Most everyone in the liberal media and press are applauding the victory achieved by the 111th Congress. How does a defeat for the nation equal a victory for Congress and Obama?
Changing tires on a racing car in record time is not a victory if the tires come off as the driver rounds the track, smashes into the wall and goes down in flames.(See 1 and 1a below.)
However, one newspaper seems to get it. (See 1b below.)
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This was sent to me by a former South African. Maybe Seattle's bus company can replace the anti-Israel ads with an anti-Mugabe ones.
This naive writer suggests various flotillas going to Gaza are meant solely for humanitarian purposes. I question that, however. (See 2 below.)
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Final interview with Porter Stansberry.
Whenever things get bad there is always a doomsday scenario that someone presents to make a living off of fear that abounds. I personally do not believe things will get as dire as Stansberry suggests but I also do not logically see how we get out from under our debt burden without taking drastic measures which I am not sure Americans will tolerate or something more drastic happening forcing our hand.
I am in total agreement with Stansberry re his demand for a balanced budget and his rational behind it is morally correct. It is unconscionable for Congress to indebt future generations who have no vote.(See 3 below.)
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The Jerusalem Post's Editor, David Horovitz, conjures up a State Department Cable as a spoof and lo and behold it had already been written by a perceptive American Diplomat - read and find out what it said.
Obama either cannot understand Israel because it is a democracy or because his sympathies lie with his Muslim brothers. Either way he continues to bark up the wrong tree and thus,his diplomatic initiatives are doomed to fail. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)Political Connections
By Ronald Brownstein
This Congress will enter the history books for the magnitude of both its political losses and its legislative victories.
This month’s final flurry of legislative successes for President Obama and the Democratic Congress underscores the difficulty of rendering a single verdict on their tumultuous two years in power.
In November, Democrats forfeited control of the House after suffering the largest midterm losses for either party since 1938. They absorbed stinging defeats in the Senate as well. But before that, and to an utterly unexpected extent after that as well, Obama and congressional Democrats passed into law an enormous agenda. This Congress will enter the history books for the magnitude of both its political losses and its legislative victories.
The program that Democrats implemented during Obama’s first two years doesn’t approach the Himalayan peaks of the first congressional sessions for Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. But probably not since Johnson has either party implemented as much of its agenda in a single legislative session as Democrats did in this one. “You probably have to go back to Johnson to see something as substantial as this,” says presidential historian Robert Dallek, a Johnson biographer. Historian Alan Brinkley of Columbia University agrees: “Legislatively, this Congress has probably done more than any Congress since the 1960s.”
Democrats had their legislative disappointments. Mostly because of Senate filibusters, they could not pass limits on carbon emissions, reform the labor laws or the immigration system, or establish a public competitor to private health insurers. Obama felt compelled to accept the extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor could he persuade Congress to back his pledge to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
But the achievements in the ledger’s other column are imposing. Health care and financial-services reform top that list. The 2009 economic-stimulus package contained, by some measures, more net new public investment in education, infrastructure, and clean energy than Bill Clinton achieved during his entire two terms. Other significant wins included bills that restructured and increased college financial aid, toughened pay-equity laws for women, expanded national service, and provided new credit card protections to consumers. This week’s Senate vote approving the New START pact provided Obama a bipartisan foreign policy-victory that steamrolled the opposition of the GOP Senate leadership.
Many of these bills fulfilled long-standing Democratic goals. Presidents of both parties since FDR had pursued comprehensive health care reform; Obama alone signed it into law. The repeal of the Pentagon’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy that Obama signed this week concluded an effort to allow gays to serve openly that dated back to Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Earlier, Obama signed legislation protecting sexual orientation under the hate-crimes law and more closely equalizing the penalties for possession of powder and crack cocaine--in each case implementing changes key Democratic constituencies have likewise sought since the 1990s.
Almost without notice, Obama ended a similar odyssey of even greater consequence. In 1996, Clinton’s Food and Drug Administration asserted the authority to regulate the marketing and sale of tobacco products; in 2000, the Supreme Court said it overreached. Since then, public health advocates had repeatedly failed to pass legislation providing FDA that authority (partly because of Bush’s opposition). Last year, Congress finally approved the bill and Obama signed it. FDA has already banned candy-flavored cigarettes and proposed to strengthen health warning labels. “That was the most significant legislative action that the Congress has [ever] taken with regard to tobacco,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.
Why didn’t this record provide Democrats more defense against the wave that capsized their House majority? One (smaller) reason is that the interminable struggle over health care overshadowed much of it. More important, conservatives, and even many independents, recoiled from the cumulative scale and cost of these initiatives at a time of economic unease. Most important, as the downturn lingered, the Democrats’ agenda appeared incapable of, and even tangential to, creating jobs, the public’s main concern. Many of the Democrats’ priorities “didn’t seem relevant to what the public was struggling with,” says lobbyist Vic Fazio, the former chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
One other factor contributed. Democrats passed such a comprehensive agenda largely because they achieved near-parliamentary levels of party unity in Congress. That focus on uniting Democrats was probably unavoidable given lockstep Republican opposition, but it produced a kind of myopia. On the biggest issues--health care and stimulus--Democrats spoke mostly to each other and never attracted enough public support beyond their core coalition.
All of these factors converged to ignite a fierce backlash against Democrats in the midterm election. If that recoil carries a Republican past Obama in 2012 as well, many of the Democratic legislative achievements could be uprooted. But if Obama wins a second term, he could instead institutionalize his key reforms. The huge federal deficit, and growing Republican strength in Congress, virtually ensures that the Democrats’ latest tide of Washington activism has already crested. Yet, if Obama can steer a course to a second term, the powerful imprint of that surge might endure.
1a)Lame Ducks Triumphant
By GAIL COLLINS
Wow, we’re getting a new nuclear arms control treaty for Christmas. I know some of you were hoping for iPads. But still, big news.
Good work, White House! Thank heavens we got rid of our former president, Barack Obama, who couldn’t even get the trade agreement he went all the way to South Korea to sign. Our current president, Barack Obama, would never let that happen, and, in fact, came up with a really excellent trade agreement with the South Koreans just the other day.
“Administration officials have bent over backwards to try to solve every problem that’s come up,” said Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, one of the Republicans who reached across the aisle to get the New Start treaty with Russia ratified.
The treaty, which needed a two-thirds vote, was actually approved 71 to 26. The Democrats did not have to go scrambling madly around looking for one last vote. And even the opponents were winners since they got to spend more than a week beating up on the Russians, revisiting the golden days when life was simple and wars were cold.
“They cheat. They are serial cheaters,” said Senator James Risch of Idaho, the author of my favorite unsuccessful amendment to the treaty. It would have made the entire groundbreaking nuclear-reduction program contingent on the return of four American Humvees that the Russians picked up during their conflict with Georgia. Risch hauled out blowups of one of the enslaved military vehicles, shouting: “You can watch your property right here being towed away by the Russians! Back to Moscow!” If the former Red Menace wants to “hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya,’ ” he added, “Well, that is fine. But give us back our stolen military equipment.”
When was it that the singing of “Kumbaya” became a shorthand for weenieness? “Kumbaya” is an excellent campfire song, especially for groups that border on tone-deafness and don’t know the words to anything. I remember singing it in Girl Scout camp with friends who emerged unscathed and became conservative Republicans. Some may be writing letters protesting the New Start treaty at this very moment. Please, give “Kumbaya” a break.
But I digress. Nothing, not even Humvees in chains, was going to stop the progress of what has recently become known as the “hard-charging lame-duck Congress.” It is a perfect image, with its suggestion of a flock racing along in the clumsiest manner possible but still stumbling over the finish line.
“When it’s all going to be said and done, Harry Reid has eaten our lunch,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who called the hard-charging lame duck “a capitulation in two weeks of dramatic proportions.” This is the rapidly evolving new hyperpartisan Lindsey Graham, who was so ticked off at the fact that the Senate was devoting a mere eight days to the treaty that he told the antitreaty obstructionist Jon Kyl of Arizona: “I want to apologize to you for the way you’ve been treated by your colleagues.”
His Start-supporting fellow Republicans appeared quietly unrepentant. Perhaps they were afraid that if they said anything in response, Graham would continue his evolution into awfulness right there on the Senate floor and start gnawing on the ankles of elderly legislators.
Good work, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry. We appreciate the way you’ve evolved from one of the world’s worst presidential candidates into an extremely useful senator. Unlike some unsuccessful presidential candidates we could name.
Good work, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the lone Republican who stuck with the treaty through thick and thin and never mutated into a scary new entity.
Good work, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Unlike your hapless predecessor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, you’ve had legislation shooting off to the White House like angry birds in that video game. Unemployment compensation! Gay rights! Food safety! Judicial appointments! Arms control! Health care for 9/11 responders!
But let’s admit it. Nothing would have gotten done if Obama hadn’t swallowed that loathsome compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy.
If he’d taken the high road, Congress would be in a holiday war. The long-term unemployed would be staggering into the new year without benefits. The rest of the world would look upon the United States as a country so dysfunctional that it can’t even ratify a treaty to help keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The people who worked at ground zero would still be uncertain about their future, and our gay and lesbian soldiers would still be living in fear.
It’s depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t need it. But it’s kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he’s doing.
1b)Voters elected Republicans to end Obamaism, not expand it
By: Examiner Editorial
It has probably escaped the attention of all but the few who make it their business to pay attention to such things, so we note here that a subtle but dangerous piece of revisionism about the meaning of the November election crept into the national political conversation this week.
Nowhere was that revisionism more evident than in President Obama's comments late Wednesday in lauding the just-ended 111th Congress, and in particular its lame-duck conclusion: "A lot of folks in this town predicted that after the midterm elections, Washington would be headed for more partisanship and more gridlock. And instead, this has been a season of progress for the American people. That progress ... is a reflection of the message that voters sent in November, a message that said it's time to find common ground on challenges facing our country." A few paragraphs later, it became clear that Obama wants us to believe that voters meant for congressional Democrats and Republicans to find that common ground so they can do more of what made the 111th Congress "the most productive two years that we've had in generations."
No, Mr. President, voters in 2010 did not demand bipartisan cooperation in 2011 to advance Obamacare, increase out-of-control federal spending that drove the national debt to $13.4 trillion and the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion, add thousands of bureaucrats to the government payroll even as private-sector unemployment remains near 10 percent, create hundreds more wasteful, duplicative federal programs that mainly benefit Democratic-favorite special interests like Big Labor, impose thousands more growth-killing environmental regulations, or erect multitudes of additional obstacles to achieving energy independence here at home.
To be sure, voters have lost patience with the endless partisan harangues, elitist arrogance, political corruption, and hypocritical pandering to special interests that long ago came to define Washington and its professional politicians in both parties. That was why Republicans were tossed out of congressional power in 2006. The same factors further coalesced in 2010 with disgust with Obamacare, the failed $814 billion economic stimulus program, the "Always Apologize for America" foreign policy, and exploding spending and debt. The result was that voters tossed Democrats out of control of the House and handed Republicans their deepest midterm election victory since 1938. Only in a liberal fantasy world does such an electoral result represent an electorate demanding bipartisan cooperation for more of the same.
Historians may someday describe the just-ended lame-duck session as the high-water mark of Big Government. Come Jan. 5, the reality of what voters did on Nov. 2 will become incontestably clear as a Republican House majority takes office. Then, as Sen. Tom Coburn said Wednesday, henceforth, "there will be no more big spending bills." The new year cannot come too soon.
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2)The following letter from a Zimbabwean refugee in Johannesburg is a stark reminder of the world's indifference to human tragedy wrought by Mugabe, while the anti-Israel crusaders divert the world's attention.
Regards
Maurice
An appeal from Zimbabwe
To all those good people who organize flotillas to aid Hamas in Gaza
PLEASE RECOGNIZE US TOO
We admire and envy the good works and immense resources and influence around the
world that enable you to charter ships and organize costly flotillas and we
ask in all humility, are we Zimbabweans less human and less deserving than
the Gazans? At least they have UNRWWA with its $400 million annual budget and
substantial additional funds from the EU, the U.N. the U.S., Saudi Arabia
and other Arab League countries.
We don't for one moment suggest that you ignore the Gazans but we appeal to
you to remember our suffering too, with 80% percent of our population barely
existing below the poverty line, where Mugabe has destroyed basic health
services, where the police use batons and worse to suppress political
opponents, where malaria, Aids and tuberculosis continue to spiral upward,
where hyperinflation is rampant and the privileged few who have jobs earn $8
to $16 per month, barely enough to buy bread when available, for the family.
The average life-span has fallen to about 30 years per person and more than
one-third of Zimbabwean children are orphans.
ABC news reported in June this year that the largest number of new refugees
in the world are from Zimbabwe, almost all in South Africa. ZimOnline has
reported that while the people starve, Mugabe and his loyalists in ZANU-PF
own nearly 5 million hectares of agricultural land, seized from white
commercial farmers since 2000, making a mockery of the land reform plan.
In a John Simpson BBC documentary "Tracking down a massacre", the terrible
wounds which Mugabe's Fifth Brigade inflicted on Matabeleland in the early
1980s were recently exposed. It began when Mugabe decided to deal with about
500 dissident followers of his rival, Joshua Nkomo. Mugabe ordered the
Brigade to root them out
The Fifth Brigade, like Mr Mugabe's government was mostly Shona-speaking,
whereas Matabeleland is populated mostly by Ndebele descendants of Zulus who
came to the area in the 1830s. Joseph Buchena Nkatazo who co-ordinated an
investigation some years ago by the Catholic Commission for Justice and
Peace told Simpson that in the areas where they had been able to
investigate, they found evidence of more than 20,000 deaths. He was sure
there must have been many more elsewhere.
