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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; deadline</title>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Generous Deal With the Mullahs</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/obamas-generous-deal-with-the-mullahs/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-generous-deal-with-the-mullahs</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:00:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245714</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Winner: Islamic Republic.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Rouhani_1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245717" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Rouhani_1-431x350.jpg" alt="Rouhani_1" width="337" height="274" /></a>There are two issues which have become crystal clear about the nuclear talks with Iran. First of all, the Obama administration wants to reach a final nuclear deal regardless of how flimsy and weak the comprehensive nuclear deal might be and regardless of whether the ultimate nuclear deal will leave the Islamic Republic with a path to obtain nuclear capabilities and lift economic and political sanctions.</p>
<p>Secondly, the Iranian leaders have masterfully captured the weakness of the Obama administration and its desperation to strike a final nuclear deal. As a result, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has been playing with the naiveté of the Obama administration by taking a tough stand and pointing out that Tehran will resist the “excessive demands” over its nuclear program. In other words, Iranian leaders are looking for a diluted, flimsy and sweet nuclear deal that would allow them to pursue their path to become a nuclear state and would help them phase out the economic and political sanctions as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>In the intense final few days of nuclear talks, the destiny of a historic nuclear deal and the outcome of the concentrated international negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear program will be determined. The deadline for nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) is approaching a deadline of 24 November.</p>
<p>There are some crucial hurdles which are still unresolved. These barriers are the process and phases through which sanction will be lifted as well as limitation on uranium enrichment, reducing the stockpile of already-enriched uranium, and the number of centrifuges that the Islamic Republic can retain. The Islamic Republic currently holds approximately 19,000 centrifuges. However, the Obama administration appears to be willing to ignore these gaps in order to save face by striking a deal and in order to add to his questionable and superficial records of Middle East achievements.</p>
<p>Although many scholars, politicians and policy analysts thought that the interim nuclear deal was far off and out of reach last year, the Obama administration, which desperately needed the interim nuclear deal, gave a significant amount of concessions and “closed the gaps” in the eleventh hours in order to persuade the Islamic Republic to sign the short term deal and reach an accord. This might occur again in the face of the final nuclear deal.</p>
<p>President Obama and Secretary of the State John Kerry will robustly push for any kind of final nuclear deal in order to avoid the post-failure consequences of the comprehensive nuclear deal and years of negotiations. The Obama administration has long been reluctant to carry out particular robust foreign policies such as ratcheting up political and economic sanctions on Iran and further isolating the Islamic Republic for  its nuclear defiance.</p>
<p>In addition, the other reason for the White House&#8217;s weak and desperate position to reach a final nuclear deal, is that the Obama administration&#8217;s attempts to create a narrative domestically that the spending of a considerable amount of political capital, months of negotiations, release of billions of dollars to the Iranian government, and diplomacy have “worked.” As a result, in order to avert any criticism, President Obama and John Kerry are willing to jeopardize the security threat that a nuclear state of Iran might pose to the Middle East.</p>
<p>On the other hand, whether the nuclear talks fail or succeed, the Islamic Republic will come out of this game as a winner. The major winner of the success or failure of nuclear talks will be Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamnenei. Shrewdly and masterfully, Khamenei placed himself in a position to not lose his legitimacy and credibility whether the nuclear talks succeed or scuttle. On the one hand, Khamenei has been arguing that he does not trust the United States and these nuclear negotiations, while he has been willing to give his blessing and a chance to President Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and their technocrat team to pursue their objectives with these nuclear talks. As a result, if nuclear talks fail, the Supreme Leader will argue that he told them so from the beginning, and if the nuclear talks succeed, he will get credit for being flexible and giving the president a chance. In addition, the Supreme leader has reached his economic, hegemonic, and political objectives in the meantime.</p>
<p>In case of failure, the Iranian leaders have already received billions of dollars, they bought more time to stabilize their economy, regain the value of their currency, reduce inflation, and further consolidate the hold on power of the ruling clerics. In addition Russia, China and some other Asian countries, and European companies have ratcheted up their economic and business deals with the Islamic Republic, particularly in the oil sector due to the prospects of these nuclear talks in the last year. In either ways, the ruling politicians of the Islamic republic will emerge as the winners.</p>
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		<title>The Year of ObamaCare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-our-national-new-years-hangover/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-our-national-new-years-hangover</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Jan 2014 05:45:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214306</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The worst is yet to come.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/article-2190294-0AD5782F000005DC-689_634x512.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214310" alt="article-2190294-0AD5782F000005DC-689_634x512" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/article-2190294-0AD5782F000005DC-689_634x512-433x350.jpg" width="303" height="245" /></a>As of today, ObamaCare is the law of the land. Or more accurately, those parts of ObamaCare that weren&#8217;t unilaterally changed or delayed to serve the interests of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party heading in the 2014 election. Despite those efforts, it would appear that 2014 will bring no respite from the criticism associated with what might be best described as the biggest government boondoggle of all time. As the nation straddles the passage from the old year into the new, the hits just keep on coming.</p>
<p>The first hit concerns the exchanges themselves. As Forbes Magazine contributor Michael Cannon <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelcannon/2013/12/30/what-surge-obamacare-enrollments-remain-dangerously-below-60-percent-of-target/">explains</a>, ObamaCare enrollments remain a whopping 60 percent below the targets set by the Obama administration. Only 2.2 million Americans out of the 3.3 million envisioned by the administration have signed up, not paid up. That means the 2.2 million figure will eventually be lower, since no program has a 100 percent success rate in that regard. Thus the administration&#8217;s notion that they can meet their target of 7 million <i>paying</i> customers by March 31 (of which 2.7 million must be &#8220;young invincibles&#8221; to offset the costlier coverage for older, sicker Americans) looks like a pipe dream. Furthermore, since the 60 percent number is a national average, states with low enrollment totals will undoubtedly see a surge in premium costs by 2015.</p>
<p>Two other hits come courtesy of Democrats. On Monday, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/367203/dem-rep-obamacare-enrollment-low-because-people-think-law-repealed-andrew-johnson">managed</a> a &#8220;two-fer&#8221; in that regard, unscoring the low enrollment numbers, and insulting her constituency in the process. “There are millions of people out there who think [ObamaCare] was repealed, so there was no way to break through that very easily,” she told MSNBC, adding that the “debacle of a website&#8230;seemed to confirm that it must have been repealed, or should have been repealed.” Norton was positive that once the fines for not obtaining insurance kick in, &#8220;you’re going to see people trotting to sign on like you’ve never seen it before,” she predicted.</p>
<p>Perhaps. Or perhaps those same currently under-informed Americans will learn that the president unilaterally (and illegally) <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/12/20/Obamacare-Individual-Mandate-Fix-is-Illegal-Again">suspended</a> those fines. Those who were unable to access a policy on the &#8220;debacle of a website,&#8221; or found policies that were unaffordable, were granted a &#8220;hardship exemption&#8221; for some part of 2014. In keeping with the orchestrated chaos, the Obama administration did not say how long this particular improvisation will remain in effect, or how they will distinguish between those Americans who are legitimately burdened or simply gaming the system. No doubt the intrepid Ms. Norton will double-down on her efforts to keep the voters in her district informed as the year wears on.</p>
