Obama is already following thru on the promise of “consequences” for Iran if they continued to ignore United Nations restrictions on their nuclear material program. An agreement has been reached to place Patriot Missile batteries in four Persian Gulf countries: Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The U.S. Navy will also station Ageis cruisers in the Gulf. This development should put some weight behind the Administration’s stance against Iran’s nuclear development.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, placing special ships off the Iranian coast and antimissile systems in at least four Arab countries, according to administration and military officials.
The deployments come at a critical turning point in President Obama’s dealings with Iran. After months of unsuccessful diplomatic outreach, the administration is trying to win broad international consensus for sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, which Western nations say control a covert nuclear arms program.
Mr. Obama spoke of the shift in his State of the Union address, warning of “consequences” if Iran continued to defy United Nations demands to stop manufacturing nuclear fuel. And Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly warned China on Friday that its opposition to sanctions was shortsighted.
The news that the United States is deploying antimissile defenses — including a rare public discussion of them by Gen. David H. Petraeus — appears to be part of a coordinated administration strategy to increase pressure on Iran.
The deployments are also partly intended to counter the impression that Iran is fast becoming the most powerful military force in the Middle East, to forestall any Iranian escalation of its confrontation with the West if new sanctions are imposed. In addition, the administration is trying to show Israel that there is no immediate need for military strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile facilities, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
By highlighting the defensive nature of the buildup, the administration was hoping to avoid a sharp response from Tehran.
Military officials said that the countries that accepted the defense systems were Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. They said the Kuwaitis had agreed to take the defensive weapons to supplement older, less capable models it has had for years. Saudi Arabia and Israel have long had similar equipment of their own.
General Petraeus has declined to say who was taking the American equipment, probably because many countries in the gulf region are hesitant to be publicly identified as accepting American military aid and the troops that come with it. In fact, the names of countries where the antimissile systems are deployed are classified, but many of them are an open secret.
The general spoke about the deployments at a conference at the Institute for the Study of War here on Jan. 22, saying that “Iran is clearly seen as a very serious threat by those on the other side of the gulf front.”
General Petraeus said that the acceleration of defensive systems — which began when President George W. Bush was in office — included “eight Patriot missile batteries, two in each of four countries.” Patriot missiles are capable of shooting down short-range offensive missiles.
He also described a first line of defense: He said the United States was now keeping Aegis cruisers on patrol in the Persian Gulf at all times. Those cruisers are equipped with advanced radar and antimissile systems designed to intercept medium-range missiles. Those systems would not be useful against Iran’s long-range missile, the Shahab 3, but intelligence agencies believe that it will be years before Iran can solve the problems of placing a nuclear warhead atop that missile.
Iran contends that it is not trying to develop nuclear weapons, and that its program is for energy production. The White House declined to comment on the deployments.
But administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the moves have several aims. “Our first goal is to deter the Iranians,” said one senior administration official. “A second is to reassure the Arab states, so they don’t feel they have to go nuclear themselves. But there is certainly an element of calming the Israelis as well.”
As Iran’s nuclear program proceeds — more slowly, American intelligence officials say, than the United States had once thought — Israel has hinted at various times that it might take military action against the country’s military facilities unless it is convinced that Mr. Obama and Western allies are succeeding in stopping the program.
Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, took an unannounced trip to Israel this month, partly to take the temperature of the Israeli government and to review both economic and covert programs now under way against the Iranian program, according to officials familiar with the meeting.
American officials argue that the willingness of Arab states to take the American emplacements, which usually come with a small deployment of American soldiers to operate, maintain and protect the equipment, illustrates the region’s growing unease about Iran’s ambitions and abilities.
Gulf countries are also taking steps of their own to harden their defenses. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have bought more than $15 billion in American arms in the past two years, including missile defense systems. The United States is helping support a plan by Saudi Arabia to triple the size, to 30,000 people, of a Saudi force that protects the kingdom’s ports, oil facilities and water-desalinization plants, a senior military officer said. The Washington Post reported both steps on its Web site on Saturday.
One senior military officer said that General Petraeus had started talking openly about the Patriot deployments about a month ago, when it became increasingly clear that international efforts toward imposing sanctions against Iran faced hurdles, and the administration’s efforts to engage Iran were being rebuffed by the Tehran government. In October, the two countries reached an agreement in principle to move a significant portion of Iran’s nuclear fuel out of the country, but Iran backed away from the deal.
In discussing the Patriots and missile-shooting ships, General Petraeus’s main message has been to reassure allies in the gulf that the United States is committed to helping defend the region, said the military officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the topic. But the general’s remarks were also a pointed reminder to the Iranians of American resolve, the officer said.
Dr Raja Muhammad Khan | Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the people of Pakistan remained apprehensive about its role and future designs in South and Southwest Asia. Majority of analysts believe that the US has a long-term broad based agenda of regional domination with the intent to contain the rising Chinese influence and a resurgent Russia. Besides, it intends to dominate the natural resources of Central Asia and Caspian region to either deny the region to China and Russia or establish its own subsequent control there.Apart from these bigger agendas, the bulk of the Pakistani masses have been concerned about three legitimate consternations, which seriously threaten the safety and security of Pakistan. The first is the threat to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from none other than the United States. The second concern is about the growing US interest in procuring land in Pakistan and use of Pakistani air bases for the drone attacks in FATA. The third issue, which even gravely bothers Pakistan’s security, is the unprecedented Indian involvement in Afghanistan, which also is likely to have a direct linkage with United States.
In order to address the Pakistani concerns, US high officials have made extraordinarily visits to Pakistan in last few months. These visitors include; Richard Hallbrook, Admiral Michael Mullen, General David Howell Petraeus, and the US secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The last and very infrequent visitor was the Secretary of Defence, Robert M. Gates. Prior to his visit of Pakistan, Mr. Gates had visited India. In New Delhi, the Secretary audaciously supported the Indian viewpoint in regional politics and tried to convey to Pakistan that India is regional power and other states including Pakistan will have to accept its hegemony. While replying to a question regarding the possibility of future terrorist attacks in Indian soil and its likely response, Mr. Gates categorically said, “It is not unreasonable to assume that Indian patience will be limited, were there to be further attacks”. The statement harked back the memories of the period of President George W. Bush, whose only pictogram is present in the Obama’s cabinet in the form of Robert Gates, the former Director of CIA.
Secretary Gates’ statement has three undertones; first; Pakistan is responsible for terrorist attacks. Second; the US will support India to launch an offensive against Pakistan in case of any terrorist act, which even may be India’s own stage-managed drama like; an attack on Indian Parliament in December 2001, Samjhauta Express bombings of Feburary-2007 and Mumbai attack of November 2008. Third; any act of none-state actors, who may be from any country, religion or ideology can trigger war between India and Pakistan.
In his meetings with the civilian and military leadership, which also include off the record lecture cum debates and later during a selective media interaction, the visiting US Secretary of Defence tried to elucidate the U.S stance on Pakistani concerns. The Defence Secretary made it clear that, “The United States does not covet a single inch of Pakistani soil. We seek no military bases here and we have no desire to control Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.” Mr. Gates also declared these concerns as tainted perceptions and nothing more than cynicism, spread by “same enemies threatening both Pakistan and the US within the context of terrorism” and are creating dissection in the Pak-US relationship.
Regarding the Indian involvement in Afghanistan and its covert activities for the promotion of terrorism in Pakistan, the visiting dignitary expressed the view that, since either country has its concern about the other’s involvement in Afghanistan, therefore, back channel discussion should act as a forum. Debate during these meets should be transparent, while taking into account each other’s concerns. We regard the Secretary Gates commitments, but how can we ignore the ground realities. On more than one occasion, the US officials have confirmed that they have been using some of Pakistani air bases for air attacks on Afghanistan and are still using at least two of them for drone attacks in Pakistan. The US State Department also proclaims a tacit approval of drone attack against terrorists from the Government of Pakistan. Surely, this is an overt use of Pakistani soil rather a covert one.
The US may have no intention to establish military bases in Pakistan, but the people of Pakistan would like to know about the likely uses of hundreds of acres of land, purchased by the United States in Islamabad, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Karachi. This is coupled with enhanced strength of US nationals in Islamabad, Lahore, and elsewhere in Pakistan in the guise of diplomats. More so, U.S nationals have been permitted to hire hundreds of houses and were issued licences of prohibited bore weapons. Police and intelligence agencies have tried to arrest quite a few of them in Islamabad and Lahore, while carrying such weapons, but the authorities had to set them free on the orders of Interior Ministry. Does the US really need such an armed diplomatic corps in Pakistan, or else, another East India Company is in the making? Acquiring land on three strategic locations by the US gives out many speculations about its future designs. Veiled in the guise of security staff to the US embassy, there is presence of hundreds of the Blackwater personnel in Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore and may be elsewhere in Pakistan. Amazingly, our Interior Minister is constantly denying the presence of Blackwater in Pakistan, a truth accepted by the US Defence Secretary during his recent tour. What is not understood is why we try to be more loyal to the US than its own nationals are. Being a Pakistani national, Mr. Malik could have the courage to accept their presence as Ex, if not Blackwater. The masses would also like to know why their heavy luggage, either sealed in wooden or tin boxes, were allowed to pass through the airports without legal formalities of screening during immigration.Concerning Pakistan’s nuclear programme, how we can believe the wordings of Robert Gates, when on a fortnightly basis we receive a new version of threat and US contingency to control it, about our nuclear programme. Apart from its think tanks, and powerful media, US officials have expressed their reservations regarding the safety and security of Pakistani nukes. After having known the effective command and control system, being exercised through National Command Authority (NCA) and Strategic Plans Division (SPD), should the US and others not trust once for all that Pakistani nukes are as safe and secure as the ones with the P-5 countries. Had there been any nuclear theft case in Pakistan like India, where three such cases took place in 2009 only? Besides U.S itself being the first nuclear proliferator, India has been involved in the proliferation of nuclear material and technology to and from many countries. Nevertheless, the international community and the U.S have never pointed a finger towards it. They mistakenly expect that Pakistan would give them access to its nuclear weapons. It is indeed a hard-earned capability by the Pakistani nation, never to be compromised at any cost.
