Just POlitics

U.S. & India accord

The United States and India have reached an accord that India can bid on U.S. fighter planes. The announcement comes shortly after the U.S. announced the sale of nearly two-dozen F-16 to Pakistan. India is looking to buy approximately 126 planes. India may be able to buy F-18’s in addition to F-16’s.

The U.S. also announced that it was considering helping to provide domestic energy technology to India. This is in part in response to the growing energy demand of India and the subsequent rising energy costs in the world.

Rice on foreign policy

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Post. Here is a portion of the interview and story:

Rice also said she made the case to Chinese officials that they cannot make a distinction between stability on the Korean Peninsula and North Korea possessing nuclear weapons. In more than two years of talks over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, a major problem for U.S. policy has been that China has been hesitant to press North Korea too hard for fears of sparking instability in the closed communist country on its border.

"My discussion with the Chinese was to suggest to them that those two [concepts] are indivisible," Rice said. "They understand that a nuclear North Korea on the Korean Peninsula has potentially unpredictable effects that will not make the Korean Peninsula very stable, will not make the region very stable. And so I didn't find much pushback on that."

In another story in the Post they cover the possibility that Syria may be in for some transformational changes:

"What we're trying to do is to assess the situation so that nobody is blindsided, because events are moving so fast and in such unpredictable directions that it is only prudent at this point to know what's going on," Rice told Washington Post editors and reporters, citing "the possibility for what I often call discontinuous events, meaning that you were expecting them to go along like this and all of a sudden they go off in this direction, in periods of change like this. So we're going to look at all the possibilities and talk to as many people as we possibly can."

Democrats urge continued Social Security disaster

Analysis by: Roger Wm. Hughes

Rep. Sandy Levin, who holds a key position to fix Social Security, offered the Democrat response to President Bush’s radio address by showing incalcitrant to any cooperation in fixing the flawed nature of Social Security.

"This would have dire consequences including major borrowing and massive benefit cuts. It would mean the dismantling of Social Security as we know it," Rep. Sandy Levin said in the Democratic Party's weekly radio address.

President Bill Clinton, when urging the Nation to deal with the coming Social Security Crisis, said that there were only three possible solutions to the Social Security dilemma: raise taxes; cut benefits; or increasing earnings.

Levine today ruled out the increase of earnings. The only way that increased earnings will solve the crisis of Social Security is for those who are earning to actually pay in for their (or their generation’s) retirement.

That’s right! Anyone who believes they are receiving the taxes they paid into FICA back on their Social Security checks is ill-informed. You are not receiving back the taxes you paid into the system. Your money went to pay for your grandparents’ and parents’ Social Security checks. The money you are now receiving comes from those people who are currently working. 

It is only through personal accounts that President Clinton’s hope of helping to solve Social Security’s insolvency by way of higher interest rates is possible.

Still, the Democrat leadership continues to offer no signal that they are ready to compromise and solve the Social Security’s financial problems. Rep. Charlie Rangle still brags that there is no Democrat House Member who will sit down with Republicans -- an order that was given by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Annan close to quitting?

The London Times reports that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is depressed and close to resigning his U.N. position:

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, is said to be struggling with depression and considering his future. Colleagues have reported concerns about Annan ahead of an official report this week that will examine his son Kojo’s connection to the controversial Iraqi oil for food scheme.

Depending on the findings of the report, by a team led by the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, Annan may have to choose between the secretary-generalship and loyalty to his son.

Some are predicting Annan’s withdrawl:

"Kofi Annan is going to find his position increasingly untenable," said Nile Gardiner, an expert on the UN at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "There is a strong possibility he will resign voluntarily because of his declining credibility."

The blog of Roger L. Simon is reporting that Kofi may be in more trouble than he has let on. Simon reports that Tuesday’s findings by the committee investigating the Oil-for-Food "may reveal, among other things, startling information tending to indicate Secretary General Kofi Annan had more knowledge of, or was closer to, his son Kojo's activities with Cotecna - the company whose role in the scandal seems so pervasive - than previously thought."

