U.S. is expected to reveal size of nuclear stockpile

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May 012010
 

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Walter Pincus
Washington Post, May 1, 2010

The Obama administration is likely to reveal a closely guarded secret — the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile — during a critical meeting starting Monday at which Washington will try to strengthen the global treaty that curbs the spread of nuclear weapons, several officials said.

Various factions in the administration have debated for months whether to declassify the numbers, and they were left out of President Obama‘s recent Nuclear Posture Review because of objections from intelligence officials. Now, the administration is seeking a dramatic announcement that will further enhance its nuclear credentials as it tries to shore up the fraying nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The numbers could be released as soon as Monday, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is to address the NPT Review Conference in New York, officials said. She will speak after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is likely to repeat his demands for more global controls over the stockpiles of the nuclear nations. Continue reading »

Obama’s Tea Party Straw Man

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Apr 282010
 

By Sean Parr
American Thinker, April 27, 2010

Why does it seem that the public is being told that the only demand the Tea Party activists have is that their taxes be lowered? Though the activists would doubtless welcome such an outcome, it is by no means the sole impetus of their objections. In fact, the demand is explicitly absent from their “Contract from America.”

The contract — a written expression of the will of those like-minded Americans who would sign it — serves to convey to U.S. public officials a consensus outcry for a policy agenda of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

Interestingly, only two of the ten recommendations from the Tea Party’s contract involve the topic of taxation, and contrary to what the public has been presented from both the White House and the news media, each of these recommendations is devoid of any mention of protest in response to cripplingly high taxes. The movement’s members request, and the contract stipulates, that the U.S. government ought to: Continue reading »

The time of testing is coming for Obama

 ENEMIES OF AMERICA, IRAN TENSIONS, PRESIDENT, RUSSIA*, SECURITY, TERRORISM, VENEZUELA*  No Responses »
Apr 242010
 

Jim Stuart
American Thinker, April 24, 2010

In 1962, after nuclear missiles were discovered in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy faced down his Soviet Rival Nikita Khrushchev, almost precipitating a nuclear exchange. The principal reason JFK took a firm stand was to protect his image. In those days, with the Cold War in full swing, it was important to maintain a posture of strength and resolve.

Each side was constantly testing the other for signs of weakness that could be exploited. Earlier in 1961, Kennedy had been humiliated at the Bay of Pigs, and Eisenhower had warned him that the Soviets would be emboldened as a result. So when the missiles were discovered, Kennedy’s primary concern was not any strategic advantage they might pose (the US had offsetting nuclear missiles already installed in Italy and Turkey), but rather, that he not appear weak. Such was his concern for his image of strength and resolve that he was willing to risk a nuclear confrontation. Continue reading »

What Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama?

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Apr 222010
 
Jonah Goldberg
Commentary Magazine, May 2010 Issue

The assertion that Barack Obama is a socialist became a hallmark of the 2008 presidential campaign. His opponent, John McCain, used Obama’s own extemporaneous words to an Ohio plumber as Exhibit A: “When you spread the wealth around,” Obama had said, “it’s good for everybody.” That, McCain insisted, sounded “a lot like socialism,” as did Obama’s proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy and high earners for the explicit purpose of taking better care of the lower and middle classes with that redistributed money.

Republicans believed they had hit a rhetorical mother lode with this line of argument in 2008, but their efforts to make hay of Obama’s putative socialism proved unedifying, if not outright comic. The National Committee of the Republican Party even formally considered a resolution on whether the Democratic party should change its name to “the Democratic Socialist Party” of the United States. The stunt was shelved infavor of compromise language lamenting the Democrats’ “march toward socialism.”

Fourteen months into his presidency, in March 2010, Obama succeeded in muscling through Congress a partial government takeover of the national health-care system. That legislative accomplishment followed Obama’s decision a year earlier, without congressional approval, to nationalize two of the country’s Big Three automobile companies. Continue reading »

Is Obama a Socialist?

