Morning Bell: Obama’s Failure to Confront the Iranian Threat

Yesterday, America learned that Iran conspired to launch a terrorist attack in Washington, D.C., with a planned assassination of the Saudi ambassador and bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies. U.S. authorities disrupted the plot and have brought charges against the men who planned to carry out the attack, but the audacity of Iran’s actions highlights a disturbing truth: The Obama Administration has done far too little to deter state-sponsored terrorism, and it has utterly failed to confront the Iranian threat.

Russia Backs Assad to the Bitter End

Ariel Cohen

In a rare admission of reality, a senior Russia Middle East hand, Duma Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Mikhail Margelov, acknowledged that Russia has “exhausted its arsenal” of support available to the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Latest Intelligence Assessment: Iran Poised to Target U.S. Homeland

Ray Walser and James Phillips

Appearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on January 31, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James R. Clapper warned that the “2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. shows that some Iranian officials—probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the U.S. in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

Congress Notes Iranian Threat in Latin America

Tomas Bethencourt

As we have been reporting, Iran is increasingly expanding its presence in Latin America, as evidenced in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent tour to Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. More troubling, of course, are reports uncovered by the Univision News Network that Iran is using Latin America as a base for possible terrorist plots against the United States.

Obama Runs Down Wrong Road on Immigration

James Carafano

Everything about the recent decision by the White House to just stop deporting illegal immigrants reinforces the conclusion that the Administration has adopted exactly the wrong policy. This will not help solve the problem of America’s deeply flawed immigration policies and broken borders.

Not Even a ‘Fact Sheet’ Changes Facts When It Comes to Nuclear Testing

Michaela Bendikova

The State Department’s newly released fact sheet, “The Case for the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty: Some Key Points,” vividly demonstrates flawed assumptions behind the Administration’s desire to get this treaty ratified. If anything, the case remains at least as unconvincing as in 1999, when the U.S. Senate decided not to give its advice and consent to the ratification of the treaty.

Scribecast: John Yoo Talks Terrorism and the Future of National Security

Rob Bluey and Lachlan Markay

Earlier this week at Heritage, a Bush-era deputy assistant attorney general shared the stage with a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union. It’s not exactly the type of combination you might expect talking about terrorism 10 years after 9/11. But for John Yoo and Nadine Strossen, it was an opportunity to discuss the future of national security.

Chart of the Week: Obama’s Abuse of FEMA Declarations

Rob Bluey

President Obama has used his executive power in many ways to expand the role of government. But there’s one area that stands out: Obama’s frequent and repeated use of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to issue emergency and disaster declarations.

Heritage Employment Report: January Jobs. By Rea Hederman, Jr. and James Sherk

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in January, the economy added 243,000 jobs—108,000 more than the consensus forecast of 135,000. As a result, the unemployment rate fell from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent, the lowest level since February 2009. For the last three months, job creation has averaged 201,000 a month, a sign that the labor market recovery may be truly underway.
Unfortunately, many fiscal policies enacted by Congress have generated little job growth. A two-month extension of the payroll tax cut does little to create employment, because the duration of the tax change is seen as temporary. Even worse, businesses have the added uncertainty of the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which will constrain hiring.

LORD OF THE FOOD STAMPS

Joe Rogan - About the Wars Strong Language

Fox News Talks on New World Order & The Global Elite

Chavez Jr. arrested for drunk driving

Busted

Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., who fights Marco Rubio tonight, was arrested fo
Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. was arrested by the California Highway Patrol on the morning of Jan. 22 and charged with drunk driving, according to records obtained by RingTV.com and a spokesman at the holding facility.
Chavez, 25, was arrested in Los Angeles at 4:38 a.m., booked at 7:19 a.m. at the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Men's Central Jail, and released at 10:25 that morning, according to the operator at station No. 4 of the Sheriff's Department Inmate Reception Center.
Chavez has a court hearing scheduled for March 16 in Los Angeles Municipal Court, according to the spokesman.
The fighter was listed by police at 6-foot-1 and 175 pounds at the time of his arrest.
Chavez (44-0-1, 31 knockouts ) defends his WBC middleweight belt against Marco Antonio Rubio (53-5-1, 46 KOs) tonight in San Antonio on HBO. The son of Julio Cesar Chavez is rated No. 5 by THE RING.
Public relations director Lee Samuels of Top Rank Inc., Chavez's promoter, said he had no knowledge of the arrest.

Misrepresenting Inequality Mises Daily: by Gary Galles

Sir William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, once said,

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.

Kelvin's statement is an important reminder that when magnitudes of certain variables or their relationships are in question, without the ability to accurately measure them, you don't know very much; certainly far too little to claim knowledge of "the answer." Unfortunately, his view, while dominant in the natural sciences, has often been abused in the social realm, in defense of misguided government policies.

