RWC Unfiltered 9-29-2011

· More Foreign Policy Trouble For Obama

· Black Caucus Boondoogle

· Another Geithner Gaff

· Fossil Fuels Fiasco

· Putin Goes For 12 More Years

· Perry Pooping Out

· Mexico Criminal Investigation Of US

· Ahmadinejad Back Benched

92-year old Andy Rooney ends his career this weekend,

Americans don’t pay much attention for foreign affairs until the wheels fly off like the Iranian hostage crisis that flushed Jimmy Carter from office. That’s good for Obama who arguably has engineered an abject foreign policy flop and worldwide retreat and many now say wholesale abandonment of longtime allies from Poland to the Czech Republic; Taiwan to South Korea and Israel

From Russia to China/Taiwan to Turkey to Saudi Arabia to the Middle East peace process to Pakistan and Afghanistan to Mexico and Latin America –needs only a spark to reveal to the American public that in the last three years, we have experienced the most sustained weakening of our international interests, values and positions since the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Just last week, Obama sustained three self-inflicted international reversals in Russia, China/Taiwan and the U.N., regarding the Palestinian/Israeli peace process.

Consider Russia. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that he was stepping aside to permit Vladimir Putin to run (essentially unopposed) for president next year. That means that Putin is likely to be president of Russia for 12 more years because, constitutionally, Putin can now serve two more consecutive six-year terms.

Unfortunately, President Obama had placed a huge, strategic bet that Putin was not coming back. As CNN reported on July 6, 2009: “In an interview with the Associated Press late last week, Obama seemed to be trying to work through the sticking points by driving a bit of a wedge between Medvedev and Putin. ‘The old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russia relations is outdated and that it’s time to move forward in a different direction,’ said Obama. ‘I think Medvedev understands that. I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.’”

It doesn’t take much to imagine where Putin, the former KGB operative, will place one of those booted feet when he gets back in office. That foot placement will be felt hard in Washington, D.C.

The average person manages to consume about 430 insects every year of their lives, whether they intended to or not! Remember flour is graded by the number of rat dropping per measure

Behind the president’s whining to the Black Caucus, begging them to “quit grumbling,” is a decline in his personal popularity among African-American voters that could portend catastrophe for his fading reelection chances.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News survey, his favorability rating among African-Americans has dropped off a cliff, plunging from 83 percent five months ago to a mere 58 percent today — a drop of 25 points, a bit more than a point per week!

Nothing is more crucial to the president’s reelection strategy than a super-strong showing among black voters. In the election of 2008, he was able to increase African-American participation from 11 percent of the total vote in 2004 to 14 percent. He carried 98 percent of them. This swing accounted for fully half of his gain over the showing of John Kerry. Now his ability to repeat that performance is in doubt.

And the emergence of Herman Cain as a serious Republican candidate could not have come at a worse time for the embattled president. Cain’s alternate narrative — self-help, entrepreneurial skill, hard work and self-improvement — stands in stark contrast to the victimization/class warfare argument that the president has adopted.

Over all, how’s that class warfare working out for you, Mr. President? Well, here are some unpleasant numbers for you:

• Before Obama’s speech to Congress and the nation — watched by 34 million families — his job approval averaged 44 percent. Now it averages 43 percent, according to realclearpolitics.com. He deployed his ultimate weapon — a nationally televised speech to Congress — and came up empty.

• The president’s personal favorability has taken a big hit even as his job approval has shown no gain. The Post/ABC poll has his rating down to 47 percent, the first time in his presidency it has dropped below 50. Clearly, the spectacle of a class warrior leading the country is grating on most Americans. Usually, despite drops in his job approval, his personal ratings have stayed high. Not anymore. The most recent New York Times/CBS poll had his favorability actually lagging behind his job approval by four points — the first time it has ever done so in their polling.

• Young people, the core of Obama’s base, now hold equally favorable and unfavorable views of the president they once adored. And his favorability among self-described “liberal” Democrats has also dropped. The percentage of those who say they are strongly favorable has fallen from 69 percent in April to 52 percent now. For a president whose reelection chances hinge on his ability to turn out his base, these numbers are depressing indeed.

Obama’s advisers likely think that fervent appeals to liberal views, including class warfare, are the best way to repair the gaping holes that are now appearing in his political base. But this is a conviction born of instinct and intuition, not generated by polling data. The fact is that as the president has ratcheted up his class warfare rhetoric, his personal popularity has fallen and his job approval has edged down slightly.

