Part 4--June, 2009

* 6/1/09--The newest development in the corruption scandal enveloping House Democrats, including Rep. Jim Moran and Rep. Jack Murtha, was the sending of subpoenas to Murtha's ally, Rep. Pete Visclosky of Indiana. The core of the story is simple: PMA, a now disbanded lobbying outfit, used “straw” donors to steer hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to Murtha and his congressional allies. In turn, they rewarded PMA’s clients with millions in earmarks. Kuchera Defense, one of Murtha’s favorite earmark-recipients, has been disbarred as a contractor for alleged fraud. So what is Nancy Pelosi, who promised the most ethical congress ever and vowed to drain the swamp of corruption, doing? Hanging tough, according to Politico: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a close Murtha friend and political ally, has remained tightlipped about him as well. One Democrat says Pelosi “won’t even discuss” Murtha and “won’t even consider” any move to replace him as the head of the Defense Subcommittee."--CommentaryMagazine.com

* 6/1/09--China is the biggest foreign owner of U.S. Treasury bonds. U.S. data shows that it held $768 billion in Treasuries as of March, but some analysts believe China's total U.S. dollar-denominated investments could be twice as high. "Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s. His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience.--Reuters

* 6/3/09--President Obama headed off to the Middle East last night by dangling yet another carrot in front of the mullahs: He endorsed Iran's "legitimate aspirations" to nuclear power. Plus US embassies worldwide were given the OK to invite Iranian diplomats to next month's Fourth of July parties. So, how long before the president gets an Iranian thumb in his eye? Probably not very, given how Teheran has reacted thus far to Obama's outstretched hand. The mullahs mounted a major military exercise last week -- including the dispatch of six warships to international waters in the region of the Gulf of Aden, a move Iran itself conceded was "historically unprecedented." Which came hard on the heels of Iran's test-firing a newly enhanced medium-range missile capable of striking Israel, Europe and US bases in the Middle East. Which itself followed February's successful launch of a satellite into orbit aboard a vehicle deemed capable of flying even farther than the newer missile. All of this came after Obama's offer of direct talks. Imagine how his imprimatur for Iranian nuclear energy will go down. Here's hoping the president will learn on his five-day swing through Egypt and Saudi Arabia that the Arab world is as terrified of a nuclear Iran as is Israel. Or as Washington should be. And, just maybe, Obama also will come to understand that the mullahs have been playing him for a fool.--NY Post Editorial

* 6/4/09--The carnage in state budgets is getting worse, a report said Thursday, with places like Arizona being hurt by falling revenue on multiple fronts, like personal income and sales taxes....The report, by the National Conference of State Legislatures, also provided a scorecard for how well drafters of state budgets read the recession’s economic tea-leaves — and the short answer is, not very well. Thirty-one states said estimates about personal income taxes had been overly optimistic, and 25 said that all three major tax categories — sales taxes, personal income taxes and corporate taxes — were not keeping up with projections. Even gloomy-Gus states that saw the recession coming and low-balled their tax estimates had little room for celebration, the report said. “The handful of states that have weathered the economic decline reasonably well are starting to report adverse revenue developments,” it said. “The news is alarming....” “What this report really underscores is that the states are facing revenue-based problems,” said Todd Haggerty, a research analyst at the conference, a nonpartisan group based in Denver....Worse is yet to come. The total collective budget gap that the states will have to resolve in the fiscal year that starts, in most states, next month, is $121 billion, compared with 102.4 billion for the year approaching its end, the report said. --NY Times