It is very unfair to believe that, America, being an occupying power in Afghanistan, is unaware of Indian activities against Pakistan, while making use of that soil. In most of the cases, the militants use Indian and even Western origin weapons against Pakistani security forces in FATA as well as in Balochistan. At the official level, Pakistan has provided evidence of Indian involvement in these terrorist activities to the US as well as to India. Therefore, Roberts Gates’ over-generalization cannot absolve him from the reality. As the sole super power, US should adopt an unbiased approach while dealing with the nuclear-armed neighbours of South Asia. Moreover, the US needs to be more judicious, while matching its deeds with its words and commitments.
(1) Eliminate all pre-insurance health related screening. No pre-existing illness, surgery or health condition can be used to exclude any person from coverage. DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(2) Eliminate ability of any health insurer to drop any subscriber from coverage due to development of illness or injury. DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(3) Eliminate any caps on ‘lifetime benefits’ regarding payments by health insurers for costs incurred for approved, legitimate treatment. DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(4) Eliminate group rating. Premiums to be set on total number of persons insured by insurer regardless of group, age, sex etc. DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(5) Eliminate waiting periods for coverage under group or individual plans. When premium is paid, coverage begins. DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(6) Eliminate any restriction on national sales of health insurance products (i.e. removal of barriers to interstate sale of health insurance products). DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(7) Limit premium increases health insurers are able to make to annually, fixed at cost of health care inflation rate plus 1%. DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(8) Standardize health insurance reporting forms for filing of claims by hospitals, surgery centers, doctor’s offices, health clinics etc. DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(9) Eliminate ‘timely filing rules’ which are designed to cheat providers out of payment by imposing arbitrary time lines (such as 30-90 days) for a legitimate claim to be filed. DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(10) Standardize coverages to that there is full coverage of all medical and surgical conditions, thus eliminating wide variations in coverages from plan to plan. DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(11) Allow for expansion of Health Savings Accounts to give consumers choice in regard to premium structure (based off of overall rate as enumerated in #4 above). DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
(12) Allow for catastrophic coverage options for certain age groups to increase affordability for younger subscribers (based off of overall rate as enumerated in #4 above). DIRECT COST TO TAXPAYER = $ 0
We could go on. But you get the idea. Here are 12 (and we have more) basic, easy to understand concepts that could move health insurance reform forward now. No major government programs. No direct costs to taxpayers. No need for increased federal bureaucracy. Seems like this should be an easy, bipartisan, quick method to move health reform forward. So, are there any takers out there? Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Reid, are you listening? Want to get something done for the American people like you say you do. Mr. Obama, care to lean on the Democratic leadership in Congress a bit? Republicans, care to get on board for meaningful health reform with little cost to tax payers? The ball is in your court. We suggest to you take the field and get moving. Americans are tired of political games an the unwillingness of either party to practice legitimate oversight of the the health insurance industry. That is the key to real health reform that we can all believe in . . . obi jo and jomaxx
Health Bill Stalled, Obama Juggles an Altered Agenda – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/politics/29cong.html?scp=1&sq=Health%20Bill%20Stalled,%20Obama%20Juggles%20an%20Altered%20Agenda%20&st=cse
Searching for Some Light Amid the Heat – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/health/policy/30check.html?scp=1&sq=The%20Struggle%20Over%20Health%20Care&st=cse
While Confident Health Care Will Pass This Year, Democrats Still Search for a Plan – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/health/policy/29health.html?ref=health
What’s Next for Healthcare Reform? – http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100111/beyerstein
House Democrats Queasy About Health Care Reform Post-Brown – http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/house-democrats-queasy-about-health-care-reform-post-brown
GOP officials: no sign of bipartisanship on healthcare reform – http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2010/0121/GOP-officials-no-sign-of-bipartisanship-on-healthcare-reform
President Obama gave his State of the Union Address on January 27, 2010. Among the many issues that he addressed, Obama spoke about restoring security for middle-class families after a lost decade of declining wages, eroding retirement security and escalating health care and tuition costs. President Obama also committed himself to repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy.
President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union Address
Obama’s Amazing GOP Question Time: An Astonishing Smackdown!!
President Obama and Congressional Republicans sparred over a range of policy disagreements Friday in a lively Q&A session that highlighted the void between the parties. Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may have turned out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months. The Republicans learned the hard way that debating a former University of Chicago law professor is pretty darn foolish! Many of the Republicans asked good and probing questions, but they sat in astonishment watching their arguments simply be demolished by the President. It was an amazing Obama slam dunk, after slam dunk, after slam dunk!
Obama’s Amazing GOP Question Time: An Astonishing Smackdown!!
The full version of President Obama’s lively Q&A session with the GOP can be watched in HQ video here.
Let’s go back to an article I wrote last year titled, “Obama Promise To Transcend Political Divide His Signature Failure And Lie“:
Back in March of 2008, the New York Times correctly identified what they described as the CORE of Barack Obama’s promise to the American people, and they correctly identified why reasonable people should be skeptical:
WASHINGTON — At the core of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority.
To achieve the change the country wants, he says, “we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done.”
But this promise leads, inevitably, to a question: Can such a majority be built and led by Mr. Obama, whose voting record was, by one ranking, the most liberal in the Senate last year?
Anyone who possessed more reason than their dog or cat, of course, should have known that the answer to the last question would be a resounding “NO!” If Obama had wanted to be a “unifier,” he wouldn’t have been the most liberal (and radical) member of the U.S. Senate.
And of course, anyone who truly possessed even a shred of bipartisanship wouldn’t have spent 23 seconds in Jeremiah Wright’s demagogic, racist, anti-American, Marxist church, let alone 23 years.
Obama PROMISED he would heal the partisan divide, that he would reach across the divide in an unprecedented way. According to the New York Times, that was Obama’s CORE promise.
He did the exact opposite. He couldn’t have lied to us more.
Again, in his State of the Union Speech, Obama went back to the same demagoguery, even as he called upon those he was demagoguing to abandon their principles and follow him:
From some on the right, I expect we’ll hear a different argument, that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts, including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away.
The problem is, that’s what we did for eight years.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s what helped us into this crisis. It’s what helped lead to these deficits. We can’t do it again.
Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let’s meet our responsibility to the citizens who sent us here. Let’s try common sense, a novel concept.
Now, to do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust, deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years.
Then later Obama said:
And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, a supermajority, then the responsibility to govern is now yours, as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.
If Obama wants Republicans to cooperate with his agenda, he should stop demonizing them. He keeps demagoguing “the last eight years” (as if we should forget the unprecedented 52 consecutive months of growth during those eight years); maybe he should also mention his party’s unprecedented eight years’ of vicious attacks against George Bush.
Democrats now demagogue Republicans as the “party of no” without ever bothering to answer for why they did the same thing:
But did congressional Democrats offer their own alternative to President Bush’s 2005 Social Security plan? When a fellow Democrat asked Rep. Nancy Pelosi when their party would offer its own Social Security plan, her answer was “Never. Is that soon enough for you?” Democrats would not even negotiate until personal retirement accounts were taken off the table. Why should Republicans act differently today, regarding the “public option”?
Obama is a polarizing, divisive demagogue. He refuses to understand that you don’t get people to join you by demonizing them. You get them to fight you to their last breath.
Obama lies when he says his administration has reached out to Republicans. He’s shut them out. And that tactic was employed so heavily that even blue-dog DEMOCRATS were shut out of any part in the debate:
Forty-five House Democrats in the party’s moderate-to-conservative wing have protested the secretive process by which party leaders in their chamber are developing legislation to remake the health care system.
The lawmakers, members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, said they were “increasingly troubled” by their exclusion from the bill-writing process.
So when Democrats claim they included Republicans, they are just rank liars; they even refused to include their own moderate Democrats!
Obama is the most cynical demagogue America has seen in decades, and nothing more.
And the American people now readily understand that:
January 25, 2010 Obama’s Approval Most Polarized for First-Year President Shows much greater party differences than approval for any prior first-year president
by Jeffrey M. Jones
PRINCETON, NJ — The 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats’ (88%) and Republicans’ (23%) average job approval ratings for Barack Obama is easily the largest for any president in his first year in office, greatly exceeding the prior high of 52 points for Bill Clinton.
Overall, Obama averaged 57% job approval among all Americans from his inauguration to the end of his first full year on Jan. 19. He came into office seeking to unite the country, and his initial approval ratings ranked among the best for post-World War II presidents, including an average of 41% approval from Republicans in his first week in office. But he quickly lost most of his Republican support, with his approval rating among Republicans dropping below 30% in mid-February and below 20% in August. Throughout the year, his approval rating among Democrats exceeded 80%, and it showed little decline even as his overall approval rating fell from the mid-60s to roughly 50%.
Democrats suffered a MASSIVE defeat and a MASSIVE repudiation of their agenda in even the heavily Democrat state of Massachusetts. Obama has lost every single statewide race since becoming president – all of which occurred in states that overwhelmingly voted for him in 2008. The people are no longer with Obama; they are against him. But judging by his performance in the State of the Union, Obama is determined to keep heading full speed ahead off the cliff.
The following was sent to me today:
++++++++++++++++++
Your U.S. House & Senate have voted themselves $4,700 and $5,300 raises.
1. They voted to not give you a S.S. cost of living raise in 2010 and 2011.
2. Your Medicaid premiums will go up $285.60 for the 2-years
and you will not get the 3% COLA: $660/yr. Your total 2-yr loss and cost is -$1,600 or -$3,200 for husband and Wife.
3. Over 2-yrs The House & Senate each get $10,000 raises
4. Do you feel SCREWED?
5. WILL your cost of drugs – doctor fees – local taxes – food,
etc., increase? You better believe they will!
WILL THEIRS…NO WAY . They have a raise and better benefits. Why care about you? You never did anything about it in the past.
You’re obviously too stupid or don’t care. No offense; just making a point!
6. Do you really think that Nancy, Harry, Chris, Charlie, Barnie, et al, care about you?
SEND THE MESSAGE– You’re FIRED.
