LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

OBAMA 2.0: DEFENSE POLICY

Will the US deploy forces sufficient to meet threats?....

As Chuck Hagel's confirmation hearing unfolds today, what issues should be raised, beyond those already raised as to Hagel's own fitness (or lack of same) to serve as Secretary of Defense?

Overall Security Posture.  Michael Ledeen tells Ginni Thomas (17:54) why US policy is in a shambles: (a) we fail to integrate the global Islamist threat; (b) we fail to punish our enemies sufficiently to cow adversaries; (c) Obama's world view sees US power & policy as the problem, not the solution, and hence America is in worldwide retreat; (d) Obama is slashing the military budget.  Illustrating Obama's perverse worldview (& Hillary's too) is "O" telling "60 Minutes" on Sunday that the Islamist Morsi regime in Egypt is an example of his leadership.  One day later the US closed its embassy due to turmoil in Cairo.  The crackdown may have been partly induced by Team Obama's F-16 shipment last week, which signaled Morsi that the US regards him as an ally.  In the emerging struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood regime and secular Egyptian youth, in which the regime may well unravel, whose side will Hagel take?  A Foreign Policy article punctures Western illusions about Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood--all eagerly embraced by Team Obama.

For its part, Israel has had close military cooperation with US re military technology under Hagel's predecessors, such as the new "David's Sling" system.  Will Hagel support this?  Does Hagel understand that Israel's recent election turned on domestic issues (economy, obligations of Orthodox Jews) and not on foreign affairs?  Jennifer Rubin eviscerates a 2009 Hagel Mideast speech that shows a nominee simply wrong on everything--facts, judgments, quixotic goals--re the Mideast.  And what might Hagel say of Israel's Wednesday strike destroying Russian SA-17 missiles (and, say Syrian rebels, a chemical weapons research center as well)?  The SA-17 is deadly against low-flying high-end jets, and were taken before Syria could activate them.

Former senior official John Bolton aptly summarizes Obama's feckless national security policies & what likely lies ahead, in a recent interview:

OBAMA 2.0: SUNDERING US

Why immigration reform likely will prove toxic....

Hispanic Politics.  Black/white issues are not the only major ethnic factor. Hispanics comprise a greater share of the electorate than do blacks.  Sen. Ted Cruz's Jan. 26 speech (39:50) at the National Review Institute's conservative summit called for immigration reform and more sensitivity by the GOP towards nonwhites.  Monday's "Gang of Eight" announcement by four Democratic & four GOP senators, and then the president's remarks Tuesday have placed immigration front & center in the policy arena.  A Fox News report identifies the main differences between the two--foremost of which is that unlike the Gang of Eight's proposal, which requires an upgrade to border security before starting illegals on a path to citizenship, the president's version does not require same.  The arguments pro & con are complex--too much so for me to sort through persuasively in short order--so try this WSJ editorial pro versus NRO's John O'Sullivan con for size.  G-of-E member Marco Rubio is in full "charm offensive" mode selling the G-of-E principles, on display in his solid Tuesday interview (16:19) with Rush Limbaugh.

But I can predict with some confidence that the effort will once again fail....

OBAMA 2.0: FOREIGN POLICY II

Outside the Mideast, also a grim outlook....

KERRY'S WORLD.  But begin first with the views of incoming SecState John Kerry.  Barry Rubin ably dissects Kerry's confirmation testimony:

Unfortunately, Kerry subscribes — as is so fashionable today in the Obama administration and academia — to what I’ll call the “abusive relationship approach” to foreign policy.

If another country supports you and is good for your interests, you take that country’s good will for granted and mistreat it. If another regime — say, Turkey, Pakistan, Venezuela, Egypt, and, at times in the recent past, Syria and Iran — walks all over you, then you chase after it all the more passionately and shower it with presents.

In the hands of a good realpolitik statesman, this balance would be managed well. For example: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger would have kept the Egyptian government off-balance and made it understand that Washington was doing it a favor by providing aid. In other words, leverage would be used.

But in Kerry’s hands, leverage is tossed away. He is so afraid of using power or being tough that he throws away leverage, believing there can be no risk of problems. The recipient must not be intimidated or pressed to change, but instead shown that America is its friend — not the imperialist bully that people like Kerry and President Barack Obama see when they look back at U.S. history.

Kerry, long a proponent of engagement with Syrian thug Bashir Assad, will serve a president stumped as to what to do in Syria....

OBAMA 2.0: FOREIGN POLICY I

What will a retreating America mean for our security?