Obama stepped on his own jobs initiative speech a week after he delivered it by proposing a class-based tax revenue plan. He poured on the class rhetoric, dwarfing any focus on the job creating aspirations of his spending program. So the message we get is that the president proposes to solve our economic problems by taxing rich people. To some this is counterintuitive, since the top 2 percent spend 33 percent of the money in this country. To others, it seems like an irrelevancy, as the president once again indulges his agenda for social reform rather than promoting economic recovery.

With only 26 percent of Americans approving of Obama’s handling of the economy (Fox News poll), the president’s ratings are bound to drop further, until and unless he can post real economic gains on the scoreboard, something his rhetoric alienating the GOP House of Representatives and scaring the daylights out of the business community is unlikely to achieve.

Strange but true. There are more microbial cells in your body than cells that have your own DNA. As NPR’s Robert Krulwich reported in 2006, the human body has 20 times more microbes than cells! I guess that pretty well justifies the “Imperial We.”

According to The European Union Times, the Russian Finance Minister Tatyana Nesterenko prepared a report about the Eurogroup meeting of the Informal Economic and Financial Affairs Council in Wroclaw, Poland. In it, she said that the EU Finance Minsters were stunned after Timothy Geithner appeared uninvited to the meeting and started yelling at the participants for their bad economic policies in handling the European debt. After asked whether this is the position of his President, Barack Obama, Geithner replied, “Obama is not in charge.”

The EU Finance Ministers are not the only ones stunned. Those of us who have been following Geithner’s career are stunned too. What does Mrs. Nesterenko mean, that Timothy Geithner really said something true in his life? She must be kidding!

Seems like some moral transformation happens to Geithner when he crosses the Atlantic. On this side he can’t say anything else but lies. On the other side he tells the truth – both about the EU handling of their debt and about the incompetence and the inability of his Democrat President to handle the highest government position in this nation. There must be something really redeeming about flying over the Big Pond if it can transform a habitual, shameless liar into a fervent prophet of the truth. May be we need to keep Geithner over in Europe longer, and organize for him as many European meetings as we can. This way we may be able to learn lots of truths about the real mess Obama and his cronies have cooked for us this side of the Atlantic.

We shouldn’t be awfully surprised that Obama is not in charge. It was obvious he collapsed psychologically long ago: when British Petroleum brought tons of oil to the American shores and the highly praised puppet of Soros in the White House couldn’t bear the burden of responsibility to make a single decision to address the situation. We don’t need Geithner to know that at the present America has no President to be worth mentioning. After all, Larry Summers confided to Peter Orszag not long ago that “…we’re really home alone. There’s no adult in charge.” Of course there isn’t.

I am just a little jealous that Geithner tells the truth only to non-Americans. Come on, Tim, we deserve to hear the truth as much as the Europeans do. We are paying your salary, right?

Plants that are not cared for will cry for help, a thirsty plant will make a high-pitched sound that is too high for us to hear.

Obama’s war on fossil fuels is adding to world instability already wracked by international debt, demographic bulges and largely unpredictable galloping technology.

Domestic implications of his policies are increasingly apparent: the closing of prospecting and drilling is costing tens, perhaps hundreds of thousand of jobs. The attempt to choose winners and losers through “green energy” subsidies is producing market distortions, huge losses of taxpayers’ funds and corruption rarely seen since the old Soviet Union’s Gosplan. Using executive fiat for arbitrary environmental rulings after Mr. Obama’s “cap and trade” quietly died in Congress is eroding Constitutional government by creating “precedent” for defying public opinion as expressed through the legislative process.

On the world scene, the impact is equally grim, although as always with intricate politico-economic problems, difficult to quantify.

It is a given, of course, that world energy is, as the economists say, an imperfect market. It runs the gamut: President Hugo Chavez gives 100,000 bbl/da to his ideological buddy Fidel Castro to keep Havana lights on from Venezuela’s production, a principal source of American imports. Hand-me-down restrictive policies, a heritage of the Carter Administration’s misbegotten Department of Energy and its first head, James R. Schlesinger, dogs natural gas. Cartelization of the industry despite all the legislation and litigation since the Supreme Court broke up John D. Rocekefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911 continues to inhibit competition with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC] trying to set production quotas to control prices.