IN 2010 YOU WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO GET RID OF THE SITTING CONGRESS AND Up to 1/3 OF THE SENATE, AND 100% OF THE HOUSE.
MAKE SURE YOU’RE STILL MAD IN NOVEMBER 2010 AND TELL THEIR REPLACEMENTS NOT TO SCREW UP.
It is ok to forward this to your sphere of influence if you are finally tired of the abuse. Maybe it’s time for the…….. Amendment 28
“Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United
States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States .”
Let’s get this passed around, folks – these people in Washington have brought this upon themselves!!! It’s time for retribution. Let’s take back America .
If you don’t forward this to all your friends you’re just part of the problem of national apathy.
IT’S TIME!!!!!!!
JUST DO IT!
Eight in 10 of all Americans surveyed call the economy the top priority.
Posted January 25, 2010 9:30 AM
by Mark Silva
As President Barack Obama starts his second year in office — with his first State of the Union address scheduled Wednesday night — the public’s priorities look much like they did when he was sworn into office: Strengthening the nation’s economy and improving the job situation. Eight in 10 of all Americans surveyed call that job No. 1.
Considering the fact that unemployment stood at 7.7 percent at the president’s inauguration, and at 10 percent in December, it’s not surprising that the economy still tops the list of issues which people name in the Pew Research Center’s surveys of public priorities. (See the list from the Pew Center at the left.)
At the same time, another big issue has risen in importance in the public’s eye: The percentage saying that reducing the federal budget deficit should be a top priority has grown from 53 percent to 60 percent over the year.
Watch for Obama to tout his support for a bipartisan budget commission to grapple with the growing problems of spending surpassing revenues on Wednesday night.
And at the same time, some other big issues have lost some traction: The share saying the nation’s energy problem should be a top priority has slipped from 60 percent to 49 percent in the past year. With the “cap-and-trade” energy bill that passed the House last year with the support of a handful of Republicans mired in the Senate — and the Senate soon facing a 41-vote Republican minority — there may not be much talk about energy this week.
The latest survey of the Pew Research Center also finds that health care has slipped from a top priority among 61 percent in January 2001 to 49 percent.
And “notably, there is now a wider partisan gap in opinion about this issue than for any of the 21 issues included in the survey,” the Pew Center’s Andrew Kohut reports today: “75 percent of Democrats rate providing health insurance to the uninsured as a top priority compared with just 26 percent of Republicans” agreeing.
The president is sure to address health care in the State of the Union address, though he is counting on congressional leaders to sort out the way forward on the issue now that his party faces a loss of a filibuster-proof Senate.
Just 28 precent say that dealing with global warming should be a top policy priority, largely unchanged from a year ago. This is the lowest measure for any issue tested in the survey.
One in four of those surveyed say Obama’s State of the Union address will be more important than previous addresses.
The Pew survey of 1,504 adults conducted Jan. 6-10 carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
This originally appeared in the Sunday, January 24 edition of NOW! as an op-ed.
As an American, I can understand, even if it seems inexplicable to the rest of the world, why there is so much talk calling President Barack Obama’s first year in office a “disappointment.” We did, after all, put our heart and soul into that election, and for once American politics seemed to be going right. Not only were we getting “Anyone But Bush,” but we had a candidate who was young and energetic, who gave rousing speeches that made us believe in our future, and who, at first glance anyways, appeared to share all of our deepest held convictions. After the eight years of political misery and shame, and with all the world crashing down around us in the financial crisis, can you really blame us for putting all our hopes and dreams on Obama’s shoulders? For wanting it to be easy? For supposing, subconsciously even if we never admitted it, that we could just sit back and rest our eyes for a little bit, and all our troubles would go away?
Yes actually, you should blame us, those Americans who demand the impossible for nothing, who now see hypocrisy only because they never looked closely at his promises, who have suddenly and inexcusably become blind to the complexities of the American political system and the terrible inertia of the problems facing the President, and from whom the rest of the world media seems to be taking their cues this week. For in wanting and saying all these things, about disappointment and betrayal and “the next Jimmy Carter,” these Americans have undermined President Obama’s political capital and sabotaged his ability to eventually bring them all these wonderful things they want from him. We should blame them, and ourselves.
The American political system, while not as messy and bureaucratic as democracy in India, is a big and aged thing, hulking and lumbering with a unique gait, occasionally pausing to scratch at some apparently pointless itch. Our President may be powerful, commanding the mightiest military and wearing the heavy mantle of “Leader of the Free World,” but he is not all powerful. The Senate and the House and the Judiciary each have their own powers, and each member of each branch has their own agenda. Wrangling notoriously fractious liberal politicians into passing huge, sweeping legislation over conservative obstructionism was never going to be easy. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were never going to have a single, simple miraculous solution. (Some liberals secretly relished each new massacre and bombing and setback in the wars, for each provided them with new opportunities to lash at Bush; apparently this habit has continued, albeit mutated, into the Obama Administration.) Most importantly, the financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn were always going to take their toll for longer than anyone would like, and nothing can be done, not even by the “Leader of the Free World,” to change that. Don’t blame Obama: blame Bush and blame the bankers.
And yet, still the “disappointment” seems tangible. “Sure, he inherited all these problems,” people say, “but he’s still doing it wrong.” But one only needs to watch a couple episodes of The West Wing to understand that in making policy there is rarely a “right” or “wrong” way. Should the army spend more money on rifle rounds or pistol rounds? Is this proposed bridge worth building? How much can you limit fishing or hunting in an area before local economy suffers too much? What do you do with abused and mistreated, but possibly also guilty and dangerous prisoners of war? A hundred or thousand of these choices might reveal a greater ideology, but balancing everything is very hard and pleasing everyone is impossible.
Then there is the more sinister accusation: that Obama has not done enough. In normal and prosperous times, a new President would spend his first year or so just settling in, setting up a reliable staff, finding a rhythm of ceremonial duties, ingratiating himself with the political class. Of course these are not normal times. Still, even with higher expectations than usual, the claim that he hasn’t done anything perplexes me. He has ordered the shutdown of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, for years a blight on the USA’s international reputation. He began the admittedly difficult and arduous process of withdrawing the American military presence in Iraq, and he has instituted a new strategic push so that America can soon do the same in Afghanistan. He pushed through a revolutionary stimulus package that, however much the economy might still be suffering, most experts agree has saved the country from a far worse depression. He has rebooted America’s relations with the international community, especially the Muslim world. He has sparked a movement, however embattled, to make sweeping reforms to America’s troubled healthcare system. And perhaps most important, and most ignored, Obama has made important first steps towards a meaningful push to rid the world of nuclear weapons and find compromises to defuse the ambitions of dangerous states. And that’s just the cliff notes version. Compare this to what Clinton accomplished in his first year, or the damage Bush did in his. It seems to me the American left, and the rest of the world, need to shed a measure of myopia and gain a measure of patience.
From Charles F. Kerchner, Jr., Commander USNR (Retired), Lead Plaintiff, Kerchner v Obama & Congress, January 24, 2010.
“I Believe The Fix Was In for the 2008 Election and The Cover Up is Still Going Strong!”
I believe that the RNC and DNC at the highest levels in 2008 were both complicit in shutting down all discussion of Obama’s eligibility issue in the Main Stream Media, print press, and in the leading Conservative Talk Show radio stations. I believe that the RNC and the DNC were complicit in subverting Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of our Constitution as to the eligibility requirements for the Office of the President, i.e., the person eligible for that office must be a “natural born Citizen”, i.e., one born in the country to parents who are both citizens of the country such that the child born has singular and sole allegiance at birth to the USA and no citizenship at birth with any other country via his parents or due to the place or location of birth. A natural born Citizen needs know law or resolution of Congress to give or clarify citizenship status. Natural born Citizenship status can only be obtained by the facts of nature at the child’s birth. This is natural law. This is what the founders and framers of our Constitution required for the singular and very powerful office of the President and Commander in Chief of the military. John Jay and George Washington put that requirement into the Constitution for exactly the reason that the person serving in that office would have no foreign influences on him/her at birth due to the facts and circumstances of his/her citizenship at birth. Only “natural born Citizenship” in the USA per natural law guarantees no other allegiance or citizenship claims by an another country at birth. If you are born on the U.S. soil of parents who are both citizens, no other country can claim you as a Citizen of their country and you are only governed by the laws of the USA at your birth. This is natural law as written by Vattel in 1758 in his legal book, “The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law”. This book was used as a reference to set up our new new nation in 1776 in the writing of the Declaration of Independence and also in drafting the new form of federal government in 1789 and the writing of our Constitution, the fundamental law of our nation.
Both parties put up questionable candidates in 2008 as to their birth citizenship and then the covered up for each other and helped shut down the media and talk radio totally via their respective high contacts in the media industry and elected officials within the sitting Bush administration and in Congress as well as within their own respective presidential campaign organizations. Though shalt not talk about the presidential constitutional Article II eligibility issues was the word put out by all the powers to be in Washington DC and the USA media. It was reported that threats were even made to certain conservative talk show radio hosts in the last quarter of 2008.