Philosopher Alexander Moseley offers a straightforward definition of political realism as "tak[ing] as its assumption that power is (or ought to be) the primary end of political action, whether in the domestic or international arena." Realism thus provides a prism through which to observe and to appraise political phenomena, dispensing with the illusions that have built up around the modern state. A consistently realistic view of the state does not impute to it godlike, extramundane characteristics or motivations, or detach it from all of the analyses that mark common discussions of incentives and "human nature." Political realism — as both an experiential or historical matter and a methodological one — must be at the center of a thoroughgoing libertarian project, informing our criticisms and proposed solutions. In a time when attitudes toward political power are marked by awe and adoration rather than a deliberate suspicion, a new, rehabilitated realism can furnish the fresh approach to social questions that people around the world are crying out for.

Beware The Ides of March in 2012: The Double Blow of Economic Collapse And World War Is Coming

Saman Mohammadi

“Ruin from Man is most conceal’d when near
And sends the dreadful Tidings in the Blow.” – Edward Young,Night Thoughts.

The world economy is on the brink of a crisis that will end modern civilization as we know it.

Nations, or I should say banking colonies, will collapse left and right. Global poverty and unemployment rates have risen to levels that are socially and economically unmanageable under the current global financial, political, and bureaucratic system which favours the few at the expense of the many.

It is fitting that the collapse of Western Civilization is beginning in its ancient cradle, Greece. This great nation has fallen to the banksters who are behind the despotic new world order.

Romney Takes Strong Lead in Nevada GOP Victory

U S is not a democracy Milton Friedman

CONVERSACIONES CON EL TIO GILBERTO VIII

REFLEXIONES LIBERTARIAS
CONVERSACIONES CON EL TIO GILBERTO VIII
Ricardo Valenzuela

Semanas después, estábamos instalados en la bella ciudad de Bruselas y tu padre asistía ya al Real Ateneo de Bruselas, un exclusivo colegio fundado por Napoleón a principios del siglo XIX, en donde batallaba en su admirable esfuerzo para aprender el francés. Mi estancia en el viejo Continente, me abriría los ojos como nunca. Europa todavía no se reponía de la primera guerra mundial y el ambiente que se respiraba, era de mucha tensión ante resentimiento de alemanes descontentos con las condiciones impuestas en los tratados de paz que le daban fin a la guerra.

Rusia había ya abrazado el comunismo y surgía como una potencia militar con clara intención de expandir sus tentáculos. El liberalismo que navegara por todo el continente durante todo el siglo XIX y la primera década del presente, poco a poco se extinguía para darle paso a una variedad de nuevos arreglos económico, políticos y sociales entre los cuales, ya en Italia, Benito Mussolini enseñaba sus primeras cartas, en España una rara efervescencia emergía de todos los rincones, en Inglaterra el partido laboral cada VEZ tomaba más fuerza. Pero lo más preocupante, una Alemania en vías de una recuperación mezclada con una sed de venganza, nacionalismo y un pueblo que perdía la confianza en su Kaiser.

Free Cities: How countries worldwide are unleashing new economic prosperity

MICHAEL STRONG

AN ASTONISHING 3.3bn people will move from the countryside to live in cities over the next forty years. How will we handle that influx? By installing better legal systems worldwide.
Legal institutions determine whether nations are rich or poor. Think of East and West Germany and North and South Korea, two controlled experiments in which culture was constant and the only difference was the legal rules within which economic activity took place.
Which legal institutions result in prosperity? The answer clearly includes property rights, the rule of law, and economic freedom. Investors won’t invest and entrepreneurs can’t create if ownership is uncertain or subject to confiscation, if judicial decisions are arbitrary or corrupt and if red tape prevents action. Poor nations are poor because they don’t provide the legal institutions required for entrepreneurial capitalism. As they improve their legal systems, as with China’s special economic zones and India’s legal reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, they become prosperous.

Mitt Romney's campaign

Fit for fighting?

by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

I WROTE before the South Carolina primary that I thought it basically impossible that Mitt Romney could lose the primaries. This didn't require great skill on my part, of course, but now the conclusion is nigh-universal.
So have we found a humming Mitt Romney machine, funded, skilled, disciplined, having won Florida by 14 points and ready to fight the general election? I am far from convinced. The analysis that follows is from the most biased possible source. But I find it hard to argue with.

Team Romney wants voters and the national media to believe its victory reflects its candidate’s positions. In reality, it is a product of the fact that Romney and his SuperPAC allies carpet-bombed Gingrich by spending five times as much money on Florida’s airwaves, and running more than 60 television ads for every one Gingrich and his allies aired. Nearly all of the $15.3 million Romney’s campaign and its allies’ spent on advertising in Florida was focused not on their own candidate, but on the rest of a weak field of opponents, contributing to a campaign in which more than nine out of every 10 ads were negative – by far the most negative campaign in Florida’s history.

Europe against the people?

Eurozone crisis

Peter Schrank

Efforts to save the euro cannot run against the will of the voters indefinitely, writes Charlemagne of the Economist.

Europe has claimed the scalps of two leaders in almost as many days. First George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, promised to resign, and then Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi did the same. Both leaders have been in trouble for some time, but the immediate cause of their downfall is plain: the ultimatum they received from eurozone leaders at the G20 summit in Cannes to reform their economies – or else.

INTERMEX POWER

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Morning Bell: Obama’s Failure to Confront the Iranian Threat

Russia Backs Assad to the Bitter End

Latest Intelligence Assessment: Iran Poised to Target U.S. Homeland