Yet, by and large, world energy is fungible — that is, production, stocks and therefore prices in one region impacts the worldwide market. After becoming a net importer in 1970, then doubling imports since the mid-80s to 50 percent of total consumption in 2010, the U.S. as world’s No. 1 consumer [and a producer of 25 percent of the world’s liquid gold] is decisive in establishing price, stocks and supply in other markets.

By impeding U.S. production through its refusal to lift controls, dragging out decisions or initiating or threatening to initiate new controls, the Obama Administration helps put a floor under world prices. That’s despite their erosion by a fall in consumption impacted by the worldwide economic recession, a very “leaky” OPEC struggling to control its 40 percent of world production, and production in the Persian Gulf for some grades a fraction of costs in North America. At a time of growing worldwide economic stagnation, despite the argument the real price of oil is skewed by a depreciating petrodollar in which most of it is traded, cheap oil remains as it has always been the sine qua non of American prosperity — and probably for world recovery.

Higher prices gorge feudal satrapies with their small backward populations in the Persian Gulf, unable to absorb and efficiently utilize capital. Worse, they indirectly finance world terrorists wherever they may be. For example, Saudi subsidies to mosques and community activities in the U.S. and the West as well as in the rest of the Muslim world carry with them Wahhabbi sect preachers insinuating sharia [pre-modern Islamic law] into Western legal codes, advocating armed jihad against “infidels” and even fellow dissident Muslim sects or reformers.

Higher prices produce a petroleum bonanza for the increasingly authoritarian and corrupt Russian regime permitting it to avoid basic post-Soviet reforms. They give Moscow’s inefficient producers increasing international political leverage through gas sales to Germany and other Western countries. They reinforce the Putin regime’s efforts to reestablish Soviet hegemony over Ukraine and Central Asia and Moscow’s hope to intervene in a post-U.S. withdrawal Afghanistan.

Higher prices for its meager oil exports has propped up — along with Obama Administration appeasement — the bloody al-Assad dictatorship at war with its own Syrian people.

Not only has the natural gas snafu produced a temporary domestic surplus — with new technology pointing toward vast new production but it prevents potential liquefied natural gas [LNG] exports to high priced markets such as East Asia. U.S. sales to South Korea, for example, would block a proposed Moscow-Seoul gas project whose transit fees through North Korea would bolster the bankrupt, peace-threatening regime in Pyongyang.

Much of this, again, is the Obama Administration’s heritage. But its pandering to environmentalistas within its ranks has exacerbated old problems and invented new ones. With most of the President’s foreign policy initiatives in shambles, the external manifestations of his energy policy could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

There is enough salt in the world’s oceans to cover all the land on all the continents to a depth of nearly 500 feet!

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when president Boris Yeltsin resigned. He was elected President in 2000 and reelected in 2004. Because of a two terms limit he stepped asside for one four year term and is now running agains for what could be his third term and this time for six years.

A former KGB agent with postiung inside Russia and Eaast Germany he entered politics after the failed KGB sponsored 1992 abortive putsch against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev over saw the disolution of the Soviet Union.

Current President Medvedev will likely swap jobs with Putin. Russia’s population is trending downward driven by lower birth rates and out migration.

If a tiger loses all his hair, he’ll still be striped. Tiger stripes are like fingerprints, each individual cat’s markings are unique. And they’re not just hair, the stripes are in their skin. Seems to be a thing with cats, since your house cat’s fur markings are also skin deep!

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has tumbled among GOP primary voters and now trails business executive Herman Cain in the race for the nomination, according to the latest IBOPE Zogby Poll.
The interstellar gas cloud that comprises Sagittarius B contains a billion billion billion (yes, that’s three orders of billion) liters of alcohol. This factoid is bound to be a big hit at the pub!

Cain’s campaign appears to have picked up steam after a win in Florida’s Straw Poll this weekend, while Perry continues to suffer from lackluster performances in GOP debates, the most recent held last Thursday in Orlando.

Perry, at 18 percent, has tumbled by more than 20 percentage points over the past month, according to IBOPE Zogby numbers and is now second to Herman Cain, who leads the field with 28 percent.

Mitt Romney trails the others at number three, with 17 percent of the vote.

The poll, conducted Sept. 23-26 was done after Perry’s performance last Thursday in the most recent debate, but was still in the field as Cain took the Straw Poll win in Florida. Cain was the choice of only 8 percent of the GOP voters a month ago.