And it continues to this day, imo, and is most obvious with the stone silence and “cone of silence” and occasional mocking comments made by the talk show hosts about the eligibility issue questions if mentioned briefly by a guest now and then on Fox News. The approach on Fox News is to ban the topic. Other networks such as MSNBC simply mock the movement continually using Saul Alinsky’s tactics from Rules for Radicals rule number 5, ridicule, to stifle all open, serious, and public debate on the issue and to scare off any one in political power from broaching the subject. Anyone even just mentioning this issue is pounced on for the ridicule treatment by the press. This shut down of a free and full “on air” debate of the Obama eligibility issue with serious scholars and legal experts representing each side (such as my attorney, Mario Apuzzo) being allowed on the air together with someone from the Obot side to debate this issue openly is being orchestrated at the highest levels of the RNC and DNC and their elected official type contacts in various powerful positions both today and back in Dec 2008 and early Jan 2009. Whispers in the hallways allude to grave consequences if one breaches this subject seriously on the air ways. The RNC silenced opposition in the conservative talk show radio and elsewhere in late 2008 which has enabled Obama to take power virtually unopposed as to addressing his constitutional eligibility in any serious manner in public debate via the national media. The leadership of the RNC at the highest levels, imo, shut down members of their own political party in Congress and via using their contacts in the highest levels of government, they helped shut down conservative talk radio and TV hosts with innuendos and and whispers of the consequences if this subject surfaced for discussion in a major way on their shows. They were told to keep the eligibility issue and the so called “Birthers” banned on their callers list with special instructions to the call screeners to keep them off the air. The RNC powers to be and their political connections used their power to do this to cover up their own subverting of Article II of the Constitution via putting up a candidate of their own with questionable natural born Citizenship status as their candidate for President. The big liberal media anointed Obama (a hard core progressive and Socialist) and then anointed McCain (a progressive light) because they knew McCain had a citizenship issue of his own and thus would keep him silent about Obama’s. And it worked. A “cone of silence” was dropped on the eligibility issue in the DC media and Congress and elsewhere in American to cover up for what both parties were doing, subverting Article II of the U.S. Constitution in the 2008 election. Listen to this radio show interview for more details.”
Who’s panting for Obama speech number 412? Exactly no one.
By Mark Steyn
So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”
But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”
Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.
via Too Much of a Bad Thing by Mark Steyn on National Review Online.
You may have caught some of President Obama’s comments about the banks. It is also hard to avoid seeing that the White House has released a picture of Obama towering over Larry Summers and Sec’y of Treasury Tim Geithner in what appears to be a ‘trip to the woodshed’ conversation.
The belief among the pundit class is that the Prez is 1. unhappy with the loss in MA to Scott Brown , or 2. unhappy with the bank bonuses or 3. ready to push on banking reform but Summers and Geithner are not in agreement.
I don’t think that #1 is a strong reason to be upset. I think that #2 is the likely reason and that #3 is what he is going to do about it. I believe that the Prez has decided that the evil bankers owe him/the government some respect for bailing them out and he is not getting any.
It is possible, too, that the Banking War is not yet over. Somehow I think that Financial Service banks true objective is to control the wealth in America and that the Commercial banks stand in their way. The Federal Reserve definitely stands in the way of Goldman Sachs from becoming the “Official Bank of the US Government”. I also imagine that the FS banks feel snubbed that the Commercial banks refused to loan them money when the market fell last year.
I don’t have a clear vision of all of this but it seems to me that there are four forces at work: 1. Commercial banks are defending their turf and their tradition of being America’s solid bankers, 2. FS banks got their comeuppance last year when commercial banks refused to loan them money and they had to go to Uncle Sam to get bailed out; they are embarrassed but not humbled and they want more , 3. the Federal Reserve saved the Wall Street wealth of America (the FS banks) and wants to prevent a second occurrence, and 4. Obama’s Administration sees that the FS banks are arrogant and unregulated and that, without Obama’s push on them, Geithner and Summers would let the FS banks do what they want.
The Prez is unhappy that this mess was not all sorted out earlier this year and he absolutely will not tolerate any bank thinking that it can snub its nose at the US government. And $16B in bonuses is a big snub. (Obama may regret not nationalizing the FS banks when he had an opportunity. He chose capitalism instead and bailed them out.)
Now that Obama has told the FS banks to “Bring it on”, we will see if he can bring them to heel. They have lots of money and influence. Obama has Congress and the Fed Reserve. A fair fight , I should think.
The FS banks also have Arianna Huffington against them. She is urging people to take their money out of the big banks and put it in community banks. A good idea , I believe. The Commerical banks loan money to corporations and governments and Arianna’s Move Your Money project should not impact them but the FS banks may be hurt by Arianna’s project if their cash on hand is reduced significantly.
Hey, Dems: If the people really don’t want it, could they possibly have a point?
By Charles Krauthammer
On January 14, five days before the Massachusetts special election, President Obama was in full bring-it-on mode as he rallied House Democrats behind his health-care reform. “If Republicans want to campaign against what we’ve done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have.”
The bravado lasted three days. When Obama campaigned in Boston on January 17 for Obamacare supporter Martha Coakley, not once did he mention the health-care bill. When your candidate is sinking, you don’t throw her a millstone.
After Coakley’s defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration “not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Let’s get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that . . . it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent.
And the Democrats are delusional: Scott Brown won by running against Obama, not against Bush. He won by brilliantly nationalizing the race, running hard against the Obama agenda, most notably Obamacare. Killing it was his No. 1 campaign promise.
via The Meaning of Brown by Charles Krauthammer on National Review Online.
One might think that a $15,000 donation to charity for victims of Haiti’s earthquakes is a generous response to a terrible tragedy. In general, one might be correct.
In particular, this $15,000 donation came yesterday, more than a week after the 7.0 magnitude quake decimated the small nation. It came from our President and First Lady, out of their personal bank account. And it came for the following reason:
“[T]he Obamas were inspired to give upon seeing the response of millions of Americans who have given generously during tough economic times.” [Link]
Not the day of the earthquake; not the day after, nor the day after that. It was over a week later that the Obamas decided to donate. Not because they realized that the cause was worthy, but because the generosity of the American people was showing them up.
Americans have been giving at what could be a record pace. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, as of Saturday, $150 million has been donated by Americans.
That’s more than the U.S. government has committed so far…
Not that this lack of generosity is unusual for the Obamas. As the Huffington Post reports:
Up until recent years when their income increased sharply from book revenues and a Senate salary, Obama’s family donated a relatively minor amount of its earnings to charity. From 2000 through 2004, the senator and his wife never gave more than $3,500 a year in charitable donations — about 1 percent of their annual earnings. In 2005, however, that total jumped to $77,315 (4.7 percent of annual earnings), and to $60,307 in 2006 (6.1 percent).
Among those charitable donations, the Obamas listed “a $13,107 contribution to the Congressional Black Caucus as a charity gift”, HuffPo states.
Americans are arguably the most generous people in the world. Whenever there is a need, Americans donate tens and hundreds of millions of dollars almost instantly. Regardless of the economic situation or the state of our bank accounts, we donate whatever we can. Not only in emergencies like Haiti, but also on a regular basis, we donate to food pantries, soup kitchens, orphanages, church outreach efforts. We are Americans. We give.
It is unfortunate, then, that our nation’s leader only gives when it becomes politically expedient.
The White House and congressional Democrats have reached a tentative deal to set up a task force that could make it easier for lawmakers to approve tax increases, spending cuts or other unpopular measures needed to reduce budget deficits, lawmakers and aides said on Tuesday.
If you can’t get Congress to vote your way just set up a commission to do it, I guess. This is brazen, especially on the heels of the repudiation of new taxes under the guise of health care reform.
It’s incredibly difficult this morning not to be over-the-top excited for Scott Brown, especially when you see hard-core liberal ”operatives” proclaiming a Brown win.
I keep praying the outcome reflects the enthusiasm and hard work of so many–on the right, on the left, and down the middle–but I know we must overcome what Mark Steyn dubbed “the margin of Acorn, the margin of lawyer, and the margin of Franken-style recounts.”
I searched for something this morning to to quell my election day jitters, and stumbled upon this, “Panic: Why Democrats need to take a deep, deep breath. Maybe two” at The New Republic. Jonathan Chait argues that Democrats didn’t overreach or misjudge the mandate they were handed, they’ve just stumbled upon the misfortune of timing given the economic climate. This from someone who claims that over a third of the stimulus consisted of tax cuts and cites a ”consensus” of economists who think it helped the economy. I digress. Obviously, my ability to see the forest for the trees differs greatly from Mr. Chait’s.
But what shocked me most about his op-ed was the end.
The GOP’s ability to ignore establishment nostrums in the face of defeat is its great electoral strength. Democrats, by contrast, have a congenital tendency to panic. Abandoning health care reform after they’ve already paid whatever political cost that comes from voting for it in both houses would be suicide. Even if Coakley loses, the House could pass the Senate bill as is, avoiding the need to break a filibuster, and tinker with it in a reconciliation bill that can’t be filibustered. The only thing preventing the Democrats from following through would be sheer panic.
Remember the classic scene in It’s a Wonderful Life? Facing a run on his building and loan, George Bailey tries to explain to his frantic customers how to look after their self-interest. “Don’t you see what’s happening?” he pleads, “Potter isn’t selling. Potter’s buying! And why? Because we’re panicking and he’s not.” President Obama’s great challenge right now is to be his party’s George Bailey.
Obama needs to be his party’s George Bailey? Seriously? I’m not sure if I should laugh at your inability to see the world or cry because of it.
George Bailey consistently puts everyone else’s needs ahead of his own. He is pure of heart. He learns that life is sacred. If anything, Obama is Mr. Potter: willing to steal and conceal the truth for his own personal gain. (Or in Rahm’s words: “never let a crisis go to waste.”)
Have ideological boundaries shifted so severely that liberals can’t tell the good guy from the bad guy even in fiction?!
The folks at ABC repeated the White House claims of “Shakespearean” tragedy if Brown wins today in Massachusetts. What strikes me is the emphasis placed on it being a tragedy for the White House. It’s all about him.
Hey folks: the only Shakespeare that comes to mind in watching Obama is Richard III. (As an aside: the only live performance I’ve seen of Richard III was at the Globe in London. All female cast. Oddly enough, that leering woman reminds me of our dear leader. All that’s missing is the hunchback.)
Launched from a barge off the U.S. coast, an EMP attack consisting of one nuclear warhead attached to a single missile might shut down much of the country and kill all except 30 million Americans.[2] Such an attack has been described as “a ‘giant continental time machine’ that would move us back more than a century in technology to the late 1800s”—and effectively destroy our great nation.[3] Yet, President Obama seems oblivious to this fact, and is doing nothing to protect us from perhaps the greatest threat faced by the United States.[4][5]
Reporting to Congress, an EMP commission concluded that little in the private sector is hardened to withstand such an attack, and the American military has only limited protection. According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, “China and Russia have the capability to launch an EMP weapon—and have let us know it.”[6] However, imagine if such a weapon falls into the hands of al-Qaeda or other terrorists who are willing to commit suicide to destroy America. What has really scared the commission members is a relatively unsophisticated EMP weapon in the hands of these terrorists. As frightening as such a possibility seems, it is very real and likely unless we take action now.