Flotilla organizers, Physicians for Human Rights, Rabbis for Human Rights,
and other humanitarian organizations, please spare some of your compassion,
energy and resources for this human disaster in Zimbabwe that has been
callously ignored by people who should be concerned. Can we look forward to
an aid flotilla via South Africa with food for distribution to the needy and
medical supplies for the ailing?
Joseph Khumalo
Fomerly of Josiah Tongogara Street
Harare
Zimbabwe
Now in Johannesburg
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3) Goldsmith comment: In the final installment of our "End of America" interview with Porter, he tells you how he'll escape the U.S. if things get really bad. He also predicts the one major freedom U.S. citizens will lose in the next two years.
Sean Goldsmith: I know previously you've discussed an escape plan.
Porter Stansberry: Hold on. Let me go back to that facetious question [where I'm holding my offshore assets]. One of the things I used to really like to do in investment conferences when I used to speak in front of a bunch of people every year... I do little of that anymore because I have a family now and I don't like to travel that much without them. But I would get up and say, "Hi, everybody. How's everybody doing today? How are things going?" And we talk about their investments, and then I would ask the audience, "Now, how many of you people here have an offshore bank account?" And there would actually be people who raised their hands.
SG: Another good one is when Doug Casey was giving a speech, and he'd get up and say, "Well, I got a call and I know that there are two federal agents in the audience, so if you guys would please stand up? We all know you're here, so please just stand up and show yourselves out." And of course no one had called him. He was just making a joke. And sure enough, two federal agents stood up and walked out of the conference.
PS: That's great.
SG: So back to my question... You've previously discussed an escape plan. I would like to know what is your plan – if you're willing to discuss that – if things get bad enough in the U.S. Do you recommend the average American citizen have an escape plan?
PS: Well, this goes to what I think everyone considers to be the fringe element of these discussions.
SG: Certainly.
PS: And so let me preface my remarks by saying I consider the idea that I would have to flee my country because of political or fiscal pressures to be remote. The possibility is certainly remote that I would ever feel persecuted enough individually to flee the country.
SG: And that's coming from a guy who was sued by our country.
PS: Yes. The government has targeted me individually. It cost me $3 million and eight years of my life to fight the lawsuit that resulted from it, so I speak from some experience. But I do consider it unlikely I will need this contingency plan.
On the other hand, I firmly believe that it is my responsibility to always provide for the safety, the security, and the well being of my family. I can't do anything to save my neighbors. I might not be able to do enough to save our subscribers, but I can damn sure save myself and my family from any and all outcomes of this coming hyperinflation.
So I have provisioned the ability for me to leave the country secretly, anonymously, and I have taken the steps to make sure that I have assets overseas that can sustain me in the event of an emergency. This may not be for you, and it may be completely unnecessary. It probably is. But I know a lot about what's going to happen here. It's going to get really, really ugly. And nobody can know exactly what the outcome will be. So I think that taking certain precautions in a limited way is simply prudent. Whether you feel the same, of course, is up to you.
SG: All right. So a couple of questions for entertainment value... I want to know – let me preface this by saying I know that never in a million years will you ever enter the political arena – but what would you do to fix the U.S.?
PS: That's a very good question, and I have no interest at all in serving my fellow citizens, at least not at the wages that the government will pay. So…
SG: Well, everyone knows that you don't make money as a politician with your wages. It's in the kickbacks.
PS: Right, exactly, and I'd rather just make money honestly. So my answer is sort of silly because there's no political way to do these things... but if I was king for the day and my edicts would remain in effect, I would start by doing one simple thing.
One thing you have to do is have a balanced-budget amendment. It's completely immoral to spend more than you tax if you're the government because all you're doing is taxing future generations of Americans who are not even entitled to have a vote on decisions that you're making.
It's totally immoral to leave vast debts to our children and grandchildren. Every American ought to understand this. So I would put in a balanced-budget amendment that says unless our continental United States is invaded by a foreign enemy we have to run a balanced budget. If the Mexicans decide to invade us, then OK… we can run a deficit for a couple years just until we can repel the invasion. Perhaps the Canadians will come after us. We don't know.
But there's no point at all in believing these foreign adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are worth the debts we're going to leave to our children. And don't even get me started on Medicare and Social Security running deficits like that. It's just completely immoral, and it shows just how decrepit and disgusting the American political process has become. So a balanced-budget amendment is No. 1.
No. 2, you have to have sound money. When you don't have sound money, none of the economy can function correctly. Prices are the most important form of information in the economy. Prices are what inform entrepreneurs about what needs to be created and what doesn't need to be created. When you don't have sound money, you have a completely distorted price system, and it all falls apart.
Then of course, people say, "Oh, look, capitalism has failed." No, we haven't had capitalism in this country since before World War II. What we've had ever since then is this sort of phony corporate state capitalism, really sort of socialism-light. So you have to have sound money... Otherwise, the economy can't function appropriately or efficiently.
So a balanced budget, sound money... When I say sound money, I mean either gold and silver as money or a sound backing for such a currency. So you can say 25% backed by gold, 10% backed by gold, 100% backed by gold. I don't really care about that. I just want the money to be sound, and I don't want inflation to be possible, legally.
And then the third thing, I think, is you'll never be able to keep those reforms. You'll never be able to keep a balanced-budget amendment in place. You'll never be able to keep sound money in place until you change the fundamental nature of our democracy. And this of course is the most radical idea that I'll share with you. I have a simple idea to fix America. Everyone should be entitled to as many votes as they have spent dollars in taxes. Real simple. If you spend a ton of money in taxes, you get to have a powerful vote. If you don't pay any taxes, you don't get a vote at all because you haven't invested at all in the equity of our country. So I think that would really eliminate a lot of the problems that we have with people voting themselves the largesse of our treasury.
Right now in America, half the people in our country don't pay any federal income taxes – none. So they are net beneficiaries of the welfare state, and they're going to continue to vote for more and more welfare until they bankrupt our entire country. The incentives of that are so clearly perverse everyone should understand why that's not a safe process, and I think that just giving people the vote based on their taxes is really simple.
And I tell you what would even be better: You could make taxes optional. If you don't want to vote, you don't have to pay any taxes. Boy, that would really change the math, wouldn't it? Of course, I don't expect that to happen either. But those are the three principles: a balanced budget, real money, and change the voting system so only people who have a vested interest in the success or failure of our country are able to have a voice in the decision-making process.
And by the way, all three things were in place when our country was founded. So to say that these things are radical is really not true. These things are actually conservative. They're what our country was founded on. They're just common sense. And if you put those things back in place, our country would be on the right foot almost immediately.
SG: All right, and in closing, I was wondering if you would be willing to share a prediction, an End of America prediction that you haven't yet made with Digest readers.
PS: Oh, jeez.
SG: And I know you've already predicted a lot.
PS: An End of America prediction. OK, sure. I don't know if I've exactly predicted this yet or not, but I believe it'll be against the law for you to send assets overseas without restriction by January 2013.
SG: All right.
PS: Some kind of significant capital controls will be in place in two years. So you've got two years to really prepare yourself for what's coming, otherwise all your assets are going to be trapped in the States, where they'll be confiscated or taxed or inflated away.
SG: All right. Well, thank you very much, Porter.
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4)Editor's Notes: Stranger than fiction
By DAVID HOROVITZ
I dreamed up an Israeli-empathetic cable last week. Turned out the former US ambassador had written the genuine article.
In this column last week, I manufactured a spoof WikiLeaks cable, purportedly written by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, setting out an ostensible “recalibration” of the Obama administration’s policy as regards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I didn’t see much danger of anyone mistaking it for a genuine diplomatic document. Certainly, I made it sound somewhat authentic by following some of the formatting and linguistic conventions of such cables. But there were three pretty big clues that this was a fake.
First: The WikiLeaks US State Department deluge includes nothing from the past few months, and I dated my secretary of state’s directive December 10, 2010 – just a few days ago. It is highly unlikely that even the best-connected newspaper editor would gain access to so fresh a genuine cable. And if an editor did, it would be front-page, leadto- the-paper, global-headlinemaking news, not material for an opinion piece.
Second clue: I used the word “WikaLikes” in the headline. “WikaLikes.” As in, “LookaLikes.” As in, not the genuine article!
And third, there was the not insignificant matter of the content. This was “Secretary Clinton” writing what I would like to think Secretary Clinton ought to want to be writing, rather than staking out the kinds of positions that she and the Obama administration actually have been taking – positions that have included a heavy public focus on settlements; positions that, to my mind, have indicated an unfortunately exaggerated confidence in the willingness and capacity of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority to agree to the necessary compromises for a peace accord; positions that, I further believe, have reflected a failure to internalize, on the one hand, the widespread Israeli willingness to trade land for real peace, and, on the other, the deep Israeli skepticism about Palestinian readiness to meet us halfway.
Could any reader seriously imagine Hillary Clinton truly writing to her State Department team, as I had her writing in my “cable,” phrases such as “Recognized that previous 10-month freeze was wasted by Palestinian Authority, which failed to enter direct talks in good faith”? Or “USG conscious of PA President Abbas’s failure to capitalize on former PM Olmert’s terms”? Or “Israeli mainstream commitment, interest in accommodation hitherto underestimated by this Administration”? Or “Palestinian commitment, interest in accommodation hitherto overestimated by this Administration”?
Of course not, I figured. And more’s the pity.
Well, I was wrong.
Despite the implausibility of me getting my hands on such a document and burying it in a column rather than leading the paper with it; despite that “WikaLikes” headline; and despite the cable’s strikingly Israel-considerate (though not, in my opinion, Israel-apologist) tone, many readers did seize upon it as an authentic Clinton directive – to their dismay or their delight, depending on their own positions.
And a number of people who have been involved in the American- Israeli diplomatic process wrote directly to me, wondering about the cable’s origin and asking for more details. One such correspondent, smelling a rat, noted that there seemed to be rather too many pro-Israeli assumptions.
Indeed so, I responded to him sadly.
Which is where things get more interesting.
ON MONDAY of this week, WikiLeaks released a new batch of Israel-related diplomatic cables. Genuine, leaked US State Department documents. These featured all kinds of interesting tidbits and revelations, notably including Israeli security figures’ downbeat assessments of Abbas and the PA, and their upbeat assessments of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s peacemaking capacity.
Also in the new batch was the classified section of a “scenesetter” cable prepared by the former US ambassador here, Richard Jones – a kind of overview of the Israeli psyche drawn up for relevant senior American officials just as Israel marked its 60th anniversary in May 2008 and shortly before a three-day visit to Israel by then-president George W. Bush.
Let me digress for a moment to make something clear: I do not endorse the slogan utilized by WikiLeaks on its website: “Keep us strong. Help WikiLeaks keep governments open.”
The democratic pact involves empowering elected leaderships to safeguard our interests as they see fit, subject to their ouster if and when the electorate determines that others can do the job better. It does not require that those leaderships be so transparent to friend and enemy alike – so “open,” to use the WikiLeaks term – as to doom their capacity to act effectively on their citizens’ behalf. When democratic governments led by Washington are battling rapacious and tyrannical regimes across the globe, publicizing the US diplomatic hierarchy’s classified conversations, analyses and directives does far more to undermine that struggle than to advance it.
Nonetheless, among the outweighed advantages of the WikiLeaks breach has been to make plain to the public, in almost real time, how impressive the American diplomatic corps truly is, how conscientious and astute are so many of its envoys, and how important their assessments. Richard Jones’s May 2008 “scenesetter” is a peerless case in point.
Many of the documents leaked so far pertaining to this region contain far more dramatic content than the Jones paper. But none better demonstrates a real understanding of Israel and a grounded empathy with the Israeli public – its challenges, its concerns, its moods, its guiding mindset. And there is no single cable that I would rather commend as vital reading for those who, whether because of predetermined hostility or ignorance, misrepresent us.
The same selection of documents leaked on Monday included a June 2009 cable from Paris in which US officials reported home on the stark, three pronged message that President Nicolas Sarkozy was about to deliver to Binyamin Netanyahu at a meeting in the French capital that month.
“You think you’ve got time, but you don’t,” Sarkozy was set to admonish the prime minister. “You think you have an alternative solution, but you don’t. You think you’re stronger than the Palestinians, but you’re not.”
I wish Sarkozy had been able to read Jones’s cable. He would have gleaned – not from a selfinterested Israeli official or analyst, but from a professional American diplomat – the sense that mainstream Israel does not feel that time is on its side where peacemaking with the Palestinians and the wider region is concerned. That mainstream Israel does not believe it has an alternative to a viable two-state solution with the Palestinians. And that mainstream Israel is not too cocky about its “strength,” however that might be defined.
THE JONES cable “gets” Israel to a quite remarkable degree.
Indeed, it presents precisely the kind of realist’s insights into Israel that I, last week, put into my fake Secretary Clinton cable. The kind of insights that I knew, or thought I knew, would be perceived as too Israel-empathetic to feature in a genuine cable.
Boy was I wrong. Here were insights along similar lines, set out in an articulate cable written ahead of a presidential visit by none other than the very top American diplomat here.
The ambassador began by poignantly describing a country that was “preparing to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its declaration of independence on May 8 with a characteristically Israeli mix of pride in their achievements and worry about the future.”
In a section headed “Israeli Pride Justified,” Jones wrote admiringly of the realization of the “desperate dream” of a “strong, democratic Jewish state that would be a haven for Jews everywhere.”
Today, he reported, “Israel is very much a reality, with a vibrantly original Hebrew-speaking cultural life, a Tel Aviv skyline dominated by gleaming skyscrapers, a booming high tech-based economy, and the strongest army in the Middle East.”
Israel, he went on, “is firmly Western in its values but also more diverse ethnically and culturally, less Europe-oriented, and decidedly more capitalist than the Israel founded largely by East European-born socialists. For all of its problems with finding the right electoral formula to bring about stable governments, Israel’s democracy is also a thriving reality. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country in which its citizens take for granted the peaceful transfer of political power via the ballot box.”
