Cochrane Unfiltered August 1, 2010

• Iran Attack Plan Exists But Bad Idea : Mullen
• INSS Says Israel Should Attack Iran’s Nuke
• Will Slimmy Rangel Escape 13 Charges: Waters Next
• Lebanon Masses Forces On Israel Border
• Did Iran Attack Japanese Tanker?
• Ahmadinejad sees war by November
• GOP Wins Or Recession for 5-6 More Years
• Obama and Dems Try Blaming Bush Tax Cuts for Deficit
• Obama’s Hispanic Support Cracking
• Cal Voters Split On Emissions Bill Initiative
• Gingrich — Obama Good on “The View”, Not In Oval Office.

Cluster bombs - canisters that open midair scattering tennis-ball-sized “bombies,” as they are known all over. About 30 percent of them fail to explode upon impact, and instead remain buried in the earth. On average, one person a day is injured or killed somewhere by unexploded ordnance. Cluster bombs affect about two dozen nations, from Afghanistan to Zambia

August 1, 2010 marks the beginning of a ban on cluster munitions signed by about 100 nations. Non-signers include: the U. S., Israel, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Brazil for varying reason all centered around the argument that cluster munitions are effective and save their soldiers lives.

The US military has a plan to attack Iran, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday, although he added that he thinks a strike is probably a bad idea.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the highest-ranking US military officer, has often warned that a military strike on Iran would have serious and unpredictable ripple effects around the Middle East. At the same time, he said the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon was unacceptable.

Increasingly Arab states, particularly in the Persian Gulf are urging Israel or the U. S. to do their job for them and attack Iran destroying its nuclear bomb making capacity. For its part Iran came as close as ever to admitting it is closing in on a nuclear bomb. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani said on Saturday more pressure on it would tip it over into making a nuke.

The safety shut off mechanism that failed to cut off the flow of oil from a mile-deep Gulf of Mexico oil well was modified in China, the British newspaper Observer reported July 18.

The “blowout preventer,” or BOP at the root of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill, was sent to China on orders from BP for overhaul.

The Institute for National Security Studies asserted that an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, despite U.S. opposition, could galvanize the international community, particularly the Arab world, against the Teheran regime. “Attacking Iranian nuclear installations would demonstrate to the international community and the United States that Israel is credible and determined in its claim that it cannot accept a nuclear Iran.

The report said Israel must prepare to repeatedly strike Iran and brace for the consequences over the next few months.

“The United States and Iran might continue playing for time, and such time would allow Iran to go nuclear,” the report said. “Clearly this is not in the best interests of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and Israel would have to know how to take advantage of this situation. The question is how to enlist Egypt and Saudi Arabia in an effort to steer the post-attack processes.”

Regardless, an Israeli air campaign would shatter Iranian deterrence both in the Gulf and throughout the Middle East, the report said. Tira asserted that Iran’s military, despite its image, was weak, obsolete and incapable of massive retaliation.

“Iran’s response would likely be harsh, but temporary and most definitely non-apocalyptic,” the report said. “Iran has weaknesses, such as its refined oil needs, and therefore is vulnerable to opposing and restraining leverage; hence its staying power in high to medium intensity direct confrontations is very limited. The attack may perhaps not annihilate the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, but the Israeli leadership may conclude that it would upset the balance of Iran’s successful strategy.”

Republican incumbent Tom Coburn continues to hold a commanding lead over Jim Rogers, the winner of Tuesday’s Democratic Primary, in Oklahoma’s U.S. Senate race.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds Coburn leading Rogers by better than two-to-one, 65% to 31%.  Only one percent (1%) prefers some other candidate, while four percent (4%) are undecided.

Thursday Charlie Rangel (D-New York) was a “no show” - he was not required to attend — when the House ethics committee formally unveiled charges against him after efforts to reach a settlement apparently failed, setting in motion a potentially historic trial of the 20-term congressman.

The subcommittee disclosed 13 charges that lawmakers described as “very serious” violations of House rules and federal law. Rangel could have negotiated a settlement but he’d likely have had to resign - so he didn’t. If Rangel chooses a trial it will be a disaster for Democrats.