According to the Journal’s editorial, “Mother of All Blackouts,” an EMP or “Electromagnetic Pulse” attack occurs “when an enemy sets off a nuclear explosion high in the Earth’s atmosphere. The electromagnetic pulse generated by the blast destroys the electronics and satellites in its field of vision. For a detonation above the Midwest, that could mean the entire continental U.S.”[7] The editorial continues:
No American would necessarily die in the initial attack, but what comes next is potentially catastrophic. The pulse would wipe out most electronics and telecommunications, including the power grid. Millions could die for want of modern medical care or even of starvation since farmers wouldn’t be able to harvest crops and distributors wouldn’t be able to get food to supermarkets.
The editorial adds: “[I]magine a blackout that lasts for months, or years.” Also, “[a]fter an EMP assault, the nation would be highly vulnerable to secondary attack by conventional forces or a biological weapon.”[8]
Frightening beyond belief, to say the least. But it gets worse. The “Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack” (or the EMP Commission)[9], which was created in 2000 to examine the possibility of an EMP attack and its aftermath, delivered its reports to Congress in 2004 and thereafter. Yet, they have been languishing while the Democrats seek to push through ObamaCare, which a majority of Americans oppose—and which would be rendered moot by an EMP attack because there would not be any health care in the U.S., as all medical facilities close.
The difference between a conventional nuclear attack—such as the World War II atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, at the end of the war in the Pacific with Japan—and an EMP attack is that the former destroys cities primarily; whereas, an EMP attack potentially destroys our country as a whole and kills most Americans. Also, such a calamity might be accomplished by our enemies with a single warhead that is launched from the Gulf of Mexico, the Sea of Cortez, or off our Atlantic or Pacific Coasts. In fact, one wonders why any sophisticated enemy of the United States would contemplate an attack other than with an EMP weapon.
As the Wall Street Journal’s editorial stated:
The Commission offers a series of recommendations for reducing U.S. vulnerability. It calls for better intelligence, particularly in coastal waters. Also needed are “vigorous interdiction and interception efforts” such as missile defense. Critical components of civilian infrastructure—especially the electrical power grid—need to be EMP-hardened. Most new units can be hardened for 1% to 3% of cost if done at the time of design and manufacture. Hardening existing systems can cost 10 times as much.[10]
Tragically, President Obama and the Democrats have been cutting back on our military precisely when it has been performing magnificently and its continued strength is needed most. For example, they have been paring down our missile defenses, which are critical to protecting us against an EMP attack from which we might not recover.[11]
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass), the first black senator since Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War. He practices law in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles with his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates (www.naegele.com). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA, as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He is a member of the District of Columbia and California bars. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal. Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years. See, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles
[2] See, e.g., http://newsmax.com/Newsfront/gringrich-emp-weapon/2009/03/29/id/329110 (“Some studies estimate that 90 percent of all Americans might very well die in the year after such an attack as our transportation, food distribution, communications, public safety, law enforcement, and medical infrastructures collapse”), http://www.heritage.org/Research/BallisticMissileDefense/wm2512.cfm
[3] See http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109226576685389289,00.html; see also http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121564702233840875.html?mod=d and http://newsmax.com/Newsfront/gringrich-emp-weapon/2009/03/29/id/329110 and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703363704574503432517397934.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews and http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/iran_nuclear_plan/2008/07/29/117217.html
[4] Before and after the presidential election of 2008, I was in touch with someone who has been and remains very close to Barack Obama and at least two of his principal advisers—one of whom is at the president’s side constantly in the White House. I warned the person repeatedly about the risk of an EMP attack that might destroy the U.S. and kill all except for about 30 million Americans. For example, in July 2008, I described such a possibility as follows:
Aside from threats from China and Russia, the use of such an attack by terrorists could be devastating to this country. Clearly, measures must be taken now to “harden” the U.S. against such attacks, and to prevent them in the first place. Having worked in military intelligence at the Pentagon, my guess is that an EMP attack may be high on the list of options for terrorists, because the impact of such an attack might make 9/11 seem like a walk in the park.
In late October 2009, I went on to discuss “an EMP attack by (1) al-Qaeda, (2) Iran and its proxies, (3) North Korea, (4) Russia and its surrogates, and/or (5) China and its surrogates,” and I concluded:
Everything else (e.g., ObamaCare, the economy, Afghanistan) pales beside it. Indeed, it might determine the future of our kids and their kids. Again, . . . hopefully you can use your influence to address this issue now.
To the best of my knowledge, nothing has been done by this person or the president to deal with this issue of critical importance to the welfare and survivability of the American people.
[5] See http://newsmax.com/Newsfront/gringrich-emp-weapon/2009/03/29/id/329110 (“Funding for EMP defense must be a top national priority. To downgrade or halt our missile defense program, which at last is becoming viable after 25 years of research, would be an action of criminal negligence”—and potentially grounds for impeachment of Obama)
[6] See http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109226576685389289,00.html; see also http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121564702233840875.html?mod=d (“Iran may already have the capability to target the U.S. with a short-range missile by launching it from a freighter off the East Coast. A few years ago it was observed practicing the launch of Scuds from a barge in the Caspian Sea. This would be especially troubling if Tehran is developing EMP—electromagnetic pulse—technology.”)
[7] See http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109226576685389289,00.html
[8] See id. See also http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121564702233840875.html?mod=d (“A nuclear weapon detonated a hundred miles over U.S. territory would create an electromagnetic pulse that would virtually shut down the U.S. economy by destroying electronic circuits on the ground”). Gone would be lights, heat, air conditioning, TVs, computers, phones, the Internet and all other forms of electronic communications, and all gasoline pumps for cars and trucks . . . and the list goes on and on, seemingly forever and covering all electronic equipment on which a modern society like the U.S. depends.
[9] See http://www.empcommission.org/
[10] See http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109226576685389289,00.html
[11] Compare http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121564702233840875.html?mod=d (“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Prague signing an agreement that’s a first step toward protecting Europe from ballistic missile attack”) with the fact that upon assuming the presidency, Barack Obama scuttled the missile defense system for Eastern Europe to appease Russia’s “dictator-for-life” Putin—who is a smoother version of Stalin, and should be treated as our enemy. See also http://newsmax.com/Newsfront/gringrich-emp-weapon/2009/03/29/id/329110 (“Even as the new administration plans to spend trillions on economic bailouts, it has announced plans to reduce funding and downgrade efforts for missile defense. Furthermore, the United States’ reluctance to invest in a modern and credible traditional nuclear deterrent is a serious concern. What good will a bailout be if there is no longer a nation to bail out?”)
Thomas Sowell: The verbal packaging of consumer choice as business “control” has become so widespread that few people seem to feel a need to do anything so basic as thinking about the meaning of the words they are using, which transform an ex post statistic into an ex ante condition.
By saying that businesses have “power” because they have “control” of their markets, this verbal virtuosity opens the way to saying that government needs to exercise its “countervailing power” (John Kenneth Galbraith’s phrase) in order to protect the public.
(Galbraith being a Keynesian economist and prominent Liberal ‘thinker’ and a model for liberals like President Obama)
Despite the verbal parallels, government power is in fact power, since individuals do not have a free choice as to whether to obey government laws and regulations, while consumers are free to ignore the products marketed by even the biggest and supposedly most “powerful” corporations in the world. There are people who have never set foot in a Wal-Mart store and there is nothing that Wal-Mart can do about it, despite being the world’s largest retailer.
And I know such people.
Henry Ford pioneered in mass production methods and had some of the highest paid workers of his day — decades before the industry was unionized — and the lowest priced cars, notably the legendary Model T, which made the car no longer a luxury confined to the wealthy.
But none of these plain facts prevailed against the vision of the Progressive era intelligentsia, who in this case included President Theodore Roosevelt. His administration launched antitrust prosecutions against some of the biggest price cutters, including Standard Oil and the Great Northern Railroad.
Roosevelt sought the power, in his words, to “control and regulate all big combinations.” He declared that “of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.”
No doubt it was true, as TR said, that Standard Oil created “enormous fortunes” for its owners “at the expense of business rivals,” but it is questionable whether consumers who paid lower prices for oil felt that they were victims of a tyranny.
One of the popular muckraking books of the Progressive era was “The History of the Standard Oil Company” by Ida Tarbell. The book said among other things that Rockefeller “should have been satisfied” with what he had achieved financially by 1870, implying greed in his continued efforts to increase the size and profitability of Standard Oil.
A study done a century later, however, pointed out: “One might never know from reading ‘The History of Standard Oil’ that oil prices were actually falling.”
That fact had been filtered out of the story. The question whether Rockefeller’s pursuit of a larger fortune made the consuming public worse off was seldom even addressed.
How consumers would have been better off if a man who introduced extraordinary efficiencies into the production and distribution of oil had ended his career earlier, leaving both the cost of producing oil and the resulting prices higher, is a question not raised, much less answered.
Businesses that charge lower prices often lead to losses by competing businesses that charge higher prices. But, obvious as this might seem, it has not stopped outcries over the years from the intelligentsia, legislation from politicians and adverse court decisions from judges, aimed not only at Standard Oil in the early 20th century, but also later at other businesses that reduced prices in other industries, ranging from the A&P grocery chain in the past to Microsoft today.
In short, the verbal transformation of lower prices and larger sales into an exercise of “power” by business that has to be counteracted by more government power has more than purely intellectual implications. It has led to many laws, policies and court decisions that punish lower prices in the name of protecting consumers.
As a result of the spread of globalization, even if a particular company is the only producer of a given product in a given country, that monopoly means little if foreign producers of the same product compete in supplying that product to the consumers.
Eastman Kodak has long been the only major American producer of film, but camera stores across America also sell film produced in Japan (Fuji) and sometimes in England (Ilford) and in other countries, quite aside from the competition from digital cameras, produced primarily overseas.
