Out-of-control spending by Congress and the Obama Administration has once again maxed out the latest debt limit—a nearly $17 trillion burden that harms job growth, gives special interests a pass, and lowers American families’ personal income.
Inspired by Dave Ramsey’s recent post “6 Reasons People Stay in Debt,” we compiled six reasons why Members of Congress, the Obama Administration, and others in Washington avoid the path to financial stability in favor of big spending…
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1. They want to keep up appearances.
The truth is, ever-growing entitlement programs drive ever-greater government spending. Everyone knows it. Some leaders in both parties have even worked together on first-step solutions agreeable to both sides. Yet rather than risk Warren Buffett’s taxpayer-funded benefits decreasing, politicians pretend America’s national budget can handle all the extensive promises they’ve made over the past several decades.
2. They are unwilling to sacrifice even wasteful spending.
Like a recent guest on “Hannity,” some in Washington will defend even the most ridiculous spending. Yet Congress could eliminate billions in spending tomorrow. Heritage expert Patrick Louis Knudsen, who spent two decades working on the House Budget Committee, recently went line-by-line through the federal budget to find $42 billion in unnecessary, poorly run, and duplicative federal government programs.
3. They fear changing “business as usual” in Washington.
Politicians are masters at playing the game. Because Americans are waking up to the fiscal crisis we are in, today policymakers in both parties use any number of legislative “back doors” to increase the debt ceiling—without looking like they did. CNN reports:
Since it's a politically tough vote, they occasionally devise clever ways to tacitly approve increases without ever having to publicly record a "yes" vote.4. They’re addicted to stuff.
For example, as part of the deal to resolve the 2011 debt ceiling war, Congress approved a plan that let President Obama raise the debt limit three times unless both the House and Senate passed a "joint resolution of disapproval." Such a measure never materialized. And even if it had, the president could have vetoed it.
Policymakers in Washington enjoy a good haircut, lavish conference vacations, and even renovating their bathrooms... all at our expense. How does so much wasteful spending get into the federal budget? Follow the money. When government keeps doling out so much to so many, it’s inevitable that Washington’s 10,000+ registered lobbyists get in on the bureaucrats’ action—while helping along a few re-election campaigns in the process.
5. They don’t know how to see long-term.
Word has it that the 2013 deficit will be lower than previous years. Let’s not break out the confetti just yet. This short-term change is due in part to massive tax increases signed into law by President Obama. Moreover, this year’s $642 billion deficit adds to the already massive national debt. Nearing $17 trillion, the debt is depressing job growth and opportunity for American families.
6. They lack the courage to lead on spending reform.
Clearly there are real proposals on the table to get the budget under control. Heritage offers Saving the American Dream, a budget framework that wisely resets spending levels back to historical norms. Even with recent legislative action on defunding Obamacare, it is unclear whether Congress will ultimately follow through and fully defund this unfair, unworkable, unaffordable law before its massive new entitlements go into effect.
We can change our current course, support a budget based on real Constitutional priorities, and set free the unlimited genius of Americans to create jobs, wealth, and prosperity.
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/09/23/morning-bell-6-reasons-why-the-national-debt-keeps-rising/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=&utm_content=&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Easy Money Is Narcotic
Easy money is a painkiller, not a cure. The U.S. economy has unaddressed woes that neither President Obama and his liberal friends nor Speaker Boehner and his Tea Party rebels are willing to admit or address.The new normal—growth at 2 percent, Wall Street grabbing massive wealth, and creeping impoverishment on Main Street—is nothing new. President Bush’s recovery was equally anemic and the benefits similarly lopsided.
Prior to the financial crisis, ordinary Americans borrowed from banks to finance a spending binge, and housing and stock prices rocketed. When homeowners and car buyers couldn’t make payments, the housing market crashed and retirement accounts tanked with stock prices.
This time, the Obama Administration has racked up huge federal deficits and the Federal Reserve has helped finance those by buying massive amounts of long-term Treasury securities and bonds issued by government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
All the while, the underlying causes of weak private sector growth go unaddressed—China’s protectionism that steals American manufacturing jobs; bans on offshore drilling that keep America dependent on oil imports and tied down in endless Middle East wars; health care costs as much as double those in Europe that make exports uncompetitive; an increasing concentration of bank deposits at large Wall Street institutions not much interested in lending to small businesses; burdensome regulations that raise the cost of investing and jobs creation; and an IRS witch hunt against reform-minded entrepreneurs who dare speak publicly.
Nothing the Obama Administration nor the right wing in the House proposes does squat to fix those. Instead, they reflexively quarrel and cling to ideological remedies patterned after past failures.