Rangel fans are busy planning a lavish 80^th birthday party for him. Rumors abound that Rangel might escape with a slap on his wrist- but, is irrevocably damaged. Obama gave him barely tepid support saying Rangel is at end of a long successful career.

Obama was on ABC’s “The View” Thursday and solicited its liberal panelist to defend him against other radio and TV talkers.

Lebanon is bolstering its military presence on its border with Israel.

Officials said the Lebanese Army has been ordered to send a brigade, or about 1,500 troops to the south. They said the reinforcements would ensure security as well as freedom of movement for the United Nations peacekeeping force, called the UN Interim Forces In Lebanon.

The Lebanese decision took place several weeks after a series of attacks on UNIFIL patrols in Shi’ite villages in the south. Officials said Hizbullah was believed to have directed the assaults, which included the seizure of weapons from a UNIFIL patrol from the French contingent.

“This step announced by the Lebanese government is a positive development that will be met with praise by Lebanon’s partner in UNIFIL,” French ambassador Dennis Pietton said.

Officials said the military deployment began on July 26 and would require about a week until completion. They said the Lebanese forces would accompany UNIFIL patrols throughout the south.

Until July, the Lebanese Army has deployed fewer than 1,000 troops south of the Litani River. In contrast, UNIFIL was operating a force of 13,500 peacekeepers from NATO and other states.

“This is news that we hoped to hear because it is important to support Lebanese troops in the south, in accordance with [UN Security Council] Resolution 1701 at the time of its implementation,” Pietton said.

Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr has confirmed the military redeployment to the south. Officials said the 8th Brigade would be sent to the south and another brigade could be added in 2011 if necessary.

New York City’s public schools are failing. Standard test passing scores in reading have dropped to 42% and 52% in math — drops of nearly half.

A Japanese tanker, carrying 200,000 barrels of crude oil suffered an explosion near Oman in what is deemed a “likely” attack. Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines said the M. Star oil tanker was on July 29 near the Strait of Hormuz off Iran as it exited the Gulf. Mitsui said the tanker, near the coasts of Iran and Oman, was probably the target of an attack. The vessel was brought to the United Arab Emirates for repairs. “We believe it’s highly likely an attack,” Mitsui spokeswoman Eiko Mizuno said. At least one sailor was injured in the “explosion from a suspected attack from the outside,” Mitsui said. This marked the first such explosion near the Strait of Hormuz in 2010 amid Iranian threats to block shipping in the Gulf. U. S. Navy divers have examined the ship’s hull finding it dented but publicly say the cause is officially unknown. Some speculate the tanker could have hit something or even struck a drifting mine. What is certain the damage was caused by an external explosion. Fixing the blame hasn’t happened and speculation runs from pirates to rogue Iranian Guard factions. Support for the building of a fence along the Mexican border has reached a new high, and voters are more confident than ever that illegal immigration can be stopped. 68% of U.S. voters now believe the United States should continue to build a fence on the Mexican border. That’s up nine points from March when the Obama administration halted funding for the fence and the highest level of support ever. Just 21% oppose the building of the border fence.

Iran, is warning of an imminent war by November, has been preparing for another major  military  exercise.

The Iranian Air Force has scheduled a week-long exercise in the western part of the country near Iraq and the Gulf. Officials said the exercise would seek to enhance interoperability as well as night missions.

“The maneuvers will also include mid-air refueling of aircraft,” Iranian Air Force deputy chief Gen. Mohammed Alavi said.

On July 26, Alavi said the exercise would begin on July 31 in the Hamadan province. He said 43 aircraft would participate, including the U.S.-origin F-4, and F-5, the Chinese-origin F-6 and F-7 and the Russian-origin Su-24.

The air exercise was being prepared as Iran warned of a major U.S. military strike in the Middle East. On July 27, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Washington would attack at least two countries in the Middle East by November 2010.

“They have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months,” Ahmadinejad, who did not elaborate, on what he told Iranian television.