* 6/5/09--PRESIDENT Obama's "address to the Muslim world" was a masterwork of equivocation and political naiveté. Let's start with a sentence buried within his text -- possibly in hopes that few might notice. With it, Obama effectively accepts Iran's nuclear ambitions. "No single nation should pick and choose which nations should hold nuclear weapons," he said. He wasn't prepared to go further than warning that an Iranian bomb could mark the start of a Middle East nuclear arms race. Unlike his previous statements, the Cairo speech didn't include the threat of any action -- not even further sanctions -- against the Islamic Republic. The message was clear: America was distancing itself from United Nations Security Council resolutions. Obama also abandoned President Bush's freedom agenda in support of Middle East democratic movements, saying: "No system of government can or should be imposed on one nation by another." Of course, America didn't "impose" any system of government on Afghanistan or Iraq. All it did was to remove impediments to democracy in those countries.... Obama's mea culpa vis-à-vis Islam extended beyond the short span of US history. He appropriated the guilt for the Crusades, Western colonialism and support for despotic regimes during the Cold War, and countered that with a flattering narrative about Islam's role in history, featuring outlandish claims that would astonish many Muslims. Ignoring the role of ancient Greece, pre-Islamic Persia, China and India, he credited Islam with having invented modern medicine, algebra, navigation and even the use of pen and printing. He went so far as to trace the genesis of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to Cairo's medieval Al Azhar theological school. Noting that Thomas Jefferson had a copy of the Koran, Obama stated that "Islam has always been a part of American history." He also exaggerated the number of Muslim Americans at 7 million, a figure designed to promote Islam as the second-largest religious community in America after Christianity. Obama promised to help change the US taxation system to allow Muslims to pay zakat, an Islamic tax, and threatened to prosecute those who don't allow US Muslim women to cover their hair. Despite his anxiety about being "respectful of the values of others," Obama had nothing to say about the abominable treatment of women in many Muslim-majority countries... He then committed America's support to the Saudi initiative known as Interfaith Dialogue and the Turkish-sponsored Dialogue of Civilizations, both of which divide the world on the basis of religious creed. Obama voiced no support for "Muslims around the world" who are fighting for democracy and human rights, making no mention of the tens of thousands of political prisoners in the 57 Muslim-majority countries. He had no warm words for those fighting for women's rights and equal rights for ethnic and religious minorities. The president may not know it, but his "Muslim world" is experiencing a historic civil war of ideas in which growing movements for freedom and human rights are fighting a variety of despotic, fanatical terrorist groups that use Islam as a fascist ideology. Obama refused to acknowledge the existence of the two camps, let alone take sides. So it wasn't surprising that the Muslim Brotherhood, which wasn't invited to hear Obama's speech, praised him for "acknowledging the justice of our case." Meanwhile, Egypt's democratic movement Kifayah! (Enough!), officially invited, refused to show up. "We cannot endorse a policy of support for despots in the name of fostering stability," a spokesman said in Cairo.--Amir Taheri, NY Post

* 6/5/09--DRESDEN, Germany — After mending fences with the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday, President Obama might want to keep his diplomatic tools handy for his stopover here, to repair his increasingly strained relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel. A rift has quietly opened up between Germany and the United States, marked by official statements of harmony and private grumbling. It is not an outright crisis in relations, but there are underlying tensions and disagreements on matters ranging from the global economic crisis to the future of inmates held at Guantánamo Bay. On a more basic level, there is a sense that the Obama administration is ignoring the needs and counsel of longtime allies....Yet the United States can ill afford to alienate Europe’s largest economy and its most important intermediary in the strained relationship with Russia. “They’re not angry, they’re not anti-Obama or anti-American,” said John C. Kornblum, a former United States ambassador to Germany and now a business adviser in Berlin. “But they’re confused by the wave of criticism which has been sent at them by the administration and people close to the administration....Relations were already frosty as the economic crisis deepened and the German government and Obama administration took sharply differing views on how far to push stimulus spending. Mrs. Merkel believed that the Americans were underestimating the threat of inflation. But American policy makers said she did not understand the depth and the significance of the crisis....In the early stages of the Obama presidency, officials in the Merkel government were dismayed by the scarcity of staff in midlevel positions at the Treasury Department. And Germans remain surprised that an ambassador to their country has not been named more than four months after Mr. Obama’s inauguration. There is a sense that, with his focus split between domestic concerns and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new president is taking his staunchest European allies for granted. “There is definitely this disappointment in Europe, complaining that there’s nobody home,” said Stephen Flanagan, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. German government officials were outraged that a low-ranking American official was sent for the negotiations to find a way to keep the traditional automaker Opel going despite the bankruptcy of its parent company, General Motors, in the United States. --Gainsville.com