In the face of all this, the Fed has been purchasing about $85 billion each month in long-term bonds to push down borrowing rates and boost the housing and auto industries.
Wider benefits—for example, banks lending cheap money to small businesses—have not materialized; entrepreneurs are too terrorized by government regulators and a politicized IRS to invest, and the big banks would rather gamble with the money than make honest loans. JP Morgan’s admission of wrongdoing in the infamous London Whale is just the tip of near criminal activity in Manhattan.
At its most recent policymaking meeting, the Federal Reserve was expected to begin dialing back on bond purchases but balked because economic growth and the jobs market have simply not improved as much as Chairman Ben Bernanke anticipated.
The fact is those won’t adequately improve until the president stops campaigning and starts seeking pragmatic and less anti-business solutions, and the GOP stops clinging to myths like health savings accounts can replace Obama Care and bring down the prices of medical costs.
Easy money is like a narcotic drug—it can make a terrible toothache feel better but it won’t fix it. Taken long enough, it becomes addictive and wrecks your health.
Cheap money is causing housing prices in many markets to overinflate, stock prices to rise and many companies with failing business models to stay afloat by selling junk bonds to investors betting they can collect some quick returns and sell out before those businesses and bonds fail.
Now if the Fed stops buying all those bonds and lets interest rates rise, new bubbles will burst in the housing and stock markets, mortgages will again fail and bankruptcy courts will be jammed by failing enterprises.
Meanwhile, healthy growth does not happen. Since January, the economy has added 815 thousand part time positions, but only some 35 thousand more Americans report finding full time work.
The Fed’s easy money policies won’t fix much, but it can’t stop printing money, lest the economy collapses altogether.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/23/Easy-Money-Is-Narcotic
Pelosi: ‘The Cupboard Is Bare, There’s No More Cuts to Make’
House Minority Leader makes case against negotiating on debt ceiling
CANDY CROWLEY: But again, I just have to
point out that President Clinton, President Bush, President Reagan, and
this president have all negotiated the debt ceiling and given up
something. So why now?
NANCY PELOSI: Because the cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that.
http://freebeacon.com/pelosi-the-cupboard-is-bare-theres-no-more-cuts-to-make/
PK'S NOTE: "There are entire agencies and departments that could disappear tomorrow and we'd hardly notice it. Only delusional liberals think otherwise. Everyone knows the government is too big, too expensive and too powerful for its own good and needs to be trimmed. But as long as lawmakers like Pelosi have influence, no Washington lobby need fear that its pet programs will disappear or even be cut substantially. " American Thinker
HEADSLAM HEADLINES:
$25 Million NSF Grant to Build Machines Smarter Than Average 3-Year-OldCNS
Aircraft Carrier USS Gerald Ford Plagued With Glitches, Cost Overruns
Aircraft Carrier USS Gerald Ford Plagued With Glitches, Cost Overruns
Feds Spending $13M on Anti-Smoking Studies
Many demographic groups receiving special attention
This month the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a five-year study to Butler Hospital in Providence, R.I., to examine how exercise can get depressed smokers to stop. The first grant amounts to $581,991.
The depressed are not the only ones to receive attention.
The agency is currently funding cessation studies for American Indians ($2,899,954); Chinese and Vietnamese men ($424,875); postmenopausal women ($4,151,850); the homeless ($392,322); Korean youth ($94,580); Schizophrenics ($266,554); Brazilian smokers ($174,637); Latino HIV-positive smokers ($223,265); and the LGBT community ($1,929,152).
Yale University is studying how to get“Heavy Drinkers” to stop smoking at the cost of $416,951 to the taxpayer. Other projects seek to use Twitter to provide “social support to smokers” ($659,469), and yoga ($1,178,011).
There are hundreds more active studies, and these projects alone total $13,393,611.
Dr. Michael Siegel, a physician and professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, says the NIH’s approach to smoking cessation is misguided.
He finds that quitting “cold turkey” and using electronic cigarettes have proven the most effective methods. However, these two areas are largely ignored and, in the case of e-cigarettes, actively attacked by the scientific community.
Siegel told the Washington Free Beacon that there are two faulty paradigms pervading tobacco control efforts: an obsession with nicotine receptors and the idea that smoking cessation is a long-drawn-out process.
“The most successful method of quitting is cold turkey, making an abrupt, all of a sudden smoking cessation,” said Siegel, author of “The Rest of the Story,” a tobacco policy blog.
Former smokers agree, according to a recent Gallup poll that found 48 percent said they “just quit,” “decided it was time,” or “quit cold turkey.” Only five percent used a nicotine patch and one percent used nicotine gum.