<p>Former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Howard Dean <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/dec/30/dean-individual-mandate-wasnt-necessary/#.UsF5CAsnFkg.twitter">one-upped</a> Norton, insisting the<i> entire law</i> wasn&#8217;t necessary, &#8220;and it’s probably a big political thing, and that is going to hurt the Democrats because people don’t like to be told what to do by the government no matter what party they’re in,” he contended. Americans were relatively blasé about that prospect until they began to experience what it truly meant. A combination of cancelled policies, sticker shock and the realization that the selling of ObamaCare was based on a series of coordinated lies and broken promises has already taken it toll. And while the president and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have made every effort to postpone the next eruption of chaos until after the 2014 election, they are unlikely to succeed.</p>
<p>In a piece entitled &#8220;Here Comes the ObamaCare Tax Avalanche,&#8221; columnist John Hayward <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2013/12/27/here-comes-the-obamacare-tax-avalanche/">details </a>the series of levies that are now in effect. These include a 2 percent tax on every healthcare plan, and $2.00 fee per policy to support the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a new medical-research trust fund. Individual Americans who earn $200,000 and families with an income of $250,000 or above will be subjected to a 0.9 percent Medicare surtax in addition to the existing 1.45 percent Medicare payroll tax, along with a 3.8 percent tax on all unearned income, such as capital gains or other investment income. &#8220;Hidden&#8221; taxes include raising the threshold of income tax deductions for those with high out-of-pocket medical expenses from 7.5 percent to 10 percent.</p>
<p>One insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, is <a href="http://nypost.com/2013/12/25/new-obamacare-fees-coming-in-2014/">refusing</a> to play along. They&#8217;re adding a separate line item on their bills entitled, “Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes.” In an example provided by the company, the hit on one insurance bill came to $23.14 a month, or $277.68 annually. It boosted the cost of that policy from $322.26 to $345.40 per month. If other companies follow suit, it will undoubtedly blow a giant hole in the administration&#8217;s efforts to re-focus the blame for escalating insurance costs from the Obama administration and Democrats onto the insurance companies.</p>
<p>Those escalating costs will further anger Americans as they begin to realize insurance companies will be mitigating them by <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-30/if-2013-was-hard-on-obamacare-just-wait-for-2014.html">limiting</a> which doctors and other providers will be included in the new plans. Nothing illustrated the magnitude of this reality better than a <i>Wall Street Journal</i> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304527504579171710423780446">column</a> by a cancer patent who has &#8220;fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer,&#8221; only to discover &#8220;her affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.&#8221;</p>
<p>Her narrative runs completely counter to the one promulgated by Democrats and their media enablers. &#8220;Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team,&#8221; wrote Edie Sundby in November. &#8220;The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Obama administration&#8217;s response? Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/11/07/cancer_survivor_edie_sundby_responds_to_condescending_attack_by_white_house_on_kelly_file.html">tweeted</a> that the &#8220;real reason&#8221; Sundby was losing her insurance was due to the greed of her insurance company. Apparently leftist &#8220;sympathy&#8221; for individual victims&#8211;who are regularly trotted out to promote <i>their</i> agenda du jour&#8211;is reserved only for those victims who promote that leftist ideology.</p>
<p>There are undoubtedly many other Americans experiencing a similar dilemma, but the public would only learn about them if the media were willing to report their stories. As Americans are only recently discovering, much of that media, long aware that ObamaCare was built on a tissue of lies, were more than willing to kick journalistic integrity to the curb. &#8220;Three years ago and longer these journalists knew there were a growing number of doctors warning about government intervention, rationing, price increases, Americans being kicked off their plans, the forced replacement of primary-care doctors and mass confusion,&#8221; <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/123013-684554-media-under-reported-and-misrepresented-obamacare-to-american-public.htm?p=full">writes</a> Doug MacKinnon, who further contends the media &#8220;desperately wanted to see Obama re-elected in 2012 and knew it would be much harder to obtain that outcome if his signature program were exposed as the fraud it was.&#8221;</p>
<p>Sarcastically, but accurately, he insists &#8220;that the most newsworthy story of 2013 was the mainstream media burying the most newsworthy story of 2013.&#8221;</p>
<p>Now that they have achieved their primary objective, the media have &#8220;suddenly&#8221; discovered many Americans will be forced to endure the chaotic realities of ObamaCare. NBC <a href="http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/29/21893911-workers-at-auto-dealership-come-face-to-face-with-obamacare-trade-offs">found</a> a car dealership in Michigan whose 41 employees are getting their policies cancelled after 35 years. CBS <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/6-key-obamacare-dates-to-watch-for-in-2014/">reveals</a> that today will be a &#8220;day of reckoning&#8221; as consumers &#8220;will begin finding out if they&#8217;re actually enrolled in the plans they signed up for.&#8221; They&#8217;ve even acknowledged that the employer mandate, delayed until 2015 is &#8220;looming,&#8221; while they fail to mention that between 50-100 million employees may experience the same policy cancellations that Americans who purchased individual insurance policies dealt with this year.</p>
<p>The Gannet News Group is <a href="http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/health/2013/12/30/are-there-enough-doctors-for-newly-insured/4249719/">ruminating</a> about the shortage of 45,000 primary care doctors that will occur between now and 2020, and that long waits and greater traveling distances will become the new normal. CNN Money warns that Americans who begin using ObamaCare without their &#8220;spanking new ID card,&#8221; had better bring their wallet with them due to the reality that &#8220;some applicants’ enrollments may be incomplete in insurers’ systems on Jan. 1.&#8221; And Politico has now discovered that the president they have long shilled for has feet of clay. &#8220;There was apparently no single person, fully empowered by the president, lying awake at night knowing he or she would be blamed for anything that went wrong,&#8221; <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/obamacare-obama-management-experts-101620_Page2.html#ixzz2p3crgMkB">writes</a> Elizabeth Titus.</p>
<p>That is somewhat inaccurate. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Operating Officer Michelle Snyder, who has spent 41 years working for the federal government, is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/us/politics/official-who-oversaw-health-laws-rollout-is-retiring.html?_r=0">retiring</a>. “She had to go. She was responsible for the implementation of Obamacare. She controlled all the resources to get it done. She was in charge of information technology. She controlled personnel and budget,&#8221; said a former unnamed agency official.</p>
<p>HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius disagreed with that assessment during a Congressional oversight hearing on Oct. 30. After naming Snyder as the person responsible for the disastrous rollout, she fell on her proverbial sword. “Michelle Snyder is not responsible for those debacles. Hold me accountable for the debacle. I’m responsible.”</p>
<p>Millions of Americans would love to do just that. But much like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton &#8220;taking responsibility&#8221; for Benghazi, those same Americans are well aware that there are no repercussions whatsoever for such &#8220;nobility.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yet there are glimmers of hope on the horizon. Americans can opt out of ObamaCare and still get insurance coverage, <a href="http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2013/12/18/you-can-opt-out-obamacare-heres-how">according</a> to Jim Lakely. They would still have to pay the fine associated with the mandate, but they can purchase &#8220;non-qualified coverage, subject to state insurance department approval,&#8221; from companies like Assurant and United Healthcare. They have apparently developed limited-benefits plans subject to approval by individual states.</p>
<p>Speaking of states themselves, three of them, Georgia, South Carolina, and Missouri, are in various stages of crafting bills that would <a href="http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/view-tenth/2013/dec/27/missouri-bill-would-gut-obamacare/">nullify</a> the implementation of the healthcare bill in those states. “If enough states do this, it will gut Obamacare because the federal government doesn’t have the resources … to go into each of the states if they start refusing,” contends Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano.</p>
<p>The idea is based on reasoning supported by the Supreme Court in four cases from 1842 to 2012. They noted that the federal government cannot &#8220;commandeer&#8221; states to participate in federal law or regulatory programs that require the use of state resources to do so. “Our sources tell us to expect at least ten states moving in this direction in the coming months,&#8221; said Tenth Amendment Center national communications director Mike Maharrey. &#8220;But that will only come true if people start calling their state representatives and senators right now.&#8221;</p>