Critically and commendably, the ambassador then penned a section titled “And Anxieties are Real” where he noted that “the looming threat of a nuclear armed Iran, whose leaders constantly declare their determination to wipe Israel off the map, weighs heavily on the minds of Israelis, who regard their country not only through the prism of the Holocaust but also as the only UN member-state to be routinely threatened with annihilation. Iran’s success in projecting power directly into the core of the Arab- Israeli conflict through its ties to Syria, Hizballah and Hamas compounds the sense of threat.”
Most pertinently, when he came to the Palestinians, Jones correctly stated that “a solid majority of Israelis has come to accept the need for a Palestinian state and for Israel to relinquish control of most of the West Bank... Gone are the days when many Israelis questioned the existence of a Palestinian national identity, and today only a small minority – though still an outspoken and determined one – continues to articulate a demand to retain control of all of the West Bank for religious/historical reasons.”
And then, in what I consider the most important observation of all, Jones drew the contours of the crucial Israeli mainstream dilemma – the dilemma that I feel has been so underestimated by, among others, key figures in the Obama presidency.
“One problem, however,” the ambassador wrote, “is the lack of a broad-based Israeli confidence in the Palestinians’ capacity to hold up their end of the land-forpeace bargain.”
When I first read that sentence, I offered a silent thank you. A thank you to Jones for stating what so many Israelis see as so blindingly obvious but what, to our frustration, seems to have eluded so many of our critics and even some of our friends. Yes, we want to make peace with the Palestinians. No, unfortunately, we are not convinced that they want to make peace with us.
It is worth noting that the ambassador, who ended his three-year term here later in 2008 to become deputy head of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, chose not to express his own judgment as to whether Israelis are right or wrong to doubt the Palestinians’ land-for-peace bona fides. It is also worth stressing that there is nothing here or elsewhere in the cable that contradicts the conviction – shared by successive American administrations, much of the international community and many Israelis – that Israel’s selfinterest requires it to do absolutely everything in its power to encourage a genuine Palestinian commitment to peace.
I DON’T doubt that senior members of the Bush administration scrutinized this cable, and it may have helped shape their ongoing Middle East thinking and policymaking. I wonder how widely it has been read, and if read, internalized, within the Obama administration.
At present, senior US administration officials are working assiduously to revive the diplomatic process – and are said to be pessimistic about their prospects. On the final-status issues of Jerusalem and border demarcation, differences are persistent and wide. Less progress has been made on security issues than widely reported. There has been some shift in the Palestinian position on the refugee issue, but no breakthrough.
Overall, the struggle for substantive progress, always difficult, has been exacerbated by the missteps of the past two years. Instead of broadcasting, along with empathy for Palestinian sovereign aspirations, Jones-style understanding of Israeli concerns, the new administration, publicly at least, seemed to be applying far more pressure in Jerusalem than Ramallah, based on the apparent conception that it was the Israelis, more than the Palestinians, who were set against concessions.
The doubly counterproductive effect was to signal to the Palestinians that they could hold to maximalist positions, while reducing the Israeli government’s incentive to engage more substantively on the key issues.
I WROTE a fake cable last week, which incidentally included no little criticism of Netanyahu – “negotiating stance and actions inconclusive, even unhelpful...”; “distressingly unforthcoming in aborted direct talks” – setting out what I thought could constitute reasonable American positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I wrote it because it has seemed to me that the administration had fallen prey to certain misconceptions and misjudgments, and that this was a factor in the failure to make the progress in which mainstream Israelis, moderate Palestinians, regional moderates and the US all share a paramount interest. I wrote it because, among others, I wanted people in the administration to read it.
The minor consequent irony is that some people mistook it for the genuine article – a belated, Clinton-ordered, dramatic recalibration of policy. The greater, depressing irony is that it turns out that a document citing various similar perspectives – an authentic, secret, diplomatic cable, overflowing with sensible assessments of the most critical issues – had been written two and a half years ago, by Washington’s ambassador here.
Maybe as of this week, now that all of us can read and appreciate its wisdom, this genuine, fair-minded and perceptive document will garner its deserved resonance, most notably in the highest echelons of the US diplomatic hierarchy for which it was originally prepared.
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Friday, December 24, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Seattle Relents as Jews Have Found Their Voice!
Even if the Start Treaty allows us to move forward with respect to a missile defense the GAO has released a report that suggests problems with Obama's concept which overruled GW's approach.
Not sure I want to trust this Community Organizer's thinking on how best to defend the nation from a missile attack. (See 1 below.)
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The media parrots are in lock step about the 111th Congress being the most productive since Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson. The basis for their unison is the amount of legislation crammed through in the lame duck session because it effected so many Americans. They submit the rush job's quantity as the basis for their optimistic conclusion but avoid looking at the 111th's accomplishments through a quality prism because that would undercut their collective voices of approval.
The idea that adding more billions to our debt, allowing Russia to possibly have a say over our own missile defense are worthy pieces of legislation does more to demonstrate their bias than their sound judgement.
I submit much of the legislation passed by the 111th Congress was the antithesis of what voters want and that is why they threw the Democrats out and I also would think, had the voters been given a chance to re-vote today, they might throw more Democrats out as well as some renegade Republicans. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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No doubt if war comes to the Middle East because of Hamas and Hezballah provocations and continued rocketing of Israel, Israel will be blamed again for defending itself. (See 3 below.)
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Seattle Bus Ads accusing Israel of War Crimes has been halted. Hatred and bias remains but common sense prevailed.
It would be nice to believe it was done in the spirit of Christmas but I suspect the disruption of bus service, because of the tremendous flood of incoming calls, was more the reason.
Jews all over the world get grief because of Israel's existence but were it not for Israel I doubt Jews all over the world would have found their voice. Let's face it, whether Israel existed or not Jews will always be attacked and or blamed for the world's ills. They remain easy targets.(See 4 below.)
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Glick questions the Obama's posture towards Iran. Obama's stooped weakness and America's passivity is driving Arab States into Iran's arms. The latest seems to be Jordan.
No matter what the media thinks of the 111th 's successes the loss of the Middle East by Obama and his 'kiss ass' State Department will prove calamitous.(See 5 below.)
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Talk about Global Warming. Prichard could be the tip of the ice berg! (See 6 below.)
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Twas the night before Christmas and all through The House,
not a creature was stirring,
they had all gone home to their girls friends, mistresses and maybe even their spouse.
So bye bye 111th Congress
You did such great works.
You busted the nation
And proved to be jerks.
Obama is now in Hawaii
Licking his chop
While over 40 million Americans
are on food stamps eating slop
Bernanke has interest rates
almost below zero
Inflation is ahead
So he'll end no hero.
Iran is gaining
Missiles could soon be raining
But the media is applauding
Our Messiah's triumphant recording
Of so much legislation passed
We should all be aghast
So onward you reindeer
and a HO HO from Santa
And from me Merry Christmas
As I end this inane banter.
Dick
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1)Three Potential Problems With Obama's Missile Defense Plan
Sharon Weinberger Contributor
A new arms-control pact with Russia has finally received Senate approval, helped along with an amendment assuring Republicans that START won't limit the United States' ability to pursue missile defense. In some ironic timing, however, the Government Accountability Office this week released a report that is deeply critical of the administration's missile defense plans.
The Bush administration focused on placing ground-based interceptors and radar in Europe that could knock long-range ballistic missiles out of the sky, but President Barack Obama has shifted attention to a sea-based system called the European Phased Adaptive Approach.
The report raises a number of criticisms of this approach:
1. Bad management. The Pentagon still hasn't established a process to ensure "transparency and accountability" of this new approach to new missile defense, the GAO says. The report criticizes the lack of clear information on the cost and schedule of the new system.
2. It might miss the mark. To accurately target a missile, the interceptors rely on something called a Command and Control, Battle Management and Communications system, which helps integrate the sensor data and provide targeting information to guide the interceptor to the threat missile. But, the GAO says, the system may not be able to accurately track incoming missiles "and may present an incorrect picture of the battlespace."
3. It's not fully tested. The Pentagon will be buying elements of the new missile defense system before it has been demonstrated that the technology actually works as promised. For example, the Pentagon is buying new interceptors before they are fully tested. GAO points out that flight tests designed to test whether the interceptors work are scheduled for after the Pentagon has already bought 38 of the new interceptor missiles. In fact, the Pentagon will have bought about a third of the planned inventory of 320 interceptors, paying more than $1 billion, before it is sure the missiles work as planned.
The Pentagon, in a letter to the GAO, said it believed that the office had "inaccurately" portrayed its missile defense plans, but missile defense opponents said the report was more evidence that the missile defense system is misguided.
"This, and several previous GAO reports, while accurately outlining the problems portray only some of the symptoms of what is actually a terminally diseased patient," Yousaf Butt, a physicist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in an e-mail to AOL News.
Riki Ellison, chairman of the nonprofit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, told AOL News that the GAO report is not an indictment of missile defense but simply a description of longstanding problems with advancing the technology to the point that it can do what policymakers would like it to do. "I think what you're seeing is a gap that's been pretty well established," he said.
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2) Congress's Monstrous Legal Legacy Put together like Frankenstein, ObamaCare risks coming apart at the seams.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
The historians will long be fighting over the legislative legacy of the 111th Congress. As to its legal legacy, the only real question is whether this just-finished Democratic Congress was the most unserious in decades, or the most unserious in history.
That much is clear from the recent ObamaCare court proceedings. Federal Judge Henry Hudson, responding to a lawsuit by the state of Virginia, last week struck down the core of the law, the individual mandate. His decision came the same week that a coalition of 20 states presented oral arguments against the health law in front of Florida federal Judge Roger Vinson. In October, Judge Vinson ruled against the Obama Justice Department's motion to dismiss the states' lawsuit.
The law professors and think-tankers and media folk who initially ridiculed these lawsuits have now had to dream up sinister reasons for why they are succeeding. Judges Hudson and Vinson, we are told, were both appointed by Republicans and obviously can't be trusted to fairly interpret the law. Some commentators have gone further, suggesting that we are witnessing a cabal of right-wing activists, lawyers and judges conspiring to kill not just ObamaCare, but the entire New Deal. If only.
What the observers seem not to have done is read the briefs, arguments or rulings. Had they done so, they'd see a far simpler explanation for what's going on: Congress earlier this year punched through audacious yet unvetted health legislation, a slapdash political product that is now proving to be an historic embarrassment in its legal shoddiness. The Justice Department is in fact having to play games to defend it, which has only further provoked the courts.
And really, is that such a surprise? The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is one of the bigger, more complex pieces of legislation in U.S. history. Yet Democrats never gave it the respect it deserved.
Look at any other consequential piece of legislation, and the record is brimming with sober congressional investigations into its legal merits and ramifications. ObamaCare? It was a largely unread, 2,700-page fiend—crafted in secret, fed on deal-making, birthed on late-night votes. The Senate and House judiciary committees didn't hold hearings. The record is bereft of letters from congressional chairmen requesting Justice Department legal analyses of the bill. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus actually ruled out of order an amendment that would have required expedited judicial review of the individual mandate. Asked about the bill's constitutionality, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's only retort was: "Are you serious?"
The result is a bill that is "in its design, the most profoundly unconstitutional statute in American history; in its execution, one of the most incompetent ones," says David Rivkin, the lawyer who represents the 20 state plaintiffs in the Florida suit. The best example is the individual mandate, the requirement that all Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty.
Democrats' first drafts of ObamaCare all decisively called this penalty a "tax." Legally, that made sense; few dispute Congress's authority to tax. But as the unpopularity of the bill grew, fewer Democrats wanted to vote for a "tax," and President Obama didn't want to own one.
So Democrats went to plan B. That was to make up an entirely new legal theory—to wit, that the federal government is allowed, under the Commerce Clause, to penalize Americans who do not take part in a specific economic activity (buying insurance).
Put another way, in order to avoid the political inconvenience of a "tax," Democrats based the very core of their bill on a new and untested legal premise—one that is a far bigger affront to the Constitution than New Deal legislation. That's why Judge Hudson struck it down. And since Congress adopted this theory sloppily, in response to political pressure, it has left a record that is killing the Justice Department in court.
Knowing how audacious the commerce-clause theory is, Justice has been trying to argue that the penalty is, in fact . . . a tax. This has only annoyed Judge Vinson, who is well aware of the history, and in fact rapped the Justice Department for the bait-and-switch.
"Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing," Judge Vinson wrote in October, "after which the defenders of that legislation take an 'Alice-in-Wonderland' tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely." Ouch.
And yet the Justice Department has continued to put forward wild theories in court—about the Commerce Clause, about the Necessary and Proper Clause—that have no basis in the statutory language of ObamaCare. And it is now playing games with the appeal of Judge Hudson's ruling, arguing against having it go straight to the Supreme Court, where the nation could get some quick clarity. The administration believes its best shot is to drag out the litigation, and hope that time pressures the courts to leave the law alone.
But what else can the Justice Department do? It's stuck defending a steaming pile of a statute. This is the 111th Congress's legacy, one that will last long after its 535members finish their term.
2a)Obama's new start
By Charles Krauthammer
Riding the lamest of ducks, President Obama just won the Triple Crown. He fulfilled (1) his most important economic priority, passage of Stimulus II, a.k.a. the tax cut deal (the perfect pre-re-election fiscal sugar high - the piper gets paid in 2013 and beyond); (2) his most important social policy objective, repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"; and (3) his most cherished (achievable) foreign policy goal, ratification of the New START treaty with Russia.
Politically, these are all synergistic. The bipartisan nature of the tax deal instantly repositioned Obama back to the center. And just when conventional wisdom decided the deal had caused irreparable alienation from his liberal base, Obama almost immediately won it back - by delivering one of the gay rights movement's most elusive and coveted breakthroughs.