“The varied strategies for quitting cited by former smokers suggest there is not a dominant ‘magic bullet’ method,” Gallup said, “but rather just a basic decision at some point in smokers’ lives to quit cold turkey.”
The myriad methods being studied by the NIH suggest they are looking not just for the “magic bullet,” but one for every “underserved population.”
Results have been inconclusive.
The University of Connecticut School of Medicine has been studying smoking cessation outcomes for postmenopausal women since 2009 and has only one published report. The report found that quitting smoking “may be associated with increased fat and muscle mass in postmenopausal women.”
The University of Kansas has been working to combat “disparities in tobacco prevalence and access to treatment” in Brazil since 2010. The project, which is creating a registry of smokers in the South American country, has yielded no published results thus far.
“I wouldn’t go so far to say that [these are] fruitless,” Siegel said. “There are important objectives. Looking at targeted populations is important to understand what methods might be effective with certain demographics.”
However, Siegel pointed to the NIH’s faulty approach in looking at nicotine replacement as the “be all end all” of smoking cessation, and meanwhile shunning the greatest innovation he has seen: the electronic cigarette.
“The thing about electronic cigarettes is they replace all the other aspects of smoking,” he said. “They look like cigarettes, they feel like cigarettes, you hold them, you see the vapor, there’s a throat hit that you get. You can associate the same feelings with smoking.”
Siegel said most tobacco groups are not embracing e-cigarettes as a breakthrough, but actually attacking the method, arguing it will increase smoking and is bad for public health.
A search of active NIH grants finds only six studies devoted to the product, and none are positive. The projects are examining the possible abuses and “potential toxicity” of e-cigarettes. One hypothesizes that they will “cause lung disease.”
Another study suggests they should not be allowed indoors because “clean indoor air laws may be compromised, or at the very least complicated.”
“Here is an innovation that really adds something and instead of responding and saying, ‘Wow this is an innovation that we didn’t have,’ the medical community, scientific community is saying this is a danger, ‘We have to get rid of these things,’” Siegel said.
Ultimately the best method lies in people making a conscious decision to quit, Siegel said.
“In my experience when you talk to people who have quit successfully they will tell you not the story that, ‘Oh yeah, little by little and finally I quit,’” he said.
“They’ll tell you, ‘Oh, one day I found out my friend got diagnosed with lung cancer and I just threw all my cigarettes away and that was the end of it.’”
“The federal government, I believe, should be putting more emphasis and more money into stimulating these sudden quit efforts,” he said. “And the way you do that is advertising and media campaigns.”
The NIH did not respond to requests for comment.
http://freebeacon.com/feds-spending-13m-on-anti-smoking-studies/
$3.39T Quantitative Explosion: Fed Owns More Treasuries and MBSs Than Publicly Held Debt Amassed From Washington Through Clinton
The same day that the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee announced last week that the Fed would continue to buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and $45 billion in U.S. Treasury securities per month, the Fed also released its latest weekly accounting sheet indicating that it had already accumulated more Treasuries and MBSs than the total value of the publicly held U.S. government debt amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington though Bill Clinton.
Since the beginning of September 2008, in fact, the Fed's ownership of Treasury securities and MBSs has increased seven fold.
As of the close of business Thursday, the Fed said, it owned approximately $2,052,055,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities and approximately $1,339,771,000,000 in mortgage-backed securities—for a combined total of about $3,391,826,000,000 in Treasury securities and MBSs.
The U.S. Treasury divides the U.S. government debt into two parts: debt held by the public, which includes publicly traded Treasury securities such as Treasury bills, notes and bonds, and intra-governmental debt, which is money the Treasury has borrowed out of the Social Security trust fund and other government trust funds and then used to pay current expenses.
As of the opening of business back on Nov. 23, 2001, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, the federal government’s total debt held by the public was $3,383,605,000,000. (By the close of business that day, the total debt held by the public would increase to 3,406,661,000,000.) The $3,383,605,000,000 in U.S. Treasury debt held by the public as the morning of Nov. 23, 2001, represented the total publicly held debt the federal government had accumulated until that date from the moment the Treasury first opened during the presidency of George Washington.
The $3,383,605,000,000 the Treasury owed to the public as of the morning of Nov. 23, 2001 was less than the $3,391,826,000,000 in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities owned by the Federal Reserve as of the close of business last Thursday.
Thus the Federal Reserve now owns more debt in the form of U.S. Treasury securities and MBSs than the sum total of the publicly held debt that the U.S. government accumulated from George Washington’s administration into November 2001, during President George W. Bush’s first term.