<p>Right now, most Americans are enjoying their New Year&#8217;s holiday, relaxing and/or nursing a hangover. After that, they may very well undertake whatever work is necessary to extract themselves from the hangover known as ObamaCare. Perhaps 2014 is the year most Americans decide that, &#8220;if you like your freedom, you can keep your freedom. <i>Period</i>.&#8221;</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>La Loi, C&#8217;est Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/la-loi-cest-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=la-loi-cest-obama</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Dec 2013 05:56:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213822</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The latest ObamaCare turn toward lawlessness. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1023-Obamacare-rollout-delay_full_380.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213826" alt="1023-Obamacare-rollout-delay_full_380" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1023-Obamacare-rollout-delay_full_380.jpg" width="247" height="201" /></a>In a move worthy of a Third World banana republic, President Obama used his extraconstitutional lawmaking wand and secretly extended the Dec. 23 Obamacare enrollment cutoff by 24 hours, usurping the authority of Congress.</p>
<p>This is only the latest in a long series of capricious, imperial, impeachable, <i>ad hoc</i> adjustments that the 44th president has made to his creation. Each and every unilateral abridgment or abrogation of the Affordable Care Act, as monstrous as the statute may be, is an affront to the rule of law that is supposed to prevail in our constitutional republic. This rule by presidential decree creates legal and business uncertainty for insurers and the insured, as well as for employers and all health care market participants.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, public support for Obamacare continues to fall, dropping five whole percentage points in a month to a new record low, <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/193853-obamacare-approval-drops-to-record-low-in-cnn-poll">according</a> to a CNN/ORC poll. Barely a third of the public &#8212; 35 percent &#8211; now supports the law, down from 40 percent late last month, and just 16 percent of respondents said they expect their families will be better off when most of the law takes effect in 2014.</p>
<p>The completely unnecessary, mandated chaos of the Obamacare rollout is business as usual for embattled Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who continues struggling to put out fire after fire in what seems destined to be a futile effort to make an unworkable program somehow work.</p>
<p>The <i>Washington Post</i> <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/366985/administration-extends-deadline-obamacare-sign-through-christmas-eve-eliana-johnson">reports</a> that</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Over the weekend, government officials and outside IT contractors working on the online marketplace’s computer system made a software change that automatically gives people a Jan. 1 start date for their new coverage as long as they enroll by 11:59 p.m. on Christmas Eve.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>The Obama administration apparently rationalized the one-day extension away, claiming it was needed in case the perpetually malfunctioning website strains under the weight of a sudden traffic boost from last-minute enrollees.</p>
<p>“Anticipating high demand and the fact that consumers may be enrolling from multiple time zones, we have taken steps to make sure that those who select a plan through tomorrow will get coverage for Jan. 1,” an HHS spokeswoman said yesterday.</p>
<p>In the nightmarish swirl of Kafkaesque arbitrariness that surrounds President Obama&#8217;s much touted signature legislative achievement, insurance companies reportedly won&#8217;t be able to refuse late registrants. Last week the administration decreed that individuals whose insurance plans were canceled may receive an exemption from the individual mandate imposed by the Affordable Care Act.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s abundantly clear that President Obama is making this up from finely manicured golf courses and vacation spots as he goes along. Obama reportedly was briefed on HHS&#8217;s latest efforts to keep the Obamacare website operational.</p>
<p>News of the latest presidential diktats came as the Obama administration <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/193922-obamacare-site-sees-traffic-surge-on-eve-of">claimed</a> that the HealthCare.gov website was experiencing a “record day” for visits yesterday.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) said approximately 850,000 people had visited the website as of 2 p.m. on Monday and that the alleged crush of web traffic was expected to continue the rest of the day. &#8220;About 60,000 people were instructed through the system to provide an email address so they could be notified to return at a later time,&#8221; <i>The Hill</i> newspaper reports.</p>
<p>Is the visitors figure true? The administration has been caught lying over and over and over again about Obamacare&#8217;s so-called successes so there is no way to know if the figures are accurate without conducting a forensic cyber-audit or issuing congressional subpoenas (which the administration would probably ignore anyway).</p>
<p>And when the administration hasn&#8217;t been lying outright, it has been known to carefully parse, calculating its statements to mislead the public. That nearly a million visits to the website were reportedly recorded doesn&#8217;t provide any indication of how many individuals actually applied for or succeeded in obtaining health insurance coverage.</p>
<p>President Obama claimed on Friday that more than a half million people had signed up at HealthCare.gov in the first three weeks of this month. According to <i>The Hill</i>&#8216;s reckoning, this would bring the total number of individuals enrolled in Obamacare to a bit over 1 million, far short of the 3.3 million people the administration hoped would jump aboard the sinking ship by year&#8217;s end.</p>
<p>Deluded administration officials continue to insist that they will hit their goal of 7 million enrollees by the conclusion of the second signup deadline on March 31.</p>
<p>&#8220;The administration also needs consumers who have enrolled for coverage to make their first premium payments to finalize the process,&#8221; according to the newspaper. &#8220;Those payments were due by Jan. 1, but many insurers, at the request of the administration, are now accepting payments as late as Jan. 10.&#8221;</p>
<p><i>Accepting</i> payments as late as Jan. 10 at the <i>request</i> of the administration? Interesting choice of words, isn&#8217;t it?</p>
<p>There was a time when mainstream media reporters thought it was their job to cut through word smog in order to tell their readers what was actually going on in the world.</p>
<p>The above phrase could be translated as, &#8220;nice insurance company you have there. You wouldn&#8217;t want anything to happen to it, would you?&#8221;</p>
<p>But in the Obama era reporters think it&#8217;s more important to advance the mission of the president than to report the truth.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>HealthCare.gov&#8217;s Date with Destiny</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/healthcare-govs-date-with-destiny/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=healthcare-govs-date-with-destiny</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/healthcare-govs-date-with-destiny/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2013 05:30:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deadline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fix]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Healthcare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=211685</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The deadline for fixing the broken site is looking more and more like a pipe dream.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/healthcare.gov_2-620x4011.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211686" alt="healthcare.gov_2-620x401" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/healthcare.gov_2-620x4011-450x324.jpg" width="315" height="227" /></a>By now, most Americans probably know that the Obama administration has promised to fix the HealthCare.gov website by November 30. It is equally likely that a majority of Americans know this administration&#8217;s definition of &#8220;fixed&#8221; is as elastic as the president&#8217;s promise regarding one&#8217;s ability to keep one&#8217;s current insurance plan and/or doctors. Unfortunately for millions of angry and confused Americans, the current prediction it is likely to be as hollow &#8212; if not more so &#8212; than the last one.</span></p>
<p>We begin with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius&#8217;s latest readjustment of reality, <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/health-website-remain-work-progress">announced</a> last Tuesday. &#8220;The 30th of November is not a magic go, no go date,&#8221; Sebelius told the Associated Press. &#8220;It is a work of constant improvement. We have some very specific things we know we need to complete by the 30th and that punch list is getting knocked out every week.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even the AP wasn&#8217;t buying it, noting that the administration&#8217;s contention the website will be properly functioning for the &#8220;vast majority of users&#8221; by the due date &#8220;has morphed in the past few weeks.&#8221; They recounted a statement by Sebelius at an October 30 Congressional hearing that an &#8220;optimally functioning website&#8221; would be in place by the end of November. On Nov. 5, Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, upped it to &#8220;fully functioning.&#8221; Last week, the president used the words &#8220;marked and noticeable&#8221; to describe the website improvements that will ostensibly be in place four days from now.</p>