* 6/5/09--WASHINGTON (AP) -- With companies in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest in more than 25 years...(T)he increase in the nation's unemployment rate from 8.9 percent in April underscores the difficulties that America's 14.5 million unemployed are having in finding new jobs. Economists had expected the rate to hit 9.2 percent last month. If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.4 percent in May, the highest on records dating to 1994. Even with layoffs slowing, companies will be reluctant to hire until they feel certain that economic conditions are improving and that any recovery will last. Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 6 million jobs. As the recession -- which is now the longest since World War II -- bites into sales and profits, companies have turned to layoffs and other cost-cutting measures to survive the fallout. Those include holding down workers' hours and freezing or cutting pay. The average work week in May fell to 33.1 hours, the lowest on records dating to 1964.

* 6/5/09-- Despite the promises of the government's $787 billion stimu-less package, the return on investment has been abysmal to say the least. From January to March, GDP plunged 5.7 percent, business spending fell 36.9 percent, and forecasters predict a 12-percent nosedive in 2009 manufacturing output. Foreclosure and mortgage delinquencies now stand at the highest levels on record, and unemployment has reached 9.4 percent -- far beyond President Obama's prediction of a high of 8.1 percent -- and 345,000 nonfarm jobs were lost in May. Since the "stimulus," 16,000 jobs have been lost every day, though surely Obama has "saved" millions of jobs. Here, it's worth noting that Wal-Mart plans to create 22,000 new jobs this year without a dime of stimulus money. Meanwhile, this year's deficit has ballooned to $1.8 trillion, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke predicts that by 2011 the deficit will be 70 percent of GDP, an enormous leap from the 40 percent level extant before the financial crisis. Bernanke warns, "[W]e will not be able to continue borrowing indefinitely." But as yet, no end is in sight, in part thanks to Bernanke himself. And while Obama scrambles to claim victory for the stimulus, assuring us that we have "stepped back from the brink," it appears this assertion is backed only by his teleprompter. In fact, Vice President Joe Biden displayed his usual keen sense of the obvious, saying of the stimulus, "We know some of this money is going to be wasted, there are going to be mistakes made. Some people are being scammed already." So at least taxpayers can take comfort knowing the VP is aware that the stimulus is a scam. --Patriot Post

* 6/5/09--The Obamas turn up in Paris this evening, but have declined a dinner invitation from the couple next door: the Sarkozys. President Obama’s reluctance to spend more than minimum time with the French leader on his visit for the D-Day anniversary has come as an embarrassment to the Elysée Palace. America’s First Family will not be dining with President Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, even though they are staying at the residence of the US Ambassador, yards from the Elysée apartments where the Sarkozys spend their weekends.--Timesonline.co.uk

* 6/7/09--BRUSSELS – Conservatives scored victories in some of Europe's largest economies Sunday as voters punished left-leaning parties in European parliament elections in France, Germany and other nations.Some right-leaning parties said the results vindicated their reluctance to spend more on company bailouts and fiscal stimulus to combat the global economic crisis. The European Union said center-right parties were expected to take the most seats — 267 — in the 736-member parliament. Center-left parties were headed for 159 seats. The remainder were expected to go to smaller groupings. Right-leaning governments were ahead of the opposition in Germany, France, Italy and Belgium, while conservative opposition parties were leading in Britain and Spain. Greece was a notable exception, where the governing conservatives were headed for defeat in the wake of corruption scandals and economic woes. Germans handed a lackluster victory to Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and a historic defeat to their center-left rivals in the European Parliament vote months before a national election.--AP

* 6/9/09--North Korea today said it would use nuclear weapons in a "merciless offensive" if provoked — its latest bellicose rhetoric apparently aimed at deterring any international punishment for its recent atomic test blast. AP