The symbolism of the don't ask, don't tell repeal cannot be underestimated. It's not just that for the civil rights community, it represents a long-awaited extension of the historic arc - first blacks, then women, now gays. It was also Obama decisively transcending the triangulated trimming of Bill Clinton, who instituted don't ask, don't tell in the first place. Even more subtly and understatedly, the repeal represents the taming of the most conservative of the nation's institutions, the military, by a movement historically among the most avant-garde. Whatever your views, that is a cultural landmark.
Then came START, which was important for Obama not just because of the dearth of foreign policy achievements these past two years but because treaties, especially grand-sounding treaties on strategic arms, carry the aura of presidential authority and diplomatic mastery.
No matter how useless they are, or even how damaging. New START was significantly, if subtly, damaging, which made the rear-guard Republican opposition it engendered so salutary. The debate it sparked garnered the treaty more attention than it would have otherwise and thus gave Obama a larger PR victory. But that debate also amplified the major flaw in the treaty - the gratuitous reestablishment of the link between offensive and defensive weaponry.
One of the great achievements of the past decade was the Bush administration's severing of that link - first, by its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, which had expressly prevented major advances in missile defense, and then with the 2002 Treaty of Moscow, which regulated offensive weapons but ostentatiously contained not a single word about any connection to missile defense. Why is this important? Because missile defense is essential for protecting ourselves from the most menacing threat of the coming century - nuclear hyper-proliferation.
The relinking that we acquiesced to in the preamble to New START is a major reversal of that achievement. Sure, Obama sought to reassure critics with his letter to the Senate promising unimpeded development of our European missile defense system. But the Russians have already watched this president cancel our painstakingly planned Polish and Czech missile defenses in response to Russian protests and threats. That's why they insisted we formally acknowledge an "interrelationship" between offense and defense. They know that their threat to withdraw from START, if the United States were to build defenses that displease them, will inevitably color - and restrain - future U.S. missile defense advances and deployments.
Obama's difficulty in overcoming the missile defense objection will serve to temper the rest of his nuclear agenda, including U.S. entry into the test-ban treaty, and place Obama's ultimate goal of total nuclear disarmament blessedly out of reach. Conservatives can thus take solace that their vigorous opposition to START is likely to prevent further disarmament mischief down the road. But what they cannot deny is the political boost the treaty's ratification gives Obama today, a mere seven weeks after his Election Day debacle.
The great liberal ascendancy of 2008, destined to last 40 years (predicted James Carville), lasted less than two. Yet, the great Republican ascendancy of 2010 lasted less than two months. Republicans will enter the 112th Congress with larger numbers but no longer with the wind - the overwhelming Nov. 2 repudiation of Obama's social-democratic agenda - at their backs.
"Harry Reid has eaten our lunch," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, lamenting his side's "capitulation" in the lame-duck session. Yes, but it was less Harry than Barry. Obama came back with a vengeance. His string of lame-duck successes is a singular political achievement. Because of it, the epic battles of the 112th Congress begin on what would have seemed impossible just one month ago - a level playing field.
2b)Obama the Great - if he does say so himself
By Dana Milbank
It took President Obama fewer than 50 days to go from shellacking to swashbuckling.
Seven weeks earlier to the day, the president faced harsh questions about his leadership as he took responsibility for Democrats' loss of the House in the previous day's election. But the man who faced reporters Tuesday afternoon in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building was treated by his questioners as a conquering colossus - and Obama didn't mind wearing those shoes.
"A lot of folks in this town predicted that, after the midterm elections, Washington would be headed for more partisanship and more gridlock," he said to a roomful of people who had predicted just that. "And instead, this has been a season of progress for the American people."
He bestowed superlatives on his accomplishments:
"The most productive post-election period we've had in decades."
"The most productive two years that we've had in generations."
"The most significant arms-control agreement in nearly two decades."
"The biggest upgrade of America's food-safety laws since the Great Depression."
"Al-Qaeda is more hunkered down than they have been since the original invasion of Afghanistan in 2001."
More! Most! Biggest! And when he wasn't praising his accomplishments, he was praising himself: "One thing I hope people have seen during this lame-duck, I am persistent. I am persistent. You know, if I believe in something strongly, I stay on it."
Careful, Mr. President. What got Obama in trouble in the first place were the extraordinarily high expectations that the nation had for his administration - and that Obama's campaign had encouraged. The humility forced on him by the Republicans' triumph in November served to focus Obama, leading him to cut a tax deal with the GOP that infuriated fellow Democrats but made possible the string of legislative achievements he rightly boasted about on Tuesday.
The frantic worries of recent weeks of a "failed one-term presidency" (as Katrina vanden Heuvel warned) were overstated. But now Obama's return to messianic status - his campaign-style event to sign the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal on Tuesday was held in the Interior Department auditorium to accommodate the huge and raucous crowd - risks unlearning the valuable lesson in humility.
"You racked up a lot of wins in the last few weeks that a lot of people thought would be difficult to come by," pointed out Reuters's Caren Bohan, the leadoff questioner at the news conference. "Are you ready to call yourself the comeback kid?"
"It's a victory for the American people," came the cliched demurral.
And that was about as tough as the questioning got.
"Merry Christmas," said ABC's Jake Tapper.
"Merry Christmas," Obama replied.
"Happy holidays," said CNN's Dan Lothian.
"Happy holidays," Obama replied.
"Feliz navidad," said CNN en espanol's Juan Carlos Lopez.
Even Fox News's Mike Emanuel felt compelled to preface his question with a "Merry Christmas" - a wish Obama returned, in the spirit of the season.
The president, fresh from his successful triangulation of the Democrats in negotiating the tax deal, spoke as if he were an entity distinct from Republicans and Democrats alike.
He said he would "take to heart" voters' wishes for common ground, "and I hope my Democratic and Republican friends will do the same." He suggested that "we've got to look at some of our old dogmas, both Democrats and Republicans." The man who famously spoke of the need to "spread the wealth around" could be heard telling CBS News's Mark Knoller, "We celebrate wealth. We celebrate somebody like a Steve Jobs."
Obama even looked better: The makeup was heavy, the lip injury faded, his blue tie coordinated with the curtains. He gave his questioners only half an hour - which turned out to be more than enough for the gentle lines of inquiry.
Lothian asked Obama to extend his campaign-season metaphor about Democrats pushing a car out of an economic ditch. "What kind of highway do you think it will be driving on in 2011?" the correspondent asked. "Who will really be behind the wheel?"
Obama, minutes from departure for his Hawaiian vacation, played along. "The car is on level ground," he reported, adding automotive imagery about "a dent in the unemployment rate" and about how "the private sector is going to be the driving force" and the government "a catalyst." A catalytic converter?
"The American people are driving," Obama continued. "And both parties are going to be held accountable ... if we take a wrong turn."
Very clever, sir. But, for your own safety and that of your passengers, please park the celebration.
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3)Middle East Bloody Endgame
By Lee DeCovnick
Describing the barbarity of a Civil War prison. Benson Lossing wrote in 1868, "Seventeen feet from the inner stockade was the 'dead-line,' over which no man could pass and live." Lossing could well be describing the inevitable bloody endgame of the Israeli- Iran conflict during the final twenty-four months of the Obama administration. Both sides are acutely aware of this "dead- line", Iran more so than Israel. Iran's "dead-line" awareness reaches back 31 years to the release of 52 American hostages held for 444 days, just 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President. (And after Jimmy Carter previously agreed to release $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets.)
The slow simmering buildup to war between the Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hezb'allah, and Israel continues to ramp up in rhetoric, intensity and violence. Here are some examples of news items that are cheerfully hidden by the usual propaganda organs of our State controlled media.
From Israel Today Magazine we find this astonishing bit of hubris from our PA "partners."
The Palestinian leadership on Wednesday warned Israel against any large-scale military response to the escalating terrorist rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told a visiting European diplomat that "any new Israeli aggression would put the entire peace process in real danger." He did not address the fact that it was the Palestinians of Gaza who fired first.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also warned against Israeli "aggression," and even blamed Israel for the increased tensions along the Gaza border.
Palestinian terrorists operating out of the Gaza Strip have fired dozens of rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel over the past two weeks.
Another news item you won't hear about from Katie Couric, also from Israel Today Magazine:
Palestinian terrorists operating out of the Gaza Strip fired a short-range missile into southern Israel on Tuesday morning wounding a 14-year-old Israeli girl. The missile landed just outside a kindergarten in a kibbutz not far from the southern coastal town of Ashkelon.
The attack comes less than a day after Gaza-based terrorists fired 10 mortar shells into southern Israel, prompting retaliatory strikes on terrorist positions by the Israeli air force.
In other violence, an Israeli soldier narrowly escaped being stabbed by three Palestinian Arabs just north of Jerusalem on Monday.
The soldier was at a gas station outside the Jewish community of Givat Ze'ev when a car pulled up and three Arab men jumped out, one of them brandishing a large knife. The soldier quickly loaded his M-16 rifle and pointed it at his would-be attackers, who got back in their car and sped off.
Do you remember that cold-blooded murder of an American Christian woman last weekend? Here are the details of attack you will not find in the American press. Why? Perhaps the bravery shown by these Palestinians does not perfectly fit the political narrative being shoveled down our gullets by the New York Times and it associates.
Arab terrorists attacked and killed a visiting American Christian woman and badly wounded her UK-born Messianic Jewish friend in a forested area south of Jerusalem on Saturday.
Kay Wilson is a leading tour guide with Shoresh Tours, which operates under the auspices of the CMJ global ministry from the Christ Church complex in Jerusalem's Old City. Kristine Luken came to Israel with a Shoresh tour three years ago. From there she became involved win CMJ's US branch, and then went on to become adminsitrative secretary at the UK branch.The two friends decided to take a weekend hike through a forest between the southern Jerusalem suburb of Tzur Hadassah and the nearby town of Beit Shemesh.
Along the way they were approached by two young Arab men who asked for water. Wilson told Ynet that she responded in Hebrew that they did not have any extra water, but that she did not feel good about the situation. Wilson told Luken that they needed to get out of there, but it was too late. As the two women began to walk away and look at their map, the Arab men attacked. "It all happened so fast," said Wilson. "Suddenly they attacked us, and one pulled out a long knife, like a bread knife." Wilson said that as the terrorists tied her hands she was scared, but recalled that Luken became hysterical. And that's when the stabbing began." One of them turned me around and saw that I was wearing a Star of David necklace," said Wilson. "He took it off of me like a gentleman and then stabbed me 12 times." Wilson realized the knife had not hit her heart, and so pretended she was dead. As she laid on the ground, Wilson could hear her friend being stabbed, but could do nothing to help her. When she was sure the two men had gone, Wilson made a dash for the nearby highway. After walking a short distance, a group of people at a children's playground spotted her and called the police.
An overnight search was launched to find Luken, whose had apparently been dragged away by the attackers. There was widespread fear that Luken had been kidnapped. Her body was found on Sunday morning a few hundred yards from the site of the stabbing. Wilson is recovering in stable condition at Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.
Have you noticed the total lack of response from the American government in this matter? Surely the PA has; American citizens can now be murdered in Israel without any consequences. Thank you, Barry; you really are the most clueless guy in the room.
And finally, from the Jerusalem Post, we find a chilling news item detailing the sophisticated weapons that are finding there way from Russia to Hamas. Didn't we just agree to some treaty with these лежащих сукины дети (lying bastards)?
DF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi called the situation in Gaza "fragile and explosive." Sources in the Southern Command told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas would likely prevent rocket fire deep into the Israeli home front, but continue targeting towns and IDF positions along the border.
"We have no guarantee that the situation won't deteriorate if a rocket causes a large number of casualties," Ashkenazi said during one of his final briefings to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Ashkenazi also revealed that two weeks ago an advanced Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missile - one of the most sophisticated in the world - hit an Israeli Merkava tank and succeeded in penetrating its hull. As a result, the IDF has decided to deploy Battalion 9 of the 401st Armored Brigade along the Gaza border, since its tanks are equipped with the new Trophy active-protection anti-tank missile defense system.
Top military sources said the current round of violence was started by Hamas and was likely a result of internal pressure within the organization to renew attacks on Israel, which it hadn't undertaken since Operation Cast Lead two years ago. Hamas is still recovering from the damage it suffered during that campaign and has yet to complete the rebuilding of many of its underground tunnels and passageways on the outskirts of towns and villages in northern Gaza.
Ashkenazi said that a total of 60 Palestinian terrorists had been killed inside the Gaza Strip over the past few months in 112 Israeli attacks.
To millions of Muslims around the world, it must seem as if Allah has graciously reciprocated the Iranian Mullahs' fanatical suicidal belief in the Mahdi's return by the election of a pro Palestinian, anti- Israeli American President. Our Adolescent-in-Chief's astonishingly naive appeasement of Iranian nuclear aspirations brings a strong likelihood for a bloody Middle East war before Obama's butt feathers are firmly compressed by the steel toed boot of the American electorate.
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4)Seattle: Anti-Israel campaign called off
By Yitzhak Benhorin
The Jewish community in the west coast city of Seattle managed to thwart a media campaign against Israel, which calls on the US administration to halt all financial and defense aid to the Jewish state.
The campaign organizers spent thousands of dollars to place ads accusing the Israel Defense Forces of committing war crimes on sides of buses, but massive pressure from the Jewish community led the Transportation Department of King County to cancel the campaign at the last minute, claiming that it might incite violence
The anti-Israel campaign, initiated by The Seattle Mideast Awareness, was scheduled to run for four weeks, and organizers rented ad space on 15 buses that travel through downtown Seattle.
The large ads feature Palestinian children standing next to a demolished structure, alongside the text: "Israeli war crimes. Your tax dollars at work."
In addition to many private complaints by local Jewish residents, King County Councilmember Peter von Reichbauer sent a letter to the department of transportation in which he warned that the campaign might endanger the city's Jewish community.
