discuss core issues."
Speaking at the weekly Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense committee meeting Netanyahu said:
Peace Negotiations
State Department spokesman says attempts to persuade Israel to stop settlement construction dropped because issue 'became an end in itself rather than means to an end,' adding that administration will 'try to begin to make progress on core issues themselves'
"We did everything, including implement a nine month freeze and when the Palestinians got into gear towards the end of the freeze, the first issue they raised was a three month extension of the freeze.
"The truth is that Israel was prepared to extend the freeze, in spite of reports to the contrary," Netanyahu said.
The prime minister noted the discussions he held with the US ahead of the expected freeze extension: "I told Obama that I can take the issue to the cabinet and get the cabinet to pass a freeze extension and then I got a message from the Americans to forget the issue."
Netanyahu claims that "the US said that it wouldn't lead to a positive situation, rather it would lead to an endless path of freeze following freeze. And yet, I agreed to that."
He admitted that contacts with Palestinians were floundering.
Netanyahu also noted that US envoys are expected to arrive in Israel by mid-January, perhaps as early as next week "in order to close gaps and examine progress on core issues".
'I endorsed Palestinian state in 1995'
The prime minister blamed the Palestinians for the political deadlock: "No coalition agreement will stop the peace process. From the day I established the government I appealed to Abbas but received no response. I upheld the Bar-Ilan speech and we took many steps to promote the process while the Palestinians haven't moved an inch.
"I had many talks with Abbas but there has been no change and no progress in the Palestinian stance," he said.
Asked about his political plan, Netanyahu noted that he talked about a Palestinian state as early as the 1995 Likud convention.
This prompted an angry response by Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni. "It’s amazing listening to you describe an alternative reality and citing it as the truth. In 2002 you announced at the Likud Central Committee that 'a yes to a Jewish state means no to the Palestinian state and that no should be the answer.' I dare you to change the Likud's official position."
Livni added, "No one believes you because you say different things in different forums and are tested according to outcomes and not your statements."
She blamed Netanyahu of causing damage to Israel's security interests and noted that his integrity is shaky on the international arena.
'Syria wants everything in advance'
Netanyahu also addressed the Syrian issue stating that "we are ready and willing for negotiations with Syria, the problem today is that Syria wants everything in advance. The Syrians demand the entire territory before they even begin negotiations. We are very interested in moving forward on that issue. There is no shortage of envoys; the problem is that they want everything before negotiations."
As for the situation in Lebanon, ahead of the publication of the report on the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, the prime minister expressed hope that the situation would become clearer: "We aren't involved in the issue and certainly have no wish to ignite the border."
The prime minister is also considering the construction of a border fence along the Jordanian border in order to battle illegal infiltration. "We might have to extend the border fence we are constructing along the Egyptian border," he said. "We're checking it out, in order to avoid infiltration from other countries. The plan is to build the fence in the Arava region along the Jordanian border."
He noted that Spain too had constructed a fence in order to prevent infiltration from North African countries. As for Egypt's efforts to prevent smuggling and infiltration, Netanyahu said: "Egypt is working to prevent smuggling – but it continues."
During the meeting, the prime minister addressed additional issues including relations with Turkey: "Efforts continue. The deterioration began a long time ago, at Peres' meeting with Erdogan in Davos. At the moment they are turning towards the Muslim world at Israel's expense. During the Carmel fire I saw a window of opportunity – with a goal of preventing IDF soldiers from being put on trial."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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I was speaking with a dear relative, a very accomplished executive, a person with an extraordinary career both in business, politics and world matters. We were discussing the economy and why he was more upbeat and then our conversation turned to Israel, Iran and The United Nation's UNRA Agency.
He told me something I was unaware of, ie. Israel is the only U.N. nation member that has an 'asterisk' by its name and is specifically singled out as to what it cannot become within the organization, ie. never a member of The Security Council etc..
We both were in agreement about UNRA as the agency specifically formed to deal with the Palestinian refugee problem. Since UNRA began, the Palestinian refugee problem, which came as a result of their betting their Arab friends would defeat Israel, has not been resolved. In fact there are more refugees today than when UNRA started and this after billions have been allocated to the refugee problem. Why is this so and why has UNRA morphed into an Agency perpetuating victim hood?