* 6/10/09--As if terrorists needed another reason to make New York their Target No. 1, President Obama gave them one yesterday -- by moving Ahmed Ghailani here from Guantanamo Bay for trial in Manhattan federal court. The Tanzanian-born Ghailani -- captured in Pakistan in 2004 -- is a primary suspect in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in his native country and Kenya. Those attacks killed 224 people. That was back when President Bill Clinton thought law enforcement and the traditional legal system were the best ways to fight terror. Post-9/11, President George W. Bush had another idea: Go after terrorists before they get here. But now, Obama seems to want to bring back at least a part of the old system -- using US courts, complete with all their protections for the presumed "innocent" -- to fight the War on Terror. And that means bringing terrorists to America. Starting with New York City. Thanks, Mr. Prez. Just what we need. Yes, Obama had vowed to close Gitmo and prosecute terrorists in mainland courts. And, yes, he won the election. But for New Yorkers -- survivors of the worst attack on US soil ever -- the prospect of terrorists on our very streets just does not sound terribly attractive. Fact is, the Bush approach kept the country safe for nearly eight years. "Change"? It sure is -- but we're just not ready to "believe" in it quite yet.--NY Post Editorial

* 6/11/09--The Justice Department has quietly ordered the FBI to warn captured fighters in Afghanistan of their "Miranda" legal rights, a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee said. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said he learned of the change in treatment of foreign prisoners during a recent fact-finding trip to Afghanistan. "The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement," he told The Weekly Standard. "Here's the problem," he added. "You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today. . . . We capture them . . . and they're reading them their rights -- Mirandizing these foreign fighters." "Mirandizing" means advising a criminal suspect that he has certain legal protections, such as the right to remain silent and to an attorney. "I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up, because we hadn't been briefed on it," Rogers said. --NY Post

* 6/11/09--"...In the latest Gallup Poll, Obama's favorability remains high (67 percent), as does his job-approval rating (61 percent). But only 55 percent approve of his handling of the economy, just 45 percent approve of his handling of federal spending and only 46 percent approve of his treatment of the budget deficit. Meanwhile, the Rasmussen poll finds that the public now trusts Republicans over Democrats in managing the economy (for the first time in two years) by 42 percent to 36 percent. There lies the president's vulnerability. As the consensus among economists and journalists grows that the deficit is pushing up interest rates and weakening the dollar, Obama's weakest link will come under strain. If, say, the falling dollar pushes up gasoline prices and rising interest rates kill off any revival in the construction industry, the deficit will cause a perfect economic storm for the president. The United States has to borrow a net $3 trillion to $4 trillion over the next two years -- far more than the $1 trillion a year average of the last three years....The one thing Obama should do is the one thing he won't do: cut spending. The public has begun to realize that the stimulus package is doing little to help the economy. Obama's answer is to ramp up spending -- but voters in the Rasmussen poll believe, 45-36, that he should cancel the rest of the stimulus outlays.Stoked by ongoing bad economic news, the firm public conviction that new deficit spending will do more harm than good will increasingly wear on Obama's popularity -- and may bring him down.--Dick Morris, Eileen McGann

6/12/09--WASHINGTON -- In a move that infuriated America's close ally Britain, four Chinese Muslim Uighurs got the ultimate upgrade in accommodations yesterday -- ditching their Guantanamo Bay prison cells and landing in Bermuda....But the British government, which handles diplomacy and security issues for Bermuda through its crown-appointed governor, wasn't feeling so friendly toward the United States. We've underlined to the Bermuda government that they should have consulted with the United Kingdom as to whether this falls within their competence or is a security issue, for which the Bermuda government do not have delegated responsibility," fumed a spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office. --NY Post

* 6/12/09--WASHINGTON -- President Obama plans to fire the inspector general who investigates national- service programs, amid a controversy between the IG and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter. The IG, Gerald Walpin, was criticized by the US attorney in Sacramento for the way he handled an investigation of Johnson and his nonprofit, St. HOPE Academy, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants. Walpin found that Johnson -- a former NBA star -- had used Ameri-Corps grants to pay volunteers to engage in school-board political activities, run personal errands and even wash his car. Walpin referred the matter to the local US attorney's office, which said the IG's conclusions seemed overstated. Obama yesterday said in a letter to Congress that he had lost confidence in Walpin. Neither the president nor deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnestwould give details. Sen Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Walpin had identified millions of dollars in AmeriCorps funds that were wasted or misspent, and "it appears he has been doing a good job."--NY Post