In short, Kodak’s ability to jack up film prices without suffering lost sales is hemmed in by substitutes. The fact that Eastman Kodak is a huge enterprise does not change any of that, except in the visions and rhetoric of the intelligentsia.
The straining of words to depict businesses as exercising “power” in situations where consumers simply buy more of their products has been used to justify depriving people who run businesses of the rights exercised by other people. This attitude can even extend to putting the burden of proof on businesses to rebut accusations in certain antitrust cases and civil rights cases.
A somewhat similar mind-set was expressed in a question asked in the Economist magazine: “Why should companies be allowed to dodge taxes and sack workers by shifting operations overseas?”
In free countries, no one else’s right to relocate for their own benefit is treated as something requiring some special justification. Indeed, workers who relocate to other countries in violation of immigration laws are often defended by those who consider it wrong for businesses to relocate legally.
So are “Big Oil” and “Big Tobacco” and “Big Pharma” business successes that have to be punished for being successful.
That the people, the consumers, must be protected from their “power” by the government’s “power”?
So the Liberal Intelligensia want to destroy them, and replace them with their own.
And use the cudgel of Government “control” and “power” to save the people from something they actually don’t need saving from.
That gets THEM more “power”.
Because then the people will look to them to save them.
When in fact, they are being enslaved all over again.
Doesn’t that kind of sound like the “War on Poverty” started over 40 years ago?
And explain why the Liberals hate Bank CEOs because they dare to give bonuses to their employees. But if Congress porks certain groups or gives them special deals (Cornhusker Kickback, Union “Cadillac” Deal” etc) that’s ok.
CEO’s salaries must be “controlled” except for the government ones, Like GM, Chrysler, Fannie and Freddie. (Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Michael Williams and Freddie Mac CEO Charles Haldeman Jr. are each eligible for compensation of as much as $6 million this year, the companies said Thursday in regulatory filings.
In addition to the CEO pay, 10 additional executives at the two companies are eligible collectively for $30.1 million in compensation for 2009.–NY Post 12/24/09)
Have you seen them vilified in the Ministry of Truth Mainstream Media??
No.
Will you?
No.
Overall, pay for top executives of the mortgage-finance companies is down 40% from before they were seized, the regulator said in a statement.
So this “control” is considered “good” in fact.
Because they are defending the “middle class” person and “small business” against the “power” of “big business”.
After all, the whole of the last year of Health Care “reform” was about lower costs. But in the end it’s come down to “control” not costs.
Hence, the Democrats meet in secret to work out how to pass the “control”, and not actually address the “costs” because the “Control” is the “cost” to them.
Most radio and television stations stopped functioning, and the airwaves were only punctuated by a few rare radio appeals for help Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A man being helped following a powerful 7.0 quake that struck Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010 Photo: AFP/Getty
A young girl cries after Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince is hit by a powerful earthquake Photo: PHOTOSHOT
Haiti’s presidential palace before (top) and after the earthquake Photo: AFP/GETTY
A major international relief effort was launched yesterday to hurry rescuers and suppliers to the Caribbean country as the streets of Port-au-Prince were left strewn with corpses and shattered buildings.
Haiti Earthquake updates
Little escaped the devastation wrought by the grade 7.0-magnitude quake that struck the area in the south of Haiti on Tuesday afternoon.
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Hospitals and schools collapsed and were reportedly full of dead while 200 foreigners were missing from the city’s expensive Hotel Montana.
Up to 200 United Nations staff in the city were unaccounted for last night including the civilian head of mission, Hedi Annabi of Tunisia, after its headquarters was flattened.
Monsignor Serge Miot, the city’s Catholic archbishop, was a confirmed casualty, his body pulled from the rubble of his offices while his vicar general, Charles Benoit, was missing.
The presidential palace, Haiti’s grandest building, was substantially destroyed and its incumbent, Rene Preval, described the scene in his capital as “unimaginable”.
He said he had been stepping over the bodies of the dead and hearing the cries of the trapped underneath his country’s collapsed parliament building.
His prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, said the government believed the death toll in the city of two million people was “well over 100,000″ while Youri Latortue, a senior senator, said it could be 500,000.
Both admitted they had no way of knowing but aid workers on the scene reported widespread destruction and suffering as severely injured people lay in the streets, unable to get medical assistance.
Haiti, the poorest country by far in the western hemisphere, was already struggling to recover from a series of severe hurricanes and flooding in 2008.
The country sits on a major fault line and scientists have warned for years that it was likely to be hit by a major earthquake.
Well it’s been more than a year since He “moved on up” to the White House, and His people are still on the street corner with their hands out hoping for change.
“Unemployment for African Americans is projected to reach a 25-year high this year, according to a study released Thursday by an economic think tank, with the national rate soaring to 17.2 percent and the rates in five states exceeding 20 percent…
According to the Economic Policy Institute report, the unemployment rate for blacks is projected to reach a not-seasonally adjusted rate of 17.2 percent in the third quarter of this year, up from 15.5 percent during the same period last year. And the rate for Hispanics is forecast to jump to 13.9 percent from 12.4 percent. The study is based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data and projections from Moody’s Economy.com. MORE
But it is not just the black population that is feeling the invisible hand of Obamanomics. Across the board unemployment rates are at historic highs… some estimates have it as high as 18%. And what is the White House focusing on?
Raising taxes to pay for health care, bailouts to the auto industry, insurance giants such as AIG, and the list goes on… The American Dream is being deflated and replaced by the Obama Pipe Dream.
I am beginning to think that Obama inhaled and never exhaled. He is so “high” on his own image, voice, persona, and place in history that he has forgotten the office he was elected to.
This was supposed to be the most transparent, new minded, innovative, accomplished, goal oriented, administration the USA has ever seen, instead it is more secretive, diabolical, and arrogant than the Nixon administration ever came close to.
It is time for a change. If this were a parliament we would be calling for a vote of no confidence, and demand an election be held. I am calling for a vote of no confidence on Obama, and the Congress… We need to clean house.
Alfred de Montesquiou and Mike Melia / Associated Press – January 16, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Pushed to the far edge of desperation, earthquake-ravaged Haitians dumped decaying bodies into mass graves and begged for water and food Friday amid fear that time is running out to avoid chaos and to rescue anyone still alive in the wreckage.
The U.S. military brought some relief, taking control of the airport, helping coordinate flights bringing in aid and evacuating foreigners and the injured. Medical teams, meanwhile, set up makeshift hospitals, workers started to clear the streets of corpses and water was being distributed in pockets of the city. But the task was enormous.
Aid workers and authorities warned that unless they can quickly get aid to the people, Port-au-Prince will degenerate into lawlessness.
There were reports of isolated looting as young men walked through downtown with machetes, and robbers reportedly shot one man whose body was left on the street. Survivors also fought each other for food pulled from the debris.
“I’m getting the sense that if the situation doesn’t get sorted (out) real soon, it will devolve into chaos,” said Steve Matthews, a veteran relief worker with the Christian aid organization World Vision.
Time also was running out to rescue anyone who may still be trapped alive in the many buildings in Port-au-Prince that collapsed in Tuesday’s magnitude-7.0 quake.
(GiaVang.com.vn – Giá vàng Việt Nam và Thế Giới) – Giá vàng đã tăng 20% trong năm nay và hướng tới năm tăng giá thứ 9 liên tiếp.
Giá vàng tại thị trường New York hạ sau thời kỳ tăng giá lên mức quá cao, nhà đầu tư bán vàng để kiếm lời.
giá vàng trong phiên giao dịch hôm qua đã có lúc lên mức 1.072,70USD/ounce tại thị trường New York, mức giá cao kỷ lục. Tính từ đầu tháng đến nay, giá vàng luôn đóng cửa trên mức 1.000USD/ounce.
giá vàng giao tháng 12/2009 hạ 30 cent xuống mức 1.064,70USD/ounce tại thị trường New York. Trong phiên giao dịch, đã có lúc giá vàng hạ khoảng 0,8%.
Giá vàng đã tăng 20% trong năm nay và hướng tới năm tăng giá thứ 9 liên tiếp, USD trong khi đó giảm 7,1% so với các đồng tiền khác trong rỏ tiền tệ. Phó chủ tịch FED cho biết lãi suất cơ bản đồng USD sẽ duy trì ở mức thấp trong một thời gian dài.
Để cứu kinh tế, chính quyền Tổng thống Obama đã buộc phải vay nợ mạnh tay. Ngày một nhiều chuyên gia dự đoán việc tăng nguồn cung tiền vào nền kinh tế sẽ khiến đồng USD ngày một mất giá trị và đẩy lạm phát tăng cao.
Chỉ số Reuters/Jefferies CRB của 19 loại nguyên liệu thô tăng lên mức cao nhất trong 11 tháng trong phiên giao dịch ngày hôm qua.
FED đã hạ lãi suất xuống gần mức 0%, hỗ trợ mua tài sản và mở rộng chương trình tín dụng để ứng phó với khủng hoảng kinh tế. FED hiện vẫn tiếp tục các chương trình mua chứng khoán đảm bảo bằng thế chấp, nợ liên bang và trái phiếu Bộ Tài chính…
Giá dầu thô giao tháng 11/2009 tăng 1,03USD/thùng tương đương 1,4% lên mức 75,18USD/thùng tại thị trường New York, mức giá đóng cửa cao nhất từ ngày 14/10/2008. Giá dầu đã tăng 695 trong năm nay.
Thông tin mới công bố cho thấy dự trữ dầu của Mỹ tuần trước giảm 172 nghìn thùng xuống 339,2 triệu thùng.
Giá dầu giao tháng 11/2009 tăng 70 cent tương đương 1% và chốt phiên tại mức 73,10USD/thùng tại thị trường London. Mức đóng cửa trên là cao nhất từ ngày 24/08.
Thanks for Low Carbon Sg for their tweet and facebook sharing of this article. You may find the original article here. Oh and just a quick comment! I especially like the part about “Hopenhaggling for a Miracle”. I know it’s long but do read!
