A Mountain of Debt, and Other Thoughts for a Monday

When the The New York Times begins to care enough to write about it, the Obama debt situation must really be getting out of control.    Of course, conservative commentators, including me, have been sounding the alarm bells for a long time (IVM discussed the President's money troubles from its founding back in September).  The Times actually sounds like it is concerned today when it notes that an increase in interest rates above the current unheard-of levels will cause Federal debt service payments to skyrocket:

Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

But that could seem like a relatively modest pinch. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year.

The national debt now tops $12 Trillion.  Increased debt service payments will continue to eat away at available Federal dollars unless the size of the United States' economy grows dramatically.

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Yet another recent event highlights an issue of enormous concern to me:  when will the Obama Administration stand up to the Iranians?  I have written a number of times about the President's unilateral decision to withdraw SDI from Poland and the Czech Republic, a decision that has direct implications to the Iranian situation.  And the President has utterly failed to address Iran's nuclear ambitions, a fact that creates security concerns for Israel, Eastern Europe, Iraq and India.  But why would a "progressive" American President ever want to abandon the moral high ground with respect to human rights and fostering democratic governmental institutions?  Yet the President has done exactly that, in a statement issued, of all times, on the 30th anniversary of the Iranian takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran:

I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.  We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs.

Beyond the basic fact that this statement was issued on a date commemorated by Iranian's mad mullahs as a great victory by Iran over "The Great Satan", a couple of things jump out at me.  First, the President says in the statement that he seeks a relationship with "the Islamic Republic of Iran."  The "Islamic Republic" is the same government that is now run by the madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who bullied his way to re-election by intimidation and murder.  Why could not the President simply have said that he seeks a relationship with the people--the ordinary citizens--of Iran?  And second, while the President was reaching out to a government run by institutional terrorists, the streets of Tehran were filled with thousands of protesters who risked their very lives to challenge the government of the "Islamic Republic."  Yet the President offered not one single word of encouragement to those brave souls.  Instead, he made it clear that Ahmadinejad should feel free to continue to beat, torture, imprison and kill his domestic challengers because the United States will "not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs."  How can the United States assert any sort of moral superiority when our leader refuses to utter a word of support for those who only want to enjoy the same rights of free speech, free assembly and free association that we enjoy here?

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Ah, the liberal dream that is socialized medicine appears to be dying on the vine of many branches that is the Democratic Party.  To please "progressives" in the Party, any plan must provide coverage for abortion and must include a government-run option.  To the so-called "Blue Dogs" of the Party, the public option is a non-starter, and the final version must show some fiscal restraint.  And while all of the Democrats want to raise our taxes--Democrats LOVE to raise taxes--the Democrats in the House cannot agree with the Democrats in the Senate over which taxes to raise.  So while Harry Reid was able to muster enough votes to move the bill to floor debate in the Senate, he is a looooooong way from herding the cats of his party into the same pen.

My biggest issue:  the pathological lying by Democrats in both houses of Congress over the actual cost of their health care "reform" proposals.  They continue to trumpet that health care reform will actually reduce the deficit over the next ten years.  And how could a Trillion Dollars in new spending possibly reduce the deficit?  Because the Democrats play a parlor trick with the accounting by counting ten years of revenue against only six years of expenses, thus hiding the true cost of their "reform."

And while the Democrats are wasting all of this time and effort on a "reform" proposal that will either (1) fail; or (2) doom the American people to a massive debt burden for as far as the eyes can see, unemployment is reaching higher and higher and higher.  It truly is hard to believe that a gifted politician like Barack Obama can be so tone-deaf when it comes to the actual concerns of the American people.  As his poll numbers continue to slip, he and the Democratic Party-controlled Congress are doing nothing--NOTHING--about the economy.

The Case for a Hard Line with the Iranians

I ran across this opinion piece in today's The Times (of London) regarding the upcoming direct talks between the United States and Iran.  The author, Rosemary Righter, whom I have not previously encountered, outlines a strategy for exploiting the chinks in the armour of the current Iranian regime.  I do not expect that anything she recommends will be taken up by the American negotiators dispatched by the Obama Administration, but one can dream.  I do not believe that a sit down with the Iranians is a good idea, particularly by this Administration, since Obama has already played his hand that appeasement will be his method of operation.  It is too bad that what little opportunity is created by such discussions will not be leveraged to any useful end.

Sarkozy Calls Obama "Naive" about Iran

The world diplomatic landscape has surely changed when the President of the French Republic takes a harder line on Iranian nuclear proliferation than the President of the United States.  As reported in The Independent of Dublin (the one in Ireland, not the one in Ohio), President Sarkozy mocked President Obama as "naive" following Obama's speech to the United Nations.  As quoted in the article, Sarkozy had the following to say about Obama's speech:

"We live in a real world not a virtual world," the Frenchman told the 15-member council. "And the real world expects us to make decisions.  President Obama dreams of a world without weapons . . . but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.  Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.  I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community?  More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map," he continued, referring to Israel.

Thank heavens someone is actually saying it.  If you were looking for The New York Times to report on President Sarkozy's comments, you would still be waiting.  The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece today about Sarkozy's tongue-lashing of Obama, but little else can be found in American newspapers.  Now that "The Chosen One" has fallen on his face, the American media, which have been his cheerleaders since he announced his candidacy, can only avoid embarrassment by hiding the news from the American people.

Dealing with a Nuclear Iran

In case you weren't paying attention, the world has learned that Iran now has a second uranium enrichment facility to supply the material for nuclear weapons.  And over the past few days, Iran has been flexing its muscles by test firing a variety of short and medium range missles. The tested missles could easily reach all of Israel, and some of the missles could even reach portions of southern Europe.

In a sane world, this news would be greeted by every sensible nation with alarm.  But the Obama Administration, along with the surrender monkeys of western Europe, have responded only with a promise of additional sanctions.  Well guess what:  sanctions have not worked before, and they will not work now.  Furthermore, the sanctions that are in place now are not even being enforced:  for example, our allies in Germany turn a blind eye when German industrial firms provide equipment to Iran that is necessary to make the nuclear program operate.  And Russia will render any additional sanctions meaningless by providing Iran with everything it needs.  The Iranian marketplace deposits lots of money into Medvedev and Putin's treasury.

So what happens now?  We can be certain that for the Obama Administration and NATO, a military response is absolutely out of the question.  Obama cannot even muster the strength to follow the recommendations of his commanding general in Afghanistan--a war that Obama called "necessary" during the campaign--because he is afraid of his "progressive" base.  And Obama's brand of "shame on you" diplomacy makes him the laughing stock of tyrants the world over.

The only nation that truly grasps the implications of the present situation is Israel.  In 1981, Israel launched an air strike that disabled Iraq's early efforts at a nuclear weapons program, and I do not doubt for a second that Israel is already formulating a plan for a pre-emptive strike against Iran.  Israel has to do it.  The Iranian regime is openly commited to a policy of destroying Israel--literally wiping it off the map.  I will make no prediction about when the strike will come, but come it will. 

I commend to you a great piece in today's Wall Street Journal by Eliot Cohen on the limited options left for dealing with a nuclear Iran.