Seattle has already been targeted by terror organizations. In July 2006, a Jewish community building was attacked and a woman was killed during the incident.
The human rights group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), a program of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), announced that it will run king-sized ads to counter the anti-Israel campaign, reading: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Islamic jihad."
Concerns over a possible clash between the two sides also led to the decision to retract the permit for the campaign.
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5)Slouching towards Teheran
By Caroline B. Glick
Diplomacy? We must concentrate on our strengths and our enemies' weaknesses. That's the only proven way to win and that is the message Jerusalem must send Washington
Two weeks ago, Iran scored a massive victory. Jordan, the West's most stable and loyal ally in the Arab world began slouching towards the Iranian Gomorrah.
On December 12, Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei met with Jordanian King Abdullah II in Amman and extended a formal invitation from Ahmadinejad for him to pay a state visit to Iran. Abdullah accepted.
According to Iran's ISNA news agency, Mashei said that Abdullah's visit will begin a new page in bilateral relations and that, "the two countries hold massive potential to work together." Mashei added, "If Islamic states stand united, no country will be threatened." For his part, Abdullah reportedly said that his country recognizes Iran's nuclear rights and supports its access to peaceful nuclear technology.
Abdullah was one of the first world leaders to sound the alarm o Iran. In 2004 Abdullah warned of a "Shiite crescent" extending from Iran to Iraq, through Syria to Lebanon. His words were well reported at the time. But his warning went unheeded.
In the intervening six years, reality has surpassed Abdullah's worst fears. Not only Lebanon and Syria have fallen under Iranian control. Iraq, Turkey, Qatar, Gaza and increasingly Oman, Yemen and Afghanistan are also either willing or unwilling members of the axis.
In the face of Iran's expanding web of influence and the mullahs' steady progress towards nuclear capability, Washington behaves as though there is no cause for concern. And the likes of Jordan are beside themselves.
In a WikiLeaks leaked cable from April 2009 written by US Ambassador to Jordan R. Stephen Beecroft, Jordan's frustration and concern over the Obama administration's incompetence in handling the Iranian threat was clear.
Beecroft wrote, "Jordan's leaders are careful not to be seen as dictating toward the US, but their comments betray a powerful undercurrent of doubt that the United States knows how to deal effectively with Iran."
On the one hand, Jordanian Senator Zaid Rifai beseeched US to bomb Iran's nuclear installations. Rifai said, "Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won't matter."
But on the other hand, the Jordanians recognized that the Obama administration was committed to appeasing Iran and so tried to convince the Americans to ensure that their appeasement drive didn't come at the Arabs' expense.
Beecroft reported a clear warning from Abdullah. Abdullah cautioned that if the Arabs believe that the US was appeasing Iran at their expense, "that engagement will set off a stampede of Arab states looking to get ahead of the curve and reach their own separate peace with Teheran.
"King Abdullah counseled Special Envoy George Mitchell in February [2009] that direct US engagement with Iran at this time would just deepen intra-Arab schisms and that more 'countries without a backbone' would defect to the Iranian camp."
That was then. And since then, the Obama administration did nothing after Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his henchmen stole the presidential election. It did nothing as they repressed the tens of millions of Iranians who demonstrated against the election fraud. The Obama administration did nothing as Iran conducted repeated war games along the Straits of Hormuz, progressed in its nuclear program, deepened its military alliances with Turkey and Venezuela and escalated its proxy war against the US and its allies in Afghanistan.
The Americans said nothing as Iran prevented the pro-US faction that won the Iraqi election from forming a government. They did nothing as Iran forced the reinstallation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki despite his electoral defeat.
As Washington stood idly by in the face of Iran's aggression, Jordan and the other US-allied Arab states watched as Obama harassed Israel, announced his plan to withdraw all US forces from Iraq next year, appointed a new ambassador to Syria and approved more military aid to the Iranian-controlled Lebanese army. And Abdullah and the other Arabs watch now as the US is poised to begin yet a new round of appeasement talks with Iran next month.
Unlike the previous failed rounds of talks, the next failed round of talks will take place in Turkey. Iranian officials are already exulting that Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan will act as Iran's protector in those talks, and so officially end any semblance of Iranian diplomatic isolation on the nuclear issue.
And so, just as Abdullah warned would happen, today he is leading Jordan into the ranks of "countries without a backbone," and making a separate peace with Ahmadinejad. Jordan is a weak country. Its minority Hashemite regime has failed to dominate its Palestinian majority. And since its inception by the British in 1946, Jordan has depended on Western powers and Israel for its survival.
In acting as he is, Abdullah is following in his father's footsteps. The late King Hussein survived by watching the prevailing winds closely and always siding with the side he believed was strongest at any given time.
When Hussein believed that the West and Israel were weakening, he went with their enemies. He only rejoined the Western alliance after it defeated its foes, and so convinced him that it was stronger. Notable examples of this are his 1967 alliance with Egypt and Syria against Israel and his decision in 1990 to stand with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of Saddam's conquest of Kuwait.
It is often erroneously claimed that siding with the metaphorical stronger horse is primarily an Arab practice. In truth, everyone does it.
Take France for instance.
In another diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks, the US embassy in Paris reported that French President Nicolas Sarkozy thinks that the Palestinians are stronger than Israel.
The report claimed that in Sarkozy's June 2009 meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he told the Israeli leader that he must surrender to all the Palestinian demands because in his view the Palestinians are stronger than Israel is.
Before Sarkozy took office, he was considered a great supporter of Israel and a personal friend of Netanyahu's. But since taking office, he has sided with the Palestinians against Israel. He has been friendly to Syria. Most recently, he agreed to sell one hundred advanced anti-tank missiles to the Hizbullah-controlled Lebanese military.
In light of his comment to Netanyahu it is clear that what motivates Sarkozy to act as he does is his analysis of the power balance between Israel and its enemies. Happily for Israel, Sarkozy is wrong. Israel is stronger than the Palestinians and has the capacity to defend itself effectively against its enemies.
Unhappily for Israel, Sarkozy's analysis is probably based in large part on arguments he has heard from the Israeli Left under Kadima. Over the past several years, Kadima leaders have managed to convince the country's best friends that Israel has no option other than surrender.
This is due to Kadima's obsession with demography and its demented plan for extricating Israel from what it considers predetermined demographic doom.
According to the likes of Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, the fact that there are 6 million Jews and 4 million Arabs west of the Jordan River means that Israel has no option other than surrendering Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians. As far as Livni and her leftist comrades are concerned, it makes no difference that such a move will not decrease the number of Arabs west of the Jordan.
It makes no difference to the Israeli Left that the Palestinian state they hope to build will — with their consent — bring in millions more Arabs as immigrants into the landmass west of the Jordan River and so quickly render Jews a minority, making war a foregone conclusion.
In short, through their asinine demographic argument — with which they surrender all Israeli claims to the capital city, and to strategically vital land that Israel has valid legal and historical claims to — Livni and her colleagues tell the likes of Sarkozy that not only is Israel weaker than the Palestinians. They tell these erstwhile friends that Israel is doomed to destruction and there is no reason for them to support it.
Based on these claims, Sarkozy's decision to make a separate peace with Iran through its Palestinian, Syrian and Hizbullah proxies makes sense.
It is important to bear this in mind when one considers the reason that the campaign to delegitimize Israel is gaining momentum. Given the Israeli-fuelled sense among key governments that Israel is a lost cause, as they see it, they have no reason to defend Israel from its detractors. From their perspective, their interests are better served by either standing on the sidelines or turning on Israel the weak horse.
All this is not to say that the Left is purposely sinking the ship of state. It is simply a victim of its own success. The Left has convinced Europe and the Arabs that it is dedicated to appeasement and that like the US under Obama, Israel will not fight its enemies.
The Left believed that by convincing the Arabs and the Europeans that Israel is serious about appeasing its enemies that they would make an alliance with the Jewish state. And since Europe is stronger than Israel, and the Arabs are a threat to Israel, by winning their favor, the Left believed it would strengthen Israel.
What the Left failed to recognize is that Europe and the Arabs would rather cut a deal with Iran than defend themselves against it. A surrendering Israel is of no use to them.
They only like Israel when it wins.
And now that weakness has pushed Jordan over the edge.
The lesson of all of this for Israel is clear. For the past 17 years, in the throes of the Left's strategic blindness, Israel has spent its time emphasizing its weaknesses and its enemies' strengths. This practice must be reversed. Israel must now concentrate on its strengths and its enemies' weaknesses.
For instance, Israel has a stronger claim to the disputed territories that the Palestinians. And Israel is stronger than the Palestinians by every possible measuring rod.
On their side, not only are the Palestinians militarily weak, they have nothing to offer anyone. Because the Palestinian national cause has far more to do with destroying Israel than building a Palestinian state, the Palestinian track record is one of destruction not creation. And this destructive tendency expresses itself on every front.
Iran too is far less powerful than it looks. From the Stuxnet worm, to a faltering economy, from increased domestic sabotage to the continuing opposition bid to overthrow the regime, Iran's soft underbelly is exposed. And it is getting softer all the time.
In contrast, Israel has a stable government. And its economic, technological and military power is constantly growing. Israel is a force to be reckoned with.
Jordan's move into the Iranian camp is not inexorable. Nor is Lebanon's or even Syria's. True, much to the Left's dismay, Israel lacks the option of joining the "countries without a backbone."
But we have a better option. We are strong and we can get stronger. And our enemies have weaknesses and we can weaken them still further.
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6)Alabama Town’s Failed Pension Is a Warning
By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
PRICHARD, Ala. — This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry.
Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.
Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy. Alfred Arnold, a 66-year-old retired fire captain, has gone back to work as a shopping mall security guard to try to keep his house. Eddie Ragland, 59, a retired police captain, accepted help from colleagues, bake sales and collection jars after he was shot by a robber, leaving him badly wounded and unable to get to his new job as a police officer at the regional airport.
Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. “When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house,” said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. “He was a proud enough man that he wouldn’t accept help.”
The situation in Prichard is extremely unusual — the city has sought bankruptcy protection twice — but it proves that the unthinkable can, in fact, sometimes happen. And it stands as a warning to cities like Philadelphia and states like Illinois, whose pension funds are under great strain: if nothing changes, the money eventually does run out, and when that happens, misery and turmoil follow.
It is not just the pensioners who suffer when a pension fund runs dry. If a city tried to follow the law and pay its pensioners with money from its annual operating budget, it would probably have to adopt large tax increases, or make huge service cuts, to come up with the money.
Current city workers could find themselves paying into a pension plan that will not be there for their own retirements. In Prichard, some older workers have delayed retiring, since they cannot afford to give up their paychecks if no pension checks will follow.
So the declining, little-known city of Prichard is now attracting the attention of bankruptcy lawyers, labor leaders, municipal credit analysts and local officials from across the country. They want to see if the situation in Prichard, like the continuing bankruptcy of Vallejo, Calif., ultimately creates a legal precedent on whether distressed cities can legally cut or reduce their pensions, and if so, how.
“Prichard is the future,” said Michael Aguirre, the former San Diego city attorney, who has called for San Diego to declare bankruptcy and restructure its own outsize pension obligations. “We’re all on the same conveyor belt. Prichard is just a little further down the road.”
Many cities and states are struggling to keep their pension plans adequately funded, with varying success. New York City plans to put $8.3 billion into its pension fund next year, twice what it paid five years ago. Maryland is considering a proposal to raise the retirement age to 62 for all public workers with fewer than five years of service.
Illinois keeps borrowing money to invest in its pension funds, gambling that the funds’ investments will earn enough to pay back the debt with interest. New Jersey simply decided not to pay the $3.1 billion that was due its pension plan this year.
Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota have all taken the unusual step of reducing the benefits they pay their current retirees by cutting cost-of-living increases; retirees in all three states are suing.
No state or city wants to wind up like Prichard.
Driving down Wilson Avenue here — a bleak stretch of shuttered storefronts, with pawn shops and beauty parlors that operate behind barred windows and signs warning of guard dogs — it is hard to see vestiges of the Prichard that was a boom town until the 1960s. The city once had thriving department stores, two theaters and even a zoo. “You couldn’t find a place to park in that city,” recalled Kenneth G. Turner, a retired paramedic whose grandfather pushed for the city’s incorporation in 1925.
The city’s rapid decline began in the 1970s. The growth of other suburbs, white flight and then middle-class flight all took their tolls, and the city’s population shrank by 40 percent to about 27,000 today, from its peak of 45,000. As people left, the city’s tax base dwindled.
Prichard’s pension plan was established by state law during the good times, in 1956, to supplement Social Security. By the standard of other public pension plans, and the six-figure pensions that draw outrage in places like California and New Jersey, it is not especially rich. Its biggest pension came to about $39,000 a year, for a retired fire chief with many years of service. The average retiree got around $12,000 a year. But the plan allowed workers to retire young, in their 50s. And its benefits were sweetened over time by the state legislature, which did not pay for the added benefits.
For many years, the city — like many other cities and states today — knew that its pension plan was underfunded. As recently as 2004, the city hired an actuary, who reported that “the plan is projected to exhaust the assets around 2009, at which time benefits will need to be paid directly from the city’s annual finances.”
The city had already taken the unusual step of reducing pension benefits by 8.5 percent for current retirees, after it declared bankruptcy in 1999, yielding to years of dwindling money, mismanagement and corruption. (A previous mayor was removed from office and found guilty of neglect of duty.) The city paid off its last creditors from the bankruptcy in 2007. But its current mayor, Ronald K. Davis, never complied with an order from the bankruptcy court to begin paying $16.5 million into the pension fund to reduce its shortfall.
A lawyer representing the city, R. Scott Williams, said that the city simply did not have the money. “The reality for Prichard is that if you took money to build the pension up, who’s going to pay the garbage man?” he asked. “Who’s going to pay to run the police department? Who’s going to pay the bill for the street lights? There’s only so much money to go around.”