Several major changes can be expected.  One clue: Obama is pushing CENTCOM's superstar commander, the legendary Marine Gen. James Mattis, into retirement several months before his tenure was to end.  Put simply, Mattis is known to offer honest contrary advice to superiors, without fear or favor.  This is not what this president wants to hear.  This comes from, as the linked article shows, a reportorial source friendly to the president, who sees a White House interested in hearing only from "yes men" (and, presumably, "yes women" as well).

MIDEAST.  Arab Spring reverberations further inflame the entire region, generating & exacerbating myriad major policy challenges.  Barry Rubin notes that "useful idiots" among the Western Left have joined with the Arab Left to back Islamists in the struggles for power.

Iraq.  Start with a riveting video from Iraq (5:28), showing the kind of vital intermediary services the American military provided to stabilize Iraq by reconciling factions.  This mission is effectively ended by President Obama's abrupt troop departure from Iraq.

Iran.  Iran has developed a strong cyberwar capability, in response to the successful Stuxnet cyber-attack that set Iran's nuclear program back an estimated one year.  At Davos, departing Isreali defense minister Ehud Barak said that the US has "sophisticated" plans for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, impliedly obviating the need to early Israeli unilateral action.  Specifically, Barak said that per White House directive, “the Pentagon prepared quite sophisticated, fine, extremely fine, scalpels” for such action.

Also at Davos, Henry Kissinger sees a severe crisis approaching re Iran's nuclear program:

OBAMA 2.0: ENERGY v. GREEN

Energy is O's potential saviour....

If, that is, he gets it.

Team Obama needs an energy math lesson, too, on why alternative fuels are at best marginal players in providing for the world's burgeoning energy needs.  Enviro-guru Bjorn Lomborg notes three canards floated by warmists: wildfire increases; drought increases; more intense hurricanes.  All, BL writes, are wrong.

Obama's EPA plans new tests aimed at flunking fracking, thereby putting the kibosh on the US"s best energy play in 50 years.  Climate change hysteria will also slow energy growth.  Yet 2012 saw the lowest level of carbon emissions in 20 years, courtesy of natural gas consumer substitution for dirtier fuels.  But Team Obama won $12.1 billion for a single-year subsidy for the wind industry.

At the state level, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo fights fracking, as noted by WSJ editor Jason Riley:

Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York has been bowing to the demands of radical environmentalists who want a moratorium on natural gas fracking. Upstate New York is an economic wasteland, and Buffalo is one of the nation's poorest cities. A study last year from the Manhattan Institute found that hydraulic fracking could be a boon to the state, creating more than $11 billion in economic output and more than 15,000 jobs by 2020.

Cuomo did this all the while sitting on a study showing fracking to be environmentally safe.  John Steele Gordon adds telling detail on Cuomo's calculations favoring his re-election in a solidly blue state.  Yet the son of former NY Gov. Mario Cuomo found time to give a $226 million subsidy to the ... Buffalo Bills, that the NFL team agree to stay in the Empire State.  AC called it "a top priority" of his administration, reports JR.

Meanwhile, energy expert Mark Mills informs us that California is the next potential fracking powerhouse, with potentially $1 trillion in economic benefits to be unlocked.  Sacramento is casting a gimlet eye in that direction.  Alternatives to hydro-fracking are emerging, which avoid the toxic politics of water versus shale oil.  That use of water to extract oil & gas is less than one percent of agricultural water use is politically irrelevant.  Media focus on the water issue makes transition desirable.

Energy policy is tied to global warming--oops!, now "climate change"--yet while warmists shout & stamp their feet when the thermometer rises above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, they have been strangely (well, not so strangely) silent during China's coldest winter in decades.  And the media flurry over 2012's warm temperatures ignores many cold years in between 2012 & super-hot 1998.

EPA claims of virtually unlimited regulatory authority recently received a stern rebuke from a federal court.

Bottom Line.  Obama had to choose between his ardent pro-Green leanings & energy security for the US.  In his Second Inaugural Address the president chose the former.

Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, Economy, Conservative Politics

OBAMA 2.0: OBAMACARE

ObamaCare, or economics & federalism?....

OBAMA 2.0: UNIONS

Unions are a huge federal/state battleground....

The latest front is New York City, where a bus-driver strike has crippled transportation to/from public schools.   The workers, under private contract, are on strike because when their contract expires in June the city wants to bid out the new contract.  The cost per pupil of the current drivers: $7,000 per child.

Bethany Mandel's CommBlog piece (link above) adds telling detail:

OBAMA 2.0 CHANNELS 1939!

A FATEFUL TURN OF PHRASE....

Fox All-Stars contributor Jonah Goldberg caught something last night that I missed in The One's Second Inaugural: Obama used the infamous 1939 phrase "peace in our time--a phrase associated with a foreign policy stance Obama does not wish to be seen as his....