I personally saw where many of its employees live in The French Hill section of Jerusalem. Lovely, comfortable homes with nice white cars sporting U.N. symbols parked outside. Its proponents and employees know a good thing when they see it and benefit from the world's largess. Ending UNRA would be like politicians voting themselves out of a job.
The second reason for UNRA's continued existence is that Palestinian refugees serve a political purpose. By allowing the problem to fester it dictates policy away from the problems facing the Arab Street by reason of their morally bankrupt and dishonest leadership.
Were UNRA a division of a for profit corporation and measured by its accomplishments it would have been out of existence years ago.
UNRA is simply another reason why funding so much of the U.N. is throwing good money after bad and proves my dictum that if you want more of something fund it.
In terms of his economic outlook he sees corporate momentum, spending to remain technologically competitive and bank lending beginning to loosen as ultimately driving the economy forward, albeit at a less than historic pace.
Iran remains the thorniest canker and we agree here as well but I added that one cannot think of Iran without conjuring a N Korean connection.
He too is reading and enjoying GW's book, has serious issues with Obama and Michelle so we are on the same page in that regard.
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I love humor, all kind of humor and the more anti-PC and irreverent the better. I like to start the New Year off with humor so here are a few oldies but still goodies. (See 1 below.)
---
Now for an interesting article on what factors will drive the next political
upheaval. (See 2 below.)
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One of Israel's best retires and Iran breathes a sigh of relief. (See 3 below.)
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Netanyahu holds forth. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Chaim Yankel, Chelm's first doctor, was becoming a knowledgeable medical
practitioner but was still struggling with his bedside manner.
One morning, Chaim Yankel walked into his office where one of his patients
was sitting. Chaim Yankel told the patient, "I have good news, and I have
bad news. Which do you want me to tell you first?"
The patient answered, "Give me the good news first, doctor." So Chaim
Yankel said, "You only have 24 hours to live." The patient screamed,
"That's the good news? What's the bad news?"
Chaim Yankel replied, "I forgot to tell you this yesterday..."
You know you were raised Jewish if...
The only good advice that your Jewish mother gave you was: "Go! You might
meet somebody!"
You were as tall as your grandmother by the age of seven and you were as tall as your grandfather by age seven and a half.
Sam owned a furniture store and went back to the store late at night only to find his wife and his top salesman making love on a Thomasville Bed.
He was aghast and the next morning told his Rabbi.
The Rabbi said he had to divorce his wife but Sam said after 38 years he could not do so. Then the Rabbi said you have to fire your salesman but Sam said he sells 50% of my furniture, I cannot fire him.
The Rabbi said you must come back in two days with an answer.
Sam returns and tells the Rabbi his problem is solved. He would not have to divorce his wife nor fire the salesman. Why the Rabbis asked. Sam said because the Thomasville bed had been sold.
Subject: IMPORTANT AIRPORT DATA .........
Year to date statistics on Airport screening from the Department of Homeland Security
Terrorist Plots Discovered 0
Transvestites 133
Hernias 1,485
Hemorrhoid Cases 3,172
Enlarged Prostates 8,249
Breast Implants 59,350
Natural Blondes 3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)The Coming Political Upheaval
By Monty Pelerin
The late Murray Rothbard, famous Austrian economist and libertarian, published a collection of essays under the title Making Economic Sense. One subsection was entitled "Politics as Economic Violence." That phrase described, in Rothbard's view, politics' contribution to society.
Rothbard's reasoning was simple: Economics is the interaction of people freely making choices while subject to minimal restriction (no theft, coercion, fraud, etc.). Politics is coercion to force outcomes that otherwise would not occur. Thus, politics is violence against economics, or people, because it precludes freedom's running its natural course.
A couple of centuries earlier, Thomas Jefferson expressed the same sentiment:
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Rothbard, as was often his way, came up with an incisive way of categorizing government activity. Little that government does is not violence against economics. Virtually every government program involves coercion to achieve an outcome that free individuals otherwise would not choose. Otherwise, there would be no need for the program or legislation.
After decades of violence against economics, the economy hovers on the brink of destruction. There are too many to list, but some of the political fallacies that brought us to this point are the following:
•Bigger government means more prosperity.
•Everyone is entitled to own a house.
•Non-producers are entitled to live at the expense of producers.
•Deficits are good for the economy.
•Government can spend your money better than you can.
•Printing money can increase real wealth.
•The economy can be managed by a central authority.
As a result of these and other false precepts and decades of applying them, the economy is in shambles:
•Few jobs are being produced.