Workers paid 5.5 percent of their salaries into the pension fund, and the city paid 10.5 percent. But the fund paid out more money than it took in, and by September 2009 there was no longer enough left in the fund to send out the $150,000 worth of monthly checks owed to the retirees. The city stopped paying its pensions. And no one stepped in to enforce the law.
The retirees, who were not unionized, sued. The city tried to block their suit by declaring bankruptcy, but a judge denied the request. The city is appealing. The retirees filed another suit, asking the city to pay at least some of the benefits they are owed. A mediation effort is expected to begin soon. Many retirees say they would accept reduced benefits.
Companies with pension plans are required by federal law to put money behind their promises years in advance, and the government can impose punitive taxes on those that fail to do so, or in some cases even seize their pension funds.
Companies are also required to protect their pension assets. So if a corporate pension fund falls below 60 cents’ worth of assets for every dollar of benefits owed, workers can no longer accrue additional benefits. (Prichard was down to just 33 cents on the dollar in 2003.)
And if a company goes bankrupt, the federal government can take over its pension plan and see that its retirees receive their benefits. Although some retirees receive less than they were promised, no retiree from a federally insured plan in the private sector has come away empty-handed since the federal pension law was enacted in 1974. The law does not cover public sector workers.
Last week several dozen retirees — one using a wheelchair, some with canes — attended the weekly City Council meeting, asking for something before Christmas. Mary Berg, 61, a former assistant city clerk whose mother was once the city’s zookeeper, read them the names of 11 retirees who had died since the checks stopped coming.
“I hope that on Christmas morning, when you are with your families around your Christmas trees, that you remember that most of the retirees will not be opening presents with their families,” she told them.
The budget did not move forward. Mayor Davis was out of town.
“Merry Christmas!” shouted a man from the back row of the folding chairs. The retirees filed out. One woman could not hold back her tears.
After the meeting, Troy Ephriam, a council member who became chairman of the pension fund when it was nearly broke, sat in his office and recalled some of the failed efforts to put more money into the pension fund.
“I think the biggest disappointment I have is that there was not a strong enough effort to put something in there,” he said. “And that’s the reason that it’s hard for me to look these people in the face: because I’m not certain we really gave our all to prevent this.”
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Not sure I want to trust this Community Organizer's thinking on how best to defend the nation from a missile attack. (See 1 below.)
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The media parrots are in lock step about the 111th Congress being the most productive since Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson. The basis for their unison is the amount of legislation crammed through in the lame duck session because it effected so many Americans. They submit the rush job's quantity as the basis for their optimistic conclusion but avoid looking at the 111th's accomplishments through a quality prism because that would undercut their collective voices of approval.
The idea that adding more billions to our debt, allowing Russia to possibly have a say over our own missile defense are worthy pieces of legislation does more to demonstrate their bias than their sound judgement.
I submit much of the legislation passed by the 111th Congress was the antithesis of what voters want and that is why they threw the Democrats out and I also would think, had the voters been given a chance to re-vote today, they might throw more Democrats out as well as some renegade Republicans. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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No doubt if war comes to the Middle East because of Hamas and Hezballah provocations and continued rocketing of Israel, Israel will be blamed again for defending itself. (See 3 below.)
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Seattle Bus Ads accusing Israel of War Crimes has been halted. Hatred and bias remains but common sense prevailed.
It would be nice to believe it was done in the spirit of Christmas but I suspect the disruption of bus service, because of the tremendous flood of incoming calls, was more the reason.
Jews all over the world get grief because of Israel's existence but were it not for Israel I doubt Jews all over the world would have found their voice. Let's face it, whether Israel existed or not Jews will always be attacked and or blamed for the world's ills. They remain easy targets.(See 4 below.)
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Glick questions the Obama's posture towards Iran. Obama's stooped weakness and America's passivity is driving Arab States into Iran's arms. The latest seems to be Jordan.
No matter what the media thinks of the 111th 's successes the loss of the Middle East by Obama and his 'kiss ass' State Department will prove calamitous.(See 5 below.)
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Talk about Global Warming. Prichard could be the tip of the ice berg! (See 6 below.)
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Twas the night before Christmas and all through The House,
not a creature was stirring,
they had all gone home to their girls friends, mistresses and maybe even their spouse.
So bye bye 111th Congress
You did such great works.
You busted the nation
And proved to be jerks.
Obama is now in Hawaii
Licking his chop
While over 40 million Americans
are on food stamps eating slop
Bernanke has interest rates
almost below zero
Inflation is ahead
So he'll end no hero.
Iran is gaining
Missiles could soon be raining
But the media is applauding
Our Messiah's triumphant recording
Of so much legislation passed
We should all be aghast
So onward you reindeer
and a HO HO from Santa
And from me Merry Christmas
As I end this inane banter.
Dick
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1)Three Potential Problems With Obama's Missile Defense Plan
Sharon Weinberger Contributor
A new arms-control pact with Russia has finally received Senate approval, helped along with an amendment assuring Republicans that START won't limit the United States' ability to pursue missile defense. In some ironic timing, however, the Government Accountability Office this week released a report that is deeply critical of the administration's missile defense plans.
The Bush administration focused on placing ground-based interceptors and radar in Europe that could knock long-range ballistic missiles out of the sky, but President Barack Obama has shifted attention to a sea-based system called the European Phased Adaptive Approach.
The report raises a number of criticisms of this approach:
1. Bad management. The Pentagon still hasn't established a process to ensure "transparency and accountability" of this new approach to new missile defense, the GAO says. The report criticizes the lack of clear information on the cost and schedule of the new system.
2. It might miss the mark. To accurately target a missile, the interceptors rely on something called a Command and Control, Battle Management and Communications system, which helps integrate the sensor data and provide targeting information to guide the interceptor to the threat missile. But, the GAO says, the system may not be able to accurately track incoming missiles "and may present an incorrect picture of the battlespace."
3. It's not fully tested. The Pentagon will be buying elements of the new missile defense system before it has been demonstrated that the technology actually works as promised. For example, the Pentagon is buying new interceptors before they are fully tested. GAO points out that flight tests designed to test whether the interceptors work are scheduled for after the Pentagon has already bought 38 of the new interceptor missiles. In fact, the Pentagon will have bought about a third of the planned inventory of 320 interceptors, paying more than $1 billion, before it is sure the missiles work as planned.
The Pentagon, in a letter to the GAO, said it believed that the office had "inaccurately" portrayed its missile defense plans, but missile defense opponents said the report was more evidence that the missile defense system is misguided.
"This, and several previous GAO reports, while accurately outlining the problems portray only some of the symptoms of what is actually a terminally diseased patient," Yousaf Butt, a physicist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in an e-mail to AOL News.
Riki Ellison, chairman of the nonprofit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, told AOL News that the GAO report is not an indictment of missile defense but simply a description of longstanding problems with advancing the technology to the point that it can do what policymakers would like it to do. "I think what you're seeing is a gap that's been pretty well established," he said.
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2) Congress's Monstrous Legal Legacy Put together like Frankenstein, ObamaCare risks coming apart at the seams.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
The historians will long be fighting over the legislative legacy of the 111th Congress. As to its legal legacy, the only real question is whether this just-finished Democratic Congress was the most unserious in decades, or the most unserious in history.
That much is clear from the recent ObamaCare court proceedings. Federal Judge Henry Hudson, responding to a lawsuit by the state of Virginia, last week struck down the core of the law, the individual mandate. His decision came the same week that a coalition of 20 states presented oral arguments against the health law in front of Florida federal Judge Roger Vinson. In October, Judge Vinson ruled against the Obama Justice Department's motion to dismiss the states' lawsuit.
The law professors and think-tankers and media folk who initially ridiculed these lawsuits have now had to dream up sinister reasons for why they are succeeding. Judges Hudson and Vinson, we are told, were both appointed by Republicans and obviously can't be trusted to fairly interpret the law. Some commentators have gone further, suggesting that we are witnessing a cabal of right-wing activists, lawyers and judges conspiring to kill not just ObamaCare, but the entire New Deal. If only.
What the observers seem not to have done is read the briefs, arguments or rulings. Had they done so, they'd see a far simpler explanation for what's going on: Congress earlier this year punched through audacious yet unvetted health legislation, a slapdash political product that is now proving to be an historic embarrassment in its legal shoddiness. The Justice Department is in fact having to play games to defend it, which has only further provoked the courts.
And really, is that such a surprise? The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is one of the bigger, more complex pieces of legislation in U.S. history. Yet Democrats never gave it the respect it deserved.
Look at any other consequential piece of legislation, and the record is brimming with sober congressional investigations into its legal merits and ramifications. ObamaCare? It was a largely unread, 2,700-page fiend—crafted in secret, fed on deal-making, birthed on late-night votes. The Senate and House judiciary committees didn't hold hearings. The record is bereft of letters from congressional chairmen requesting Justice Department legal analyses of the bill. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus actually ruled out of order an amendment that would have required expedited judicial review of the individual mandate. Asked about the bill's constitutionality, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's only retort was: "Are you serious?"
The result is a bill that is "in its design, the most profoundly unconstitutional statute in American history; in its execution, one of the most incompetent ones," says David Rivkin, the lawyer who represents the 20 state plaintiffs in the Florida suit. The best example is the individual mandate, the requirement that all Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty.
Democrats' first drafts of ObamaCare all decisively called this penalty a "tax." Legally, that made sense; few dispute Congress's authority to tax. But as the unpopularity of the bill grew, fewer Democrats wanted to vote for a "tax," and President Obama didn't want to own one.
So Democrats went to plan B. That was to make up an entirely new legal theory—to wit, that the federal government is allowed, under the Commerce Clause, to penalize Americans who do not take part in a specific economic activity (buying insurance).
Put another way, in order to avoid the political inconvenience of a "tax," Democrats based the very core of their bill on a new and untested legal premise—one that is a far bigger affront to the Constitution than New Deal legislation. That's why Judge Hudson struck it down. And since Congress adopted this theory sloppily, in response to political pressure, it has left a record that is killing the Justice Department in court.
Knowing how audacious the commerce-clause theory is, Justice has been trying to argue that the penalty is, in fact . . . a tax. This has only annoyed Judge Vinson, who is well aware of the history, and in fact rapped the Justice Department for the bait-and-switch.
"Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing," Judge Vinson wrote in October, "after which the defenders of that legislation take an 'Alice-in-Wonderland' tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely." Ouch.
And yet the Justice Department has continued to put forward wild theories in court—about the Commerce Clause, about the Necessary and Proper Clause—that have no basis in the statutory language of ObamaCare. And it is now playing games with the appeal of Judge Hudson's ruling, arguing against having it go straight to the Supreme Court, where the nation could get some quick clarity. The administration believes its best shot is to drag out the litigation, and hope that time pressures the courts to leave the law alone.
But what else can the Justice Department do? It's stuck defending a steaming pile of a statute. This is the 111th Congress's legacy, one that will last long after its 535members finish their term.
2a)Obama's new start
By Charles Krauthammer
Riding the lamest of ducks, President Obama just won the Triple Crown. He fulfilled (1) his most important economic priority, passage of Stimulus II, a.k.a. the tax cut deal (the perfect pre-re-election fiscal sugar high - the piper gets paid in 2013 and beyond); (2) his most important social policy objective, repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"; and (3) his most cherished (achievable) foreign policy goal, ratification of the New START treaty with Russia.
Politically, these are all synergistic. The bipartisan nature of the tax deal instantly repositioned Obama back to the center. And just when conventional wisdom decided the deal had caused irreparable alienation from his liberal base, Obama almost immediately won it back - by delivering one of the gay rights movement's most elusive and coveted breakthroughs.
The symbolism of the don't ask, don't tell repeal cannot be underestimated. It's not just that for the civil rights community, it represents a long-awaited extension of the historic arc - first blacks, then women, now gays. It was also Obama decisively transcending the triangulated trimming of Bill Clinton, who instituted don't ask, don't tell in the first place. Even more subtly and understatedly, the repeal represents the taming of the most conservative of the nation's institutions, the military, by a movement historically among the most avant-garde. Whatever your views, that is a cultural landmark.
Then came START, which was important for Obama not just because of the dearth of foreign policy achievements these past two years but because treaties, especially grand-sounding treaties on strategic arms, carry the aura of presidential authority and diplomatic mastery.
No matter how useless they are, or even how damaging. New START was significantly, if subtly, damaging, which made the rear-guard Republican opposition it engendered so salutary. The debate it sparked garnered the treaty more attention than it would have otherwise and thus gave Obama a larger PR victory. But that debate also amplified the major flaw in the treaty - the gratuitous reestablishment of the link between offensive and defensive weaponry.
One of the great achievements of the past decade was the Bush administration's severing of that link - first, by its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, which had expressly prevented major advances in missile defense, and then with the 2002 Treaty of Moscow, which regulated offensive weapons but ostentatiously contained not a single word about any connection to missile defense. Why is this important? Because missile defense is essential for protecting ourselves from the most menacing threat of the coming century - nuclear hyper-proliferation.
The relinking that we acquiesced to in the preamble to New START is a major reversal of that achievement. Sure, Obama sought to reassure critics with his letter to the Senate promising unimpeded development of our European missile defense system. But the Russians have already watched this president cancel our painstakingly planned Polish and Czech missile defenses in response to Russian protests and threats. That's why they insisted we formally acknowledge an "interrelationship" between offense and defense. They know that their threat to withdraw from START, if the United States were to build defenses that displease them, will inevitably color - and restrain - future U.S. missile defense advances and deployments.
Obama's difficulty in overcoming the missile defense objection will serve to temper the rest of his nuclear agenda, including U.S. entry into the test-ban treaty, and place Obama's ultimate goal of total nuclear disarmament blessedly out of reach. Conservatives can thus take solace that their vigorous opposition to START is likely to prevent further disarmament mischief down the road. But what they cannot deny is the political boost the treaty's ratification gives Obama today, a mere seven weeks after his Election Day debacle.