The mortgage-backed securities owned by the Fed are those that have been issued and guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. Ginnie Mae is government-owned corporation operated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are congressionally chartered, government-sponsored enterprises, that are now held in conservatorships by the federal government.
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are chartered by Congress as government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to provide liquidity in the mortgage market and to promote homeownership for underserved groups and locations,” the Congressional Research Service explained in a report published this August. “They purchase mortgages, guarantee them, and package them in mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), which they either keep as investments or sell to institutional investors. In addition to the GSEs’ guarantees, investors widely believe that MBSs are implicitly guaranteed by the federal government. In 2008, the GSEs’ financial condition had weakened and there were concerns over their ability to meet their obligations on $1.2 trillion in bonds and $3.7 trillion in MBSs that they had guaranteed. In response to the financial risks, the federal government took control of these GSEs in a process known as conservatorship as a means to stabilize the mortgage credit market.”
The federal government first took control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008. In its last weekly accounting sheet released before that, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008, the Fed said that it owned $479.726 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. That sheet did not even include a line item for mortgage-backed securities.
The Fed’s combined ownership of $3,391,826,000,000 in Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities is now more than 7 times as great as the $479.726 billion in Treasury securities it owned five years ago before the takeover of Fannie and Freddie.
Of the ten members of the Federal Open Market Committee who voted on whether the Fed should continue purchasing $40 billion in MBS each month and $45 billion in Treasury securities, only one voted no. That was Esther George, who is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
The Fed’s press release announcing the vote said George voted against the continued buying of Treasury securities and MBS because she was “concerned that the continued high level of monetary accommodation increased the risks of future economic and financial imbalances and, over time, could cause an increase in long-term inflation expectations.”
- See more at:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/339t-quantitative-explosion-fed-owns-more-treasuries-and-mbss#sthash.3oYMNOp4.dpuf
Obama hides aid for criminals in immigration bill
The White House is trying to hide unpopular provisions in the Senate’s immigration bill that would allow immigrant criminals to stay in the country and would increase the inflow of low-skill refugees from war-torn countries, says a top White House official.“The bill has a number of other important provisions that have stayed under the radar and we’d actually like to keep them under the radar,” said Esther Olavarria, the White House’s director of immigration reform.
“We haven’t played [them] up because we want to be able to maintain them as we go through the legislative process,” she told about 50 attendees at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual conference, on Sept. 19.
At the CBC foundation event, Olavarria described the sections in the Senate bill that she’s trying to hide from the public and the GOP.
The first section reverses parts of the 1996 immigration reform, which allowed law-enforcement authorities to deport long-term residents who have committed crimes.
The Senate bill “redefines ‘convictions,’ it redefines ‘sentences,’ to make it more realistic, so individuals who get suspended sentences would not be found inadmissible or deportable under these new provisions,” she told the attendees.
The liberal pre-1996 rule “was a very good provision,” and its revival in the Senate bill will “allow long-time residents who committed minor crimes to be able to stay here,” she said.
By accepting criminals and increasing the inflow of poor refugees, “they’re putting non-citizens in a higher position than native Americans,” said D.A. King, who runs the Dustin Inman Society, which seeks to reduce the annual inflow of legal immigrants.
“When you have over 22 million Americans that are out of work or underemployed, we have to have to an immigration system that puts these American citizens back to work,” King said.
Polls from rival groups indicate that majorities of Americans oppose the increases in immigration demanded by Democrats and by many businesses who eager for cheaper workers and extra customers.
Olavarria also suggested that the GOP leadership in the House, led by House Speaker John Boehner, may help pass an bill to increase immigration, despite opposition from the base and the possibility that immigrants will eventually vote for Democratic politicians.
“The House is a very difficult place… the [leadership is] not sure how they’re going to get to immigration reform, “ she said when asked by The Daily Caller if the GOP leadership wants to pass an immigration rewrite.
“The speaker has difficulties with lots of things,” she said.
Last week, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House’s judiciary committee, revived progressives’ hopes that the GOP leadership is quietly looking for a way to pass an immigration bill. “We have to find the appropriate legal status for people who are not lawfully here,” Goodlatte told an audience of Hispanic politicians and activists attending an event planned by the House Republican Conference.
If any bill is passed by the House, Boehner will be able to schedule a joint bill-writing conference with Democratic Senators. In turn, Boehner will be able to bring that joint bill to the House floor, where it would be approved by nearly all Democratic legislators and become law despite overwhelming disapproval from GOP legislators.