* 6/13/09--The ongoing Senate circus in Albany (NY) is pure farce at its most absurd, but at one point this week, things turned downright ugly. On Thursday, some 150 protestors -- many of them from the thuggish far-left group ACORN -- turned up outside the Senate chamber and actually assaulted members of the Republican faction. The demonstrators nearly knocked to the floor Sen. James Alesi (of upstate Monroe County); they also spat in the face of his chief of staff, according to published reports. Not only was this violence uncalled for, the ACORN crowd shouldn't even have been there in the first place: The Senate lobby is a restricted area, and public protests are explicitly prohibited. Sen. George Winner (R-Elmira) accused Senate Secretary Angelo Aponte -- the Malcolm Smith ally who earlier had locked the entire Senate out of the chambers -- of having "clearly sanctioned" the riot. Violence from ACORN hardly surprises: It has a history, dating to the '80s, of engaging in trespassing, illegal seizure of private property, physical harassment, intimidation and outright extortion. Those tactics, along with its notorious, fraud-tainted "voter registration" efforts, have been bolstered not only with millions in union cash, but also with $53 million in direct federal aid since 1994. --NY Post (ACORN could be eligible for up to $8 billion under Obama's 'stimulus' bill).

* 6/13/09--(AP)-BAGHDAD -- The head of Iraq's main Sunni parliamentary bloc was killed in a daylight ambush after delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at a mosque in western Baghdad, raising fears that insurgents are trying to rekindle sectarian violence.

* 6/16/09--IT must have been the viewing angle: The despots who run Iran somehow missed the halo gracing President Obama during his recent sermon to the Muslim world. The ruling mullahs' contemptuous handling of Iran's presidential election was their response to "the Cairo effect" announced a tad prematurely by the White House. Our president's public flagellation of America only emboldened the junta in Tehran -- leaving Iran's power brokers more defiant, determined and dismissive than they've been in years. And the strongest response Obama can muster to the blood in Tehran's streets is: "I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television." How bold, how manly, how inspiring . . . .Obama's penitential Cairo sermon betrayed those Middle Easterners who embraced our ideals, who struggled for human rights and democracy, suffering prison, torture and death. Perceived as a confession of weakness and guilt, Obama's rhetoric electrified our enemies. There has been a "Cairo effect." We just saw it. In Iran. Now we face our bloodiest year in Afghanistan. Iraq's exciting progress has ground to a halt. All Palestinian factions just rejected an attempted opening by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And al Qaeda has awakened from its coma. The desert's a lousy place to walk on water.--Ralph Peters, NY Post

* 6/24/09--SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map as Washington and its allies watched for signs the regime will launch a series of missiles in the coming days.--AP

*6/25/09--(Bloomberg) -- The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week and the total number receiving payments increased, indicating the labor market may take longer to stabilize. Initial jobless claims rose by 15,000 to 627,000 in the week ended June 20, from a revised 612,000 the week before, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The number of people collecting unemployment insurance gained by 29,000 in the prior week, to 6.74 million.

* 6/25/09--(AP) -- Seoul, South Korea—Punching their fists into the air and shouting "Let's crush them!" some 100,000 North Koreans packed Pyongyang's main square Thursday for an anti-U.S. rally as the communist regime promised a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation" for any American-led attack. Several demonstrators held up a placard depicting a pair of hands smashing a missile with "U.S." written on it, according to footage taken by APTN in Pyongyang on the anniversary of the day North Korean troops charged southward, sparking the three-year Korean War in 1950. North Korean troops will respond to any sanctions or U.S. provocations with "an annihilating blow," one senior official vowed—a pointed threat as an American destroyer shadowed a North Korean freighter sailing off China's coast, possibly with banned goods on board. A new U.N. Security Council resolution passed recently to punish North Korea for conducting an underground nuclear test in May requires U.N. member states to request inspections of ships suspected of carrying arms or nuclear weapons-related material. In response to the sanctions, the North pulled out of nuclear talks and has ramped up already strident anti-American rhetoric. And the isolated regime may now be moving to openly flout the resolution by dispatching a ship suspected of carrying arms to Myanmar.