The great liberal ascendancy of 2008, destined to last 40 years (predicted James Carville), lasted less than two. Yet, the great Republican ascendancy of 2010 lasted less than two months. Republicans will enter the 112th Congress with larger numbers but no longer with the wind - the overwhelming Nov. 2 repudiation of Obama's social-democratic agenda - at their backs.
"Harry Reid has eaten our lunch," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, lamenting his side's "capitulation" in the lame-duck session. Yes, but it was less Harry than Barry. Obama came back with a vengeance. His string of lame-duck successes is a singular political achievement. Because of it, the epic battles of the 112th Congress begin on what would have seemed impossible just one month ago - a level playing field.
2b)Obama the Great - if he does say so himself
By Dana Milbank
It took President Obama fewer than 50 days to go from shellacking to swashbuckling.
Seven weeks earlier to the day, the president faced harsh questions about his leadership as he took responsibility for Democrats' loss of the House in the previous day's election. But the man who faced reporters Tuesday afternoon in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building was treated by his questioners as a conquering colossus - and Obama didn't mind wearing those shoes.
"A lot of folks in this town predicted that, after the midterm elections, Washington would be headed for more partisanship and more gridlock," he said to a roomful of people who had predicted just that. "And instead, this has been a season of progress for the American people."
He bestowed superlatives on his accomplishments:
"The most productive post-election period we've had in decades."
"The most productive two years that we've had in generations."
"The most significant arms-control agreement in nearly two decades."
"The biggest upgrade of America's food-safety laws since the Great Depression."
"Al-Qaeda is more hunkered down than they have been since the original invasion of Afghanistan in 2001."
More! Most! Biggest! And when he wasn't praising his accomplishments, he was praising himself: "One thing I hope people have seen during this lame-duck, I am persistent. I am persistent. You know, if I believe in something strongly, I stay on it."
Careful, Mr. President. What got Obama in trouble in the first place were the extraordinarily high expectations that the nation had for his administration - and that Obama's campaign had encouraged. The humility forced on him by the Republicans' triumph in November served to focus Obama, leading him to cut a tax deal with the GOP that infuriated fellow Democrats but made possible the string of legislative achievements he rightly boasted about on Tuesday.
The frantic worries of recent weeks of a "failed one-term presidency" (as Katrina vanden Heuvel warned) were overstated. But now Obama's return to messianic status - his campaign-style event to sign the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal on Tuesday was held in the Interior Department auditorium to accommodate the huge and raucous crowd - risks unlearning the valuable lesson in humility.
"You racked up a lot of wins in the last few weeks that a lot of people thought would be difficult to come by," pointed out Reuters's Caren Bohan, the leadoff questioner at the news conference. "Are you ready to call yourself the comeback kid?"
"It's a victory for the American people," came the cliched demurral.
And that was about as tough as the questioning got.
"Merry Christmas," said ABC's Jake Tapper.
"Merry Christmas," Obama replied.
"Happy holidays," said CNN's Dan Lothian.
"Happy holidays," Obama replied.
"Feliz navidad," said CNN en espanol's Juan Carlos Lopez.
Even Fox News's Mike Emanuel felt compelled to preface his question with a "Merry Christmas" - a wish Obama returned, in the spirit of the season.
The president, fresh from his successful triangulation of the Democrats in negotiating the tax deal, spoke as if he were an entity distinct from Republicans and Democrats alike.
He said he would "take to heart" voters' wishes for common ground, "and I hope my Democratic and Republican friends will do the same." He suggested that "we've got to look at some of our old dogmas, both Democrats and Republicans." The man who famously spoke of the need to "spread the wealth around" could be heard telling CBS News's Mark Knoller, "We celebrate wealth. We celebrate somebody like a Steve Jobs."
Obama even looked better: The makeup was heavy, the lip injury faded, his blue tie coordinated with the curtains. He gave his questioners only half an hour - which turned out to be more than enough for the gentle lines of inquiry.
Lothian asked Obama to extend his campaign-season metaphor about Democrats pushing a car out of an economic ditch. "What kind of highway do you think it will be driving on in 2011?" the correspondent asked. "Who will really be behind the wheel?"
Obama, minutes from departure for his Hawaiian vacation, played along. "The car is on level ground," he reported, adding automotive imagery about "a dent in the unemployment rate" and about how "the private sector is going to be the driving force" and the government "a catalyst." A catalytic converter?
"The American people are driving," Obama continued. "And both parties are going to be held accountable ... if we take a wrong turn."
Very clever, sir. But, for your own safety and that of your passengers, please park the celebration.
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3)Middle East Bloody Endgame
By Lee DeCovnick
Describing the barbarity of a Civil War prison. Benson Lossing wrote in 1868, "Seventeen feet from the inner stockade was the 'dead-line,' over which no man could pass and live." Lossing could well be describing the inevitable bloody endgame of the Israeli- Iran conflict during the final twenty-four months of the Obama administration. Both sides are acutely aware of this "dead- line", Iran more so than Israel. Iran's "dead-line" awareness reaches back 31 years to the release of 52 American hostages held for 444 days, just 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President. (And after Jimmy Carter previously agreed to release $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets.)
The slow simmering buildup to war between the Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hezb'allah, and Israel continues to ramp up in rhetoric, intensity and violence. Here are some examples of news items that are cheerfully hidden by the usual propaganda organs of our State controlled media.
From Israel Today Magazine we find this astonishing bit of hubris from our PA "partners."
The Palestinian leadership on Wednesday warned Israel against any large-scale military response to the escalating terrorist rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told a visiting European diplomat that "any new Israeli aggression would put the entire peace process in real danger." He did not address the fact that it was the Palestinians of Gaza who fired first.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also warned against Israeli "aggression," and even blamed Israel for the increased tensions along the Gaza border.
Palestinian terrorists operating out of the Gaza Strip have fired dozens of rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel over the past two weeks.
Another news item you won't hear about from Katie Couric, also from Israel Today Magazine:
Palestinian terrorists operating out of the Gaza Strip fired a short-range missile into southern Israel on Tuesday morning wounding a 14-year-old Israeli girl. The missile landed just outside a kindergarten in a kibbutz not far from the southern coastal town of Ashkelon.
The attack comes less than a day after Gaza-based terrorists fired 10 mortar shells into southern Israel, prompting retaliatory strikes on terrorist positions by the Israeli air force.
In other violence, an Israeli soldier narrowly escaped being stabbed by three Palestinian Arabs just north of Jerusalem on Monday.
The soldier was at a gas station outside the Jewish community of Givat Ze'ev when a car pulled up and three Arab men jumped out, one of them brandishing a large knife. The soldier quickly loaded his M-16 rifle and pointed it at his would-be attackers, who got back in their car and sped off.
Do you remember that cold-blooded murder of an American Christian woman last weekend? Here are the details of attack you will not find in the American press. Why? Perhaps the bravery shown by these Palestinians does not perfectly fit the political narrative being shoveled down our gullets by the New York Times and it associates.
Arab terrorists attacked and killed a visiting American Christian woman and badly wounded her UK-born Messianic Jewish friend in a forested area south of Jerusalem on Saturday.
Kay Wilson is a leading tour guide with Shoresh Tours, which operates under the auspices of the CMJ global ministry from the Christ Church complex in Jerusalem's Old City. Kristine Luken came to Israel with a Shoresh tour three years ago. From there she became involved win CMJ's US branch, and then went on to become adminsitrative secretary at the UK branch.The two friends decided to take a weekend hike through a forest between the southern Jerusalem suburb of Tzur Hadassah and the nearby town of Beit Shemesh.
Along the way they were approached by two young Arab men who asked for water. Wilson told Ynet that she responded in Hebrew that they did not have any extra water, but that she did not feel good about the situation. Wilson told Luken that they needed to get out of there, but it was too late. As the two women began to walk away and look at their map, the Arab men attacked. "It all happened so fast," said Wilson. "Suddenly they attacked us, and one pulled out a long knife, like a bread knife." Wilson said that as the terrorists tied her hands she was scared, but recalled that Luken became hysterical. And that's when the stabbing began." One of them turned me around and saw that I was wearing a Star of David necklace," said Wilson. "He took it off of me like a gentleman and then stabbed me 12 times." Wilson realized the knife had not hit her heart, and so pretended she was dead. As she laid on the ground, Wilson could hear her friend being stabbed, but could do nothing to help her. When she was sure the two men had gone, Wilson made a dash for the nearby highway. After walking a short distance, a group of people at a children's playground spotted her and called the police.
An overnight search was launched to find Luken, whose had apparently been dragged away by the attackers. There was widespread fear that Luken had been kidnapped. Her body was found on Sunday morning a few hundred yards from the site of the stabbing. Wilson is recovering in stable condition at Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.
Have you noticed the total lack of response from the American government in this matter? Surely the PA has; American citizens can now be murdered in Israel without any consequences. Thank you, Barry; you really are the most clueless guy in the room.
And finally, from the Jerusalem Post, we find a chilling news item detailing the sophisticated weapons that are finding there way from Russia to Hamas. Didn't we just agree to some treaty with these лежащих сукины дети (lying bastards)?
DF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi called the situation in Gaza "fragile and explosive." Sources in the Southern Command told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas would likely prevent rocket fire deep into the Israeli home front, but continue targeting towns and IDF positions along the border.
"We have no guarantee that the situation won't deteriorate if a rocket causes a large number of casualties," Ashkenazi said during one of his final briefings to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Ashkenazi also revealed that two weeks ago an advanced Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missile - one of the most sophisticated in the world - hit an Israeli Merkava tank and succeeded in penetrating its hull. As a result, the IDF has decided to deploy Battalion 9 of the 401st Armored Brigade along the Gaza border, since its tanks are equipped with the new Trophy active-protection anti-tank missile defense system.
Top military sources said the current round of violence was started by Hamas and was likely a result of internal pressure within the organization to renew attacks on Israel, which it hadn't undertaken since Operation Cast Lead two years ago. Hamas is still recovering from the damage it suffered during that campaign and has yet to complete the rebuilding of many of its underground tunnels and passageways on the outskirts of towns and villages in northern Gaza.
Ashkenazi said that a total of 60 Palestinian terrorists had been killed inside the Gaza Strip over the past few months in 112 Israeli attacks.
To millions of Muslims around the world, it must seem as if Allah has graciously reciprocated the Iranian Mullahs' fanatical suicidal belief in the Mahdi's return by the election of a pro Palestinian, anti- Israeli American President. Our Adolescent-in-Chief's astonishingly naive appeasement of Iranian nuclear aspirations brings a strong likelihood for a bloody Middle East war before Obama's butt feathers are firmly compressed by the steel toed boot of the American electorate.
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4)Seattle: Anti-Israel campaign called off
By Yitzhak Benhorin
The Jewish community in the west coast city of Seattle managed to thwart a media campaign against Israel, which calls on the US administration to halt all financial and defense aid to the Jewish state.
The campaign organizers spent thousands of dollars to place ads accusing the Israel Defense Forces of committing war crimes on sides of buses, but massive pressure from the Jewish community led the Transportation Department of King County to cancel the campaign at the last minute, claiming that it might incite violence
The anti-Israel campaign, initiated by The Seattle Mideast Awareness, was scheduled to run for four weeks, and organizers rented ad space on 15 buses that travel through downtown Seattle.
The large ads feature Palestinian children standing next to a demolished structure, alongside the text: "Israeli war crimes. Your tax dollars at work."
In addition to many private complaints by local Jewish residents, King County Councilmember Peter von Reichbauer sent a letter to the department of transportation in which he warned that the campaign might endanger the city's Jewish community.
Seattle has already been targeted by terror organizations. In July 2006, a Jewish community building was attacked and a woman was killed during the incident.
The human rights group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), a program of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), announced that it will run king-sized ads to counter the anti-Israel campaign, reading: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Islamic jihad."
Concerns over a possible clash between the two sides also led to the decision to retract the permit for the campaign.
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5)Slouching towards Teheran
By Caroline B. Glick
Diplomacy? We must concentrate on our strengths and our enemies' weaknesses. That's the only proven way to win and that is the message Jerusalem must send Washington
Two weeks ago, Iran scored a massive victory. Jordan, the West's most stable and loyal ally in the Arab world began slouching towards the Iranian Gomorrah.
On December 12, Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei met with Jordanian King Abdullah II in Amman and extended a formal invitation from Ahmadinejad for him to pay a state visit to Iran. Abdullah accepted.
According to Iran's ISNA news agency, Mashei said that Abdullah's visit will begin a new page in bilateral relations and that, "the two countries hold massive potential to work together." Mashei added, "If Islamic states stand united, no country will be threatened." For his part, Abdullah reportedly said that his country recognizes Iran's nuclear rights and supports its access to peaceful nuclear technology.
Abdullah was one of the first world leaders to sound the alarm o Iran. In 2004 Abdullah warned of a "Shiite crescent" extending from Iran to Iraq, through Syria to Lebanon. His words were well reported at the time. But his warning went unheeded.
In the intervening six years, reality has surpassed Abdullah's worst fears. Not only Lebanon and Syria have fallen under Iranian control. Iraq, Turkey, Qatar, Gaza and increasingly Oman, Yemen and Afghanistan are also either willing or unwilling members of the axis.
In the face of Iran's expanding web of influence and the mullahs' steady progress towards nuclear capability, Washington behaves as though there is no cause for concern. And the likes of Jordan are beside themselves.
In a WikiLeaks leaked cable from April 2009 written by US Ambassador to Jordan R. Stephen Beecroft, Jordan's frustration and concern over the Obama administration's incompetence in handling the Iranian threat was clear.
Beecroft wrote, "Jordan's leaders are careful not to be seen as dictating toward the US, but their comments betray a powerful undercurrent of doubt that the United States knows how to deal effectively with Iran."