The End of Magical Climate Thinking
One year ago, America’s president said he was going to start a green-energy revolution. Here’s why the Obama administration failed — and what needs to come next.
Originally published at Foreign Policy
By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
There was good reason to be hopeful in January of 2009 that the election of Barack Obama would bring about America’s long-awaited clean energy revolution. As president-elect, Obama had started to talk about energy policy in a way that no leader of either party had before. Promising to save the country from both severe recession and industrial decline, Obama described the transformation of America’s energy economy as a defining challenge of his presidency — an economic and national security imperative that Congress would fail to address at the nation’s peril.
But the reality fell far short of expectations. The Obama administration succumbed, like many others, to a sort of magical climate thinking that promised a painless and even prosperous transition to a low-carbon future with the tools already at hand. The only official within his administration to accurately grasp the technology challenges we faced, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, was sidelined at crucial moments.
Don’t Write A Check Congress Won’t Cash: Obama’s clean energy rhetoric consistently embraces public investment in technology innovation, but proposed climate legislation does not come close to making the $15 billion annual investment he has promised.
Here is the back-story of how the Obama administration dramatically raised and then dashed America’s — and the world’s — hopes that 2009 would be a pivotal year for remaking our collective energy future.
One year ago, in his first State of the Union address Obama proposed a previously unprecedented $15 billion annual investment in clean energy research and development. Further, he appointed a technologist, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Chu, as Energy secretary to oversee that investment. The $800 billion stimulus, passed shortly thereafter, gave further credence to the notion that after 30 years of false starts, overblown rhetoric, and outright neglect, Congress and the president might finally get serious about remaking America’s energy economy.
The stimulus included billions for energy R&D, infrastructure, and efficiency and overturned the conventional wisdom that the United States would never again make big federal investments in technology as it had during the Cold War. But no sooner had the president’s stimulus program demonstrated that a new way forward on climate and energy might be possible then the new administration relinquished its energy and climate policy to the partisans of the past.
A new administration is always an inchoate thing, a reflection of the divergent and conflicting interests that make broad and successful electoral coalitions possible. The Obama administration was no different, and when it came to energy and climate, a tangled text of sub-rosa commitments — to various carbon emissions targets and timetables, to making clean energy “the profitable kind of energy,” to investing in clean coal, nuclear power, and solar tax credits alike — lay beneath the banner headlines about clean energy investments and green jobs.
As the new administration took shape, the question of how those various commitments would be reconciled was largely unresolved. But the senior team that Obama assembled to lead the administration’s climate and energy efforts held some clues. Chu, as it turned out, was the only prominent energy technology advocate given a senior role in the administration. Virtually every other key policy role was filled by environmental regulators — former Environmental Protection Agency head Carol Browner as climate czar, former Browner aide Lisa Jackson at EPA, and Nancy Sutley at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).
Putting Browner, a former Al Gore aide, in charge of climate policy was payback to environmental groups and the green donors who had supported Obama’s campaign. But it also signaled that, inside the White House, the clean energy investment message that the president had used to such great effect in winning battleground states like Ohio and Colorado was seen as just that: a powerful message to use in the campaign, not a policy priority.
In this, Obama was following two decades of magical thinking among both greens and liberal Democrats about energy technology. In this view, energy efficiency pays for itself, solar and wind power are already nearly cost-competitive with fossil fuels, and both can quickly and cheaply reduce emissions. This Pollyanna view of fossil fuel alternatives and efficiency, which makes going green seem cheap and easy — “little more than the cost of a postage stamp a day” — has provided the justification for green policy advocacy that has overwhelmingly focused upon pollution regulations and carbon pricing while ignoring serious investment in energy research and development.
The price of Obama’s failure to break with green climate orthodoxy is only now becoming apparent. The collapse of international climate negotiations last month was just the latest evidence that efforts to regulate global pollution output cannot succeed. The Kyoto framework, which imagined that carbon pollution limits could be the primary driver of the complete transformation of the global energy economy, has irretrievably failed.
The real technological obstacles to decarbonizing the global economy today represent an insurmountable obstacle to political efforts to limit carbon emissions. Until policy makers get serious about addressing the central technological challenge, all efforts to control carbon emissions are doomed.
Chewed Up
Little Scientist in the Big City: Energy Secretary Steven Chu never bought the myth that we have all the technology we need, but he’s found himself in a situation where he must support legislation constructed on that premise.
Steven Chu came to Washington expecting to manage a massive expansion of energy R&D. Chu had cut his teeth as a research scientist at the justly famed U.S. government-funded Bell Labs, which he saw as a model since they were responsible for inventing or developing a range of devices now part of the fabric of American life, from fax machines to TV transmission, radio astronomy, solar panel cells, the transistor, calculators, cell phones, WiFi, and hundreds of other technological miracles.
Chu had never bought the idea that, in Al Gore’s words, “we have all the technology we need” to solve the climate problem. Instead, he told the New York Times, “Nobel-caliber breakthroughs” are required in chemistry, physics, and biology in order to make more efficient batteries, solar panels, and biofuels that can compete with fossil fuels in price, and that nuclear power is needed to displace coal.
Unfortunately, his view hasn’t shaped the actions of the administration or Democrats in Congress. By early spring it was clear that Democratic leaders in the House and Senate budget committees were not inclined to honor the president’s request for a dramatic scale-up of federal clean energy R&D and that the White House was not inclined to fight for it. And with greens and establishment Democrats fully lost in the magical idea that we can achieve massive emissions reductions through conservation, efficiency, and existing renewable technologies, there was scarcely any constituency inside the beltway for the kind of big energy technology program that Chu had hoped to launch.
Incumbent energy interests were happy to indulge the magical thinking by green groups and Democrats, who have been certain since the Carter administration that solar and wind are on the verge of becoming economically competitive with coal and oil. And so a deal was cut by green groups, coal utilities, and Rep. Henry Waxman and Rep. Ed Markey, who authored the legislation. Energy firms could purchase offsets rather than reduce their own emissions for far off into the future. The price of carbon dioxide would hover around $15 per ton — a far cry from the $70 per ton that Chu had suggested would be needed to result in significant deployment of clean energy technologies. And utilities would be given trillions in free pollution credits even while raising the price of energy for consumers.
The green giants in Washington — Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Center for American Progress (CAP) — all claimed that cap and trade would constitute a breakthrough, and Chu dutifully defended the legislation, expecting it would include his $15 billion for R&D.
But Waxman and Markey ended up using virtually all of the money raised from carbon auctions to buy off fossil fuel interests, leaving virtually nothing for technology innovation. Believing that a carbon price — any carbon price — would work as a quasi-mystical “price signal” on the market, ushering in a world of solar farms and electric cars, they stiffed Chu.
Friend of Fossil Fuel: Instead of reigning in top carbon emitters, Representative Waxman co-authored legislation that hands out allowances to the Fossil Fuel industry permitting them to maintain business-as-usual emissions for years.
In the end, Waxman-Markey would give R&D $1.1 billion a year, less than a third of current levels, and would give coal and utility companies $32 billion.
A Conjuror’s Trick
Waxman-Markey passed the House last summer by a scant few votes, even as it became glaringly obvious to everyone who dared look that it would not require emissions reductions below business-as-usual levels.
Green groups insisted that the bill would reduce emissions and pointed reporters and green donors to allegedly independent analyses by the World Resources Institute (WRI). But WRI, a major party to the cap and trade agreement negotiated by EDF and NRDC with energy companies, simply used a magic accounting trick that was visible in plain sight: counting carbon offsets as real reductions of U.S. emissions.
Offsets typically fund activities such as tree planting or methane capture from landfills and have proven over the last decade to be extremely unreliable, when they have not been outright fraudulent. The extensive use of offsets in Waxman-Markey would have allowed U.S. emissions to rise at business as usual rates over the next decade rather than declining 17 percent below 2005 levels, as proponents of the bill claimed.
Nevertheless, WRI created graphs showing U.S. emissions magically going down 17 percent by 2020 and nearly 80 percent by 2050, the New York Times duly reprinted them, and partisans on both sides of the debate tacitly agreed to pretend as if proponents’ farcical claims about the bill’s mandated emissions reductions were true.
Doing so served all involved. The White House, Democrats in Congress, and national green groups could claim that progress was finally at hand to address climate change after eight years of Bush administration obstructionism. Republicans could attack the bill as a radical environmental plan to destroy the U.S. economy.
Miss Not-So-Independent: As part of USCAP, WRI helped write the cap and trade legislation under congressional scrutiny, but still portrays its analysis as independent when it counts carbon offsets as real emissions reductions.
In this, domestic climate politics, like international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, had become a simulacrum of reality. Democrats and Republicans had, in the course of a few short months, effectively switched policy positions on energy, with Democrats voting to hand trillions in new subsidies to coal burning utilities and power plants while gutting Clean Air Act restrictions on the construction of new coal fired power plants, and Republicans, longstanding coal boosters, voting against a pro-coal bill.
But because hardly anybody other than the attorneys who were hired by the coal and energy companies to write the bill had actually read the 1,300-plus page document, legislators, reporters, and greens alike evaluated the proposal on its symbols, not its substance. The bill’s introduction claims to cap emissions and expand clean energy, and even though it would do neither, in the simulacrum that is global warming politics, these symbolic intentions were more than sufficient for Democrats and greens to proclaim the bill a “breakthrough” and for Republicans to vote en masse against it.
Incumbent energy interests had, in short, hijacked magical climate thinking for their own uses. They took cap and trade legislation and turned it into an opportunity for them to raise energy prices on consumers, invest a fraction of the higher revenues into clean energy, remove existing regulatory obstacles to the construction of new coal plants, and lock in their competitive advantage while crowding out energy newcomers, including clean energy firms, for decades to come.
Now ‘n’ Later: Incumbent coal utilities, like Duke Energy, hijacked magical thinking for their own purposes, happily promising to reduce emissions in 20 years — after receiving billions of dollars in allowances in advance.