<p>For those unfamiliar with the Obama administration&#8217;s definition of words such as &#8220;fully functioning,” or &#8220;marked and noticeable&#8221; improvements, it should be noted that they will consider <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a> optimally functional if <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/healthcaregov-goal-80-percent-able-to-enroll-for-insurance-through-web-site/2013/11/16/04fa02a2-4e1a-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html">80 percent</a> of its users can buy healthcare online. Thus, what <i>Washington Post</i> describes as the &#8220;first concrete performance standard in the 3<sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub> years since the government began to design the health exchange&#8221; will leave one-in-five Americans searching for their government-mandated insurance policies twisting in the wind&#8211;even as it is deemed a success for doing so.</p>
<p>Yet while Sebelius was out pitching her latest hooey in Orlando and Miami, a panel of ObamaCare computer technicians was delivering more inconvenient truths at a House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing. Deputy Chief Information Officer Henry Chao of the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/tech-chief-didnt-see-march-obamacare-memo-100058.html">admitted</a> that as much as 40 percent of the IT systems supporting the healthcare exchange <i>have yet to be built</i>. “It’s not that it’s not working,” Chao told lawmakers. “It’s still being developed and tested.”</p>
<p>The most prominent part of what is being developed and tested is the ability to process and deliver payments to the insurance companies. An HHS source clarified that a bit for <i>Politico</i>, contending that customer payments can be delivered, but the government subsidies that accompany them cannot. Without this &#8220;reconciliation&#8221; process functioning properly, insurers cannot enroll customers in the proper plans. An unnamed insurance industry source illuminated the potential pitfalls. “If people are enrolling, but the back-end systems are not working, their coverage could ultimately be disrupted,&#8221; the source noted. &#8220;They may think they’re enrolled in a plan and they’re not. They may show up at the doctor’s office and not be covered.”</p>
<p>This particular aspect of Chao&#8217;s testimony is stunning, in that it came a full week after the Obama administration revealed that 106,185 people nationwide had “selected,&#8221; rather than actually &#8220;paid for&#8221; an ObamaCare health insurance plan. That number included 26,794 people who had used the federal website. If Chao&#8217;s testimony is accurate, it seems possible that <i>no one </i>who has used the federal website could have a policy that has been fully processed. The only thing more remarkable is that no one thought to ask if that was the case.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s the good news. when pressed on the issue of security, Chao insisted the website was safe. But once again, words mattered. Chao noted that the federal <i>data hub</i>, which verifies one&#8217;s eligibility to use the exchange, does not store information. He further explained that the website has a dedicated security team to monitor progress.</p>
<p>Yet <i>Politico</i> noted that contractors tasked with security who spoke to the committee &#8220;distanced themselves from any responsibility for overall security.&#8221; Jason Providakes, senior vice president and general manager at MITRE’s Center for Connected Government, a federally funded nonprofit, revealed the &#8220;nuances&#8221; in Chao&#8217;s remarks. He explained that while his organization was responsible for six different security assessments, they had &#8220;no view on the overall safety or security status of <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a>,” and no role in end-to-end security testing. MITRE tested only “specific parts of <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a> within specific parameters established by CMS and in almost all cases we succeeded,” Providakes said.</p>
<p>Whether success in <i>almost</i> all cases on <i>part</i> of a security system is supposed to reassure Americans is anyone&#8217;s guess.</p>
<p>Far less reassuring was the testimony of David Kennedy, head of TrustedSec, a company that offers to hack into private systems to determine their vulnerabilities. He contended that a cursory look at the site revealed numerous &#8220;exposures&#8221; that put it at &#8220;critical risk.&#8221;</p>
<p>Kennedy was one of four experts, including two academics and two private sector tech researchers, who testified that day. All four of them said the website was not secure, and three-out-of-four believed it should be shut down entirely until it is. In an interview following the meeting, Morgan Wright, CEO of Crowd Sourced Investigations, described the size of the code base needed to run the site as &#8220;indefensible.&#8221; Avi Rubin, director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said he wouldn&#8217;t use the site at all, because of the bugs he has learned about.</p>
<p>The administration&#8217;s response? &#8220;I feel like it&#8217;s safe. Absolutely,&#8221; said Sebelius, adding, &#8220;when there have been issues identified or flagged, it&#8217;s immediately fixed.&#8221; White House spokesman Jay Carney sounded even more clueless. &#8220;The privacy and security of consumers&#8217; personal information are a top priority,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Yet once again, one is left to wonder whether that &#8220;top priority&#8221; is part of the November 30 deadline for fixing the website. Last Friday, another evolution occurred. &#8220;There will not be a magic moment around the end of the month when our work will be complete,&#8221; <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/new-wiggle-room-obama-health-plan-sign-ups">said</a> Jeffrey Zients, a management consultant brought in by the administration to straighten out the website. He was speaking shortly after the Obama administration announced yet another &#8220;fix,&#8221; namely the addition of eight extra days to sign up for healthcare. The previous cutoff date of December 15 was moved to December 23. If one signs up by then, one can still get insurance by January 1, 2014, provided they are paid up by December 31&#8211;which depends on Chao and company reconciling the reconciliation process as noted above.</p>
<p>Note that all of the above is about the website. On Saturday, another empty promise was exposed. A analysis done by CNN <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/22/politics/obamacare-subsidies">reveals</a> that &#8220;in the largest city in nearly every state, many low-income younger Americans won&#8217;t get any subsidy at all.&#8221; Low-income is defined as anyone making less than $45,960 per year (four times the poverty level of $11,490). Because the actual cost of insurance is lower than what the Obama administration calculated it would be, many Americans with incomes far below that level will get no help buying their mandated insurance policy.</p>
<p>This contradicts testimony made by the ever-present Kathleen Sebelius to a congressional sub-committee last April, when she insisted that anyone making less than $45,960 would qualify for &#8220;an upfront tax subsidy,&#8221; while someone making $25,500 would &#8220;definitely qualify for a subsidy if he or she is purchasing coverage in the individual market.&#8221; CNN cited three individuals in three different states with incomes ranging from $25,500-$28,725&#8211;all of whom will get no subsidy at all.</p>
<p>HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters defended the change. &#8220;In some instances, because of the competition that the marketplace creates, premiums have come in so low that the premium is below the ceiling in the law,&#8221; she explained. &#8220;This means that, in some places, people will pay less than they would with a tax credit.&#8221;</p>
<p>That is true, but it ignores two salient factors. First, because premium prices increase with age, the younger, healthier Americans needed to keep ObamaCare afloat will be disproportionately affected by the subsidy elimination. Second, and far more important, the unexpected change amounts to one more instance where ObamaCare expectations fall short of ObamaCare reality.</p>
<p>Another arena of lowered expectations regards the president&#8217;s &#8220;fix,&#8221; theoretically allowing Americans to keep their old insurance policy for another year. The word theoretically is very apt, in that many of those policies are long gone. Moreover as of yesterday, the number of states rejecting the fix has <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/23/states-rejecting-obama-fix-shows-plan-will-have-little-impact-on-improving/">increased</a> from last week&#8217;s four to this week&#8217;s nine. Connecticut California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington are rejecting the president&#8217;s offer, with Minnesota Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and others suggesting that the fix would destabilize their respective markets, and raise premiums for too many residents.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for millions of Americans, the most destabilizing element of all has yet to be realized. And once again, the nation’s date with destiny has been readjusted. Last week the Obama administration announced that the date for next year&#8217;s open enrollment season will be pushed back one month, from October 15 to November 15&#8211;putting it past the 2014 mid-term election. It should be quite an enrollment period, since the 61 million to 108 million Americans who are currently insured by their employer will be seeing the same cancellation notices next year that have hit 5 million Americans&#8211;and counting&#8211;in the individual market this year. As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) rightly notes, this &#8220;cynical political move&#8221; is intended to prevent Americans from finding out how much insurance premiums for 2015 may spike &#8220;until after the election.&#8221;</p>
<p>That assumes the <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a> website is working a year from now. Unbelievably, AP reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar actually states that if it malfunctions again, &#8220;Democrats could benefit politically. If lighting strikes twice and the website sputters again during the next open enrollment season, that second act would not take place until after the voting is done.&#8221;</p>