 ECONOMICS, NEW AMERICA, PRESIDENT  No Responses »
Apr 222010
 

More like a corporatist.

by Steven Horwitz
The Freeman.com, April 22, 2010

In an April 14 Washington Post column , Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, took issue with conservatives (and presumably some libertarians) who call President Obama a socialist.  Ornstein’s counterargument largely consisted of demonstrating that most of Obama’s policies, from health care to the “stimulus” to foreign policy, were based on ideas proposed by conservatives or Republicans, or passed with their cooperation or approval.  He concludes:  “This president is a mainstream, pragmatic moderate, operating in the center of American politics; center-left, perhaps, but not left of center.” In other words, he is not “the most radical president in American history.”

There is much that is interesting in this argument, but I want to focus on two related points.  First, I agree with Ornstein that Obama is not a socialist, at least not in the usual ways that term is used.  However, that hardly means his ideas are not of concern, lying as they do toward the center of American politics.  What Ornstein misses, and this is my second point, is that the very fact that Obama’s policies are supported by Republicans should be what makes us even more concerned about this presidency. Continue reading »

GM Repays Government, in a Manner of Speaking

 ECONOMICS, NEW AMERICA  No Responses »
Apr 222010
 

by Sheldon Richman
The Freeman, April 22, 2010

It’s all over the news: GM repaid its loan to the federal government — early. The Obama-engineered bankruptcy worked. Did it?

The story takes on a new aspect when we realize that Neil Barofsky, Treasury Special Inspector General of TARP, told both Rep. Thomas Carper of Delaware and Neil Cavuto of Fox Business News that GM repaid the loan with other borrowed money. How’s that again?

“It’s good news in that they’re reducing their debt, but they’re doing it by taking other available TARP money,” Barofsky said, according to Jamie Dupree of Cox Radio.

“It sounds like it’s kind of like taking money out of one pocket and putting in the other,” Carper said.

Barofsky nodded.

“The way that payment is going to be made is by drawing down on an equity facility of other TARP money,” he added.

In his exchange with Cavuto, Barofsky said:

“The one thing a lot of people overlook with this is where they got the money to pay the loan. It isn’t from earnings. They didn’t earn and extra 4 1/2 billion dollars. So there’s money in escrow.”

“Wait a minute,” Cavuto said, “They paid off a credit line with another credit line?”

“Exactly.”

Why is this not being widely reported?

TheFreeman

Netanyahu to Obama: Pound sand

 GLOBAL, PRESIDENT, TERRORISM  No Responses »
Apr 222010
 

by Ed Morrissey
Hot Air.com, April 22, 2010

Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an unequivocal message to the Obama administration this morning, rejecting completely a call from Barack Obama to stop building settlements in Jerusalem. The rejection creates a standoff between the two traditional allies in the region and all but halts Obama’s efforts to force Israel back to the bargaining table (via JWF):

Aides to Israel’s prime minister said Thursday that he has officially rejected President Barack Obama’s demand to suspend all construction in contested east Jerusalem, a move that threatens to entrench a year-old deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

The aides said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his government’s position to Obama over the weekend, ahead of the scheduled arrival later Thursday of the U.S. president’s special Mideast envoy, George Mitchell. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the contact between the two leaders was private. Continue reading »

American Neutrality Toward Israel Invites Violence

 ENEMIES OF AMERICA, TERRORISM  No Responses »
Apr 222010
 

When Israel is alone, its opportunistic enemies pile on.

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, April 22, 2010

American relations with our once-staunch ally Israel are at their lowest ebb in the last 50 years.

The Obama administration seems as angry at the building of Jewish apartments in Jerusalem as it is intent on reaching out to Iran and Syria, Israel’s mortal enemies. President Obama himself, according to reports, has serially snubbed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A new narrative abounds in Washington that Israel’s intransigence with its Arab neighbors now even endangers U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. Obama is pushing Netanyahu’s Likud government to make concessions on several fronts, from supplying power and food to Gaza to hasten Israel’s departure from the West Bank.

These tensions follow the Obama administration’s new outreach to the Muslim world. Obama gave his first interview as president to the Middle East newspaper Al Arabiya, in which he politely chided past U.S. policy on the Middle East. Continue reading »

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