•Dependency has become a way of life for many citizens.
•Wealth of current and future generations has been squandered.
•Infrastructure has been neglected.
•Government is drowning in debt and other promises that will never be honored.
•Jobs, investment, and talent have been driven overseas.
•Businesses face arbitrary penalties, sanctions, and a weakened rule of law.
•Living standards have been reduced.
The continuing political violence against the economy has rendered the milk cow dry.
The damaged economy can no longer sustain the lifestyles that the American people have experienced for the past couple of decades. Much "prosperity" was phony in the sense that the credit bubble encouraged people to live beyond their means. Now begins the de-leveraging phase, where people must live "below" their means in order to pay down debt.
The corpulent political class cannot be sustained, either. Government tax revenues are insufficient to support spending. Government faces its own de-leveraging problem. Debt obligations and social promises cannot be met. Deficits cannot continue indefinitely, and the eventual rise in interest rates will impose new burdens.
For the first time since 1913, when the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve were instituted, government no longer can count on ever-increasing resources.
If politics can exercise violence on economics, might the reverse be true?
Economic laws, abused for so long, are now back in charge. They, rather than politics, are reshaping our economic and political possibilities.
In the fantasy land that is politics and modern-day media, assertions will be made that economics is now committing political violence. Such statements reflect ignorance and prejudice. The public sector is more important than the private sector, at least to these convoluted minds. Crass concepts such as supply and demand, limited resources, and other constraints should apply only to the hoi polloi, not the political elite.
But economics is not a force. It cannot commit violence or coerce in the sense that politics can. Economics is merely a loose body of "laws," not unlike physics. To say that economics commits something would be equivalent to saying that gravity commits murder when a person jumps off a building.
Politically outrageous promises have hit the wall of limited resources. Reality is here. No amount of bluster or legislation can alter this fact. The laws of economics and mathematics are controlling.
Government greed and mismanagement seriously wounded the golden goose. It is poetic justice that the political excesses that created the financial crisis will be instrumental in terminating the era of political dominance of economies.
It is tragic that so many citizens and their descendants will have to pay such a high price.
Here Come the Casualties
The first governmental casualties will come at the state and municipal level because these have no access to a money printing press. The first sign has already appeared:
Alabama Town Defaults on Pensions, Breaks State Law; Renewed Calls For San Diego Bankruptcy; "Prichard is the Future"
The dubious honor of being the first city in the nation to completely default on pension obligations goes to Prichard, Alabama. The city has sought bankruptcy protection twice and is flat broke. It faces a choice of paying to keep city services like police and garbage running or pay pensions. It selected the former.
There is no other way out. Prichard is merely the leader of a forming parade which will stretch out over several years and include hundreds if not thousands of others. Unfunded pensions will generate defaults, if not outright sovereign bankruptcies.
Precarious conditions in three other locales were recently highlighted by Mish:
•Pensions Eat 70% Decatur, Illinois Budget
•New York's Exploding Pension Costs
•Houston Mayor Wants Pension Benefit Cuts
Shortfalls developed as states and municipalities diverted pension funds to current expenditures. Politicians try to fudge the laws of economics, which sometimes provides a short-term political expediency. Eventually, though, economic laws take on the force of mathematical certainties.
When the money is gone, it is gone. We are very near that point, and that will make for interesting politics.
The Political Upheaval
The world has changed as a result of the economy. More than living standards will be affected. The political calculus of the country has been irreparably altered.
The states in need of the biggest bailouts are the blue states. The 2012 election will be Democrats eating their own as a result of state budgetary problems. As I wrote last year:
States should recognize their coming vulnerability and commence real budgetary reforms. Given the nature of politics, proactive steps are unlikely. Rather, we are likely to experience the bizarre scene of large Democrat states flirting with financial ruin while Obama attempts to avoid personal ruin.
By the 2012 election, the federal government will be struggling to avoid its own default, even with Ben Bernanke running his presses. Some municipalities and states will have reneged on various obligations. Survival of government at all levels will be an issue.
The 2012 election will be a pivotal event for the Democratic Party. President Obama will be unable to bail out one of his last remaining support bases: the public service unions. The disparate interests that represented the party will be under great strain. Failure to uphold public pensions and wage levels may be the catalyst that ends the modern Democratic Party.