<p>Perhaps Alonso-Zaldivar should interview Debra Fishericks, a woman with kidney cancer who is <a href="http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/11/25/woman-battling-kidney-cancer-losing-company-health-plan-due-to-obamacare/">losing</a> her company-sponsored insurance due to ObamaCare. Or he could interview company owner Betsy Atkinson of Atkinson Realty in Virginia Beach, who discovered that none of the plans offered in place of her current employee plan is affordable. “We were happy, we had great insurance,” Atkinson told CBS News. “We had continuing care for our employees. On June 30, 2014, I will probably not be offering company insurance for my employees. I just can’t afford it,” she added.</p>
<p>Another due date, another disaster. That&#8217;s the real story behind ObamaCare. And fixing a lousy website won&#8217;t change it.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Three Years of Budget Failure</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-three-years-of-budget-failure/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-three-years-of-budget-failure</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:45:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Budget]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deadline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debt ceiling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deficit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[press conference]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=173452</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president demonizes Republicans over the debt ceiling while leading the nation into the abyss. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-three-years-of-budget-failure/abc_obama_specreport_121114_wg/" rel="attachment wp-att-173486"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-173486" title="abc_obama_specreport_121114_wg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/abc_obama_specreport_121114_wg-450x348.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="209" /></a>The mixture of arrogance and indifference to the law that has become the trademark of the Obama administration hit another mile marker yesterday. At a press conference, the president <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/276967-obama-demands-congress-raise-164-trillion-debt-ceiling">demanded</a> that Congress raise the debt ceiling, because America is not &#8220;a deadbeat nation,&#8221; further characterizing the failure to do so as &#8220;irresponsible&#8221; and &#8220;absurd.&#8221; The White House should be quite familiar with both concepts: last Friday, the administration&#8217;s acting Budget Director, Jeff Zients, told House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) that it will <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/276969-obama-budget-delayed-again-white-house-tells-paul-ryan">miss</a> the legal deadline for submitting a budget to Congress.</p>
<p>The White House&#8217;s disregard for its legal obligations is hardly an anomaly. &#8220;This will mark the third time in four years the president has missed his statutory requirement to present a budget on time, while trillion-dollar budget deficits continue to mount,&#8221; <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/jan/23/white-house-miss-budget-deadline-third-year/">said</a> Ryan. Nor is such irresponsible behavior limited to the White House. The Democratically controlled Senate has failed to pass a budget in more than three and a half years, taking several proposals enacted by the House and tabling them. The last time they adhered to their legal obligation was in 2009.</p>
<p>Missing the budget deadline is no accident. Last month, the White House <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/fiscal-cliff-2014-budget-already-delayed-85145.html?hp=f2">told</a> <em>Politico </em>that it had &#8220;deliberately slowed preparations for President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget&#8221; until it &#8220;had a better fix&#8221; on negotiations with Republicans regarding the fiscal cliff deal. Despite that reality, Obama had no qualms about taking Congress to task for its inability to reach a deal in a timely manner. “America wonders why it is in this town why you can’t get stuff done in an organized timetable,” said the president. “Why everything has to always wait until the last minute. We’re now at the last minute. The American people are not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy,” he added.</p>
<p>The American public is indeed low on patience. But that impatience pales in comparison to their general lack of knowledge regarding economics, and the subtleties of the fiscal cliff deal and the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations, in particular. Nothing epitomized that lack of knowledge better than the <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/010713-639637-reelected-obama-immediately-raises-middle-class-taxes.htm">shock</a> expressed by the legions of Obama&#8217;s supporters when they discovered that the tax increases they heartily supported when they thought it was all about making the &#8220;rich&#8221; pay &#8220;their fair share&#8221; included a bite out of their own paychecks. Somehow the president and his media enablers failed to mention that the expiration of the payroll tax holiday, raising the rates from 4.2 percent back up to 6.2 percent, was part of the equation.</p>
<p>That lack of understanding invariably works to the president&#8217;s advantage with respect to the debt ceiling debate. Thus, the president can once again <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/01/obama-press-conference-january-14/60965/">chide</a> Republicans in Congress with pithy phrases such as, &#8220;You don&#8217;t go out to dinner and eat all you want and then leave without paying the check,&#8221; or &#8220;I don&#8217;t think anyone would consider my position unreasonable. I&#8217;m not going to have a monthly conversation of whether we will pay our bills,&#8221; even as this administration can neither pay for its &#8220;dinner check&#8221; or its &#8220;monthly bills&#8221; without massive amounts of borrowing that now <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/7/government-borrows-46-cents-every-dollar-it-spends/">comprises</a> a mind-bending 46 cents of every dollar spent in FY2013, which began October 1. In October and November alone, the government rang up another $292 billion in deficit spending&#8211;as in $4.8 billion of borrowed money <em>per day.</em></p>
<p>Yet at the press conference, the president insisted that his administration has already cut more than $1 trillion in federal spending. He said the same thing in a December 30 <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-i-cut-spending-over-trillion-dollars-2011">appearance</a> on NBCs “Meet the Press.” &#8220;Well, I have to tell you, David, if you look at my track record over the last two years, I cut spending by over a trillion dollars in 2011,&#8221; Obama told host David Gregory. That is a flat out lie. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) not only revealed that the federal government <em>increased</em> spending by $147 billion from FY2010 to FY2011, but added another $1.29 trillion to the national debt&#8211;which is the primary reason the nation has once again bumped up against the debt ceiling.</p>
<p>Even more remarkable than the president&#8217;s ability to lie without the slightest hesitation, is the mainstream media&#8217;s abject failure to call him on it. Whether this is an error of commission, as in a failure to obtain budget information that is readily available, or an error of omission, meaning they have the information and refuse to bring it up during a high-profile press conference, hardly matters. The public hears $1 trillion in cuts, and the contention is left unchallenged. Thus, Americans are forced to endure a media that is ignorant, collaborative or both.</p>
<p>As we get closer to the debt ceiling, nothing will change. Thus, when the president begins his opening round of debt ceiling &#8220;negotiations&#8221; by warning the public that Republicans &#8220;will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy,” no one is willing to explain that the only way the economy crashes is if the president <em>orders</em> it to happen. The <em>NY Post&#8217;s</em> Carolin Baum <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_phony_default_drama_sJgRMsRg3RXNJ23fLybYxI">explains</a> that the tax receipts government takes out of Americans&#8217; paychecks each month far exceeds what the government owes in monthly interest payments. Furthermore, despite claims by the Treasury it has no authority to prioritize payments to holders of U.S. debt, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reached the following conclusion in 1985: “We are aware of no statute or any other basis for concluding that Treasury is required to pay outstanding obligations in the order in which they are presented for payment, unless it chooses to do so.”</p>
<p>In other words, the only way America could default is if Obama issues an executive order to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, mandating that America&#8217;s obligations must be paid in the order they are received, even if it crashes the economy in the process.</p>
<p>Yet that didn&#8217;t stop the president from characterizing 2011&#8242;s debt ceiling negotiations in precisely that manner. When CBS News&#8217; Major Garrett noted that Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling as Senator, even as he is adamant about raising it now, absent &#8220;deficit reduction or budget maneuvers&#8221; that presidents Reagan, G.W. Bush and Clinton were willing to undertake, the president blamed &#8220;certain groups in Congress&#8221; for their &#8220;absolutist positions&#8221; that brought the nation &#8220;within a few days of defaulting.&#8221;</p>
<p>No it didn&#8217;t. It bought the nation within a few days of a likely government shutdown, during which serious choices would have to have been made regarding what the government could actually pay for, <em>in addition</em> to the interest on the debt. It is <em>that</em> conversation that the president, his party, and more than a few Republicans for that matter, are desperately trying to avoid.</p>