More hits to Social Security

Democracy for America (DFA) launched two radio ads that depict how Social Security affects the lives of real people. The ads are DFA’s way of attacking President Bush’s hope to save Social Security from its inherent faults. The two ads make the plea to protect Social Security from privatization. To listen to the ads, visit:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/30_second_ad

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/60_second_ad

The true stories featured in the ads are just a few of the thousands that Democracy for America collected from activists across the country since February. The ads will run in the next few weeks on radio stations in key swing districts, Latino radio stations, and markets where the right-wing front group, USA Next airs television ads. They will be complemented by a grassroots action plan, among the hundreds of DFA Meetup groups across the country.

There efforts continue to ad to the Democrats efforts to do nothing to save Social Security. President Bush’s plan of personal accounts is the only way that Social Security would be able to receive higher interest on savings. This is because the generation now receiving benefits gets that money from taxes paid in by current workers. Under President Bush’s plan, workers would be paying in for their own retirement and would have a lifetime of earning on investments to add to their benefits.

Rumble on the border?

The Washington Times reports on how Latin American groups are planning to "teach" the Minuteman Project " a lesson." The Minuteman Project plans to report illegal aliens who are crossing the border into America.

Here is part of the Times story:

Members of a violent Central America-based gang have been sent to Arizona to target Minuteman Project volunteers, who will begin a month-long border vigil this weekend to find and report foreigner sneaking into the United States, project officials say.

James Gilchrist, a Vietnam veteran who helped organize the vigil to protest the federal government's failure to control illegal immigration, said he has been told that California and Texas leaders of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, have issued orders to teach "a lesson" to the Minuteman volunteers.

"We're not worried because half of our recruits are retired trained combat soldiers," Mr. Gilchrist said. "And those guys are just a bunch of punks."

More than 1,000 volunteers are expected to take part in the Minuteman vigil, which will include civilian patrols along a 20-mile section of the San Pedro River Valley, which has become a frequent entry point to the United States for foreigner headed north.

Shi'ite want purge

The Washington Times reports on Shi’ite desires to remove harassing elements from Iraq’s security forces:

Members of the Shi'ite coalition that won Iraq's elections are demanding that the new government, when it is formed, cleanse the security services of terrorist informers and Saddam sympathizers as its first order of business.

Pressure for a purge of the new services is coming from within the ranks of the United Iraqi Alliance, many of whose mainly Shi'ite members complain of being harassed by Sunni officers much as they were persecuted under deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

Message for DeLay

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board assesses Majority Leader DeLay and his ethics accusations:

Taken separately, and on present evidence, none of the latest charges directly touch Mr. DeLay; at worst, they paint a picture of a man who makes enemies by playing political hardball and loses admirers by resorting to politics-as-usual.

The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. Mr. DeLay's ties to Mr. Abramoff might be innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange with being included in Mr. Abramoff's lavish junkets.

Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers his former staffers Michael Scanlon and Mr. Buckham achieved after leaving his office had something to do with their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader.

Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out.

The Iowa Scene

Mike Glover of the Associated Press offers a great review of how Iowa has already begun the 2008 search for President. Republicans have chosen Iowa and New Hampshire to be first in the nation to start the process:

In the realm of nonstop presidential politics, this is the slow time, when 2008 hopefuls are putting out early feelers in Iowa, a state critical to any White House aspirant. The calendar may show two years and 10 months to the next round of caucuses, but the courting continues.

Consider the experience of John Norris, who worked as a field director for 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and has served as chief of staff to Gov. Tom Vilsack. Not long ago, Norris was at his home in Ames, playing with his 18-month-old twin sons, when the telephone rang. It was Kerry.

"He talked and talked and talked," Norris chuckled. "He wanted to tell me what his PAC (political action committee) was going to be doing in the next couple of years, things like that."

State Sen. Tom Courtney, a county Democratic chairman, had a similar experience a few months ago.

"It was a cold day and I was driving through the snow when my cell phone rang and they said, 'Can you hold for Senator Edwards?'" Courtney recalled. "He said, 'I'm calling around the state to a lot of people like you.'"