Undoubtedly, it may seem foolish to some that such definitive comments have been made with respect to political outcomes. After all, two weeks is a lifetime in politics. Yet there is an inevitability to this financial crisis that is destined to run over the excesses of both government and private behavior.
Republicans will not help Obama or his union supporters in this matter. Even if it were not good politics, it would be irresponsible to do so. Governments must live within their means. Given where we are, that requires draconian budget cuts everywhere.
The social welfare state, a dystopian vision from the beginning, has had its fifteen minutes of history. It now begins its slow descent into the dust bin, alongside so many other tragic experiments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)C-in-C of Israel's covert war on Iran retires at its high point
The Israeli cabinet quietly took leave Sunday, Jan. 2, of Meir Dagan, marking the end of his eight remarkable years as head of the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence, espionage and covert warfare service. His retirement - after several extensions - also won a backhanded mention in Tehran.
Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards aerial arm, told the Fars news agency: "Many spy planes and ultra-modern aircraft of our enemies have been shot down. We have also shot down two Western reconnaissance drones in the Persian Gulf." He did not say when this happened, only: "It is the first time we are announcing it."
The Iranian official, according to intelligence sources, was aiming a dig at Meir Dagan by hinting at Tehran too may have had successes against "our enemies." That was the best – or worst - Tehran could do after the French Le Canard Enchaine's glowing account of Israel's secret war against Iran's nuclear program. Thursday, Dec. 30, the journal, known for its good connections with French intelligence, reported Israel had won the help of the American CIA and British MI6 for its covert operations after promising to hold back from a direct military attack on Iran's nuclear installations.
The publication describes Mossad as responsible for the liquidation of five senior Iranian nuclear scientists and planting the Stuxnet cyber worm in the program's computer systems. Also attributed to Israeli intelligence is the explosion in Iran's most important Shihab-3 ballistic missile arsenal at the Imam Ali mountain base near Khorramabad on Oct. 12 last year. Le Canard reported that 18 Iranian nuclear technicians died in that attack and many of the missiles were destroyed.
Judging from the French intelligence description, Meir Dagan led this successful secret war on Iran not just for Israel but for the West at large.
Even if Le Canard embellished those feats somewhat, they are still pretty impressive. The measure of their success was conveyed in a laconic comment by Moshe Yaalon, Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Strategic Affairs in a radio interview on Dec. 29. He said: "Iran does not currently have the ability to make a nuclear bomb on its own" – throwing out all previous forecasts of Iran's close approach to this capability as no longer valid.
Was this delay due to Stuxnet? Yaalon did not say. But he referred to Western pressure (sanctions) when he predicted that this pressure would force a decision in Tehran between stopping the nuclear program or stopping to exist.
"I don’t know whether this will happen in 2011 or 2012," he said, "but we are talking in terms of the next three years" – i.e. 2014 will be the critical year," said the minister. By then, either Iran will have a bomb or the Revolutionary Islamic regime will be gone.
Yaalon's timeline, the clearest heard thus far from any Israeli official, means that Meir Dagan is ending his tour of duty at the high point of the undercover war he managed, having successfully tipped the scales against Iran's nuclear progress.
The minister said cautiously in the same interview: "We cannot talk about a point of no return" – meaning that the greater part of the contest still lies ahead - until the moment comes for the Iranian regime to abandon its drive for a nuclear bomb if it wants to survive.
While the Western media by and large has high praise for Dagan's accomplishments, the consciousness of the inevitable failures on his record colored his parting address to the Israeli cabinet Sunday. He used it to pay tribute to Mossad and its agents: "Our people," he said, "have only two weapons: their cover stories and their sharp wits. Otherwise, they are on their own with no chance of rescue."
So where was the Israeli Defense Forces in the fateful secret war with Iran? The answer is nowhere.
In the four years since the 2006 war with Hizballah, the IDF's role has been progressively sidelined in most proactive efforts to safeguard Israel's national security and enhance its strategic standing. History may one day determine whether this decline was the outcome was dictated by circumstances or a function of the personalities of the last two chiefs of staff, Dan Halutz and Gaby Ashkenazi who too is about to retire.