The Iranian Air Force said it would deploy unmanned aerial vehicles during the exercise, which would involve at least nine bases. A spokesman said attack missions would be conducted at night, the first time that the F-7 and Su-24 would participate in such operations.

The exercise, titled “Devotees to the Sanctity of Religious Leadership,” would also include the launch of new air-to-ground munitions, officials said. They said the F-4 and Su-24 would also practice mid-air refueling to prepare for long-range missions and obvious warning to Israel..

Iran has intensified air and naval exercises amid its acceleration of the nation’s nuclear program. Teheran has repeatedly warned against any Israeli or U.S. air strike.

California’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina picked the wrong restaurant to announce her Latino outreach effort last week. Fiorina said at a campaign stop at Texas Mexican Restaurant in Sacramento last month that she was pleased to be supported by people like Griselda Barajas, a member of the Sacramento Metro Chamber’s board and owner of Griselda’s Catering, which hosted the event. Barajas is endorsing incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.

The economy needs a victory by Republicans in the November congressional elections to make a speedy recovery, says Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and others.

If current policies continue, the economy may take five to six years to rebound, just as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has predicted, she told Newsmax.TV.

But the bright side is that Republicans can re-take control of Congress, says Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist for the Labor Department.

“Just as in 1994 we elected Republicans who then put in a system of lower spending and cut the size of government, resulting in a boom, the same thing might happen this November.”

Vice President Joe Biden has declared that the heavy lifting is over for the year, and it’s time to begin campaigning and talking about the White House’s accomplishments. The heavy lifting might be over, but it sounds like the heavy shoveling is just beginning. — Leno

A Wall Street Journal analysis debunks Obama and congressional Democrats who are blaming their trillion and a half dollar budget deficits on the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Letting these tax cuts expire is their answer. Yet the data flatly contradict this “tax cuts caused the deficits” narrative.

“The next decade’s deficits are the result of the previous administration’s profligacy,” Mr. Obama asserted in his January State of the Union Address that by the time he took office, “we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.”

But, WSJ paints a dramatically different picture pointing out three critical facts:

1. The wars, tax cuts and the prescription drug program were implemented in the early 2000s, yet by 2007 the deficit stood at only $161 billion. How could these stable policies have suddenly caused trillion-dollar deficits beginning in 2009? (Obviously what happened was collapsing revenues from the recession along with stimulus spending.)

2. The president’s $8 trillion figure minimizes the problem. Recent CBO data indicate a 10-year baseline deficit closer to $13 trillion if Washington maintains today’s tax-and-spend policies-whereby discretionary spending grows with the economy, war spending winds down, ObamaCare is implemented, and Congress extends all the Bush tax cuts, the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch, and the Medicare “doc fix” (i.e., no reimbursement cuts). Under this realistic baseline, the 10-year cost of extending the Bush tax cuts ($3.2 trillion), the Medicare drug entitlement ($1 trillion), and Iraq and Afghanistan spending ($515 billion) add up to $4.7 trillion. That’s approximately one-third of the $13 trillion in baseline deficits-far from the majority the president claims.

3. Most importantly, the White House methodology is arbitrary. With Washington set to tax $33 trillion and spend $46 trillion over the next decade, how does one determine which policies “caused” the $13 trillion deficit? Mr. Obama could have just as easily singled out Social Security ($9.2 trillion over 10 years), antipoverty programs ($7 trillion), other Medicare spending ($5.4 trillion), net interest on the debt ($6.1 trillion), or nondefense discretionary spending ($7.5 trillion).

Sunday Treasury Secretary Geithner was all over the Sunday morning talk shows trying to explain why allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is a good idea. You can bet the demagoguery against successful Americans will ramp up in coming weeks as a precursor of ending the Bush tax cuts and raising taxes.

Demagogue is a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power

India has unveiled a prototype of a tablet PC it hopes to sell for $35 or less. The $35 tablet will run a variation of the open source Linux operating system. It has 2Gb of RAM, but no internal storage–relying on a removable memory card. The device has a USB port, and built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. Seems like reasonable enough specs–especially for $35.