“If Speaker Boehner were to bring the [Senate] bill to the floor… we would have the votes to pass it, but he has not found a way yet do this,” said Olavarria, who played the leading role in drafted a 2007 immigration-boosting bill for Sen. Ted Kennedy.
“So it is important that we continue to work together… to bring it to the floor,” she said.
The number of minor or major crimes committed by illegal immigrants, and the number of American victims is high but uncertain, partly because the federal and state governments do not keep close track. The number of illegals who would be shielded from deportation, or be allowed to become citizens because of the rule-change, is also unclear.
Some courts have been very solicitous of criminal immigrants. In January, the federal 9th circuit blocked the deportation of an kidnapper who is an illegal immigrant.
The Senate bill also includes a section that offers a “path to citizenship” to illegal immigrants convicted twice of drunk driving. Only drivers who have been caught drunk more than two times would be excluded, according to the bill. In a July debate, Democrats defeated a more stringent rule proposed by Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn.
Olavarria also said she wishes to hide sections in the bill that will boost immigration of refugees.
One of the secret bill changes, said Olavarria, “will allow more groups [of people] to be identified as refugees and come into the country under that program.”
The Senate bill also allows people who have been staying in the United States for more than a year to apply for a refugee visa, Olavarria said. The change is important because it would allow people who have been in the country illegally for more than a year to ask for a residency visa.
In the last 10 years, roughy 55,000 Africans have won refugees status, and that number will increase if the Senate bill passes, Olavarria told the CBCF audience.
Olavarria’s support for increased immigration reflects the progressives’ desire to diversify the country’s population so that voters can be manipulated via staged but damaging ethnic and racial conflicts, said King. “They’re trying to erase the bigger picture [of a united America]… they have a new idea where the country is no longer unified and is basically balkanized,” he said.
The Senate bill was passed in July. If approved by the House, it could triple legal immigration to 33 million over the next 10 years, and double the resident population of non-agricultural guest-workers to 2 million, according to matching estimates from rival groups seeking to increase or reduce immigration. The bill would effectively approve the arrival of one new immigrant for every two Americans that turn 18.
“Comprehensive immigration reform, common sense immigration reform… is a top legislative priority for President [Barack] Obama, and he has worked very, very hard to get us where we are so far, and is not giving up,” Olavarria said.
“I know there’s lot of stories in the press … that declare immigration reform dead, [but] it is far from dead.”
”We don’t think its over,” she said.
Medical school official urges denial of care for Obamacare 'nonbelievers'
Then
there is Kansas University Professor David Guth, who on Monday, shortly
after the Navy Yard massacre, tweeted, "#NavyYardShooting The blood is
on the hands of the #NRA . Next time, let it be YOUR sons and
daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you."
Jihadist Massacre in Kenya
Al Qaeda's al Shabaab affiliate makes a bloody comeback.
The bloody jihadist assault on a Kenyan shopping mall shows that while al Qaeda forces may be dispersed, they are still highly dangerous. The gunmen fired their way into the crowd Saturday afternoon and hurled grenades as they made their way to the upper levels. At least 68 people had been killed and 205 injured as we went to press. Dozens more are being held hostage. Escapees report the terrorists are targeting Westerners and non-Muslims.The attack comes at the hands of Somalia's al Shabaab, a jihadist group many observers had hoped was a spent force. Until a couple of years ago, al Shabaab had the run of much of Somalia, imposing brutal Shariah law from the capital of Mogadishu and exacerbating widespread famine as it blocked foreign food aid.
But by the summer of 2011, a surge of African Union soldiers in Somalia and U.S. strikes against al Shabaab leaders appeared to be routing the terrorists. Al Shabaab announced in August 2011 that it was withdrawing from Mogadishu—supposedly as part of a tactical shift, though it looked every bit like a retreat. The African Union force currently includes some 4,000 Kenyan soldiers, who in September 2012 helped the Somali government retake Kismayo, the strategic port city that had been al Shabaab's last major stronghold in Somalia.
Some will say that al Shabaab's horrifying comeback shows the futility of resisting such groups, or intervening to help a neighbor like Somalia. But ignoring a threat won't make it vanish, as Kenya learned when al Qaeda blew up the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998. The massacre shows that the fight against the jihadist terror threat really is the "long war" many envisioned after 2001. Kenya has become an antiterror frontline state that deserves U.S. assistance, including information gathered by NSA surveillance.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304213904579091000625812612.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Goodbye Syria, On to Iran!