OBAMA INAUGURAL 2.0

What did "O" say & will it work?....

Begin with his lackluster address (full Address text)--my comments in parentheses.  "Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, as one people."  (This after a relentlessly negative campaign, demonizing his opponents.)  "The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob."  (Whoever said they did?)  "We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.   But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future."  (Precisely the choices "O" has resolutely refused to make--and then unfairly blamed Republicans for not making them.)  "We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war."  (Has any US president ever advocated perpetual war?)

Jennifer Rubin at Right Turn explains why "O's words no longer matter:

OBAMA 2.0: HITTING THE WALL

Will practical constraints frustrate O's design?

A critical factor in whether the president can achieve is goal of fundamentally transforming America are financial constraints.  One such constraint is the federal debt ceiling, whose history the Congressional Research Service recently assessed in "The Debt Limit: History and Recent Increases" (April 5, 2011).

GUNS: THE PUBLIC SPEAKS

Obama pursues guns, public looks elsewhere....

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows public sentiment ranking gun control fifth in priority as to how best to deal with gun violence.

Here are the public's rankings, as to what to focus on:

OBAMA 2.0: "SINGLES, STUPID!"

Will singles save O's blue social model?....

OBAMA 2.0: RACE FOREVER?

Will the US ever be post-racial?.....

The official New York City presidential vote figures show President Obama winning by the highest margin in the 114 years since NYC's five boroughs were fully consolidated into one city in 1898.  The One garnered 81 percent of the NYC vote to Mitt Romney's 18, a 4-1/2 to 1 margin.  The 8.2 million population city's demographics are 65 percent minority (29 percent Hispanic, 23 percent black & 13 percent Asian) to 35 percent white.  The white figure is half the 72 percent national figure for whites; the Hispanic & black numbers are twice, and the Asian number thrice their national group shares.  NYC voter turnout in 2012 was 2.45 million, down from 2.62 million in 2008.

Here is more detail from the Bloomberg News report:

Republican presidential candidates have taken less than one-fourth of the city vote in each of the past six elections. Calvin Coolidge in 1924 was the last Republican presidential nominee to win New York.
Obama broke his own record of 79 percent support in New York in the 2008 election. His showing four years ago topped the 78 percent that Al Gore won in the city as the 2000 Democratic nominee.
The president in his re-election win improved on his 2008 showing in four of the city’s five boroughs. He rose to 91 percent from 89 percent in the Bronx, to 82 percent from 79 percent in Brooklyn, and to 79 percent from 75 percent in Queens, and carried Staten Island with 51 percent after taking 48 percent and losing the borough in 2008.
Manhattan, which includes Wall Street, is the one borough where Obama’s support edged downward, falling to 84 percent from 86 percent four years ago.

As the president prepares his second inaugural address, America's racial divisions, at the ballot box and in public discourse, seem wider than they have been in a generation....

GUNS: OBAMA-CUOMO

How well might the president's new orders & ideas work in reducing unlawful gun violence?

Start with the 23 executive orders President Obama announced yesterday, many of which would enforce existing laws.  Add a primer on presidential executive orders, that sketches out the likely limits of presidential authority in this field:

VIOLENCE & TINSELTOWN

Does film violence generate school shootings?....

On the day that Vice-President Biden is expected to announce his recommendations on how to reduce gun violence, hark back half a century, to 1963.

School shootings were rare, with mass murder of students unheard of.  Indeed, mass murders were virtually unheard of.  In 1966 came one outlier case, when at the University of Texas a mentally ill sniper shot four dozen people.  Almost another quarter century passed before the next major school mass killing, in 1989.  A 1988 - 2012 mass US shootings timeline shows that America's shooting-spree tempo picked up in the 1990s, and accelerated dramatically in the first decade of the 21st century.

Guns were far less regulated--minimally at best--in 1963.  Since 1968 there has been a vast web of gun laws placing restrictions on what people may lawfully possess, and what kinds of hoops they must jump through to be authorized to own a gun.  Thus more gun laws seem unlikely to alter the current mass-murder trajectory.

What has changed dramatically that may well be responsible for the

"TORTURE" & TINSELTOWN

"Zero Dark Thirty" revives a contentious debate....

MIDEAST MESS DEEPENS

Mideast comes unglued, Obama transfixed....

HAGEL, OBAMA & DEFENSE

What do we learn from the Hagel SecDef flap?....

PASSING OF A HERO FRIEND

A great Canadian friend passes on....

GUNS, MEDIA & NEWTOWN

Is the post-Newtown debate being skewed?....