Despite Obama’s pandering to Latinos including suing Arizona over it tough immigration law his once solid support among Hispanics is cracking, a troubling sign for Democrats desperate to get this critical constituency excited about helping the party hold onto Congress this fall.

Hispanics still overwhelmingly favor the Democratic Party over the GOP, and a majority still think Obama is doing a good job, according to an Associated Press-Univision poll of more than 1,500 Hispanics.

But the survey, also sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Stanford University, shows Obama gets only lukewarm ratings on issues important to Hispanics - and that could bode poorly for the president and his party.

For a group that supported Obama so heavily in 2008 and in his first year in office, only 43 percent of Hispanics surveyed said Obama is adequately addressing their needs, with the economy a major concern. Another 32 percent were uncertain, while 21 percent said he’d done a poor job.

44% of members of Congress are millionaires compared to 1% of all Americans. Of greater interest is that less than half of those Congressional millionaires were not when first elected begging the question - how?

Fifty-four percent (54%) of U.S. voters say the Justice Department should take legal action against cities that provide sanctuary for illegal immigrants. Even more think the federal government should cut off funds to these “sanctuary cities.”

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% say the federal government should not take legal action against cities that offer illegal immigrants various forms of sanctuary. Fifteen percent (15%) more are not sure.

The findings are in sharp contrast to voter attitudes about the Justice Department’s decision to challenge a new law in Arizona that attempts to help enforce federal immigration law. Fifty-six percent (56%) oppose the Justice Department’s decision to challenge the legality of Arizona’s new immigration law in federal court. Sixty-one percent (61%), in fact, favor passage of a law like Arizona’s in their own state.

Explaining why the Justice Department is pursing Arizona for aggressive enforcement of the law but not pursuing cities that break the law, a spokesperson for Attorney General Eric Holder recently told The Washington Times, “There is a big difference between a state or locality saying they are not going to use their resources to enforce a federal law, as so-called ’sanctuary cities’ have done, and a state passing its own immigration policy that actively interferes with federal law.”

Obama is the seventh U. S. President to be left-handed. Others included: 20th James A. Garfield; 31st Herbert Hoover; 33rd Harry S. Truman; 38th Gerald Ford; 40th Ronald Reagan and 41st George H.W. Bush. Which means — almost nothing.

Roughly two-thirds of Californians (and 61 percent of likely voters) support AB 32, the 2006 law mandating that California drop its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. That figure remains consistent with support in past years a new PPIC poll finds.

Proposition 23 would suspend the law until the unemployment rate hits 5.5 percent or lower for four consecutive calendar quarters it is considered by many to be the battle royal among the November initiatives. Supporters of the initiative say that move is needed to ease the regulatory burden on businesses until the economy rebounds.

Despite the strong support for the law, Californians were divided when asked whether the government should act right away to reduce emissions or wait until the economy recovers as the initiative proponents suggest.

A slim majority of Californians (53 percent) said the government should still immediately take action, with 42 percent of respondents saying they think the state should wait. Likely voters were split, with 48 percent of respondents on either side of the issue.

After unilateral retreat on defense Obama has adopted a tougher tone with China in recent weeks as part of a diplomatic balancing act in which the United States welcomes China’s rise in some areas but also confronts Beijing when it butts up against American interests. Few believe it is anything but toothless posturing and politics. China has just surpassed Japan’s economy as #2 in the world.

Just last week the U. S. - South Korea moved  joint exercises out of the Yellow Sea after China objected. China still claims sovereignty over the South China Sea.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says of President Obama: “I think that [Obama] is very good at being a celebrity and not very good at being president. He’s perfect on ‘The View,’ but not very good in the Oval office.”

Gingrich, who says he’s seriously thinking about a run for President, blasted Obama with his most direct and stinging criticism yet.

It’s still too early to judge his administration, President Barack Obama said. in an interview broadcast on the CBS “Sunday Morning” program, Obama gave himself a grade of “incomplete” on the first 18 months of his presidency