Both began building their political careers and platforms before taking off their uniforms. During their watch, not only did the IDF not face up to the Iranian threat, but it avoided grappling with Iran's junior allies, Hizballah and Hamas, taking no action to prevent them tightening a noose strung with missiles and rockets around Israel's borders. In more ways than one, Meir Dagan stood in for the chief of staff - and the Mossad for the IDF – in bearing the brunt of cutting down Israel's foremost enemies.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)PM: I agreed to freeze, US didn't
By Roni Sofer
Benjamin Netanyahu discusses US role in removal of construction freeze from negotiating table, possibility of peace with Syria and efforts to restore relations with Turkey. As for talks with PA he says unlike Israel, Palestinians haven't moved an inch to promote peace
After opposing an extension of the settlement construction freeze, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprising statement Monday and said Israel was willing to extend the freeze "but ultimately the US rightfully decided not go in that direction and instead decided to go ahead with an outline for gap bridging talks in order to discuss core issues."
Speaking at the weekly Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense committee meeting Netanyahu said:
Peace Negotiations
State Department spokesman says attempts to persuade Israel to stop settlement construction dropped because issue 'became an end in itself rather than means to an end,' adding that administration will 'try to begin to make progress on core issues themselves'
"We did everything, including implement a nine month freeze and when the Palestinians got into gear towards the end of the freeze, the first issue they raised was a three month extension of the freeze.
"The truth is that Israel was prepared to extend the freeze, in spite of reports to the contrary," Netanyahu said.
The prime minister noted the discussions he held with the US ahead of the expected freeze extension: "I told Obama that I can take the issue to the cabinet and get the cabinet to pass a freeze extension and then I got a message from the Americans to forget the issue."
Netanyahu claims that "the US said that it wouldn't lead to a positive situation, rather it would lead to an endless path of freeze following freeze. And yet, I agreed to that."
He admitted that contacts with Palestinians were floundering.
Netanyahu also noted that US envoys are expected to arrive in Israel by mid-January, perhaps as early as next week "in order to close gaps and examine progress on core issues".
'I endorsed Palestinian state in 1995'
The prime minister blamed the Palestinians for the political deadlock: "No coalition agreement will stop the peace process. From the day I established the government I appealed to Abbas but received no response. I upheld the Bar-Ilan speech and we took many steps to promote the process while the Palestinians haven't moved an inch.
"I had many talks with Abbas but there has been no change and no progress in the Palestinian stance," he said.
Asked about his political plan, Netanyahu noted that he talked about a Palestinian state as early as the 1995 Likud convention.
This prompted an angry response by Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni. "It’s amazing listening to you describe an alternative reality and citing it as the truth. In 2002 you announced at the Likud Central Committee that 'a yes to a Jewish state means no to the Palestinian state and that no should be the answer.' I dare you to change the Likud's official position."
Livni added, "No one believes you because you say different things in different forums and are tested according to outcomes and not your statements."
She blamed Netanyahu of causing damage to Israel's security interests and noted that his integrity is shaky on the international arena.
'Syria wants everything in advance'
Netanyahu also addressed the Syrian issue stating that "we are ready and willing for negotiations with Syria, the problem today is that Syria wants everything in advance. The Syrians demand the entire territory before they even begin negotiations. We are very interested in moving forward on that issue. There is no shortage of envoys; the problem is that they want everything before negotiations."
As for the situation in Lebanon, ahead of the publication of the report on the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, the prime minister expressed hope that the situation would become clearer: "We aren't involved in the issue and certainly have no wish to ignite the border."
The prime minister is also considering the construction of a border fence along the Jordanian border in order to battle illegal infiltration. "We might have to extend the border fence we are constructing along the Egyptian border," he said. "We're checking it out, in order to avoid infiltration from other countries. The plan is to build the fence in the Arava region along the Jordanian border."
He noted that Spain too had constructed a fence in order to prevent infiltration from North African countries. As for Egypt's efforts to prevent smuggling and infiltration, Netanyahu said: "Egypt is working to prevent smuggling – but it continues."
During the meeting, the prime minister addressed additional issues including relations with Turkey: "Efforts continue. The deterioration began a long time ago, at Peres' meeting with Erdogan in Davos. At the moment they are turning towards the Muslim world at Israel's expense. During the Carmel fire I saw a window of opportunity – with a goal of preventing IDF soldiers from being put on trial."
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Saturday, January 1, 2011
Change For The Sake of Change - Did Not Sell Well!
We learned change for the sake of change was/still is Obama's mission for our nation. Obama learned last year voters were not happy with his change for the sake of change.
In 2011, Obama must/will change in order to get us to change our view of him so he can return to The White House with his wife who also wants us to believe she has changed.