The locus of our original outrage — 99,000 Syrians lost in a brutal sectarian war — had almost nothing to do with Assad’s alleged use of WMD. Thus the Syrian violence never could be addressed through even successful negotiations about mostly irrelevant WMD. It would have been as if, at the height of the Rwanda crisis, we had threatened to bomb an RPG depot to force the Hutus and Tutsis to continue with their machetes — then backed off, had an ongoing dialogue with Putin about such dangerous rocketry (as Rwandans continued at it with edged weapons), and called our bluff “non-stylish but smart diplomacy.”
So we moved on from Syria. The U.S. continues to express outrage and so continues to allow Assad and his many enemies to kill lots of people until one side loses or wins. The only difference, after the red lines were issued, hyped, and forgotten, is that while Assad once was ordered to step down, he is now a legitimate talking partner in global discussions. Using WMD worked. It certainly proved a good way for Assad to show off his French-accented English and stylish haircut and suit on prime-time American television. WMD proved a far better deal than a costly new Russian air-defense system in deterring U.S. bombs.
The present trajectory of endless haggling and rug-buying over WMD simply reduces the issue to its status before Obama’s unwise red line — mostly one of benign neglect, and mostly supported by the proverbially “tired” American people. After all, Obama can say to us, “Aren’t you happy with me that I didn’t do the stupid thing I promised to do?” Well, yes, sort of like the relieved police suicide negotiator after the would-be bridge-jumper finally slinks down off the pylon.
Obama is relieved that there is a critical but transitory moment of destiny in every crisis, real or manufactured. His own psychodramatic stare-down has long passed with his blink. It would be near impossible to work the public, the Congress, and the world back up into another melodrama. Again, because Obama never really wished to do anything in Syria other than bluster, there is no reason for him now to reopen the issue. And because Obama did not act when thousands died and he ordered Assad to go, and almost did act when WMD was used and did not, why act at all anymore? Even his critics prefer the virtual Obama.
Syria has also changed. Assad is no longer losing. Iran and Hezbollah have upped the ante. The insurgents seem morally compromised. Their connection with the “Arab Spring” is ancient history, and so is the Arab Spring itself. Iran is now talking directly to the American people in Putinesque fashion. Despite the mounting death toll, doing nothing in late 2013 will earn Obama far less condemnation than did doing nothing in 2011 or 2012. Syria is now either already lost, or impossible to sort out, or relegated to secondary consideration after all the diversionary talk about WMD.
So Obama’s inaction is now more attuned to political realities, here and abroad. His interventionist trial balloon exploded; the result will be that he probably won’t float one again. As far as the politics go, looking weak and confused is damaging, but perhaps not as damaging as acting weakly and confusedly, which was the likely result of an “unbelievably small” sort of “shot across the bow.”
But if Americans are relieved to let Syria be Syria, others crawled out of the woodwork at the sound of Obama’s loud empty bluster about bombing. Why the sudden Iran charm offensive, if not that the theocracy believes it can now follow Assad’s model, but by focusing on a nuclear bomb or at least the lifting of sanctions? And why is Putin suddenly in the news, as if to remind the world that he can prevent not just a reckless U.S. from doing real harm to others but, he feigns, to itself as well?
Obama is probably not too concerned with any of these worries. After all, he pulled out all the troops in Iraq, after a brilliant two-year surge that by January 2009 had led to a stable, consensual government. Apparently, such a legitimate constitutional Iraq was not as valuable to Obama as a reelection slogan that he had “ended the war” in Iraq.
Ditto Afghanistan. The once good war that candidate Obama promised to win is pretty bad; for Obama, leaving Afghanistan seems far more important than saving it. Again, “Bush did it” is all ye need to know about the looming defeat. Let us hope the Taliban does not play the role of the North Vietnamese in 1975. (How will there be boat people, with no boats and water? Airlifts to mountaintops for mountain people? Beheadings in lieu of reeducation camps?)
Who, Obama assumes, cares what Libya has become? “We came, we saw, [Gaddafi] died,” Hillary chuckled, as if she had been Caesar on a white horse at Zela taking out Pharnaces II of Pontus.
So what difference at this point does it make? Who, Obama assumes, cares about what happened later in places like Benghazi or the current status of events on the ground in Tripoli? Like the stuff with the Russians and Assad, to the extent these are even problems, they exist down the line for someone else. If Obama retired early during the Noche Triste in Benghazi and played 15 rounds of cards with Reggie Love on the night of the Osama bin Laden hit (“I’m not, I’m not going to be down there, I can’t watch this entire thing”), why would he get too worked up about Syria?