<p>Moreover, exactly as he did in 2011, the president is once again attempting to avoid that conversation by instilling fear in vulnerable and economically illiterate Americans, <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/national_world&amp;id=8953973">warning</a> them that &#8220;Social Security benefits and veterans&#8217; checks will be delayed&#8221; if the debt ceiling isn&#8217;t raised &#8220;quickly.&#8221; This is nothing less than Chicago-way thuggery designed to obscure the reality that the president could begin debt ceiling negotiations <em>right now, </em>even as he steadfastly refuses to do so.</p>
<p>The reason for such intransigence is simple. A combination of fearful Americans, a duplicitous media, and a Republican party with a track record of spinelessness will allow Obama to demagogue the issue without restraint. The purposeful failure to present an on-time budget is icing on the cake, in that it pushes any chance of negotiations closer to the deadline where the debt ceiling is raised, or the government shuts down&#8211;but does <em>not</em> default.</p>
<p>As of now, Republicans are talking the talk. &#8220;I do know that the most important issue confronting the future of our country is our deficit and debt,&#8221; said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).  &#8220;So we are hoping for a new seriousness on the part of the president with regard to the single biggest issue confronting the country, and we look forward to working with him to do something about this huge, huge problem.&#8221; House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) concurs. &#8220;The American people do not support raising the debt ceiling without reducing government spending at the same time. &#8230; The House will do its job and pass responsible legislation that controls spending, meets our nation&#8217;s obligations, and keeps the government running, and we will insist that the Democratic majority in Washington do the same.&#8221;</p>
<p>It won&#8217;t happen. Only the Republicans have to have enormous courage to take on America&#8217;s insatiable addiction to spending. Democrats and the president can sit back, hold veterans and elderly Americans hostage, and wait for their media apparatchiks to pile on a &#8220;heartless&#8221; GOP.</p>
<p>&#8220;If we want to have a conversation about how to reduce our deficit, let’s have that. We’ve been having that for the last two years,&#8221; said the president at yesterday&#8217;s press conference. During those two years, America&#8217;s debt has increased by more than $2.1 trillion. By the time this president is finished talking in 2016, the national debt will top $20 trillion. At some point, talk of &#8220;cliffs&#8221; and &#8220;ceilings&#8221; will cease to matter. Only the word &#8220;abyss&#8221; will be relevant.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>What Is Israel&#8217;s &#8216;Red Line&#8217;?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/understanding-israels-red-line/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=understanding-israels-red-line</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Oct 2012 04:50:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=147683</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where the Jewish State and the “experts” differ on Iran’s nukes.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/understanding-israels-red-line/hi-netanyahu-03344178-8col/" rel="attachment wp-att-147685"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-147685" title="hi-netanyahu-03344178-8col" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/hi-netanyahu-03344178-8col.gif" alt="" width="375" height="273" /></a>Why, in his speech to the UN General Assembly late last month, did Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu push back the crunch time for Iran’s nuclear program to next spring or summer? The extended deadline came as a surprise considering that Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak had been saying for almost a year that time was running out fast, and implying that 2012 was the year of decision.</p>
<p>Since Netanyahu’s speech it has been variously claimed that he pushed back the deadline because of successful sabotage of Iran’s Fordo enrichment plant; because of too much opposition to a strike in the Israeli cabinet and top brass; or because Netanyahu expected Barack Obama to win on November 6 and saw improving relations with him as Israel’s cardinal strategic interest at the moment.</p>
<p>On Tuesday Amos Harel, defense analyst of <em>Haaretz</em>, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/iran-slowed-progress-on-nuclear-weapons-program-by-eight-months.premium-1.468768">offered</a> still another take on the matter. Iran, he said, has been diverting enough of its enriched uranium for scientific purposes—specifically, making fuel rods for producing medical isotopes—that it won’t have enough bomb-grade uranium for another eight months.</p>
<p>The International Atomic Energy Agency’s report in August had already said Iran was diverting enriched uranium for that other purpose. Now, says Harel, “defense sources” have further information to confirm that.</p>
<p>If so, why would Iran be slowing down its bomb program? Harel says it’s “an attempt to reduce international pressure”—thereby allowing Netanyahu and Israel to breathe a tad easier for now.</p>
<p>Typically, though, another report appearing on the same day puts Iran much closer to the finish line—though with a catch. Washington’s Institute for Science and International Security now <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6016">says</a> Iran could have enough material for a bomb in two to four months—definitely sooner than Netanyahu’s spring deadline.</p>
<p>And if the centrifuges at Fordo—now idle—start operating again, Iran could even, says the ISIS, have enough enriched uranium in three or four weeks.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the ISIS believes that, in any case, it would take Iran much longer to come up with a warhead: Iran would need “many additional months to manufacture a nuclear device suitable for underground testing and even longer to make a reliable warhead for a ballistic missile.”</p>
<p>In still another piece appearing on Tuesday, nuclear-weapons expert Prof. Graham Allison of Harvard takes a similar line. While Netanyahu’s timeline of next spring is “essentially correct,” Allison <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/did-bibi-s-bomb-bomb.premium-1.468882">claims</a> Iran would then have to launch a crash program to build the other components of a weapon. That, in turn, would entail ejecting the IAEA inspectors and giving the U.S. and Israel plenty of time—a few months—to act.</p>
<p>A scenario that, in Allison’s view, would make no sense for Iran; instead it would “wait until it has amassed enough material for a half-dozen bombs—allowing it to test one and credibly claim to have a nuclear deterrent against attack.” For <em>that</em>, says Allison, Iran would need at least two years.</p>
<p>In claiming, then, in his UN speech that the West’s red line should be enough Iranian enriched uranium for a single bomb, was Netanyahu being unduly alarmist?</p>
<p>The answer may lie in an <a href="http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/05/netanyahu_envoy_our_position_on_red_lines_has_not_changed">interview</a> that appeared in <em>Foreign Policy</em>’s <em>The Cable</em> on Friday with Netanyahu envoy Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S.</p>
<p>Shoval reaffirmed to interviewer Josh Rogin: “Israel doesn’t set dates, but if by a certain point the sanctions have not achieved the desired results, then other measures will have to be very practically considered…. We talk in terms of 6 to 8 months.”</p>
<p>He added: “Israel doesn’t pretend that it can totally eliminate Iran’s nuclear program…. But the general view in Israel is that we could stop the Iranian effort for 3 to 5 years. Well, in the Middle East 3 to 5 years is not such a short time, as we have seen. And the Americans could get into the game if they want to, within that delay.”</p>
<p>Most revealingly, Rogin reports that Shoval said Israel’s red line “is when the Iranians have produced enough fissionable material from which they can produce at least a dirty bomb within a short time….”</p>
<p>Setting off a dirty bomb in a city, of course, would not require the additional components mentioned by the ISIS and by Allison. For large countries, that threat may seem tolerable. For Israel—where a single dirty bomb could cause widespread panic in Tel Aviv and make much of it uninhabitable for years—it would not be.</p>
<p>Netanyahu’s announcement Tuesday night that Israel, too, is going to elections—which he’s expected to win handily—can put him in a stronger position, with a stronger coalition, to act against Iran later in 2013 if it proves necessary. And, it should be added—since much remains speculative—if it hasn’t been done already.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>A New Way on Iran – by Jacob Laksin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/a-new-way-on-iran-%e2%80%93-by-jacob-laksin/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-new-way-on-iran-%25e2%2580%2593-by-jacob-laksin</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Dec 2009 05:03:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration’s policy of engaging the mullahs goes up in flames. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44272" title="Tehran_664861a" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Tehran_664861a.jpg" alt="Tehran_664861a" width="585" height="350" /></p>
<p>As the clock counts down on the Obama administration’s <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE54H4QX20090518">end-of-year deadline</a> for negotiations with Iran, it’s timely to review what the administration has to show for its policy of engaging the regime.</p>