Prominent defenders of the legislation like CAP spokesperson Joe Romm labeled green critics of the bill “global warming delayers” and told anyone who would listen that Waxman and Markey had pulled a fast one on the coal lobby. Duke Energy’s Jim Rogers played along, offering to gladly repay the American public in emissions reductions after 2030 for billions in free allowance allocations today.
Hopenhaggling for a Miracle
For the better part of a decade, U.S. greens, liberals, and E.U. policy-makers insisted that international efforts to reduce carbon emissions had floundered due to Bush administration intransigence. Once the United States put a serious plan to reduce its own emissions on the table, the argument went, the rest of the world would get serious about reducing emissions.
But even with a domestic cap approved in the House, Senate leadership promising to follow suit, and the president promising to sign it, U.S. negotiators were unable to secure emissions reduction commitments from China, India, or other developing nations. The further the Obama administration stepped out on the limb, promising emissions reduction action that had not yet passed the U.S. Congress, the further into the distance the agreement receded.
After the realization that Copenhagen would result in nothing — no new treaty, no emissions reductions, no new technology — the hunger for symbolism grew stronger. Greens formed the magic number 350 with their bodies, tweeted deliriously, and threw their lot in with tiny island protectorates like Tuvalu and the Maldives, who championed green demands for deeper emissions cuts. The United Nations hired an advertising agency to hokily brand the summit “Hopenhagen,” and create a creepy movie about global warming earthquakes and tsunamis menacing the dreams of a little girl.
Under pressure from green groups, Obama agreed to parachute into the talks at the end instead of the beginning to bolster the perception that progress was being made. But the talks that Obama parachuted into were going far worse than anyone had anticipated. Attendees had not even been able to agree upon a series of symbolic agreements. China sent increasingly lower-level diplomats to meet with Obama and even tried to block developed nations from making binding emissions reduction commitments.
When all was said and done, greens split over the denouement in predictable fashion. Grassroots greens cast Obama as Bush-lite and accused him of blowing up the talks and destroying the United Nations. National green leaders, who had spent the previous year insisting that progress toward capping U.S. carbon emissions would ensure the successful conclusion of a global emissions reduction agreement in Copenhagen, pretended like they’d never suggested that the the United Nation’s climate change conference could ever achieve such an outcome and praised Obama for ditching the U.N. and striking out to reach an agreement — any agreement — among major emitters.
Hokyhagen: The UN hokily branded its climate summit “Hopenhagen” and created a creepy movie about a little girl menaced by earthquakes and trsunamis.
But the intramural debate among greens about the utility of the United Nations as a venue for reaching emissions reduction agreements obscured the larger outcomes of Copenhagen. The entire Kyoto framework for reducing carbon emissions died with the U.N. climate negotiations at Copenhagen. While mainstream greens praised Obama for ditching the U.N. and getting China and other developing nations to discuss making their own climate commitments, they continue to imagine the final disposition of that process will be binding emissions reduction agreements among major emitting nations.
But such an outcome is unlikely. China and other developing nations are unlikely to agree to binding emissions reductions and the “national schedules” that some have proposed to take their place are unlikely to appease domestic constituencies in the United States and elsewhere concerned that domestic emissions reduction commitments will further exacerbate the economic advantages that China and other developing economies already have on their competitors in the developed world.
The Rise of Climate Realpolitik
The collapse of the Copenhagen talks marks not just the end of the United Nations as the primary venue for global climate negotiations but also the abandonment of binding emissions reduction targets and timetables as the primary vehicle for achieving emissions reductions. Targets will continue to be tossed around, either as aspirational goals or as loophole-riddled sops to appease greens. But the real international action on climate and energy will involve bilateral and multilateral negotiations to develop and deploy clean energy technologies.
Those negotiations will sometimes look like trade negotiations, sometimes like IMF negotiations, and sometimes like global agriculture or public health efforts. What they won’t look like is the impossible global pollution output negotiations that have defined international efforts to address climate change since the Rio climate convention 17 years ago.
In the wake of Copenhagen, leading green groups have doubled down on the passage of cap and trade legislation in the U.S. Senate in hopes of breathing life back into the global effort to regulate carbon emissions. Having now endorsed Obama’s abandonment of the U.N. process, greens have bet all their chips that Obama will show up to the next round of negotiations with major emitters with a domestic cap in hand.
Obama will no doubt make a show of attempting to do so. But should that effort fail, and its prospects are tenuous, there will be no hiding how profoundly the entire green framework for addressing climate change has failed.
Framework Funeral: It’s not just that the UNFCCC is dead; the framework as a driver of technological transformation is defunct.
The old Kyoto bogeymen, George Bush and Dick Cheney, have left the building, and Democrats control the largest congressional majority that either party has seen in a generation. Greens blame Republicans and fossil fuel “deniers,” but the truth is that if cap and trade fails it will fail due to a lack of Democratic votes and despite most of the U.S. energy industry backing the bill.
In the end, whether or not the Senate passes a cap in name only climate bill, the long-term failure of Kyoto and all other efforts to establish binding emissions caps is virtually assured and is a function of a basic technological problem. We simply do not have low carbon technologies today that can at large scale replace fossil fuels at a cost that any political economy in the world is willing to impose upon itself. There will be no political solution to climate change, no binding international agreement to substantially reduce emissions, and no effective domestic carbon cap until low-carbon technologies are much cheaper than they are today.
Unfortunately, pointing out this now fairly evident reality is viewed by most greens as an act of bad faith. In the simulated world of Hopenhagen, below-cost energy efficiency can deliver emissions reductions too cheap to meter; solar and wind power are already cheaper than coal; and “political will” along with new regulations and a modest carbon price will deliver technological miracles.
However, the technologies we need will not materialize in response to carbon prices or emissions caps. Nor will they arrive, as many conservatives would have it, by getting the government out of the way and simply allowing a new generation of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to tinker away in their garages.
Rather, we need to create a new clean energy economy in the same way we created our information economy: by identifying a set of well-defined technical problems and mobilizing the human resources of our technologically advanced civilization — our scientists, laboratories, universities, and engineers — to solve them.
These technical questions are not difficult to grasp, and in fact have already largely been laid out by Chu in his remarks to the New York Times. How do we convert sunlight into energy much more efficiently than solar panels do today? What combination of chemicals can store more energy in batteries that are smaller and lighter? How can we manufacture a next generation of self-contained nuclear reactors that are safer, smaller, and cheaper than the large ones of the 1950s and 60s? And how can we engineer new biological organisms to serve as a cheap fuel alternative to oil?
Solving global warming’s technology challenges will require not a single Apollo or Manhattan Project but many. We need to solve technical problems across a range of technologies and at a variety of stages along the road from technological development to demonstration to commercialization to mass deployment.
Leaving the comfortable precincts of Hopenhagen means taking a hard look at our current predicament. A sober assessment will acknowledge that fossil fuels are remarkable sources of energy — cheap, energy-dense, and widely available. That’s why oil, coal, and gas will not be easily displaced by present day renewable energy technologies that are expensive and intermittent, nor by energy efficiency measures that are more expensive to implement than their proponents have been willing to admit. Nor will green lifestyles and energy conservation reduce the average American’s consumption of energy by 80 percent over 40 years.
Properly chastened, we will turn away from the phony certainty and faked urgency that proponents of today’s failed top-down target-based approach trade in. Claims that we don’t have time to “wait for technological breakthroughs, and the related demands for policies that supposedly guarantee rapid and assured emissions reductions, have only served to delay the technological day of reckoning.
Apollo, Cubed: Solving the technology challenge that lies at the heart of the climate challenge will require not one but several Apollo Projects to make clean energy cheap.
The hard work of mobilizing the resources and institutions necessary to engineer our way to a low-carbon economy will look profoundly different from both the histrionics at Copenhagen and the slick sales pitch offered by carbon traders in Washington. International agreements to share in the burden and the benefits of developing better and cheaper low carbon energy technologies will represent the central focus of international climate negotiations. Such agreements will extend well beyond simply agreeing to underwrite more laboratory research. They will require large financial commitments to demonstrate these technologies and create physical and institutional infrastructures that can support their commercialization.
Transforming the global energy economy from fossil fuels to low-carbon alternatives over the next 50-100 years is such a monumental technological undertaking that it is quite understandable that many would either declare it impossible or retreat into magical thinking. We must resist these temptations.
Solving the technology challenge will not be easy, but in terms of our collective wealth and knowledge we are in a better position today than at any other point in our history to solve it. In the end, global efforts to address the climate challenge, if they are to succeed, must centrally focus upon the creation of a new and extraordinarily important global public good: the development of low carbon energy technologies that are cheap, clean, and abundant. After two decades of domestic and international failure to take real action on climate, it is time for the purveyors of magical thinking to take their exit so that the main act can begin.
Dr Raja Muhammad Khan | Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the people of Pakistan remained apprehensive about its role and future designs in South and Southwest Asia. Majority of analysts believe that the US has a long-term broad based agenda of regional domination with the intent to contain the rising Chinese influence and a resurgent Russia. Besides, it intends to dominate the natural resources of Central Asia and Caspian region to either deny the region to China and Russia or establish its own subsequent control there.Apart from these bigger agendas, the bulk of the Pakistani masses have been concerned about three legitimate consternations, which seriously threaten the safety and security of Pakistan. The first is the threat to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from none other than the United States. The second concern is about the growing US interest in procuring land in Pakistan and use of Pakistani air bases for the drone attacks in FATA. The third issue, which even gravely bothers Pakistan’s security, is the unprecedented Indian involvement in Afghanistan, which also is likely to have a direct linkage with United States.
By Timothy D. Naegele[1]
Most radio and television stations stopped functioning, and the airwaves were only punctuated by a few rare radio appeals for help Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A man being helped following a powerful 7.0 quake that struck Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010 Photo: AFP/Getty
A young girl cries after Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince is hit by a powerful earthquake Photo: PHOTOSHOT
Haiti’s presidential palace before (top) and after the earthquake Photo: AFP/GETTY
Giá vàng tại thị trường New York hạ sau thời kỳ tăng giá lên mức quá cao, nhà đầu tư bán vàng để kiếm lời.