On the one hand, Jordanian Senator Zaid Rifai beseeched US to bomb Iran's nuclear installations. Rifai said, "Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won't matter."
But on the other hand, the Jordanians recognized that the Obama administration was committed to appeasing Iran and so tried to convince the Americans to ensure that their appeasement drive didn't come at the Arabs' expense.
Beecroft reported a clear warning from Abdullah. Abdullah cautioned that if the Arabs believe that the US was appeasing Iran at their expense, "that engagement will set off a stampede of Arab states looking to get ahead of the curve and reach their own separate peace with Teheran.
"King Abdullah counseled Special Envoy George Mitchell in February [2009] that direct US engagement with Iran at this time would just deepen intra-Arab schisms and that more 'countries without a backbone' would defect to the Iranian camp."
That was then. And since then, the Obama administration did nothing after Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his henchmen stole the presidential election. It did nothing as they repressed the tens of millions of Iranians who demonstrated against the election fraud. The Obama administration did nothing as Iran conducted repeated war games along the Straits of Hormuz, progressed in its nuclear program, deepened its military alliances with Turkey and Venezuela and escalated its proxy war against the US and its allies in Afghanistan.
The Americans said nothing as Iran prevented the pro-US faction that won the Iraqi election from forming a government. They did nothing as Iran forced the reinstallation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki despite his electoral defeat.
As Washington stood idly by in the face of Iran's aggression, Jordan and the other US-allied Arab states watched as Obama harassed Israel, announced his plan to withdraw all US forces from Iraq next year, appointed a new ambassador to Syria and approved more military aid to the Iranian-controlled Lebanese army. And Abdullah and the other Arabs watch now as the US is poised to begin yet a new round of appeasement talks with Iran next month.
Unlike the previous failed rounds of talks, the next failed round of talks will take place in Turkey. Iranian officials are already exulting that Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan will act as Iran's protector in those talks, and so officially end any semblance of Iranian diplomatic isolation on the nuclear issue.
And so, just as Abdullah warned would happen, today he is leading Jordan into the ranks of "countries without a backbone," and making a separate peace with Ahmadinejad. Jordan is a weak country. Its minority Hashemite regime has failed to dominate its Palestinian majority. And since its inception by the British in 1946, Jordan has depended on Western powers and Israel for its survival.
In acting as he is, Abdullah is following in his father's footsteps. The late King Hussein survived by watching the prevailing winds closely and always siding with the side he believed was strongest at any given time.
When Hussein believed that the West and Israel were weakening, he went with their enemies. He only rejoined the Western alliance after it defeated its foes, and so convinced him that it was stronger. Notable examples of this are his 1967 alliance with Egypt and Syria against Israel and his decision in 1990 to stand with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of Saddam's conquest of Kuwait.
It is often erroneously claimed that siding with the metaphorical stronger horse is primarily an Arab practice. In truth, everyone does it.
Take France for instance.
In another diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks, the US embassy in Paris reported that French President Nicolas Sarkozy thinks that the Palestinians are stronger than Israel.
The report claimed that in Sarkozy's June 2009 meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he told the Israeli leader that he must surrender to all the Palestinian demands because in his view the Palestinians are stronger than Israel is.
Before Sarkozy took office, he was considered a great supporter of Israel and a personal friend of Netanyahu's. But since taking office, he has sided with the Palestinians against Israel. He has been friendly to Syria. Most recently, he agreed to sell one hundred advanced anti-tank missiles to the Hizbullah-controlled Lebanese military.
In light of his comment to Netanyahu it is clear that what motivates Sarkozy to act as he does is his analysis of the power balance between Israel and its enemies. Happily for Israel, Sarkozy is wrong. Israel is stronger than the Palestinians and has the capacity to defend itself effectively against its enemies.
Unhappily for Israel, Sarkozy's analysis is probably based in large part on arguments he has heard from the Israeli Left under Kadima. Over the past several years, Kadima leaders have managed to convince the country's best friends that Israel has no option other than surrender.
This is due to Kadima's obsession with demography and its demented plan for extricating Israel from what it considers predetermined demographic doom.
According to the likes of Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, the fact that there are 6 million Jews and 4 million Arabs west of the Jordan River means that Israel has no option other than surrendering Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians. As far as Livni and her leftist comrades are concerned, it makes no difference that such a move will not decrease the number of Arabs west of the Jordan.
It makes no difference to the Israeli Left that the Palestinian state they hope to build will — with their consent — bring in millions more Arabs as immigrants into the landmass west of the Jordan River and so quickly render Jews a minority, making war a foregone conclusion.
In short, through their asinine demographic argument — with which they surrender all Israeli claims to the capital city, and to strategically vital land that Israel has valid legal and historical claims to — Livni and her colleagues tell the likes of Sarkozy that not only is Israel weaker than the Palestinians. They tell these erstwhile friends that Israel is doomed to destruction and there is no reason for them to support it.
Based on these claims, Sarkozy's decision to make a separate peace with Iran through its Palestinian, Syrian and Hizbullah proxies makes sense.
It is important to bear this in mind when one considers the reason that the campaign to delegitimize Israel is gaining momentum. Given the Israeli-fuelled sense among key governments that Israel is a lost cause, as they see it, they have no reason to defend Israel from its detractors. From their perspective, their interests are better served by either standing on the sidelines or turning on Israel the weak horse.
All this is not to say that the Left is purposely sinking the ship of state. It is simply a victim of its own success. The Left has convinced Europe and the Arabs that it is dedicated to appeasement and that like the US under Obama, Israel will not fight its enemies.
The Left believed that by convincing the Arabs and the Europeans that Israel is serious about appeasing its enemies that they would make an alliance with the Jewish state. And since Europe is stronger than Israel, and the Arabs are a threat to Israel, by winning their favor, the Left believed it would strengthen Israel.
What the Left failed to recognize is that Europe and the Arabs would rather cut a deal with Iran than defend themselves against it. A surrendering Israel is of no use to them.
They only like Israel when it wins.
And now that weakness has pushed Jordan over the edge.
The lesson of all of this for Israel is clear. For the past 17 years, in the throes of the Left's strategic blindness, Israel has spent its time emphasizing its weaknesses and its enemies' strengths. This practice must be reversed. Israel must now concentrate on its strengths and its enemies' weaknesses.
For instance, Israel has a stronger claim to the disputed territories that the Palestinians. And Israel is stronger than the Palestinians by every possible measuring rod.
On their side, not only are the Palestinians militarily weak, they have nothing to offer anyone. Because the Palestinian national cause has far more to do with destroying Israel than building a Palestinian state, the Palestinian track record is one of destruction not creation. And this destructive tendency expresses itself on every front.
Iran too is far less powerful than it looks. From the Stuxnet worm, to a faltering economy, from increased domestic sabotage to the continuing opposition bid to overthrow the regime, Iran's soft underbelly is exposed. And it is getting softer all the time.
In contrast, Israel has a stable government. And its economic, technological and military power is constantly growing. Israel is a force to be reckoned with.
Jordan's move into the Iranian camp is not inexorable. Nor is Lebanon's or even Syria's. True, much to the Left's dismay, Israel lacks the option of joining the "countries without a backbone."
But we have a better option. We are strong and we can get stronger. And our enemies have weaknesses and we can weaken them still further.
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6)Alabama Town’s Failed Pension Is a Warning
By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
PRICHARD, Ala. — This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry.
Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.
Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy. Alfred Arnold, a 66-year-old retired fire captain, has gone back to work as a shopping mall security guard to try to keep his house. Eddie Ragland, 59, a retired police captain, accepted help from colleagues, bake sales and collection jars after he was shot by a robber, leaving him badly wounded and unable to get to his new job as a police officer at the regional airport.
Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. “When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house,” said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. “He was a proud enough man that he wouldn’t accept help.”
The situation in Prichard is extremely unusual — the city has sought bankruptcy protection twice — but it proves that the unthinkable can, in fact, sometimes happen. And it stands as a warning to cities like Philadelphia and states like Illinois, whose pension funds are under great strain: if nothing changes, the money eventually does run out, and when that happens, misery and turmoil follow.
It is not just the pensioners who suffer when a pension fund runs dry. If a city tried to follow the law and pay its pensioners with money from its annual operating budget, it would probably have to adopt large tax increases, or make huge service cuts, to come up with the money.
Current city workers could find themselves paying into a pension plan that will not be there for their own retirements. In Prichard, some older workers have delayed retiring, since they cannot afford to give up their paychecks if no pension checks will follow.
So the declining, little-known city of Prichard is now attracting the attention of bankruptcy lawyers, labor leaders, municipal credit analysts and local officials from across the country. They want to see if the situation in Prichard, like the continuing bankruptcy of Vallejo, Calif., ultimately creates a legal precedent on whether distressed cities can legally cut or reduce their pensions, and if so, how.
“Prichard is the future,” said Michael Aguirre, the former San Diego city attorney, who has called for San Diego to declare bankruptcy and restructure its own outsize pension obligations. “We’re all on the same conveyor belt. Prichard is just a little further down the road.”
Many cities and states are struggling to keep their pension plans adequately funded, with varying success. New York City plans to put $8.3 billion into its pension fund next year, twice what it paid five years ago. Maryland is considering a proposal to raise the retirement age to 62 for all public workers with fewer than five years of service.
Illinois keeps borrowing money to invest in its pension funds, gambling that the funds’ investments will earn enough to pay back the debt with interest. New Jersey simply decided not to pay the $3.1 billion that was due its pension plan this year.
Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota have all taken the unusual step of reducing the benefits they pay their current retirees by cutting cost-of-living increases; retirees in all three states are suing.
No state or city wants to wind up like Prichard.
Driving down Wilson Avenue here — a bleak stretch of shuttered storefronts, with pawn shops and beauty parlors that operate behind barred windows and signs warning of guard dogs — it is hard to see vestiges of the Prichard that was a boom town until the 1960s. The city once had thriving department stores, two theaters and even a zoo. “You couldn’t find a place to park in that city,” recalled Kenneth G. Turner, a retired paramedic whose grandfather pushed for the city’s incorporation in 1925.
The city’s rapid decline began in the 1970s. The growth of other suburbs, white flight and then middle-class flight all took their tolls, and the city’s population shrank by 40 percent to about 27,000 today, from its peak of 45,000. As people left, the city’s tax base dwindled.
Prichard’s pension plan was established by state law during the good times, in 1956, to supplement Social Security. By the standard of other public pension plans, and the six-figure pensions that draw outrage in places like California and New Jersey, it is not especially rich. Its biggest pension came to about $39,000 a year, for a retired fire chief with many years of service. The average retiree got around $12,000 a year. But the plan allowed workers to retire young, in their 50s. And its benefits were sweetened over time by the state legislature, which did not pay for the added benefits.
For many years, the city — like many other cities and states today — knew that its pension plan was underfunded. As recently as 2004, the city hired an actuary, who reported that “the plan is projected to exhaust the assets around 2009, at which time benefits will need to be paid directly from the city’s annual finances.”
The city had already taken the unusual step of reducing pension benefits by 8.5 percent for current retirees, after it declared bankruptcy in 1999, yielding to years of dwindling money, mismanagement and corruption. (A previous mayor was removed from office and found guilty of neglect of duty.) The city paid off its last creditors from the bankruptcy in 2007. But its current mayor, Ronald K. Davis, never complied with an order from the bankruptcy court to begin paying $16.5 million into the pension fund to reduce its shortfall.
A lawyer representing the city, R. Scott Williams, said that the city simply did not have the money. “The reality for Prichard is that if you took money to build the pension up, who’s going to pay the garbage man?” he asked. “Who’s going to pay to run the police department? Who’s going to pay the bill for the street lights? There’s only so much money to go around.”
Workers paid 5.5 percent of their salaries into the pension fund, and the city paid 10.5 percent. But the fund paid out more money than it took in, and by September 2009 there was no longer enough left in the fund to send out the $150,000 worth of monthly checks owed to the retirees. The city stopped paying its pensions. And no one stepped in to enforce the law.
The retirees, who were not unionized, sued. The city tried to block their suit by declaring bankruptcy, but a judge denied the request. The city is appealing. The retirees filed another suit, asking the city to pay at least some of the benefits they are owed. A mediation effort is expected to begin soon. Many retirees say they would accept reduced benefits.
Companies with pension plans are required by federal law to put money behind their promises years in advance, and the government can impose punitive taxes on those that fail to do so, or in some cases even seize their pension funds.
Companies are also required to protect their pension assets. So if a corporate pension fund falls below 60 cents’ worth of assets for every dollar of benefits owed, workers can no longer accrue additional benefits. (Prichard was down to just 33 cents on the dollar in 2003.)
And if a company goes bankrupt, the federal government can take over its pension plan and see that its retirees receive their benefits. Although some retirees receive less than they were promised, no retiree from a federally insured plan in the private sector has come away empty-handed since the federal pension law was enacted in 1974. The law does not cover public sector workers.
Last week several dozen retirees — one using a wheelchair, some with canes — attended the weekly City Council meeting, asking for something before Christmas. Mary Berg, 61, a former assistant city clerk whose mother was once the city’s zookeeper, read them the names of 11 retirees who had died since the checks stopped coming.
“I hope that on Christmas morning, when you are with your families around your Christmas trees, that you remember that most of the retirees will not be opening presents with their families,” she told them.
The budget did not move forward. Mayor Davis was out of town.
“Merry Christmas!” shouted a man from the back row of the folding chairs. The retirees filed out. One woman could not hold back her tears.
After the meeting, Troy Ephriam, a council member who became chairman of the pension fund when it was nearly broke, sat in his office and recalled some of the failed efforts to put more money into the pension fund.
“I think the biggest disappointment I have is that there was not a strong enough effort to put something in there,” he said. “And that’s the reason that it’s hard for me to look these people in the face: because I’m not certain we really gave our all to prevent this.”
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