<p>Obama’s investment in this policy has been substantial. The president has personally reached out to the Iranian leadership, even going so far as to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/24/khamenei-obama-letter">send letters appealing for better relations</a> to the country’s unofficial leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. When demonstrations erupted this June in the wake of a blatantly fraudulent presidential election, the administration spurned a chance to take a stand with the thousands of opposition demonstrators who poured out onto Iran’s streets – and, when the streets became too dangerous, onto Iran’s rooftops – to protest the political injustice committed in their name. Not even grisly reprisals against democrats, dissidents, journalists and political activists elicited more than a tame warning from Washington. Obama pronounced himself “appalled and outraged” at the regime’s brutality, but revulsion did not translate into robust response. For all intents and purposes, the mullahs and their loyalist thugs were given a free pass to suppress all stirrings of dissent as they pleased.</p>
<p>That remains official U.S. policy. Recent weeks have seen Iran transformed once again into a battlefield between the theocratic regime and its militia enforcers on the one side and the democratic opposition on the other. Credible reports suggest that the latest crackdown has left dozens dead, even as a police-state dragnet has swept thousands under arrest. Prominent critics and democratic activists have been targeted, as have their relatives. The nephew of opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, believed by many to be the true winner of the summer election, has reportedly been killed after being run over. The apolitical sister of Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi has been arrested. Opposition leaders who fall into the regime’s clutches <a href="http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCALDE5BQ06J20091229">face execution</a>. Watching the bloodshed from his paradise retreat in Hawaii, President Obama has offered only symbolic support for the swelling ranks of victims. Despite condemning the regime’s “iron fist of brutality,” he has not lifted a hand to break its repressive grip. And so the crackdown continues.</p>
<p>From the administration’s standpoint, this calculated coldness to the human-rights atrocity unfolding in plain sight is the height of pragmatism. Granting official and active support to the opposition demonstrators’ cause, the argument goes, would only encourage the regime to discredit them as seditionist stooges of the Great Satan. At the same time, it would compromise the administration’s leverage on nuclear issues, making it more difficult to bring Iran to the diplomatic bargaining table.</p>
<p>Such convenient rationalizations fly in the face of recent history. If the past decade has taught any lesson, it is that Iran will not be peacefully persuaded to abandon its march toward a nuclear weapon. Supporting the suspicion is the ever-expanding evidence of the regime’s covert nuclear activities, including <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580344,00.html">revelations</a>, earlier this month, that Iran has spent four years constructing a “neutron initiator,” otherwise known as a trigger for a nuclear bomb. For those who continue to believe that the regime can be reasoned with – a dwindling number that nonetheless includes many in the Obama administration – Iranian officials have long been the bearers of bad news. When warned recently that Iran could face a new round of sanctions if it failed to comply with the administration’s timelines, Mahmoud Ahmadinehad offered a revealing retort: “We don’t care. We are not afraid of sanctions against us and we are not intimidated.”</p>
<p>The same cannot be said of opposition protestors, many of whom have been forced at risk of death into hiding or exile. But if the Obama administration believed that keeping its distance from the men and women being bludgeoned on the streets would spare them from the regime’s lurid slurs of treason and the United States from charges of foreign subversion it has tragically misunderstood the cynicism of totalitarian regimes. The fact that the opposition has received no official support has not deterred Iran’s Orwellian foreign ministry from <a href="http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=114909&amp;sectionid=351020101%20">decrying</a> fictional “interference” in the country’s internal affairs. Nor has the mere fact of its absurdity kept Ahmadinejad from alleging that the mass uprisings in Iran are part of a play “commissioned” by “Americans” and – who else? – “Zionists.” So much for the Obama administration’s assurance that engagement has made it “difficult to demonize the United States and say it has been the root of all evil.” Modern Iran may have few exports, but it boasts an oversupply of anti-American conspiracy theories.</p>
<p>Small indeed are the wages of inaction. There is little indication, meanwhile, that the action that the administration is prepared to take, such as <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h3eddJPOnhRvsCM4fnH7I0glk1gQ">targeted sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard</a>, offers a realistic solution to regime’s threat, foreign or domestic. However defensible in themselves, sanctions will neither make the regime more pliant on nuclear matters nor relieve pressure on the embattled opposition. By contrast, meaningful support for the opposition – including but not limited to financial aid – could provide the kind of existential threat that Iran’s ruling powers have learned to discount from the international community. It would be a grim coda to 2009 if the administration that has presided over the largest government spending spree since the Great Depression was prepared to use taxpayer dollars to bail out all but the desperately needy.</p>
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		<title>As standoff with Iran continues, U.S. prepares targeted sanctions &#8211; washingtonpost.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/as-standoff-with-iran-continues-u-s-prepares-targeted-sanctions-washingtonpost-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=as-standoff-with-iran-continues-u-s-prepares-targeted-sanctions-washingtonpost-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:41:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44216</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration is readying sanctions against discrete elements of the Iranian government, including those involved in the deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters, marking a shift to a more aggressive U.S. posture toward the Islamic republic, U.S. officials said. Ten months after President Obama set a year-end deadline for Iran to engage with world powers [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The Obama administration is readying sanctions against discrete elements of the Iranian government, including those involved in the deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters, marking a shift to a more aggressive U.S. posture toward the Islamic republic, U.S. officials said.</p>
<p>Ten months after President Obama set a year-end deadline for Iran to engage with world powers on its nuclear program, the government in Tehran has failed to respond in kind, other than an abortive gesture in the fall.</p>
<p>Now, in what may be a difficult balancing act, officials say the administration wants to carefully target sanctions to avoid alienating the Iranian public &#8212; while keeping the door ajar to a resolution of the struggle over Iran&#8217;s nuclear program. The aim of any sanctions is to force the Tehran government to the negotiating table, rather than to punish it for either its apparent push to develop a nuclear weapon or its treatment of its people.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have never been attracted to the idea of trying to get the whole world to cordon off their economy,&#8221; said a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. &#8220;We have to be deft at this, because it matters how the Iranian people interpret their isolation &#8212; whether they fault the regime or are fooled into thinking we are to blame.&#8221;</p>
<p>As a result, top officials show little apparent interest in legislation racing through Congress that would punish companies that sell refined petroleum to Iran. &#8220;Sanctions would not be an alternative to engagement,&#8221; another senior official said. &#8220;Our intention is to keep the door open.&#8221;</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122903415.html?hpid=topnews">As standoff with Iran continues, U.S. prepares targeted sanctions &#8211; washingtonpost.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Ahmadinejad dismisses US deadline for nuclear deal &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/ahmadinejad-dismisses-us-deadline-for-nuclear-deal-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ahmadinejad-dismisses-us-deadline-for-nuclear-deal-ap</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:27:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42948</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[TEHRAN, Iran – Iran&#8217;s president on Tuesday dismissed a year-end deadline set by the Obama administration and the West for Tehran to accept a U.N.-drafted deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The United States warned Iran to take the deadline seriously. via Ahmadinejad dismisses US deadline for nuclear deal &#8211; Yahoo! News.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>TEHRAN, Iran – Iran&#8217;s president on Tuesday dismissed a year-end deadline set by the Obama administration and the West for Tehran to accept a U.N.-drafted deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The United States warned Iran to take the deadline seriously.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iran_nuclear;_ylt=AiKfLK4ZXKnWva7sAWRforCs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNkMGhkZmFtBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMjIzL2lyYW5fbnVjbGVhcgRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzMEcG9zAzEwBHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNhaG1hZGluZWphZGQ-">Ahmadinejad dismisses US deadline for nuclear deal &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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		<title>A Reckless Health Care Bill That Nobody Believes In &#8211; WSJ.