The Republicans will change, or give the appearance of doing so, because they cannot stay in office being what they were and probably still are.
Pelosi and Reid are so ideologically hidebound they are incapable of change and, in fact, believe changes they imposed should not be changed.
McConell and Boehner are also Belt-way insiders and will not likely change unless Teapartiers pressure them to change.
Politicians, in general, are habitual spenders and cannot change unless voted out of office.
We know N Korea, Iran and radical Islamist terrorists will not change, and why should they? They believe they are winning. Why do they believe this? Because most Western leaders are feckless and Obama, The Justice and Security Agencies of our government are blinded by reality. If you do not know and believe your enemies you cannot defeat them.
So the question is, will whatever change we experience in 2011 be for the nation's good or more of the same?
HANG AROUND IN ORDER TO FIND OUT! 2011 SHOULD PROVE AN INTERESTING YEAR!
As for yours truly, I thought about changing then fell asleep.
That said, these "paraprosdokians" are from a friend, fellow memo reader and very disciplined tough nosed West Pointer. (See 1 below.)
---
Dick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect.
Ø I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
Ø Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Ø I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
Ø Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
Ø The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.
Ø Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
Ø If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
Ø We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.
Ø War does not determine who is right -- only who is left.
Ø Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Ø The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Ø Evening news is where they begin with 'Good evening,' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.
Ø To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
Ø A bus station is where a bus stops. A railway station is where a train stops. My desk is a work station.
Ø How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Ø Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.
Ø Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says "If an emergency, notify:" I put "DOCTOR."
Ø I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
Ø Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
Ø Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut and still think they are sexy.
Ø Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?
Ø Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
Ø A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
Ø You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive more than once.
Ø The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!
Ø Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.
Ø A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
Ø Hospitality: making your guests feel like they're at home, even if you wish they were.
Ø I discovered I scream the same way whether I'm about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.
Ø Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they go.
Ø I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.
Ø I always take life with a grain of salt ... plus a slice of lime ... and a shot of tequila.
Ø When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.
Ø You're never too old to learn something stupid.
Ø To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
Ø Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Ø A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you are after it as when you are in it.
Ø Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
In 2011, Obama must/will change in order to get us to change our view of him so he can return to The White House with his wife who also wants us to believe she has changed.
The Republicans will change, or give the appearance of doing so, because they cannot stay in office being what they were and probably still are.
Pelosi and Reid are so ideologically hidebound they are incapable of change and, in fact, believe changes they imposed should not be changed.
McConell and Boehner are also Belt-way insiders and will not likely change unless Teapartiers pressure them to change.
Politicians, in general, are habitual spenders and cannot change unless voted out of office.
We know N Korea, Iran and radical Islamist terrorists will not change, and why should they? They believe they are winning. Why do they believe this? Because most Western leaders are feckless and Obama, The Justice and Security Agencies of our government are blinded by reality. If you do not know and believe your enemies you cannot defeat them.
So the question is, will whatever change we experience in 2011 be for the nation's good or more of the same?
HANG AROUND IN ORDER TO FIND OUT! 2011 SHOULD PROVE AN INTERESTING YEAR!
As for yours truly, I thought about changing then fell asleep.
That said, these "paraprosdokians" are from a friend, fellow memo reader and very disciplined tough nosed West Pointer. (See 1 below.)
---
Dick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect.
Ø I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
Ø Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Ø I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
Ø Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
Ø The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.
Ø Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
Ø If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
Ø We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.
Ø War does not determine who is right -- only who is left.
Ø Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Ø The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Ø Evening news is where they begin with 'Good evening,' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.
Ø To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
Ø A bus station is where a bus stops. A railway station is where a train stops. My desk is a work station.
Ø How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Ø Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.
Ø Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says "If an emergency, notify:" I put "DOCTOR."
Ø I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
Ø Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
Ø Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut and still think they are sexy.
Ø Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?
Ø Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
Ø A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
Ø You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive more than once.
Ø The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!
Ø Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.
Ø A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
Ø Hospitality: making your guests feel like they're at home, even if you wish they were.
Ø I discovered I scream the same way whether I'm about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.
Ø Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they go.
Ø I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.
Ø I always take life with a grain of salt ... plus a slice of lime ... and a shot of tequila.
Ø When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.
Ø You're never too old to learn something stupid.
Ø To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
Ø Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Ø A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you are after it as when you are in it.
Ø Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
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