The worst news came for Michele Bachmann, who took just 4 percent of the votes — down from 34 percent on June 30.

The Mexican government has opened two criminal investigations into Operation Fast and Furious,the deadly ATF operation that allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to purchase $1.25 million in illegal guns responsible for countless acts of violence south of the border. Reasonable people may ask when the United States will follow suit after today’s revelations that taxpayers funded the transfer and ATF agents personally handed the guns over to murderous gang members.

Fox News reports it has uncovered documents showing David Voth,an ATF group supervisor,ordered eventual whistleblower John Dodson to use federal dollars to purchase and then personally sell six semi-automatic Draco pistols to members of the gang in Arizona. Then he allowed the guns to ride off into the sunset over the sands of old Mexico:

According to sources directly involved in the case,Dodson felt strongly that the weapons should not be abandoned and the stash house should remain under 24-hour surveillance. However,Voth disagreed and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office. Dodson refused,and for six days in the desert heat kept the house under watch,defying direct orders from Voth.

A week later,a second vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons. Dodson called for an interdiction team to move in,make the arrest and seize the weapons. Voth refused and the guns disappeared with no surveillance.

65% of those with autism are left handed only about 10% of all people are left handed.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the driving force behind Iran’s nuclear program and the most vocal of Israel’s enemies, is on his last legs as president. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stripped him of most of his powers and shut the door against his having any political future.

Iranian sources report his loyalists have been deserting him in droves since he went to New York to deliver an address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 23. The Supreme Leader used his absence for the coup de grace: The removal of the president’s loyalists from the list of 4,000 contenders running for seats in parliament (the Majlis) next March.

That was easily arranged: Khameini handed his orders to Ayatollah Mohammad Kani, head of the Assembly of Experts, which In the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for screening all contenders for office. He was told to disqualify all the president’s associates. So, in the next Majlis, Ahmadinejad will be shorn of a loyal faction and any buddies sticking to him when his second presidential term runs out in May 2013 will be out of a job.

The Supreme Ruler degraded the president very publicly with one humiliation after another.

He waited for Ahmadinejad to go on the air in a US NBC interview on Sept. 13 to promise the release of Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, the two American hikers convicted of spying, before cutting him down by suspending their release until the Iranian president was being booed by protesters in New York for reneging on his promise.
Tehran’s political, religious and military insiders were not surprised by his downfall, our Iranian sources report. For some time he had been getting too big for his boots, accumulating more powers than any president before him and only getting away with it so long as he was Khamenei’s fair-haired boy.

But then, the favorite, whose election in 2005 and reelection in 2009, Khamenei engineered at the cost of violent anti-government protests in Tehran, rewarded him with ingratitude. He increasingly flouted the master and in some cases began chipping away at his authority - until Khamenei had had enough and decided to reel him in.

At the last minute, he cancelled a live Ahmadinejad interview on Iran’s second television network wide publicized for the eve of his departure to the United Nations.

The affronts followed him home to Tehran, where waiting for him were serious criminal charges linking his name to the disappearance of three billion dollars from Iranian banks. The name of the embezzler has not been released but our sources in Tehran reveal him as Amir Mansour Arya, an entrepreneur who started a business five years ago with Ahmadinejad’s encouragement and whose fortune grew a thousand fold within a suspiciously short time.

Arya is accused of using his presidential connections to secure multi-billion dollar loans from Iranian banks and then spiriting large sums out of the country.

Ahmadinejad denies any complicity in the crime. He tried fighting back by threatening to publish within 15 days “dozens of names” of rivals he claims are guilty of financial crimes. The deadline came and went without publication.

The betting in Tehran is that the Supreme Leader will not actually sack Ahmadinejad but let him last out his term as yesterday’s man,  lame duck in political isolation.

Iranian sources: Two frontrunners for future president most mentioned recently are two hardliners, Majils (legislature) Speaker Ali Larijani, a former senior nuclear negotiator with the West, and ex-foreign minister Ali Akhbar Veliyati, who is a member of Khamenei’s kitchen cabinet as senior adviser on international relations.

Pakistan warned the United States to stop the rhetoric against their country or “they will lose an ally.” Pakistan could become an enemy harboring terrorists — as opposed to an ally harboring terrorists. - Leno