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/a-reckless-health-care-bill-that-nobody-believes-in-wsj-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-reckless-health-care-bill-that-nobody-believes-in-wsj-com</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/a-reckless-health-care-bill-that-nobody-believes-in-wsj-com/#respond</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:05:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Believes]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42706</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598130440164954.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read">A Reckless Health Care Bill That Nobody Believes In &#8211; WSJ.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>It&#8217;s now Democrat vs. Democrat on health care &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/its-now-democrat-vs-democrat-on-health-care-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=its-now-democrat-vs-democrat-on-health-care-ap</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/its-now-democrat-vs-democrat-on-health-care-ap/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:56:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[american politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42368</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s one of the oldest spectator sports in American politics: Democrat vs. Democrat. Welcome to the health care overhaul edition. With just days remaining to prove that they can meet a self-imposed Christmas deadline and pass President Barack Obama&#8217;s signature initiative through the Senate, Democrats seeking a rendezvous with history instead detoured to an intraparty [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It&#8217;s one of the oldest spectator sports in American politics: Democrat vs. Democrat. Welcome to the health care overhaul edition.</p>
<p>With just days remaining to prove that they can meet a self-imposed Christmas deadline and pass President Barack Obama&#8217;s signature initiative through the Senate, Democrats seeking a rendezvous with history instead detoured to an intraparty brawl.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091218/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul;_ylt=ArZjxgeFGldx87bS.N5PvOKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNuNzlka3A1BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMjE4L3VzX2hlYWx0aF9jYXJlX292ZXJoYXVsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDMgRwb3MDNwRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDaXRzbm93ZGVtb2Ny">It&#8217;s now Democrat vs. Democrat on health care &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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		<title>Frederick W. Kagan and William Kristol: Support the President, Weekly Standard</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/frederick-w-kagan-and-william-kristol-support-the-president-weekly-standard/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=frederick-w-kagan-and-william-kristol-support-the-president-weekly-standard</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:04:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afghan]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=41055</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[President Obama has ordered sufficient reinforcements to Afghanistan to execute a war strategy that can succeed. We applaud this decision. And we urge everyone to rally round the effort to defeat our enemies and accomplish objectives vital to America&#8217;s national security.Obama&#8217;s decision, and the speech in which it was announced, were not flawless. The president [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>President Obama has ordered sufficient reinforcements to Afghanistan to execute a war strategy that can succeed. We applaud this decision. And we urge everyone to rally round the effort to defeat our enemies and accomplish objectives vital to America&#8217;s national security.Obama&#8217;s decision, and the speech in which it was announced, were not flawless. The president should have met his commander&#8217;s full request for forces. He should not have announced a deadline for the start of the withdrawal of U.S. forces. He should have committed to a specific and significant increase in the size of the Afghan National Security Forces. He should also have explained more clearly the relationship between defeating the Taliban and defeating al Qaeda, the significance of such a victory, and the reasons his Afghan strategy can succeed. The secretaries of defense and state, as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made those arguments far more compellingly in subsequent congressional testimony than the president did at West Point.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/307lxxjy.asp">Support the President</a>.</p>
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		<title>Standing with Obama – by Jamie Weinstein</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-weinstein/standing-with-obama-%e2%80%93-by-jamie-weinstein/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=standing-with-obama-%25e2%2580%2593-by-jamie-weinstein</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:06:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Weinstein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=40156</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the conservatives should back the president on Afghanistan. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="color: black;"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-40157" title="slide_3889_54735_large" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/slide_3889_54735_large.jpg" alt="slide_3889_54735_large" width="440" height="320" /></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">One could come up with many criticisms of President Obama’s speech last night at West Point announcing his Afghanistan strategy.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Why, if he was willing to commit 30,000 troops, would he not go all the way and commit the 40,000 troops that General McChrystal was asking for? Why would the president give a deadline to remove the troops in a speech that needed to show resolve about defeating al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan? And, in giving a deadline of 18 months, why would he give one that approaches so quickly? As John McCain said in a press release after Obama’s speech, “Success is the real exit strategy.”</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">And how to account for the economic part of the speech? How is it that a president who wants to spend a trillion dollars on healthcare and who signed a pork-laden $787 billion stimulus bill is suddenly worried about the cost of a policy that directly relates to the government’s first obligation to protect its citizens?</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">One might also question the delivery. Whatever the merits of the speech, it certainly wasn’t one of the more rhetorically brilliant pieces of oratory that the president has given.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Yes, there are plenty of criticisms that could be made of President Obama’s speech. And there are some questions that still must be answered by the president. But what matters most is that the president has declared, definitively, that America is shooting for success in Afghanistan and that he will provide the resources that the military needs to achieve that end. </span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">This is tremendously important and heartening, and all Americans should stand behind the president in this important mission. What happens in Afghanistan is directly related to American security. The president apparently recognizes this. And he is now acting to prevent Afghanistan from falling into the hands of the Taliban, which would once again provide al-Qaeda a safe haven to plan and plot against the United States like they did before 9/11. Perhaps even worse, a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan could be used to destabilize a nuclear-armed Pakistan.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">The president’s decision will almost certainly alienate a large portion of his base and therefore the decision he made is politically risky for him. It is, however, the right move in defense of the safety and security of the United States. Conservatives in the opposition cannot always act as obstructionists. So far, much of the president’s foreign policy has merited criticism. But when the president is right, conservatives need to stand behind him. In this case, while President Obama is skewered by many on the Left, conservatives should vocally stand with the president in support of one of the most vital missions in the terror war.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">In that vein, conservatives must also criticize poor behavior in their ranks. While former Vice President Dick Cheney has made many important and accurate statements since leaving office, his interview in the <em>Politico </em>yesterday, right before the president’s speech, was in poor taste. While he may have been correct on much of the substance, it was wrongheaded to call the president “weak” just as he was preparing to make a major policy declaration on Afghanistan. At the very least, the former vice president could have waited until hearing President Obama’s plan.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">It may have taken too long, but in the end the president made the right call, or at least close to the right call. Conservatives must now stand with the president in supporting this important mission, even if they provide constructive criticism from time to time on elements of Obama’s plan with which they have disagreements.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><em>Jamie Weinstein is a columnist for The North Star National. He can be contacted through his blog, </em><a href="http://jamieweinstein.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><em>JamieWeinstein.com</em></span></a><em>.</em></span></p>
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