But Iran’s President Rouhani, following Putin’s lead, apparently did. He wrote another therapeutic letter to the American people (albeit settling for the Washington Post rather than the New York Times; I guess the latter thought this nice dictator stuff could get habit-forming). The campus diversity czar, peace studies professor, or T-ball coach could have written Rouhani’s script — and no doubt they were all inspirations for his American speech handlers.
America, Rouhani reminds us, should pay attention to “identity” and avoid “zero-sum” attitudes. We must look for “root causes” of terrorism, seek “win-win” results, not get caught in a “Cold War” mentality, and we should “dialogue” — and for the “children,” no less. All Rouhani needs to let the centrifuges do their work, for the Republican Guard to finish up in Syria, and for his terrorists to keep blowing stuff up is to drop the lunatic Ahmadinejad mode, go T-ball therapeutic, and find in Obama a decent sort of Stanley Baldwin or Neville Chamberlain. The glee with which American elites have received Rouhani’s creepy letter suggests, aside from the fact that they read and write that stuff on campus all the time, how well Iranians understand us.
But more importantly, Rouhani meets an Obama not just weakened over his Syrian embarrassment, but actually convinced that he is “empowered” by it! Although he admits some loss of his usual panache and style, Obama brags that his diplomacy was brilliant, a virtual blueprint of thing to come.
After all, who could go 360 degrees in two weeks, from imminent bombing to legitimizing Assad and elevating the Russians, all at once ignoring and courting and ignoring the Congress — only to call it all a head-spinning success, ending with Putin shrugging that it will take lots of time to find WMD, though he (and now Rouhani!) deplores its use that led to one percent of the deaths in Syria? It is as if soaking yourself, and everyone in the vicinity, with gasoline and not lighting the match in your hand is better proof of your prudence than never going for the match and gas can in the first place.
Again, Rouhani is intrigued by such thinking. The fact that Obama legitimized the Assad, Hezbollah, Iranian axis in Syria, ignored the body count, confused and divided the nation and Congress, outsourced matters of WMD proliferation and use to Vladimir Putin, turned red lines into no-lines and bombing in 24 hours into talking for years — and called it all a smashing success — is, well, something worth following up on. Syria is history; Iran is now.
Most like Rouhani accept that Obama is interested only in a symbolic and rhetorical presidency that follows the path of least resistance. What the name, ethnic profile, and ideology of Obama represent to particular domestic and global constituencies — rather than what he does or even says — alone counts. And, of course, Obama has grasped and profited from that reality since he left Hawaii. It is a sort of codependency that Rouhani wishes to share for a while.
Yet if Obama’s psychodramas at home and abroad are critical in dividing the nation to win election or reelection, apart from the election cycle, they have little to do with actual governance and so quietly fade away, crisis by crisis. Obama’s existential Syrian civil war already has. In between a new war against evil gun owners and a renewed offensive against nihilist Tea Partiers, we will have now had another melodramatic “breakthrough” with Iran. As Obama said of his “success” with Syria, so too the Iranian diplomacy will not be “very smooth and disciplined and linear,” but instead will be only “about getting the policy right.”
Right.
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/on-to-iran/?singlepage=true
Iran’s Military Shows Off Missiles Promising ‘Death to America’
Provocative display comes ahead of Iranian President Hassan Rowhani’s U.N. visit
The military parade was viewed as a show of force to Western nations ahead of Iranian President Hassan Rowhani’s appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
Rowhani’s trip to the United Nations has been described as a “peace tour,” and he is expected to strike a conciliatory note with America and could meet face-to-face with President Barack Obama.
However, Rowhani adopted a harder line over the weekend when he appeared at the demonstration to help rally the country with anti-Israel and anti-U.S. rhetoric.
“Today too, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic and its leadership will never launch any aggressive action in the region,” Rowhani was quoted as saying by Israel’s Arutz Sheva. “But they will always resist aggressors determinedly until victory.”
Iran’s military will act as a “factor of stability and peace in the region,” according to Rowhani.
“Down with U.S.A.” could be seen painted across the side of a military truck that drove down Iranian streets displaying Tehran’s latest missiles.
Another missile-toting truck was equipped with a sign that read, “Death to Israel,” and featured a picture of an Israeli flag engulfed in flames.
The military parade was held to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war. Rowhani praised the country’s military achievements during a speech to mark the occasion, according to China’s state-run Xinhua.
Iran unveiled at least 30 missiles capable of striking Israel during the parade.
“Iran paraded 30 missiles with a nominal range of 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles)—the first time it had displayed so many with the theoretical capacity to hit Israeli targets,” Arutz Sheva reported over the weekend.
These missiles could also strike U.S. military bases in the Gulf, according to the report.
Iranian military commanders continued their hardline rhetoric on Monday, when they announced another series of military drills scheduled to take place in November.
Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, commander of the Iranian Army Ground Force, said his forces would display “a number of new achievements” during the drills.
“The capabilities of armored and airborne units will be tested in the (upcoming) drills,” he said, according to Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency.
“The drills codenamed Qamar-e Bani Hashem will be conducted in an area covering 250,000 square kilometers (in three operational zones) of land in the Southeastern parts of the country,” Pourdastan said.
Iran claims to have successfully “test-fired different types of newly-developed missiles and torpedoes” in recent months and has “tested a large number of home-made weapons, tools and equipment, including submarines, military ships, artillery, choppers, aircrafts, UAVs, and air defense and electronic systems,” according to Fars.
Tehran also will unveil what it claims is a “home-made” warship in the coming months.
The destroyer is expected to set sail in Iran’s northern waters, according to Fars.
“The destroyer, Damavand, will join the Navy warships in Northern Iran (in the Caspian Sea) by the end of the current (Iranian) year (which ends on March 20),” Senior Iranian Army Commander Khordad Hakimi was quoted as saying on Monday.
Rowhani claimed on Monday that he would engage in talks with Western nations during his stay at the international forum, according to Reuters.
“Unfortunately in recent years the face of Iran, a great and civilized nation, has been presented in another way,” Rowhani said, according to Reuters. “I and my colleagues will take the opportunity to present the true face of Iran as a cultured and peace-loving country.”
Iran expert Emanuele Ottolenghi said that Rowhani’s public comments are markedly different than Iran’s domestic rhetoric.
“Someone did not get the memo in Tehran—what’s with all those mega posters saying ‘Death to Israel’?” said Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation For Defense of Democracies (FDD). “If Iran’s new president Hassan Rowhani truly wishes to turn the page, isn’t it time for Iran to tone down the rhetoric against Israel as well?”
http://freebeacon.com/irans-military-shows-off-missiles-promising-death-to-america/
American Terrorists
It should be a matter of great concern that the terrorist group al-Shabaab has successfully recruited as many as 50 Americans to its ranks in the last five years.When will they orchestrate a similar horror in the United States?
Hugh Hewitt rightly notes that it's now up to the press to trace the lineage of these people's evil beliefs. While they're at it, let's also point out that this is why we need border security and people at ICE and Homeland Security who are willing to put the lives of innocent Americans above considerations of mindless political correctness.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/carolplattliebau/2013/09/23/american-terrorist-n1707410
US and Europe tried to cover up data showing lack of global warming
It looks like the science isn’t settled. Leaked documents obtained by the Associated Press show that the U.S. government and several European governments tried to get climate scientists to downplay the lack of global warming
over the past 15 years.The highly anticipated United Nations report on global
warming is expected to affirm the link between human activity and
global warming, but scientists are still having trouble explaining away
the lull in rising global temperatures over the past 15 years despite
rapidly rising greenhouse gas levels.The lull in global warming has been noted by skeptics to show the flaws behind the science and the theory that human activities, primarily through burning fossil fuels, causes global temperatures to rise.
This has some governments worried, reports the AP, as documents show that the U.S. government
along with some European nations tried to convince the report’s authors to downplay the lack of warming over the past 15 years.The AP reports that “Germany called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted, saying a time span of 10-15 years was misleading in the context of climate change
, which is measured over decades and centuries.”“The U.S. also urged the authors to include the ‘leading hypothesis’ that the reduction in warming is linked to more heat being transferred to the deep ocean,” the AP noted. “Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for any statistics. …Using 1999 or 2000 as a starting year would yield
a more upward-pointing curve. Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for skeptics.”Concern by governments
over the lull in warming comes ahead of the deadline the world has set
for reaching a global climate agreement in 2015. This report would serve
as the scientific underpinning of such an agreement.“This is the culmination of four years’ work
by hundreds of scientists, where governments get a chance to ensure the
summary for policymakers is clear and concise in a dialogue with the
scientists who wrote it, and have the opportunity to raise any topics
they think should be highlighted,” Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the
UN’s climate authority, told the AP.A leaked draft of the UN’s climate report from June said it was “extremely likely” that human influence caused more than half the warming since the 1950s.
However, the report also acknowledged that the rate
of warming since 1998 was about half of what the average rate had been
since 1951, citing natural variability in the climate system, cooling
effects from volcanic eruptions, and downward phase in solar activity.“I think to not address it would be a problem because then you basically have the denialists saying: ‘Look the IPCC is silent on this issue,’” Alden Meyer, of the Washington, D.C.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, told the AP.
, there are several methods for controlling a population.
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